Archive For The “gull” Category
The sun sets over the Dunes of Florence, Oregon, August. 1980. (Robin Rowland)
It was forty years ago, in August, 1980, that a friend and I drove from Vancouver, BC, where I was living at the time, to spend a weekend at Florence, Oregon, which inspired Frank Herbert to write the famous novel Dune.
That’s me at the beach in Florence, Oregon, in 1980.
Like many at the time, I was entranced by Dune as soon as I picked it off a drug store bookshelf probably in 1965. It was sometime later that I read someplace that it was Florence that first inspired Frank Herbert to write about ecology when he originally visited back in 1953 when he was trying to write an article about a US Forest Service project to use dune grass to keep the sand in check. After all that research, as Herbert said in the collection of his essays, Frank Herbert, the Maker of Dune (1987): “Before long I had far too much for an article and far too much for a short story.. But I had an enormous amount of data, with angles shooting off at angles to gather more.” The result, of course, was the blockbuster novel, then more novels, then spinoffs by his son, a movie concept that was never made, an awful movie that was made, a pretty good miniseries and a new movie that we hope to see this Christmas (if there are movies in theatres).
That trip has been a wonderful memory for years, so to mark the anniversary, I found some of the old slides, taken on Kodak Ectachrome, with my old Minolta SRT101 and scanned them. For a some where the colour did not survive four decades, I converted to black and white.
Sand dunes and grass at Florence, Oregon, August 1980. You can see a family building a sandcastle in the distance along the shore. (Robin Rowland)
That amazing sandcastle on the beach at Florence, Oregon, that could be out of a Dune movie or perhaps a fantasy novel. (Robin Rowland)
Sand dunes and grass at Florence, Oregon. (Robin Rowland)
Sand dunes are like waves in a large body of water; they are just slower. (Frank Herbert, “The Sparks Have Flown” in Frank Herbert The Maker of Dune).
Dunes and dune grass at Florence, Oregon, August 1980. (Robin Rowland)
Seagulls over the Pacific Ocean, the dunes and grass at Florence, Oregon, August, 1980. (Robin Rowland)
A wider view of the Oregon coast and ocean surf. (Robin Rowland)
Ocean surf on the nearby Oregon coast. (Robin Rowland)
Ocean surf. (Robin Rowland)
Shots from the November shore bird survey.
A Western grebe off the Maggie Point gazebo. (Robin Rowland)
Common mergansers off Maggie Point. (Robin Rowland)
We spotted gulls in a feeding frenzy off the Kitamaat Village soccer field. (Robin Rowland)
Another shot of the feeding frenzy. (Robin Rowland)
Detail of the feeding frenzy in the above shot. (Robin Rowland)
Common loons off Kitamaat Village (Robin Rowland)
A flock of starlings off Kitamaat Village. (Robin Rowland)
A song sparrow off at Kitamaat Village. (Robin Rowland)
A red neck grebe off Maggie Point (Robin Rowland)
Canada Geese on a take off run in the Kitimat River estuary, Dec. 17. 2016. (Robin Rowland)
I made the annual trip with Walter Thorne into the Kitimat River estuary on Saturday, Dec. 17 for that leg of the Kitimat Christmas Bird Count.
We didn’t see as much variety as in previous years because the region had been the grip of an icy -15 C at least cold snap for the previous ten days. That meant many of the creeks and wetlands that were open in previous years were totally or partially frozen over.
Parts of the estuary were completely or partially frozen in the cold snap (Robin Rowland)
So that meant we saw lots of Canada geese and ducks.
Canada Geese flying over the frozen wetland (Robin Rowland)
And up into the trees. (Robin Rowland)
A northern shoveller. (Robin Rowland)
An American coot with a bit of a plant in its beak. (Robin Rowland)
A bald eagle looking through the gloom. (Robin Rowland)
A gull at the end of a snowy log. (Robin Rowland)
A Christmasy scene, ducks and geese by two evergreen trees. (Robin Rowland)
A juvenile bald eagle surveys the Kitimat River from a log on a sandbar. (Robin Rowland)
Once again this year I joined the Kitimat Christmas Bird Count, helping out the Kitimat Valley Naturalists. Here are some of the best shots from that day, Wednesday December 16. 2015.
Gulls huddle together on the shore of MK Bay at low tide. (Robin Rowland)
A great blue heron watches from an old stump in the Kitimat River estuary. (Robin Rowland)
A female mallard duck in flight over MK Bay at low tide. (Robin Rowland)
A scaup (duck) in intermediate plumage on a mound of reeds in the Kitimat River estuary. (Robin Rowland) (Corrected caption, duck was identified in the field as a ringed-neck but on further review of the photograph, the consensus of the naturalists was scaup)
A red-tailed hawk surveys Haisla Boulevard at the LNG Canada turnoff just as the light fades in the late afternoon. (Robin Rowland)
The next day, on my morning walk, the neighborhood’s resident ravens followed me through the bush. Ravens are intelligent and I almost think they are posing for the camera, for this is the third time that they’ve gone to the same trees, in the same sequence, when I was there with my camera.
One of the ravens directly overhead. (Robin Rowland)
And flying from branch to branch of bare alders. (Robin Rowland)
And perched on a conifer (Robin Rowland)
A Great Blue Heron perches on a tree overlooking the Kitimat River during the Christmas Bird Count, December 15, 2012.
The bird count photo op wasn’t as good this year as it was last year. It was just as overcast with low late December light, but this time it was high tide with wind gusts making for chop on the ocean, estuary and river and that meant not as many birds in view.
A merlin, a falcon, devours its prey on a tree branch overlooking the Kitimat River. (Robin Rowland)
As we were starting out, we spotted a merlin, a falcon, (marco columbarius) on a bare branch overlooking the Kitimat River, devouring prey, a smaller bird.
The Kitimat River estuary on Dec. 15, 2012 (Robin Rowland)
There wasn’t a bird to be seen at the Kitimat River estuary.
A bald eagle perches on a telephone pole near the Kitimat River estuary, Dec. 15, 2012 (Robin Rowland)
Although we could see a bald eagle on a telephone pole far off at the other end of the estuary.
As we were finishing the tour of the estuary, we spotted an American dipper grabbing a salmon egg out a rocky creek. The American dipper (cinclus americanus) has a special ecological niche, a fast moving stream. (The American dipper was also known as the “Water Ouzel”).
An American dipper picks a salmon egg out of a fast, rocky stream near the Kitimat River estuary. (Robin Rowland)
A gull hovers over the Kitimat harbour, Dec. 15, 2012 (Robin Rowland)
Although the estuary bird count wasn’t that successful, I did get some interesting visitors to my feeder.
A varied thrush visits my deck, Dec, 12, 2012 (Robin Rowland)
A fox sparrow on my snow covered deck, Dec. 12, 2012 (Robin Rowland)