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...
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...
I regretted leaving my camera at the hotel my first day in England. As I wandered Cambridge’s lovely meadows and gardens, songbirds new to me flitted in the bushes. A flock of fuzzy gallinule chicks paddled behind their parents, fresh from their nest in a...
My heart sank at our boatman’s words, “I can’t get you any closer than that!”The backlit blob thirty-something feet above, mostly hidden by vegetation, was hardly the photograph I wanted of a Pygmy Sloth. Two plane rides and a 50-mile boat ride to see a...
Need a break from the Santa images, overplayed holiday jingles and frazzled crowds at the mall? My personal escape from the chaotic aspects of the Holidays is my Christmas tree. Over the years my tree has evolved from a potted palm with twinkly lights to...
We’ve explored nature in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America on this tour of the continents. Our final destination, Antarctica, is a continent like no other. One of the hardest to reach, ice and penguins dominate this land. Adelie Penguins marched across the...