Tag: Environment

Cartagena

American Flamingos

I first heard about this fortress-guarded outpost of the Spanish Empire when, many years ago, as a kid, I read about how Francis Drake captured and plundered the town in 1586. Fortresses still guard the harbour, but English pirates are in short supply. I wasn’t able to check Drake’s bird list, but I’m sure he did okay. Colombia has over 2000 species!

Cartegena in 1586

Cartegena is presently a largish, prosperous city with an ambience that reminds one of Mexico – a little. Another reminder that Latin America is not a monolith, neither geographically nor culturally. Unfortunately, out stay was so brief that we weren’t able to sample much of the country of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Coconut ice cream was about it.

Mealy Parrot

The National Aviary is an hour or more from the cruise terminal by bus, the route taking us past farmland and housing developments. I spotted a few hawks enroute, including a Roadside Hawk and a Common Blackhawk.

The aviary seems well-maintained and is a pleasure to visit. Lots of birds hanging around the enclosures, of which there are just enough. I did get a chance to see the splendid Cock of the Rock This was a very rare bird when I was a boy, and one that I fantasized about capturing on an Indiana Jones style expedition into the jungle.

Cock of the Rock

Southern Screamer

Scarlet-Rumped Tanager (female, I think)

My favourite bird here was the Russet-throated Puffbird. I spotted this one watching the proceedings from a convenient branch. Definitely a wild bird. After a few minutes, it was gone, vacating the premises when my back was turned. Cute bird, though.

Russet-throated Puffbird

King Vulture

King Vultures — the Aviary has several of these wonderful birds in its collection. I saw one in the wild, flying over the Panama Canal locks. Quite a majestic bird, as this chap clearly knows. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a shot of the wild bird for all sorts of reasons, but, at least I get to see the rescued ones at the Aviary.

This bird had a broken wing, but checkout those feet! No wonder the Kings get first go at the carcass.

This Nightingale Thrush was busy digging around among the roots, perhaps looking for a tasty bug.

Nightingale Thrush

A few of the birds in the Aviary: the sparrow-sized Pygmy Owl, Spoonbill, Tiger Heron, Harpy Eagle, Chacalaca. And there are sloths.

Three-toed Sloth

Red Kytes and Polychrome Bulls: Visiting Lascaux

Ice Age Horses

A bit longer in Perigueux, with a chance to visit its museums, would have been nice. However, we had tickets to see the famous paleolithic art of Lascaux. Plus we had to be in Paris that evening. So, after a quick breakfast, we packed up and hit the road.

Auroch

I had longed to see Lascaux when I was a young archaeology student. Impossible then when gourmet macaroni and cheese was high living. Now, I’ve long forgotten the professors who taught me, and much of what I learned about the palaeolithic – it’s been a while – but Lascaux stuck with me.

Someone, or a bunch of people, have called Lascaux the “Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art”. I’m not sure why it isn’t the other way round, chronologically-speaking, but anyway. Certainly, the paintings are remarkable. And there are others. The Karst bluffs along the Vézère are famous for their caverns. Many were occupied on and off over the last 40 000 years or so of the last ice age. Amazing place!

Red Kytes

We arrived on a perfect day, sunny and mild, with a slight breeze. A few dozen migrating Red Kytes, and what looked like a Booted Eagle or two, kettled over low, heavily-treed hills, drifting west on shifting thermals. My real camera having just decided to give up the ghost a day or two back, I had to depend on my phone – not at all ideal for bird photography.

The Limestone Hills of the Vézère Valley

A warm day like this would have been rare when the cave walls were painted. It was the last ice age, after all, when giant deer, aurochs, wild horses, rhinos, and mammoths roamed the neighbourhood. The portraits of such beasts adorn the cavern walls. Were they created for magical purposes, or otherwise? Nobody can say. Europe was quite Arctic-like then. Inside a cavern probably wasn’t a bad place to be. So, there’s that.

With the cavern-riddled hills as a backdrop, the buildings containing the exhibits overlook the pleasant village of Montignac.We couldn’t see the actual caverns of course. These were closed to the CO2-breathing public many years ago. Instead we see exact re-creations of important galleries. And they certainly seem perfect, even down to the smell of cold stone. Or perhaps I was imagining that. A subconscious childhood memory maybe from when I explored the limestone caves in the cliffs surrounding the town where I lived. I once scratched my name on the cold stone. Maybe I painted a picture of a deer too, maybe.

These paintings are terrific – powerful, realistic representations of ice-age beasts. They are dated to the Solutrean, or Magdelanian. The aesthetic seems consistent with that of the beautiful, cunningly-flaked, leaf-shaped projectile points from the period. Beautiful things they are too!

My student attempt to flintknap a Solutrean Point. Not very good,I suppose, but, the right shape. Trying to replicate artifacts teaches archaeology students something about the methods and skills of the tool-makers.

Ice Age Beasts and Mysterious Markings. The artist (s) obviously ‘played’ with images, as with the antlers on this deer.

As to the significance and purpose of cave art. Who knows? Seventeen thousand years is a long time, and, as David Lowenthal once pointed out, “The Past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

While the paintings are indeed spectacular, the object that fascinated me most was a small, red-stone lamp. Easy enough to miss, but charming too.

I like to think that the person who made and used this lamp made some of the pictures too. Thinking about that actually gave me a bit of a shiver. I was seeing, in that humble artifact, the hand and mind of a long-dead, working artist, and, in a way, communicating with them.

Lamp

Indeed, it is the small accidents of survival that can, in a flash, bridge the millennia between oneself and a maker – the slip of the brush, the thumbprint in the clay, the misplaced notch on the spear shaft. They blur time and cause it to slide a bit. Suddenly, an age or two seems like nothing at all. The small, casually-dropped things, the trivial artifacts, often have more emotional power than the famous, colossal, historic monuments. Not that I won’t go look at those too!

Périgueux: The Dordogne

Isle River Bank – Local Inhabitant

Our next stop should have been Paris, but Paris on May Day seemed an even worse option than Bordeaux. Instead we leapt (figuratively speaking) at the chance to spend a couple of nights in the old pilgrim town of Périgueux in the Dordogne – famous for its medieval streets and massive cathedral. Bordeaux was great, but birding there, well…

Saint Front Cathedral in Périgueux

Périgueux is on the banks of the River Isle in the heart of the Périgord, home of foie gras, black truffles, and duck confit. A number of authors have set books here and in the region, including Michael Crichton. Martin Walker too, with his enjoyable Bruno mysteries.

The massive Romanesque Saint Front cathedral dominates the medieval core of the town, which has a history going back to pre-Roman Gaul and beyond. The museum here is reportedly quite good.

The prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux, also, are not far away. They date back 17,000 years or so. More about those in my next post.

Périgueux Architecture

Unfortunately, most restaurants and shops in Périgueux were closed both days – this being Sunday, followed by May Day – as were the Gallo-Roman and Military Museums. Drat!

Still, the cool afternoon was pleasant; the streets narrow and interesting. We had to limit ourselves to window shopping. Probably just as well. They do seem to sell some nice stuff.

We stopped for charcuterie at an outdoor cafe, one of the few places open, but whose name neither of us can remember. The glass of champagne here surprisingly inexpensive, nicely complimenting the generous platter of cured meats and the cheeses.

With not much else to do but enjoy the slightly breezy afternoon, we lingered with glasses of Bergerac, the local wine. Bergerac is under an hour away from here.

The red seemed rather like a Bordeaux, but softer – more Merlot in this blend, I think; the white crisp and aromatic Sauvignon Blanc, exactly what V. likes best. No sign here of Cyrano however.

Sunday in Périgueux

The Isle is a pleasant, unhurried river with treed banks down to the water, and a paved walkway. Aside from a couple of early morning strollers, and a dog walker or two, there was no traffic to disturb the many small birds singing and calling from the thickets.

My Merlin app confirmed nineteen species, from European Pied Flycatcher to Common Chiffchaff.

Hearing birds was easy, spotting them was almost impossible. At one point, I half-slid down on bank trying to get a better look at the Pied Flycatchers, and almost ended up in the drink. That would have been embarrassing. Would I have remembered how to say, “throw me a line!” in French? I doubt it.

The Flycatchers are pretty little black and white birds, and new to me. Very active, and, in the thick foliage, almost impossible to photograph.

The River Isle in Early May

So…I’m going to say, Chiffchaff.

The valley of the river also has its share of parks, walks, and historic sites, including chateaux. Driving through the area was quite pleasant. Lots of limestone.

I have mixed feelings about chateaux, although they’re pretty impressive. But who got exploited here when the aristos built and managed the place, I wonder? That’s the Liverpool in me talking. Sorry.

Chateau Puyguilheme

With a bit of imagination, one can people the turrets and galleries with imaginary musketeers, courtly ladies, and Cardinal Richelieu. The period is right, I think, for this place – 16th century. Still, it’s lovely and quiet today. Renaissance architecture, it has been renovated by the French state. Closed when we visited.

Jeepers! Honey Creepers

Leaving the present, and terrible, international situation for a bit. Thinking of more pleasant things….

Red-Legged Honey Creeper
Howler Monkey

For us, going to the tropics has been out of the question for the past two years-like a lot of people, I guess. Darn pandemic! We’ve certainly missed those evening breezes coming off the Caribbean, and the smells of Latin-American food being cooked down the beach somewhere. One night, in desperation, we even watched that Jeff Bridges movie from the 80’s, the one shot at Isla Mujeres and Tulum. We ordered in Mexican food, drank a few bottles of Sol, and had fun picking holes in the plot. Still, it’s not quite the same.

At least, I can rummage through my pictures of tropical birds. These are from Costa Rica, from the Cloud Forest at Monte Verde. The more observant reader might notice that not all images are of birds. Well, any port in a mountaintop storm.

Turquoise-browed Motmot

On that trip, V and I spent a few nights at a lodge near the Cloud Forest Reserve. Our driver, on his first run ever, checked google maps, and picked what was likely the worst road in the region to get us there. When we arrived an hour or so after the regular van, we were as well-shaken as a protein drink. Later on, we took a (guided) jungle walk at night, which came complete with tarantulas, little rivers of Leaf-cutter Ants, a ghostly Olingo high in the trees, and sleeping Trogons.

The next night was so windy that we thought the roof of our bungalow was going to blow off. At dinnertime, we huddled in our puffer jackets eating pasta and drinking Red Tapir Ale, thinking fondly of the beach we’d left behind at Playa Hermosa. Our birding tour of the Cloud Forest almost didn’t happen-the guide being afraid that jungle trees might fall on us. In spite of rain and wind, however,we ventured out and ‘got’ our ‘target birds – the Resplendent Quetzal and one of the loudest birds in the world, the Three-Wattled Bellbird (hard to see, but easy to hear).

Violet-eared Emerald
Hoffmann’s Woodpecker
Yellowish Flycatcher
Resplendent Quetzal
Blue-gray Tanager
Three-wattled Bellbird
Red Tapir Ale
Cloud Forest Day

Cloud Forest Night

Memories of Oaxaca

Crested Caracara

The Dancing Men

****************

They have faded into the valleys,

Those Kings who sipped

the thin mountain air

like gods.

Only we, the

Dancing Men remain in the high city,

waiting, waiting

for our own Gods to release us.

Prisoners still, we linger

on these misty pathways above the clouds.

MC 2001/2022

*The Dancing Men are 300 or so stone carvings of captives at the ancient Zapotec city of Monte Alban. Most look contorted, as if tortured and mutilated, and are thought to represent captives, most likely of high rank. Unfortunately, I can’t find the pictures I took of them.

Finally!

I’ve spent a lot of time searching for the Glaucous Gull. This Arctic visitor shows up on the west coast semi-regularly, but I just could never seem to, as Owen Wilson says in The Big Year “nail that sucker.” And I’ve really tried, really tried. I’ve gone to windswept Oregon beaches in January, landfills in March, Goldstream River with its spawned-out salmon lots of times. I followed up every report, within reason. I even spent the better part of a day at a sewage lagoon in Duncan, afraid to leave, but punished for staying, if you know what I mean. My reference picture might have been part of the problem–it’s possible.

Glaucous Gull (reference)

In any case, I finally caught up with the culprit at Goldstream, the place where I had tried so many times before. indeed, the first bird I saw when I pulled up to park was the Glaucous Gull! The river was very high, drowning the more recent remains of spent Chum and Coho, and keeping all gulls close to the picnic area. My young bird was tugging hopefully at an almost bare fish skull, and getting very little sustenance from it, or so it appeared.

I must say that the bird didn’t closely resemble my reference pic except, maybe, for the beak, so I couldn’t really be faulted. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway!

Finding my bird, after so many failed attempts, had a curious effect. The marvellous sense of birding adventure that consumed me when, six of seven years ago, I rejoined the hobby had suddenly returned. I even posted a picture of the subject on my bulletin board! So, although it took awhile – “thanks Pal!”

Glaucous Gull (the real thing)

Garafraxa

Garafraxa

exhales dolomite,

the dusk-deepening, stone breaths

of this steel-hard species of limestone,

where

Hart’s Tongue and rare orchids

survive in the cracks and crevices

of coral reefs marooned,

ages and ages past.

Of pre-things left behind

Now,

dampened under northern light,

and broken by northern ice.

I’ve seen limestone in other places,

hotter places,

where the rock

blazes white beneath the sun.

Pharaohs used to plate their tombs with limestone

pyramids made white-bright with limestone

you could go blind from that limestone;

no one ever went blind from dolomite.

The Garafraxa Road loops over the old reefs,

a ragged ridge of tomb-grey skeletons,

once swarming stuff

that hated winter and hated ice

waiting, without patience, until the poles move

little by little,

hoping,

perhaps, that

when all of us are gone,

the warm oceans will return

to drown these fields

where, for a hundred years,

farmers’ children stooped a thousand, million times

to fill stone boats,

to build stone fences,

around their Garafraxa farms.

I had a friend once, killed by dolomite.

He fell, and a great squared tower stone

fell after him, and crushed him.

In those casual days

such things happened more often,

Towers built by forgotten men

to burn rock

into lime,

abandoned,

square towers made of blocks

of dolomite,

all loosened through age,

standing like castles.

Richard, climbing there in the evening, alone.

His father tied him to a wide plank, I heard,

and, harnessed to it, dragged his son home

desperate against death, long ago.

Afterwards,

stonemasons took those towers down

to save other boys from falling

the fatal blocks cut up and used,

no doubt,

for tombstones,

in the cemeteries,

along the Garafraxa Road.

MC 2021

Avenida Quinta

The window sashes, once eggshell white,

have faded to cracked and curdled cream.

Memories of Moorish Spain

sleep in the peaks and arches of these windows,

now softened by time and the Caribbean salt air.

Likewise, the stuccoed walls,

tagged with graffiti,

assaulted by lianas and ficus,

have crumbled in places.

The gate of sapote wood gleams darkly solid

In the bright Mexican morning,

while an aggressive sun bleaches the lesser wood to spectral gray.

Not long for this world, this old queen of the avenue

Succubi of broken masonry and twisted rebar surround her,

ravenous building lots, chewing up the old ways

and disgorging money.

She waits her turn, a still substantial ghost,

one of the walking dead, so to speak,

half-hidden by those walls

 with their cascades of bougainvillea—

scarlet, foam-white, shocking pink.

The polished gate still protects one sanctuary,

a vain hope,

like the studded door to an tenth-century English abbey

surrounded by Vikings.

Then, from within, an antique lock clashes,

the massive gate trembles and opens.

Two Maya women in embroidered huipils exit and open their parasols

The elder, her hair wound in a tight bun,

wears a heavy gold necklace and pendant earrings.

A shawl of watered olive silk loops under her right arm

and across her left shoulder.

A heavy jade bracelet flashes green on the arm of her daughter-companion,

Reminders of an earlier time,

these two,

Like nobility, taking in the morning air, on their way

to church, perhaps,

towards the clanging bell.

While,

elsewhere along the avenue,

bars and cafes rattle open,

and construction workers

buy their breakfast from bicycle carts.

MC, 2001

The Other Butchart Gardens

Butchart Gardens is famous, and it’s one of Victoria’s premier attractions. But I knew of the Butcharts long before I came west. The Butchart mansion on 5th Avenue in Owen Sound, Ontario, was a block away from my boyhood home. It had, maybe still has, an indoor swimming pool. I remember once tramping through the snow to the front door in the hopes that I might sell a subscription to the Toronto Telegram.

Even after many, many years, I can still remember smelling chlorine through the half-open door. I probably wondered what living in a real mansion would be like. To be able to take a swim at home rather in the the minuscule YMCA pool – that would be something! Of course, it probably wouldn’t have worked very well in our 2 bedroom apartment behind the factory, but I would have been up for a try. Incidentally, I don’t believe I sold a subscription. Nor did I ever see the inside of the grand house. The Butchards, I think, were long gone anyway.

The Butchard Mansion

Even then though, I knew about the Butchard Gardens, later called The Martins. They were a few miles out of town at Balmy Beach. It was a long bike ride for a 12 year old so I never got there. I hadn’t yet heard of the west coast version. No reason I should.

A few years ago, I finally visited The Martins. It was May. I was birding along the cobbley Georgian Bay shoreline and then, almost accidentally, I was there, walking among the ruins of a grand idea from another time. Half of the real estate had been stripped way by winter ice and freak high water, the there was more recent damage. Winter storms on the Great Lakes can be fierce.

Winter’s Fallout – The Martins, Georgian Bay

About the Butcharts. The brothers, Robert and David, were born in Owen Sound in the 19th century. They ran a hardware store on what is now Main Street (2nd Avenue East), and ranked among the town’s “contemporary and go-ahead merchants”. Solid, likely Presbyterian, moderately well-off. Then they found that marl from a nearby lake bed could be converted into cement, a product in great demand in Canada’s developing industrial heartland. The discovery was huge. Soon, the Owen Sound Portland Cement Company was making some of the best cement in the country. They also shipped the product in bags rather than barrels. This innovation made the Butchards wealthy.

Marly, no longer industrial, Shallow Lake

Rich now, Robert built the mansion with indoor swimming pool on 5th Avenue and lived there until he and Jennie left for the west in 1904. His brother David stayed in Owen Sound and built something grand too. I’m not sure which of the imposing west side Owen Sound houses was his. Jennie, of course, created the Gardens at Tod Inlet near Victoria, BC, but David also created a Butchart Gardens at Balmy Beach on Georgian Bay. I wonder about this family obsession with ‘Gardens’, and where the idea came from.

The Martins

In any case, the Owen Sound establishment, with its Italian Garden, Sunken Garden, tennis courts, swimming pool, and many other features, was an important tourist attraction until, one winter, unusually heavy lake ice carved away a big chunk of the property. After Hurricane Hazel destroyed much of the rest, the Gardens were finished.

It rained while I was there. Forlorn, a strange, almost haunted legacy of what was once one of the country’s largest cement fortunes, it seemed the last glimmer of the Jazz Age world of the 1920’s. I suspect the property has now been developed; it certainly looked ‘ripe for the picking’. I’ll check on it next time I’m ‘home’. Since this blog is about birds, well, I saw only one on the property, a Common Merganser. The sun flashed out for a millisecond and lit him up, and then it started to pour.

Perseverance

Zeilin3Apr520

Spirit – after a month of digging

This time my post isn’t about birds. It’s a people story. It begins with a storm, a real doozy. Many of the boats in our bay dragged anchor, and moved. Of course, if your cable broke, there was only one way to go — onto the beach. Surviving that night would be tricky. In the morning, however, when the winds finally subsided and the tide ebbed, only 2 boats lay high and dry.

The little ‘Portuguese fishing boat’ was up near the curve of the seawall. Beautiful lines, high prow, white with blue trim. Eye candy out there, on calm evenings. A problem now for the owner. It turns out there is one, which is not always the case. Half of the boats are probably abandoned. The Portuguese boat was riding at anchor in a few days. Lovely. Back where she belongs.

The yellow boat I’ll call Spirit was not so fortunate. Keel high and dry, and pointing in the wrong direction, the boat is too far from the waterline. No way it’s going to float again. Out in the bay, it made for a splash of bright canary and gave the scene ‘pop’. Up close, well.

Zeiln2Ap520

I’d seen a guy taking a 5 gallon bottle of drinking water to Spirit the night before the storm. If he’d stayed aboard through that, the experience must have been horrendous. Nothing happened to Spirit for a few days, but then the 5 gallon guy came back. He placed the figure of a seated Buddha near the bow, and got to work. He had a spade, a log fulcrum, some driftwood levers and ‘moving gear’– and a damaged wrist. He refused help. The pandemic was on, and he didn’t want anyone touching the boat.

BoatholeAp520

Boathole2Apr520

Boat Hole

For a long time, not much happened. A month, or more, of digging every day, of watching the tides, of prying and bumping, resulted in a bigger hole. He was creating a slipway. He had to move, what, a ton and a half of boat. One guy. Impossible.

Then, one morning after a good tide, a miracle. Spirit did move and flipped her keel. Now, with a very high tide, she might get to the sea. And, a week later, she actually floated. Another week and she was off the beach. Not quite in deep water yet, but getting there.

ZeilinAp1420

I spend a month and a half rooting for the digger. I admire his spirit. He persevered to save his home. I’ve never seen someone work so hard, fight such ridiculous odds, under ridiculous circumstances. I guess it happens more often that I know. Perseverance is what humans are good at. It defines us. I always liked the Stan Rogers song, ‘The Mary Ellen Carter’. It tells a tale a bit like this one, about people getting on with it. Doing what they have to do. The song cheers us on when we face adversity — And Like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again…rise again. Good luck to you 5 gallon!

Zeilin6

Spirit – well and truly ‘off the beach’