A Living Building

The Lab of Ornithology appears to me to have been designed around two major aesthetic concerns. First, the trove of bird art, like that in the Fuertes library and the Fisher’s Island panel, which have been beautifully integrated into the space. A second goal was to showcase the natural wonders in the wetlands just outside, visible through huge windows all around. It’s like the biggest blind you’ve ever seen.

Though my time was limited, I was determined to take in just a bit of the gorgeous swampy bit of Sapsucker Woods immediately around the building. It’s truly another world, quiet, laced with mulched paths, swarming with birds. Canada geese were living their lives, getting it on, preening


and making a general honking ruckus. One pair has claimed ownership of a part of the path near the bird feeder, and challenges passersby in a quiet way. I saw several toddlers try to pet this bird. Not recommended.Does this goose look intelligent to you? It does to me. There's really something going on in those eyes. It hisses and intimidates people who come too close. You don’t want a bite from that bony, serrated bill. There were a couple of geese with permanently injured wings, making a good living, mates by their side, at the pond. One bird acts as an unofficial greeter, hanging out right by the entry. It's neat to see birds the second you pull into the parking lot of the Lab.

Mallards kept bombing over and dropping in, and I played at photographing them, with some pretty cool results.As a young bird painter, I devoured a book called Prairie Wings, by Edgar M. Queeney. Using the rudimentary black-and-white equipment of the time, he captured amazing photos of ducks in flight. If only I could go back in time and hand Mr. Queeney my little Digital Rebel. What fun he'd have.
A mushmouse swam by a resting hooded merganser (the white spot directly back of the rat).

A pair of common mergansers. When they hauled out on a log, I could see the bulk of their bodies. They’re like icebergs. Note the wood duck nesting boxes, which common and hooded mergansers may also use. The place is set up for birds, and the resident geese know and exploit that.

I had to chuckle when the black-capped chickadee I photographed turned out, on closer inspection, to be color-banded. This is the Lab of Ornithology, after all. Who knows what secrets these birds have revealed?

The incandescent glow of a mallard’s head. His mate hides in shadow.

I was stunned to see a big brown bat flying in daylight, dipping down to drink. I never thought my photos would be acceptable, but they aren’t bad, considering that I was focusing manually, and the bat was dipping and diving like, well, a bat. This is a really neat shot, and it's even, finally, in good focus.
I hoped he wasn’t ill; bats all over the Northeast are turning up with “white-nose syndrome,” a disease of apparently fungal origin that is killing them by the thousands, and sending them out of their hibernacula much too early. Please be well and travel safely, brown bat.
This ends my sojurn at the Lab. The "Letters from Eden" show hangs through mid-July. Please check it out if you're in the area.

Righteous Geese

Canada geese, depending on where in the country you make your home, can either be a blessing or a curse. In places where they've been introduced, like Ohio and Connecticut, they make real pests of themselves, camping out on golf courses, leaving big gooey bombs that stick perfectly in cleats; polluting reservoirs and overcrowding lawns. Poor things, they were never meant to be nonmigratory. It took the US Fish and Wildlife Service to decide to breed a whole bunch of a nonmigratory race of Canada goose (the Giant, Branta canadensis maximus) and then take it even a bit farther. They clipped their wings, and installed them on ponds all over the Midwest and Northeast, so we'd have resident geese to shoot whenever we wanted. Gee, it worked really well. Ask anybody in Connecticut.

The only problem with this elegant plan is that in the fall, hunters wind up preferentially shooting the declining migratory races that come in nice shootable flying vees, the Canada geese who are still earning an honest living, breeding way up north and migrating to the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf Coasts for the winter. Not many people shoot Giant Canadas except out of pure frustration, so they multiply like bunnies. Hey, we invited them...

The geese in Wisconsin looked to me like they belonged there. I'm not sure what race they were; they didn't look small and stubby-billed enough to be Richardson's, which breeds in Minnesota. But they were properly wary and wild, and they were breeding out where they ought to be breeding--in marshes and sloughs, instead of in people's front yards or on median strips.

I fooled around with automatic settings while shooting these strongly backlit geese, wading through a wet meadow. Oddly enough, the Night Portrait setting did best, with a nice, soft-focus touch. I guess the slightly longer exposure blurred it a bit, and picked up more detail in the birds. They are lovely birds, and so intelligent.

Take enough pictures, and weird stuff happens. This little family fled my approach, and for a moment both parents melded into a two-headed, hypervigilant bird. I feel like this at softball games, when I'm trying to watch Phoebe play and Liam mess around the outskirts at the same time.

Comedy turned to lyrical beauty as soon as the birds hit the water. They relaxed into grace, and so did I.