Tag: urban wildlife
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Kayak Instructor
Instead of exerting yourself to drag the paddle through water, let your other blade push the air. Trust me, you will propel your boat. Remember, the core of your strength is neither from arms or shoulders, but in your hips and abdomen. Seek to glide with efficiency – hull speed is plenty fast enough. Allow…
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Stanford Dish
A herd of cows blocked our way down the hill, strewn across the path as if they were boulders. Since a barbed wire fence stretched out to either side, there was no going around them. Spooked by their number, by their restlessness – by the sheer muscular bulk of each one – we stepped back…
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Cabrillo Ave
The sun has set on Santa Barbara and off-shore oil rigs at the horizon are lit up like a row of Christmas trees, each platform out there mining the seabed for countless giga-Joules of energy. Below them, marine life tries to survive, though tankers threaten whales’ safe passage: too many of their giant carcasses –…
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Egret in the Spillway
Along the edge of Fair Oaks Park runs a spillway that has become a stream with its own habitat: a snowy egret wades hip-deep seeking fish or amphibians, its curved neck like a hunter’s arm poised with a spear at the ready.
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Catch and Release
It started with a black widow who crawled out of a rolled-up rug when we moved in with each other. We both felt sad that I killed it. Though we agreed it posed a threat, we shared remorse at its demise. No more vanquishing arachnids. Each who scampers across the floor, scrambles up from wall…
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Monterey Aquarium
Feeding Time at the Monterey Bay Aquarium From the top of an enormous tank, a diver drops into the kelp forest carrying a mesh bag filled with squid chum. Moments later, many fish surround him: bright orange garibaldi and sheephead, rockfish, grouper, sardines, and leopard sharks. It is a diversity of species rarely seen so…
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Coyotes in Waltham
The granite pillars at Newton Street bridge emerge from dark into the headlights’ view. Carved with great blue herons in profile, they mark the entrance to a footpath along the banks of the Charles River. I slow my car to pause at a crosswalk, surprised to notice a large creature standing in the road –…
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Watching Swallows
It’s the dinner hour of early evening and swallows do aerial maneuvers: they skim above an empty baseball field’s fresh-cut grass in eager pursuit of insects, darting every direction, changing course at impossible angles with such acceleration it baffles the mind how their little bodies can handle it. My toddler raises his hand in greeting…
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Moss Landing
Otters frolic in the estuary – water churns as they tumble about – and snowy egrets, like dabs of sea foam rest along the shore, their heads tucked under their wings.
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Birds-of-Paradise
In the median of a parking lot birds-of-paradise crane their slender necks up to the sky, catching rain as it falls with orange flowers like wide-open beaks eager to be fed straight from heaven’s mouth.
From the Firefly Galaxy 