~Upstream and Down~

I’m not a bird photographer, although that doesn’t mean I don’t like to shoot good images of birds. I do! But when I get good shots, I attribute it to luck--being in the right place at the right time—rather than a natural birder’s patience. Real bird photographers—and I know many--have far more patience than I was born with. They’re willing to stand and wait for a long time, often in the freezing wind and cold or scalding summer sun, in hopes of seeing a bird that has been known to make sporadic appearances. I’ll go and check out the place a bird is known to be, always hopeful for a sighting, but if it’s not a lucky day, I’ll shift my focus to what ever else I can photograph. I just can’t seem to settle down and wait. Not sure why…but I just can’t. I want to keep moving. Today, shortly after we’d arrived at Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge, Bruce and I learned that the snowy owl had been spotted napping in a tree. We’d never have noticed her had not all lens...

With so many snowy owls in the region this winter, birders and photographers have been particularly successful in spotting and shooting (photographically speaking!) these beautiful birds. The well-known locales where snowies have been sighted are big draws for hopeful viewers. We’re hunters. We seek the thrill of seeing wild creatures close up. We want to experience their beauty and dignity. We bundle up, drag out our gear, and complain about the wind chill, all to witness the real hunters, whose survival depends upon their focus, their senses, their quickness—and freedom from distraction. Snowies are not easy to spot. Protective coloration works like a charm, and despite being large, once they are patiently hunkered down, scanning for rodents, they can be all but impossible to detect. Even in motion they fly low and are well camouflaged. Your best bet in spotting one is patience and a pair of binoculars … or watching for clusters of people. When someone spo...

I’ve never seen a robin in the dead of winter, but this year I saw a flock chirping together in a downtown Bridgewater tree while snow fell. When I saw another large flock on Plum Island, I added robins to my “Google list”—a mental list I keep of topics I want to know more about.  I’ve never paid much attention to robins. They’ve always seemed aloof to me, hopping along by themselves with one eye to the ground, scouting worms.   Before the ground is frozen or snow-covered, they’ve flown south where the worms are still churning the soil.   They follow the worms, I thought. So why are they still hanging around? It turns out that the robins that nested in my fruit trees have flown south to a more comfortable zone.   The birds I’m seeing now have most likely come down from the Canadian Maritime provinces. Massachusetts certainly provides more tolerable temperatures in the winter for these guys. The robins clearly aren’t digging up worm popsic...

I’ve taken plenty of cold, windy walks on snow-covered beaches, but I realized when a friend and I stood on the shore at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge , watching thick, fluffy flakes fall, that I’d never actually been on a beach during a snowfall.  Boy, have I missed something in all these years of living in the Northeast! I had my camera. Of course! And there was nothing I wanted more than to capture the beauty of the landscape—the sweep of the ocean and the rise of dunes with the beach between, softened and muted by the falling snow. But the purpose of our two-hour drive had been to get some shots of one of the several snowy owls that have settled on the Plum Island for the winter. So I'd left my landscape lens in the parked car and had only my long lens on the camera. This lens would give me the focal distance I needed to get the details of a distant owl, but it would show only a narrow slice of landscape, not the snow-filled panorama I wanted at...

  I clicked open the email with “Hello from the past!” in the subject line to find a note from from a former student, Josh. How I love hearing from former students. I remember Josh well: a little imp of a guy with a perpetual grin and a frizz of curls and an insatiable curiosity. He played the saxophone…or was that his brother Matt? I think both. I’ll let the email exchange speak for itself …  Hello Mrs. Douillette - Would you be, by chance, the same Mrs. Douillette who once taught at Cedar School (at least, I think it was Cedar School?) in Hanover 30 years-or-so ago? If so, I believe I was one of your fortunate students. I seem to remember spending countless hours--and reams of magical tracing paper--gleefully working on projects about dinosaurs and whales while under your tutelage. Happy days indeed. Anyway, if this is really you, hello! I'm sure I can conjure some more memories of those heady days that will make us both feel much older! Josh Hi Josh! ...

When I visited my 92-year-old mother at her assisted living home, I thought of butterflies—the painted ladies I’d seen sipping the last sweet nectar from the buddleia in my back yard. Painted ladies don’t live long, and my 92-year-old mother certainly has. So that’s not the comparison. And she certainly wasn’t sipping anything when I walked into her room; she was sleeping in front of a blaring TV. And neither was she painted. She’s never been much for make-up. But nonetheless, painted lady butterflies that popped into my mind as I watched her sleeping. “Mom?” I said softly. She startled and I could see in an instant that she didn’t have a clue who I was. So I told her.   “It’s Ruthie,” I said. That’s always been enough for her face to blossom into a smile of recognition. “Ruthie!” she always exclaims with pleasure. But this time her smile wasn’t convincing--she didn’t exclaim--and I could tell she didn’t know who I was.  But she went...

I spent the last day of 2011 with a group of photographers, taking pictures in Saint Anthony of Padua Church in New Bedford.  The ornate interior, decorated for the Christmas season, was beautiful. Gleaming floors and polished wooden pews reflected color and light from stained glass windows and detailed carvings.   Despite the color and detail available to shoot, I found myself drawn to the light that played through the rails of the drab stairway leading to the second and third levels of the church. The stairs were off to the side of the foyer, easily overlooked by anyone intent upon entering the splendid sanctuary.  Probably those who trudge up to the choir loft, which looks out over the gleaming center aisle in the nave,  don’t give the stairs a second thought, but they are as necessary as the marble columns that support the arched ceiling.   A friend who saw my photos called the stairs “grungy and worn and burnished with age.” And ...