Today felt like spring. An unexpected warm day in February. The bike path was crowded with rollerbladers, walkers, cyclists, kids in strollers... the cove was crowded with breaders...
the air felt light...
... sparkling...
...shimmery...
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Today felt like spring. An unexpected warm day in February. The bike path was crowded with rollerbladers, walkers, cyclists, kids in strollers... the cove was crowded with breaders... the air felt light... ... sparkling... ...shimmery... |
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The air was also alive with birds: ring billed gulls attracted by the breaders, swans, mallards, Canada geese... all went into a feeding frenzy every time a new breader arrived. Eventually the gulls gave up but the swans and Igor the broken winged Canada goose kept eating. The mallards got bolder once the gulls left also. |
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Igor held his own with the swans and the gulls. At one point a gull tried to take a chunk of bread away from Igor and he whacked that gull hard with his beak. The gull took off. Igor hangs out with the swans and is very tame around people. He can't fly at all. Note his right wing in this picture. Even when lots of his Canada geese cousins are around, he prefers the swans. The wild Canada geese won't come over to the breaders at all. They soar overhead in vee formation or sleep with their heads tucked under a wing on the golf course across the street. Of the ducks, only the mallards are interested in bread. Mergansers, canvasbacks, scaups, buffleheads all stay away from the breading frenzy. |
As we were trying to identify a hawk perched in a tree along the bike path, a woman came up to us excitedly exclaiming there was a pair of "kingbirds" just across the bridge. The place she described is exactly where we've seen a belted kingfisher before. Sure enough, we heard him before we saw him. The male was perched on a branch that extended out over the water. He dove dramatically into the water, flew back to his perch, and sang ecstatically a dozen or more times. A few of the dives were more like skims where he'd just touch the surface then dart back up a few feet and plunge again. After each dive he sang to beat the band. Like: "here I am, I'm a kingfisher, this is my afternoon, and a kingfisher is just the best thing to be" It was a glorious afternoon and the kingfisher was totally into it. We were totally into watching him. All this while we only saw the female once. She darted by and perched in a dense evergreen where we couldn't distinguish her from the pine needles. A cardinal darted by making a nice color contrast to the blue,white, chestnut of the kingfisher.
A group of swans flew low over our heads, their enormous wings beating so loudly it sounded like the bridge was shaking or something. A raft of American widgeons gathered off the end of Squantum Point. I was relieved to see them because we hadn't seen any in either side of the cove. I guess the nice day enticed them out into Providence Harbor.
A ship sailed into the harbor and docked so it lined up with the Providence skyline making a great picture if only I hadn't run out of film!
Last night we went to hear Prism of Praise, one of Providence's outstanding choirs, at the Fourth Baptist Church. The music was outstanding. The whole program was deeply moving. It was all the more moving because the church had just buried a young man of theirs who died a violent death ... a lot of the choir members were related to him (mother, cousin, brother, uncle...). It was hard not to be caught up in the spiritual feeling around a god who loves you just as you are. A few people even came forward and accepted their personal savior... Sometimes I feel nostalgic for a personal god... sometimes I don't. The god that inspires this music and the faith that these people have sounds very appealing. Not the mainstream god.
I often wonder how a god that can inspire such praise and love and faith can be used to justify so much hatred, so much disdain and disrespect for their fellow humans. Is the god these people are singing to the same god the Christian Coalition worships? How can that be? These folks sing of a forgiving god who loves me "Just as I Am". Is that god the same as the hate filled one? I guess if light can be both wave and particle, god can be both hatred and love...
I love the music and admire the people's faith, but I'm on a far different path.
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