Resolving (Happy New Year!)

The end of a calendar year is a time of self-reflection and goal-setting for many of us. Everyone talks about New Year’s resolutions—losing weight, exercising more, finding a new job—but who is still resolving in February? Real Simple magazine asked its readers to list their top-three things on their lifelong to-do list. The results, published in the July 2008 issue, included ideas like these: learn to can tomato sauce without Mom’s help, study German in Germany, and learn to juggle. This was inspirational for me--life is short! Pick something and do it! Since I love to learn, I decided to choose a topic or skill to explore as thoroughly as possible each year and probably beyond. This kind of focus on one new thing created deeper learning as I explored from various perspectives. My first area of study was writing itself.

Without intending it to be a resolution or goal, I took a winter writing course at the local community college. They called it “Turn Your Passion into Profit”. I had always wanted to set aside time for writing and this class got me going. I worked on my topics in class and out of class and tried to match up my finished articles with paying markets. I bought books on writing, took online courses and One-Day Intensives at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in Manhattan. I attended every author talk I could and listened with envy as Carolyn See, Amy Tan, Mary Higgins Clark, Salman Rushdie, and David McCullough described their writer’s lives. (I envied Rushdie’s talent, wit, and success, but not so much his life.) It grew into something just short of obsession, but has stayed a part of my life. Isn’t this a better kind of resolution—incorporating a new skill or knowledge into my consciousness?

The second year of life-changing study was the year of re-learning French. I was planning a trip to Paris in the summer and wanted to be able to communicate, watch French TV, and even eavesdrop on French conversations. Self-guided book study and page-a-day calendars hadn’t worked in the past, so I signed up for eight-week classes taught by native speakers at the Alliance Française in Philadelphia. I endured a humbling placement test but settled into a class with a wonderful, patient teacher. My classmates were educated people who also enjoyed European travel. We practiced on Wednesday nights, but I needed more. I rented movies in French and even watched my favorite DVDs dubbed in French. I discovered a great film called “Paris, Je t’aime” in which five or six (half-dozen) directors tell stories set in Paris. One of these, to my delight, was about a middle-aged woman blowing her savings on a dream trip to Paris. It was narrated in her halting French mostly learned twenty years ago in college. Hmm. My own trip to France was a success, and I was even able to meet Marie Montet, a real Parisian, for dinner at a café.

Margie and Marie

 I first learned of Marie in a most unusual way. I had been getting some of her email by accident as we both had addresses that started with “mmontet”. An email from a former suitor of hers, Joel, was the first to land in my inbox by mistake. I carefully wrote back to him in French explaining that I wasn’t the “mmontet” he thought I was. We became unlikely pen pals once we discovered we were both really English speakers. I explained that my French wasn’t good enough for me to know exactly what I had read. He explained the mishap to Marie, referred to as Ma Princesse in that original missive. I got to meet Joel in New York a few years earlier, and finally now I would meet Marie in Paris. We dined at a lovely café in the Tuileries Garden adjacent to the Louvre just as the sun was setting. Marie, a lawyer, was the quintessential chic French woman: slim, naturally beautiful, and wittily intelligent.  We didn’t look alike, but shared something more than the brown hair and brown eyes from some long-ago French ancestors. Never abandoning my quest to improve my French language skills, I asked Marie to help me learn to pronounce chantilly (whipped cream) and grenouille (frog), words I find troublesome. My memories of that evening actually glow as if candle-lit.

Hamilton-Trenton Marsh

All the while I was continuing to write (and publish) but my accompanying photographs were decidedly amateur. I designated the next year The Year of the Photograph. I worked on my photography skills while assessing what features I needed in a more sophisticated camera besides the double-digit megapixels now standard. New books on digital photography were acquired. I subscribed to Popular Photography. I went on an early spring nature photography tour in the local marsh with David Simchock, a New Jersey photographer and photography teacher. We shot young unfurling ferns, swans on the lake, beaver dams, nascent water lilies, a rotting tree trunk with the face of an old man, and an unsuspecting fisherman from across the lake. “Margie, you’re going to have to stop shooting in auto mode so that you have more control.” “Be aware of your depth of field and blur the background to make the subject in focus pop.” He was very patient with me and helped me identify what features I needed for my purpose. 

As directed, I mentioned his name when I visited his recommended shop to finally purchase the handsome Nikon D80. “Oh we charge people more when they mention HIM,” said the young helpful guy behind the counter. “It’s because we have to deal with him.” I told David this when I went on his Center City Philadelphia photo tour with my new gear on a beastly hot day in July, and not till the end of the day did I add that they had thrown in a free memory card, too. David is a teaser, but I tease back.  I’m still learning the buttons and switches on the D80, but now I have three lenses to shoot with and my photos have indeed improved. My travel photos from a tour of Germany this year were so much better than photos I’d shot in the past, and I was even successful with some holiday night shots at Rockefeller Center.

Ospreys in their nest

“Off the starboard side of the Skimmer see the osprey stand: the female is in the nest—you can see her head—and the male is sitting next to it!” Captain Bob showed us many varieties of shorebirds that day on the Salt Marsh Safari, but he seemed most enthusiastic about these ospreys. We were gliding along the shallow marsh water on a flat-bottomed boat called a skimmer. Herring gulls, laughing gulls, terns and oystercatchers are residents of this marshy area between Cape May and Wildwood, New Jersey. “Over there! Look at that grassy part of the peat bog! That’s a snowy egret!” Click—I was most appreciative of the snowy egret sighting because it posed majestically for my camera: its sleek white feathers and yellow beak against the spring green grass.

Snowy Egret in the Salt Marsh

It was on this Salt Marsh Safari that I realized bird watching is not as mind-numbing as I thought it would be. As a writer now of all things Cape May, I knew I could no longer gloss over this most important feature of the region’s identity. The World Series of Birding happens here! I had to get out there, look at birds, photograph them, and learn how birders bird. To my surprise, I was completely captivated by the Salt Marsh Safari, start to finish. Birding, I declared, would be my Thing for 2009.

Over by the Cape May Point Lighthouse one late summer day when my camera was still new, I wandered over to the hawk watching platform where all the birders meet. I was shooting non-specifically at the lake in case anything interesting flew by. At this point in my birding career, most birds would have to wear a nametag for me to identify them. “Are you shooting the glossy ibis?” a birder called over to me.

“Uh no. Where exactly…?” He let me look through his rather gigantic scope attached to a sturdy tripod. Through the scope’s powerful lens I saw the most incredible and exotic black bird with a red sheen and yellow beak. The same bird had been invisible through my camera lens. “Oh yeah,” I thought, “I’m ready for this birding thing.”

The word ‘resolution’ doesn’t seem to fit my yearly endeavors anymore. I’m amused at how they’ve grown from the first intended dalliance with writing to what would more accurately be called adventures. These endeavors are dovetailing and overlapping and informing each other in a way I hadn’t imagined, creating a whole new side to my life. Although way out of my comfort zone then, I have had the most unique experiences meeting Joel and Marie, learning real photography with David, and starting to recognize the birds I see at the shore. More recently I've practiced Latin and crocheting, and attempted to read the works of Charles Dickens. Not every choice sticks, but  I don't think I'll ever tire of these pursuits. So what's on tap for 2013? I'm going to work on boosting my freelance stuff (writing, photographing, speaking, consulting), starting with a magazine query mega-blitz. I already got some great new business cards that promote all four branches of my favorite pursuits.

Getting to Know the Birds Who Live in the Marsh: Skimmer Salt Marsh Safari

A Black Skimmer, left, and a Laughing Gull at the marsh

I count myself among the world's worst bird watchers, but I don't lack enthusiasm for the avocation. Usually, I look at the birds through my camera's longer lens and shoot a few photos that I will compare to the illustrations in my bird guides later on. Occasionally, I will treat myself to a guided birding excursion where experts tell me what I'm looking at. My favorite of these excursions is the Skimmer Salt Marsh Safari, between Cape May and Wildwood Crest. (The Skimmer is named after a bird, see photo.) Captain Ginny and Captain Ed know where to find the most interesting birds, and they describe them in ways that help us less adept birders remember who's who.

Take for example the first birds we saw yesterday, the Laughing Gulls. These guys come here to nest and raise their chicks. As many species do, they fix up their appearance in order to attract the best possible mate. Their heads turn black as if they'd visited their expert colorist, and they appear to put on white eyeliner. As I mentioned in my two previous posts about the lighthouse full moon climb and the horseshoes on the beach, the full moon occurred Monday. This was good news for the Friends of the Lighthouse and the Delaware Bay horseshoes, but sad news indeed for the Laughing Gull community. They had prepared their nest in the salt marsh grass, laid their eggs, and then extra-high tides from the full moon and windy weather washed them all away. Heartbreaking! When we cruised by, we could see them busily rebuilding nests to attempt another go at families.

This Laughing Gull is carrying nesting material to his/her new home.

My father always loved seeing egrets because they reminded him of his childhood in Louisiana. They still seem exotic to me even though I see them often around these parts. This is a Snowy Egret, and you can see his yellow feet. We saw many of these yesterday, and many Great Egrets who have yellow bills and black feet. (Now will I remember that?)

"I am a Snowy Egret and I have yellow feet."

 

 

An Osprey couple in their nest

The Osprey are easy to identify because they build their huge nests up high, usually, and you can usually see the mom hanging up there with chicks or eggs. The father might be up there, too, but he might be spotted nearby. There are around a dozen Osprey nests in the marsh, remarkable if you remember how the Ospreys were endangered not so long ago. The use of the pesticide DDT in the 1960s and 1970s caused their eggs to get too soft, and chicks could not mature. Awareness was raised by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, and eventually DDT was banned. Happily, the Osprey population recovered. The full moon tides were unkind to some of the Osprey pairs in the marsh--those that built their nests too low lost their eggs. Unlike the Laughing Gulls, they are not able to re-nest this year and now are just hanging around until it is time to fly south.

The Oystercatcher is the coolest marsh bird, just because of its bright orange bill. I'm pretty sure I heard Captain Ginny say that these Oystercatchers don't actually eat oysters here, but the long, skinny razor clams. They pop the razor clam shell open with their long orange bill and eat the yummy clam from inside. It takes awhile for the kids to learn this trick, and Captain Ginny reports that they often see the young ones with razor clams stuck to their bills looking a bit like Pinocchio!

An Oystercatcher shows off his carrot-like bill.

Captain Ginny and Captain Ed don't just teach us about birds in the marsh. At one point, they scooped up a clump of brown seaweed and examined what was living in it. There was a brown speckled Laughing Gull egg, two kinds of tiny shrimp, and two kinds of mussels. Near the end of the trip, Captain Ed pulled out a plastic tub full of marsh life: a large rock crab, sea squirts (they do squirt water when feeling threatened), three kinds of welks (I thought they were conchs but conchs do not live in NJ), and more crabs and critters whose names I do not remember.

Captain Ginny shows us a tiny shrimp that lives in marsh seaweed (photo by Cara Cotellese)

The Skimmer Salt Marsh Safari is a fine way to spend a couple hours at the shore and learn about those marshes we drive past everyday. I'm getting better with my bird identification skills, at least with those that live in the marsh!

Me and Cara on the 40-foot Skimmer (photo by Captain Ginny)

Beach Spawning under a June Moon

Two horseshoes headed back to the water after a busy night.

There has been quite a bit of full-moon horseshoe "crab" action this week on my stretch of the Delaware Bay. These curious critters have changed little since before the dinosaurs if you can imagine that, and every June full moon and the weeks surrounding it, they leave the water to spawn on the beach. I usually shy away from circle-of-life and copulation topics, but I think I can manage to tell the horseshoe story.

This critter burrows as s/he moves back to the water. Note the doggie footprints and the razor clam to the right.

They are not really crabs, but related to spiders and scorpions. Their scientific name is limulus polyphemus. They live for 17 to 18 years. They are found up and down the east coast, but are most plentiful in the Delaware Bay. They have six pairs of claws under their shells along with gills for breathing. Their blood is blue because it has copper in it and not the iron that makes human blood turn red. This blood is used by scientists to check medicines for endotoxins and bacteria (and the scientists do not harm the animals!). Male horseshoes have two extra claws called claspers that they use to hold on to females during mating. These claspers were considered good luck by whalers in days of yore. They wore them around their necks to ensure they would find their way back home no matter what weather they might encounter. The whalers called the claspers lucky bones (and this is also the name of a new favorite Cape May restaurant).

This guy's mate told him to make tracks.

So here's what has been happening this week on my beach: the males crawl out of the bay water and up onto the sand. They hang out in-between the high-tide and low-tide lines where the sand is flat. They wait around for the females to show up, and then attach themselves to the back of the female's shell with those claspers. Females are bigger than the males. The female drags the male around as she digs holes in the sand and deposits her pearly green eggs. (I've never noticed these eggs before, but I should look closer. They are smaller than peas but not microscopic.) She'll drag the male over the egg hole so he can fertilize the eggs and move on to another location. One female will deposit as many as 10,000 eggs in a season. This procedure repeats every night for several weeks, mostly at night, but there are still shenanigans to witness during the day.

That's the male in front holding onto the female who is not much bigger than he is. Cougar maybe?

Yum! Horseshoe eggs!

That would be a lot of horseshoes if all of those eggs matured into actual creatures. Alas, they don't, and this is where the circle of life comes in. Horseshoe eggs happen to be a delicacy for many birds who winter at the southern tip of South America and fly north to the Arctic to nest in summer. Wouldn't you know, Cape May is about halfway for them, so the birds stop to refuel on those tasty green eggs. This is one reason why Cape May is a fabulous bird watching spot: red-wing blackbirds, mourning doves, grackles (who also love my pre-ripe figs, laughing gulls, sanderlings, plovers, dowitchers, dunlins, willets, yellowlegs, and those famous red knots who are rarely seen elsewhere but in the vicinity of horseshoe eggs, all show up this time of year to feast. Bigger birds like hawks and herons eat the smaller birds that eat the green eggs, but also devour the insides of any unfortunate horseshoes that may have overturned on the beach.

The bay beach in June

Sometimes horseshoes can flip themselves by pushing their long, stiff tail called a telson into the sand. If they are unsuccessful they will bend at the hinge between their shell and abdomen to try and protect their insides. If their gills dry out in the sun, it is curtains for them. Here's a short video of a horseshoe heading back to the water. Notice how he changes direction when the water hits him and reminds him which way to go. In the background there is a less fortunate horseshoe "bent at the hinge" to protect his soft belly and gills from the sun.

National Lighthouse Day

Today's big event was the National Lighthouse Day celebration at the Cape May Point Lighthouse. It was a hot day so I consumed a lot of the freshly-squeezed lemonade for sale there. It was a fun event with foods, craft vendors, and sea-themed musical entertainment. Dr. Physick, Cape May's well-known historic citizen and honorary mayor, made an appearnace in a summer white suit.





I took a walk over to the bird observing deck and met a North Carolina birder with his lens focused on a glossy ibis. What an amazing specimen! I couldn't see it with my naked eye, but through his glass the glossy ibis revealed its black feathers with a reddish sheen. There was a great egret there, much more common in Cape May, along with seagulls, common terns, and a white swan. It's going to take a lot of practice before I can recognize these birds.

Gladys the Sheltie Puppy and I finished the day at the bay. We hoped for a beautiful sunset since we carried the camera, tripod, beach chair and beach stuff all the way there. The sun was behind a big cloud (bummer), but there were still pinks and blues in the sky.