At the beginning of May, as spring was starting to explode here in coastal British Columbia and the mood lightened with each opening blossom, I decided that after such a winter of angst and disruption it was high time to turn my attention fully to the natural world and go live there and try to record some of that, both in image and memory. So (once again) I went into total news blackout, grabbed my camera and each day went out to see what was what. There was a lot.
I didn’t have to go far. Our garden transformed from late winter resting and early spring bulbs to a vibrant jungle by the end of the month. Each day there was something new, a new shoot, a new bloom and a patch of garden could change from morning to night. By the end of the month, there is now blooming honeysuckle, peony, iris, lupin, valerian, poppy, aquilegia, lily of the valley, sage, chive, rosemary and more. By tomorrow, something else will open up.
Further afield, as it were, I’d walk past the farmer’s field, where I’d been watching 7 lambs, born in February.
One day I stood and watched for a long time as the lambs played a game. One little lamb would take off at full speed, running from one side of the field to the other, round one of the trees and head back to where it started from, jump up on a concrete platform, then leap down off the other side. All the other little lambs would follow so there would be seven little lambs running back and forth across the field as fast as they could, sometimes bumping into each other. But they weren’t just running. Little lambs leap. They run some steps and then they jump vertically, all feet off the ground, and then keep running. It was a riot.
I was reminded of the time in New Zealand when we went on a visit to a sheep farm and had a demonstration of the sheep dogs in action, herding the sheep up and down the field, to precise directions from the farmer. These little lambs I was watching this day were herding themselves! They were hilarious.
The lambs weren’t the only members of the herd of assorted animals in this field worthy of a portrait:
A little further down the trail, there’s a pond worth checking out for frogs this time of year. Instead I came across another family:
The forest at the end of our road is a noisy place these days, now that the songbirds have returned and it’s canoodling season. In winter I often notice and remark on the silence of the forest, the almost total lack of bird song, other than that from the ravens flying above. They’re never silent.
In spring, when there are so many birds in the forest and the owls are also very active if they have owlets in the nest, I sometimes find the owls just from the noise of other birds or squirrels. This happened three times in a week this month, when I noticed the sounds of stressed out birds above, quite high in the canopy. They were yelling and swooping and clearly extremely pissed off. I checked it out with my trusty binoculars (my walking necklace) and sure enough, there was Owl, pretending to take a nap, obviously much too close to someone else’s nest. The interesting thing about it is that there were a number of different species of birds who had come flying in from wherever to help harass the owl. As well as yelling loudly, some were flying back and forth, close in front of him/her, and some were even dive bombing. The owl completely ignored them.
On May 26th the total eclipse of full moon was visible from where we are. I didn’t get much sleep that night as the eclipse started at around 1:30 a.m and ended around 4:30. I dozed, waking up every half hour or so to sit up and look out the window.
Accompanying this full moon were the lowest tides I have seen on our beach:
And here’s what I found on the beach that day:
An eagle feather. In pristine condition, it must have just lost it (I wonder how). I take this as a gift and a reminder to always look, always see, always notice. This is a beautiful world.
