The booby's gaze
Two surprise visitors meet wildly different fates. Plus: It takes five continents to make a quilt. And a final birds-of-a-type poll.
BIRDS
Talk of the town
THIS RED-FOOTED BOOBY became a local celebrity in early August, attracting birders to Port Townsend from all around the Puget Sound and beyond. The bird is far out of its range in the southern seas, yet seems content to fish and hang out among the large flocks of gulls occupying our beaches. I’ve photographed this striking pelagic species many times at Kilauea National Wildlife Refuge, one of my favorite spots in Kauai. Hundreds of Red-footed booby tree nests line the cliffs there. But as in jewels, rarity is prized among birders. On the day I made my pilgrimage, I joined dozens of them, each with a scope or long lens. I’ve no explanation for why this booby has orange rather than red feet and a pink-magenta bill rather than the blue ones I’ve seen in Kauai. True, there are color variations in the species, but this booby appears to be an outlier in more ways than one.
A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS
Bye-bye booby
AN EARLIER VISITING booby met a less salutary fate. Three years ago, while strolling the beach, my birding buddy Tim Lawson spotted a Bald eagle clinging to a fresh kill on a rock offshore. When a child ran at the eagle and scared it off, its mate promptly flew down and fetched the prey. That eagle was flying off the rock when Tim captured this extraordinary shot. Little did he know that another drama was just beginning.
Tim identified the victim as a Brown booby. I was skeptical. I’d seen and photographed Brown boobies in Hawaii, but like its Red-footed cousin above, the Olympic Peninsula is far outside its territory. And wishful thinking about rare bird sightings is rampant. Still, what the hell was it? Various speculations about possible resident birds were abundant, and all fell short. Those fully webbed feet, called totipalmate, clearly pointed to a pelagic candidate. Finally, one of our most respected local experts agreed with Tim, as did members of the Washington Ornithological Society's Rare Bird Observation, who pointed out that Brown boobies have been occasional visitors here. The debate also caught the attention of a researcher who studies the impact of geomagnetic disturbances on “avian vagrancy.” He incorporated Tim’s picture into his presentations, noting drily that "vagrants don't always last that long.” Yeah, especially when there are eagles in the hood.
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS
Visible music quilt
By Barbara Ramsey
WHEN THE LATEST ISSUE of the New Yorker arrived last September, I was captivated by its cover illustration, “Lines of Beauty”. Diana Ejaita, a Nigerian-Italian illustrator and textile artist who lives in Berlin and Lagos created the cover art. The lush colors and strong graphic lines instantly made me think: QUILTY!
I was working on another quilt at the time, so I tore off the magazine cover and stored it away. Weeks later, when an idea had gestated, I spent a day or two drawing some simple shapes suggested by the image. I grabbed a few pieces of fabric from my stash, and started contemplating how to modify the design toward something more abstract. I then went to the fabric store in nearby Port Gamble with my materials and found the perfect background fabric, one designed by an Aboriginal artist for an Australian textile company and manufactured in India.
Fabric in hand, I went into my studio and started cutting. Since I work improvisationally, I don’t know exactly how my designs will come out until the pieces are cut and joined. I frequently revise as I go, cutting and recutting, sewing and unsewing (I rip out stitches all the time). It took me two weeks to completely piece the quilt top together. By my count, the efforts of people in five different continents culminated in the making of my little quilt, called “In Search of Visible Music.”
See more quilts on Barbara’s web site.
BIRDS-OF-A-TYPE CARDS
The finals!
THESE FOUR cards are the top vote-getters from prior polls. Now it’s time to pick the grand winner. What’s your top choice? The champion will be announced next week.
The bird choice is hard. I love all the cards AND the quilt AND the Booby story. A boat captain I met last Friday who travels on a boat that is currently anchored here in the bay said that he and his wife had a blue-footed Booby perching on their mast every evening, which was initially fun but then became not fun when they had to clean up Booby poo every morning. They shooed it away and it came back. They hoisted various things that were supposed to scare it away but the blue-footed booby always returned. Maybe it was in love. The captain finally anchored his boat far away, in a secret part of the bay. He also draped his boat in an invisibility cloak. So far, the booby hasn't found them. (Everything is true except the cloak.)
As much as I like Trajan Tropicbird, the Bodoni Booby pulls me in the most.