Chanson D'Autumne

Since this is the 100th entry I’ve posted on my blog, and since I’ve now been living in DC for six months, from April to October, I thought I’d take an opportunity to meditate briefly on the changes I’ve observed.

When we arrived here in DC, spring—which only a week earlier, when we visited to hunt for apartments, seemed a very long way off—had sprung: trees were blossoming in a profusion of white and pink and peach frothiness, looking as delicate and ethereal as a group of inverted ballet dancers, tutus pointing heavenwards. Swathes of pollen drifted from plants and trees and covered every surface, including our car, which is usually black but for a while, due to an onslaught of yellow particles, took on a sickly greenish cast.


The breeze was mild and full of the fragrance of flowers and rich spring earth, the air was filled with the clamor of birds’ calls, and the wildlife, in and out of the zoo, was focused on sex.

[Temminck's tragopan's mating display;
see my post for more]

Things are different now: the trees’ brilliant colors come not from blossoms but from changing leaves, and the wild sexual energy of spring has played itself out, turned into the ripe harvest of autumn. Not that this is Keats’ season of mists and mellow fruitfulness—there’s still a frenzy going on, but it’s a frenzy of hoarding and gathering, a frenzy of flight and imminent migration, a final wild firework of energy as the productive and reproductive part of the year ends not with a whimper but with a bang.


I can’t say for certain whether the zoo’s inhabitants feel, or demonstrate that they feel, this change—apart from being less obsessed with sex that they were previously. But certainly the zoo itself has changed: the beautifully landscaped grounds are turning gold and red or the dry, dull bronze of dead leaves; the air is no longer a humid as a wet blanket but crisp and slightly chill; the wild wood ducks and night herons that were so ubiquitous during their breeding and nesting seasons are almost gone—even the juvenile herons, whose brown colors are already fading into the elegant grey and white of adulthood, are rarer and rarer. The zoo’s hours will be reduced in November, as well, and until next April the indoor exhibits will close just a little earlier than when the light will fade out of the sky.

I’m not sure when and where the animals in outdoor exhibits will go—I hate to even contemplate a Friday empty of flamingos—but I’m sure that soon enough they’ll be shepherded indoors to wait out the cold, still months of winter.


For now, though, they and we enjoy this—my favorite—season: this intermediate, this state of transition, this untrustworthy charmer coming with her sweet scent of apples and woodsmoke, kicking up rills of exhilaration with each gust of wind that swirls fallen leaves into a waltz, this seducer for whom the trees blush and bare themselves, who vanishes along with the light and abandons us to grey days and icy nights. It could feel like a betrayal, and yet it never does: instead, I’m always grateful to autumn for ushering us into the cold months with so much fanfare and pleasure, so that even during our descent into the barren, slumbering season, we’re given a good fall.

[a dark-rum
chocolate]

On a different note, unrelated to the seasons but quite related to the fact that this is my 100th post since I started the blog in June, I thought I’d provide you with some statistics about Beasts in a Populous City:

As of this morning, there have been over 1,500 visits to the site and over 3,600 page views; 402 individuals have visited the site, some of whom—the discriminating ones—have become regular visitors; the site has been visited from people in 28 different countries, although the majority of visits have come from the U.S. (35 different states/regions), the UK, Canada, and France. The most popular individual posts (as judged by number of visits) are Stealth Educating, Creationism at the Zoo, Strange Encounter, If Looks Could Kill, and Great Apes.

So, thanks to all of you for giving me an excuse to take pictures of zoo and other wildlife and talk about them—and for writing smart and funny and insightful comments of your own.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Flamingo Friday: Feathers

One Good Shot: Barred Owl

Usually, the two resident barred owls at the zoo spend their days hunched close to one another in an extremely poorly lit area of their small outdoor enclosure. Not surprising, really: why shouldn’t they sleep the day away in a manner that thwarts photography? But one day, one of the owls was surprisingly active—for a moment, flying to a dead branch in the light and looking around with interest before rejoining his/her partner in their high corner. Seeing a gleam of light in that huge, deep black eye was the most interesting moment in my day.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wild Wildlife of Delaware, Part II: Unguarded Beaches, Discarded Armor, and Abandoned Waves

[lacy, whelk shell pierced with light]

Near Rehoboth Beach, in Lewes, DE, is Cape Henlopen State Park, site of beautiful beaches, woods, and ponds, as well as sand roads that should only be driven on by large all-terrain vehicles (trust me on this). We spent a lot of time at one of these beaches, lying in the sun like animals and taking long walks.


The beach was strewn with bits of horseshoe-crab carapaces. Horseshoe crabs, as you may know, are not actually crabs at all; in fact, they’re more closely related to spiders and mites. Relatives of contemporary horseshoe crabs, with much the same body plan, have been around for millions of years—hence the reference to these non-crabs as “living fossils,” even though they themselves haven’t been around quite so long.

[horseshoe-crab leg and shadow]

Horseshoe crabs are important not just in and of themselves but because they’re important bait species; they’re used in biomedical research; and their eggs, which they lay on the beach, are the major food source for a huge number of migrating-bird species. (Also, some really interesting work has been done on horseshoe-crab mate recognition and mating behavior—see Professor H. Jane Brockmann’s website for more information on some of this research.) It was too late in the year for us to see any live horseshoe crabs wandering around mating, but there were a few full carapaces as well as pieces on the beach, lying there like armor thrown off following a campaign:


There were some gulls on the beaches, as well, although—perhaps because this beach was less populated by humans and their foodstuff—not a large number of them. A few strutted the shores or had recently done so:


But the majority of them were either off at sea or visible only in the distance as a multi-species group whose members suddenly all took off at once in response to some signal unperceived by us.

We spied some other shorebirds as well, and to spare you the suspense that’s no doubt been building since I mentioned them last, I’ll tell you what kind they were: willets! (I’m convinced that all shorebirds are required to have bizarre names, like willet or dunlin or dowitcher or curlew or whimbrel or godwit.)


They hurried on ungainly, stilt legs to and fro along the shore, plunging their dark beaks into the sand to catch mole crabs and other hapless crustaceans and mollusks that hadn’t burrowed quite deep enough.


Apart from the wildlife (which, I admit, I was considerably more interested in than was Annie), we enjoyed being in the presence of the ocean itself. We delighted in the furiously pounding surf and in the wild foam that came racing up the shore in the wake of each crashing wave, a delirious effervescence rich as the froth bubbling up from a just-opened bottle of champagne—and just as intoxicating. It was as if the sea itself were, with each intermingling spurt of spray, making a display of its exuberance.


Some of the effect was due, too, to the quality of the late-afternoon light, which softens and enriches tones and colors and maybe even moods. In the mid-morning, by contrast, the waves that spilled over the beach were hit by a hard, direct light, like a hammer beating thin a sheet of metal: and then the shore looked as if it were being washed with successive layers of silver.


And thus concludes my abbreviated travelogue of our weekend trip to the wilds of Delaware. We’ll probably go again, and I’ll be furnished with more stories and photographs to share. Maybe we’ll even go in late spring, when the horseshoe crabs are mating! Oh, imagine all the opportunities for X-rated-arthropod entries…!

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wild Wildlife: Part I: Delaware Welcomes Us.

[the sea through an oyster]

Ever since our many trips up and down Interstate 95 early this year as my partner and I shuttled between Boston and DC, I have cherished a deep resentment towards Delaware. As anyone who has driven through Delaware on I-95 knows, you’re in the state for approximately five-and-a-half seconds, and yet they charge you something like $19 in tolls. And, adding insult to injury, their single state sign announces wearily, “Delaware Welcomes You.” Yes, with a period. Even the absence of punctuation would be less insulting than that period. Surely, I argued, any state that soaks drivers so thoroughly that it doesn’t need to have a sales tax should be friendlier towards its cash cows. Surely they could afford to be more cheerful—or at least buy a damn exclamation point.

Luckily, our time in Rehoboth Beach was charming and gave me no further reason to resent the state of Delaware. Some of the highlights of the trip included:

- My saving a giant moth (initially identified as a “hummingbird” by people in the store) from being trapped forever in a gift shop. (A quick note on identification: hummingbirds, though they are also flying organisms of about two or three inches in length, tend not to be nocturnal or possess antennae.)
- Annie’s drinking a cocktail called “Aunt Bunny’s” while regaling me with anecdotes from a new biography of Flannery O’Connor.
- Our car being rescued from where it was beached on the sand by a kind member of the Surf Fisherman’s club at Cape Henlopen State Park.
- The people at a neighboring restaurant table eating an estimated 500,000 blue crabs in order to get their money’s worth out of the “all you can eat” crab special.

Even though the place was full of vacationers who, like us, flocked in for the long weekend, we saw a fair amount of wildlife—primarily birds, although also the shells/carapaces of a number of marine invertebrates, including razor clams, shore clams, slipper-shell snails, mole crabs, jingle shells, mussels, horseshoe crabs, and bay scallops.


Our first evening, as we walked on the beach (still crowded at 6pm), I was thrilled to see that along with the several species of gulls present, various other seabirds were also flying above the water and shore. Most of them were too far away for me to identify, of course, although I spent a great deal of time telling long-suffering Annie things like, “Look! Look! Do you see that bird there, way out, with the black wings, right by the waves? That’s not a gull!” or “I think that’s an osprey! It is an osprey!” (She humored me as best she could.)

[an osprey with a fish in its talons]

We also saw a number of immensely long Vs of migrants flying in their orderly, flowing lines across the sky; I think these in this picture are cormorants with the late-day sun gilding their undersides:


Gordon Pond, in the state park, is a beautiful, huge pond just a little way from the beach, full of marsh grasses and reeds; it reminded me of parts of Merritt Island National Refuge in Florida, except without the alligators. Given that we took a walking trail, I can’t say I was disappointed by their absence.


The pond was alive with egrets and terns and ospreys and herons.



The pine trees skirting it were also full of juncos and finches and inconsiderate little Taunting Warblers (a proper name, I assure you) that flitted through the branches, paused only when they were behind an obscuring spray of needles, and had an unerring instinct for knowing precisely when I had trained the camera on them but not yet depressed the shutter-release button.

[I think this one may be
a yellow-rumped warbler]

I will continue with more photographs of shores and shore life in Part II of the Delaware Saga. Stay tuned to discover what bizarrely named shorebirds we encountered (a hint: they were not dowitchers).

[self-portrait at the beach]

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}