Last revised: December 25, 2007
This guide to the images was written by Eva in consultation with Herman.
Dear friends and family,
There was a gannet show—15,000 dive-bombing birds—off Nantucket last New Year’s, but at telescope distance. The gannet on the address label was an outlier I was able to snap with my handheld camera. Likewise, the harlequin ducks on Nantucket were too far away for me to appreciate, so Herman took me another weekend in January to the cliff at Halibut Point where I got good photo ops of harlequins, & also took “Down, Down, & Away,” aka “Eider Down,” now on YouTube, of an eider diving straight down for mussels. The duck’s body becomes a diminishing white dot until it disappears. http://theworld.com/~eva links to it.
Along with a few colleagues I've been spending my lunch hour taking a constitutional around Cutler Lake, except in Feb., when two of us four did something more: Ice skating.
The donkey is not a partisan political statement. It is emblematic of our March trip to the Mexican states of Tabasco & Chiapas, where beasts of burden and free range farm animals are very much in evidence. We lunched at that thatched restaurant on stilts in Jonuta. Wetlands, and the Mayan ruins at Palenque, which are situated in habitat, were focal points.
In April we had a D'Entremont dinner party to celebrate our 25th anniversary. This was also the month Herman traded in our red 2000 Toyota Echo for a black Prius, an event marked on the card by the panel of birds in black, all of which we saw in Mexico.
In May Brian and Tomiko came through Boston. The four of us enjoyed a whale watch.
Peter Smyth moved away. On one of his last days on Montrose we watched a baby skunk innocently circle his house. A neighborhood cat dramatically showed up but just stalked.
I trailed after Herman on Glenn's South Beach trip bearing his canvas chair. I enjoyed the piping plover chick, black-bellied plovers, dowitchers, oystercatchers, etc. And I swam.
In August the UK's Andy Culshaw birded the North Shore with Herman, Glenn and me. I photographed dragon flies for the first time. We finished up at the Salisbury heron roost.
We flew to Chicago for Thanksgiving, Maura Drumm's wedding, and a cousins’ gathering on the McCanns’ 35th anniversary. Joseph's staff reminds me of a question mark. Don't ask.
Herman stopped ushing at St. Catherine's because “I'm all lopsided.” That said, he has 315 bird species in MA in 2007, and counting, & plans to participate in three Christmas counts.
And so we head into
herman@theworld.com evacasey@rcn.com eva@theworld.com
Last revised: December 25, 2007