bird families, creeks and Cumberland Falls

post #136

       Spring continues, for just a bit longer.  A friend, Mary Camille, sent me a photo of baby robins newly hatched in a flower pot on her deck.  This photo says HUNGRY!  The parent had gone for a quick perusal, perhaps?  (Thanks for this birth announcement!  Please keep us posted on their progress.)

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         On my own recent day of birth, we were visited by not one but this time TWO pileated woodpeckers.  They were checking out our fallen willow tree.  I didn't have my 300m lens on the camera at that moment, but I did catch the following photo as record of the event, with my 25 - 105 lens.  I was pretty amazed to see this pair of pileateds -- from our kitchen window.
  
  
  
       For today's post, I want to share several images of our creek, which is so central to the natural life of this place.  Tonight, after so much rain, it would look very different than it does after weeks of no rain, but, as always, so much of plant and animal and insect life is connected to its ebbs and flows. The first image is what I might see when I first get to the creek, before crossing over it and walking along one side of it.
  
  
  
  
   The next view was taken during a dry spell, looking back at the creek after having gone a bit farther along.  Notice the dark tree trunk in the upper right of the photo:
  
  
  

       This third view is from not much farther along.  I am now standing with my back near the edge of what we call the first waterfall.   Notice the same tree, again in the upper right of the photo:

    
   I have been thinking about this creek and its variations and my many photos of it because this last photo is going to be used on the cover of a book that will come out in October!  However, for design purposes, the publishers have cropped the photo so that only the middle section is shown, in what is almost a square.  I understand their need to do this, but of course I am attached to the image as I took it.  Does that sound like some kind of worn out artist's lament?  In any case, I am so pleased the image will be used because the book is This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems 1979-2012, by Wendell Berry, to be published by Counterpoint Press; I will be saying more about this book in future posts. 


     To end today's post, I want to share two images from today when we returned from the wonderful Farm House Inn in southern Kentucky and stopped at the nearby Cumberland Falls.  It was exciting to feel the energy there after 24 hours of steady rain. I began thinking about how water comes from under the ground and comes from our creeks.  It becomes a river -- and then comes Cumberland Falls and such -- on the way to the ocean. 
      As I will say yet again, we all live downstream, and I just can't understand why we are not courageous enough to preserve sources of clean water, essential to the health and well-being of our planet and of our selves. 

      I enjoyed having my Panosonic Lumix waterproof point and shoot to use in the pouring rain, even though I don't use it often enough to remember all its bells and whistles.  Now someday I would like to see the famous moonbow these falls produce during a full moon on a clear night.  I am sure there is a bigger crowd for that than there was today, despite this spectacular show.