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Pjsee16's Journal
"So let's get one thing straight - the name...it's not buzzard, vulture doesn't even do us justice...we have a beautiful name it's "Cathartes aura." The translation from Latin is "Golden Purifier" (Commonly known as Turkey Vulture.) We keep your roads clean...we earn an honest living, and we actually prevent disease...so be sure to let Dr. Fauci know. If you mess with us we use vomiting as a defense."
Happy Halloween!
For more see:Have You Thanked a Vulture Today
Trees and fog one morning in Vermont.
Back road on the way to a off grid hermitage where I stayed for a few weeks.
This train was moving! South toward Rutland and New York City. But no fear, we are looking toward the rear car, moving fast away.....
Everybody Loves the Sound of a Train in the Distance Paul Simon
The mountains and the field caught my eye. The grass has a withered beauty nevertheless. Aidirondacks in the background.
(On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales)probably male and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone's throw of the shore.(Terra Del Fuego), over which the beech tree extended its branches) Darwin,Voyage of a Naturalist. Quoted by Melville.
Here, not Terra Del Fuego, but Cape Cod, not monsters but Humpbacks. Human observers were delighted to see these two approach each other from a great distance and then swim and dive together for close to an hour. The Naturalist aboard told us that the species is mostly solitary, traveling for long distances alone, with the exceptions of mothers and calves which stay together for a year. Solitary whales do however meet up at sea and keep each other's close company for hours at a time. I was interested to find out by my own research that bumps on the whales head are actually hair follicles, and that each has a tiny hair sprouting from it, the function is unclear but speculation is that it may be sensory like whiskers on other mammals.
This morning stretch of a humpback crosses to the vast domains of air and sea. She is likely not waving to the whale watchers, but may be signaling to other whales: "I am here," in this case by sound, not gesture as she slaps the water or perhaps she is simply taking morning exercise.
When people used to ask for directions...the saying goes..."You can't get there from here..."
"Comment ca va?"
These two Humpbacks came together at a distance as we watched, and then continued, diving and surfacing. What news had they to share? Off the coast of Provincetown MA. USA.
Islands in Lake Champlain. Will they drift off some day to join the clouds? Or will the clouds resolve as a dew on their soil? Likely they will keep having this conversation.
"The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan." Lord Bacon's version of the Psalms as Quoted in Herman Melville's Moby Dick
New York State as seen from VT, a mundane scene, in some respects, yet the undulations of hills and clouds, say exactly what they need to say, neither too much, or too little.
"...that famous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other. (Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea,) saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale..." Herman Melville as quoted in Moby Dick
Seen off Race Point Beech, Provincetown, MA, Cape Cod, USA
Chittenden Reservoir, VT USA
The Plover may be a picky eater but she always cleans her plate. It may be just a bit of this or that but she spends most of her time eating.
Visible from my home is one of the most emblematic mountains of Vermont: Camel's hump. Like maple syrup, its visage has become synonymous with Vermont, and was even minted onto a collectors quarter of the 50 states. One of the founding fathers of Vermont of Revolutionary days, Ethan Allen, is reputed to have dubbed it "Camel's Rump." Allen, was known to have spent as many days in the pub as he did fighting the British or New Yorkers, and fortunately it did not stick. The Native Americans gave it a much more dignified name, something like "the resting place," a place to stop along their journeys. Samuel De Champlain, the European Explorer who named the lake for himself, called it after a visage in a family crest - "Le Lion Couchant"-the resting lion. To my eye it looks much more like a humpback whale. From a modern vantage it's hard to imagine that Vermont has had much to do for some time, with camels, lions, or whales, but my very town, Charlotte Vt. is noted for the Charlotte Whale which is a fossiled specimen found in a farmer's field in the 1840's. About the same time, most people here would had been lighting their lamps with whale oil. There had even been a whaling ship dubbed the "Vermont." Over 10,000 years ago, Lake Champlain was once part of a great inland saltwater sea, and there were whales, in these parts. There is even a historical connection between Vermont and Cape Cod MA, where I have taken many photographs. Samuel de Champlain in the 1600s explored the waters around the cape, just as he explored the waters of Vermont's great lake, and he would have seen many the whales by the cape in that epoch . Lest I be accused of hanging with Ethan Allen in the pub, If Champlain had had a little more imagination might we have had "Humpback Mt." or "Camel's Humpback?"
"For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequods fish-spears!"
Quote from Moby Dick, Herman Melville
There had been a proposal some years back to make Champlain, though considerably smaller, one of the American Great Lakes. Such a designation would have given additional environmental protections. Here looking back east toward the Vermont shoreline. Clouds are one of Vermont's major crops and also a chief export.