At My Window
In an earlier post, I fretted there were no squirrels and chipmunks cavorting in our yard this spring. As much excitement as the Bald Eagles had brought into our lives, loss of those lively creature was an awfully high price to pay. Well, the eagles have not been seen for some weeks, now, the weather has warmed, and the chippies and a few squirrels have finally returned.
At first, the chippies sped away when they saw me at the window. Now, they delay their flight just long enough to take a good look. As they’ve gotten used to me, their curiosity has gotten the better of them. I still take care not to move too quickly when I see them, nor approach too closely to the window. This photo was take through the thermal, double glass of a French door, plus a third layer of glass in the storm door. Not too bad for all that! The date was May 5, 2012.
I’ve used the plural, “chippies,” though I’m not yet sure there’s more than one. Based on last year’s experience, however, I’ll bet there is. Time will tell.
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The warm winter and cold spring, both with a shortfall of rain, took their toll on the early bloomers in our yard, the crocuses and daffodils. Bulbs, I’m told, need a cold winter to blossom properly in the spring. I saw many healthy daffodils elsewhere in the neighborhood, leaving me to wonder whether our yard was even warmer in the winter and colder in the spring, due to the influence of the pond. It certainly felt colder this spring, with cold breezes off the pond.
Thankfully, the tulips, did pretty well, although they didn’t last as long as usual. We have only a few. One, in a far corner of the yard, planted way back in 1999, held up longer than the rest, no doubt because it received both morning and afternoon sun. I kept an eye on it.
One afternoon, I looked out to see its blossoms glowing with late, glancing light. They were so bright that the camera couldn’t capture the petal tips, which were brighter than the rest. In the parlance of photographers, they are “blown highlights, “appearing colorless in the photo. Thus, the photo is technically flawed, but it is bright and cheerful nonetheless, an anodyne to the unseasonably cold weather.
Soft, luminous light, producing long, delicate, tonal gradations in a photograph, often appears in late afternoons this time of year. Yet the glancing light on the tulips was harsh and unforgiving, like early morning light, producing the same abrupt transitions and strong contrasts. This has been a cold, dry spring. The soft light I describe comes with the warmer days usual this time of year, when there is a slight haze in the atmosphere to filter the light.
Correction. The wrong date appeared on the email alert for this post. March 2 is a bit too early for tulips around here. The photo was actually taken on April 21, 2012 at 4:04 pm.
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It’s hard to believe these peaceful Mute Swans, only hours earlier, were engaged in a horrific fight to defend their turf. After several month’s absence, they had come back to find a pair of younger swans settled on the ice-free pond. For the grim but inspiring story, read my earlier post, Fighting Swans (originally published as Swan Fight).
The first of these photos was featured in that earlier post, but I felt it deserved a more prominent place in this blog. The four-photo sequence shown here covers a mere fifteen seconds of the swans’ passage along our pondfront.
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The scene struck me as atmospheric, mysterious. I’ve been wanting to publish the photo, but just hadn’t got around to it. This is not a nimbus moon, with a halo or corona caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere. It’s a moon veiled by clouds and haze, that are diffusing its light, and casting an unworldly glow over the scene.
The electric lights are those of a rental community on the eastern shore of the pond, a little more than half mile away. The photo was taken on March 7, 2012 at 6:18 pm, before the start of Daylight Savings Time.
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