Photo Page 1003-B

This is an unusual pattern for these Photo Pages. As the bright month of October yielded many images, I decided to publish an extra page for that month. This keeps the two October Photo Pages to a reasonable size.

	Here continues the October images. With the breeze a little chilly, this curious house sparrow arranges his feathers like a cape, and clutches his wire with one stout claw. The furies of Spring are passed, food is available, and there is leisure to wonder about someone wondering about it.





	Light is sometimes said to pour like honey. And so it seemed to me as I took images in the afternoon along the river in the park on the 20th of October. The ducks and I were at ease in the warm glow of the westering sun. Here a Mallard hen attends to her toilette in a contented moment.





	The same warm light bathes this Mallard as he considers whether to slide into the water, or to remain on the sunny river bank. While this duck could, in an emergency, power straight up a hundred feet if he wished, somehow the desired easy negotiation down to the water seemed elusive, the whole effort was temporarily a bit more trouble than it was worth.





	Ducks and water go together like hummingbirds and red flowers. It is a happy combination for the photographer. Water is endlessly mysterious and changing in its moods and light. We stare into it and find some undefinable part of ourselves mirrored there. And which is the subject of the photo, the drake, or the drake's trail through the calm water?





	The hen is in a rush, the drake is languid, as the water reflects sky and late angular light from the brick buildings.





	A bit of bread tossed by a young boy brought this pigeon among the flowers. Winter seems far away, but it's coming, you can feel the edge of it in the breeze.





	These are the recently planted flowers themselves, taken as dusk approaches. As beautiful and integral as Winter is, we prolong the color and feeling of warmer weather with our flowers.





	How striking was this drake when it came near and dozed a while. The translucent feathers over the gap between the edges of the wings are beautiful, as is the whole bird.





	A groundhog, or more euphoniously, a woodchuck, needs to eat a lot in the fall as it prepares for hibernation. So, in concentrating on elaborating his rolls of fat, this fellow failed to detect the photographer drawing slowly nearer. When it did sense some motion of mine, it bounded away, fat and all, but could not resist stopping to look grumpily back. Well, I thought, pleasant dreams of sweet vegetation to you. Some blame you for depredations and reach for their guns, but I think if we people are so smart, we ought to be able to figure a way to live together.





	Turn your head sideways, and maybe its a mountain ridge somewhere in South America. But it is a wall of ornamental juniper in a low angled light that makes for a rich texture.





	One of the park trees produced a stupefying amount of fruit this year. I could not resist showing a bit of the tree.





	Many wild creatures (I don't use the word critters) are very accepting of the works of man, treating them as they treat the works of nature. Letting my thoughts play around a bit, I imagine something portentous welling up, while the hen is thinking her own thoughts.





	This was a quick shot taken as ducks flew over the bridge. Mallards have been sighted flying at 20 thousand feet while migrating. Truly they are beings for all seasons, and for all elements too.





	As you may imagine, getting good images of birds in flight is not easy. Yet persistence must pay off sometime, as I think it did here...






	On another photo page quite a while back, I showed a detailed image of a mallard hen's wing feathers. Here is a match for that photo -- the drake, in grooming, lets us see what is usually hidden, the pattern of feathers in the folded wing. Though I see it a lot, I can still barely believe how perfectly the huge wing is folded down into the body feathers and scapular feathers to protect it.





	Here is a more abstract shot. I took two images of the benches against the brick wall which was glowing in the late sun, and this is the better shot. Sometimes shadow is more interesting than that which is casting it.





	This is the last of the October images and it instantly became one of my all-time favorites. It seems a good one to end on for the prolific month of October. Looking at the hen's pretty face and expression, I choose to think there is a sweet contentment there, and a joy in life. It makes me feel good to see her again.