Rhode Island Reds? Golden Comet hybrids? Who knows! The two hardly distinguishable chickens I call the Henriettas are Amish mutts of the hen world, but they generally lay an egg a day (or at least did before days got short) and are entertaining; so does...
While I’ve always been an animal lover, my preference has been for wild animals. Leave the wild in the wild was always my motto, though perhaps that had something to do with the fact that once upon a time even a potted plant felt like...
I’m not sure what caused me to glance up at that moment, nor how I noticed the writhing gray amidst the foliage but it stopped me in my tracks. I watched as tiny wings coated in fluff beat vigorously, but the bird went nowhere. Talons...
I couldn’t get over how dense and sprawling Paris was as I stared down from the Eiffel Tower at the maze of buildings packed onto Medieval-sized streets below. It was Baron Haussmann under Napoleon III who widened some of the streets to create today’s grand...
I thought of my friend’s tale of her own visit to Stonehenge on a cold British morning as I shivered in the ticket line myself. She was huddled at the end of a long line in frigid pre-dawn fog when a van load of local...
“New” seems to be a relative term in England and in the case of the New Forest, “new” dates back to 1079 when newly arrived William the Conqueror designated the land as a royal forest for his deer hunts. As a non-Brit, 1079 sounded ancient...
Pineland gave way to rolling dunes, dunes so expansive that the ocean beyond went nearly forgotten. It was low tide and the waves were so far out that there were no crashing sounds to remind me I was seaside. Burrows riddled the hillside and I...
Titchwell, I was told by the pair of local birders I’d met while watching spoonbill courtship (see my previous blog), was THE place to ‘twitch’ (birdwatch) along the Norfolk Coast. Given the parking lot was filled with people carrying binoculars and spotting scopes, it was...
Marsh Harrier in flight. A pile of whipped cream and strawberries sat before me as word rippled through lunch at the lovely Victoria Inn restaurant that a pair of Eurasian spoonbills was courting at one of the neighboring bird blinds. I shoveled my ‘Eton Mess’ into...
Oystercatchers Mud flats stretched before me for what seemed like miles. Waves lapped at one far off edge, but seemed too distant to threaten the clusters of water birds milling about. I pulled my hood tight against the nipping winds and stared at the ground as...