Wampum

Kezzie told me she found a bird with green eyes. That sounded interesting enough, so I followed her in whatever pseudo-random direction she headed in next when she'd a parent in tow and a discovery to disclose. Just above the present reach of the current tide's waves on the beach was a bird with green eyes. An adult male Melanitta perspicillata, The bird wasn't able to do much more than blink its eyes, so I left Kezzie with The Bird With Green Eyes and instructions to keep the mordant gulls away and walked up the beach to the trailer to fetch a carrier. Indy and Max were curious about The Bird With Green Eyes, as was Grace and Sam. Jonah managed "bird" and for the rest of the morning TBWGE, graced the top of the ice chest, warmed by the sun, open to the sky, and unbothered by the beaks of other birds, until it stiffened in death.

Some sage, an opportunity to discuss non-action and listen to Kezzie, always mordant, talk about death. And the opportunity to see a beautiful bird and handle its body, articulate its joints and limbs, and know the bird by touch as well as by sight.

I've sailed through great rafts of sea ducks, both in Monterey Bay and Penobscot Bay, but I'd never seen one so close. The coloration of the beak and head are remarkable. Surf scooters winter along both coasts, they nest in the northern interior boreal forest, and the birds that winter in central and southern California summer in the Great Slave to Great Bear lakes.

A few weeks later, when we'd moved camps to the more sheltered coast south (actually east) of Point Conception Kezzie told me she found another bird.. Gracie and Kezzie had found a Western Grebe resting, or perhaps also dying, on the beach just above the present reach of the current tide. Non-action was non-acted and later in the day the grebe was no longer on the beach.

We're no longer beach camping, having moved inland to the Los Padres coastal interior zone. A recent weekend-morning she and I went for an early bird walk looking for an Acorn Woodpecker.