Sunday, December 6, 2009

December: "At This Time"


The cool December breezes chop the waters off Trial Island. The sea is a pewter gray and the eagles stand watch in paired comfort.






In Beacon Hill Park the male Mallards are coyly advertising their nuptial plumage to interested females and competing males. Their dances begin with a shake of the tail which propagates a circlet of expanding ripples.



The fall grasses have turned to bronze and curl like a poem and dry in the cool winter sun.




At Cattle Point my camera finds a jewel in this golden-yellow flower above a green and azure bed.



I hear the Pileated Woodpecker first and search to find her chipping away at a dead fir. She ignores my cautious approach as she is interested in finding food on this cold day.



Mary Vine Creek is a mass of ice-formed stalactites and conglomerates. Look closely and you can see the fingerprints of water etched in the icy surface.






Dormant leaves still cling to the spiny rose. The remnants of green a memory of the summer past.



Although colder in December, in Beacon Hill Park we can still enjoy Anna's Hummingbirds that perch like jewels on the bare winter branches



Joining the robins that are feasting on the last red berries is a Varied Thrush.


Filoplumes of frost erupt from a water logged branch in the hills above Durrance Lake.