American Robin: Kennebunk, Maine, USA, March 2026 — Birds remind us (or should remind us) that everything that matters in life is a verb. A robin is not “a robin”; it is a living pattern of robinness, robining in front of our eyes. How could that not fascinate us, living patterns of humanness, as we human through our days? Our shared days: Robining and Humaning, side by side? I know that watching a Robin Robining makes my day of Humaning that much lighter. How about you? (And if that does not get you thinking, I do not know what will?) Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 with about a 600mm equivalent field of view crop. Program with bird and wildlife modifications. Processed in Photomator and assembled in FrameMagic.

Rusty Blackbird: Kennebunk, Maine, USA, March 2026 — This is not a great photo. Too far. Too many branches. But it is, I am pretty sure, the very first Rusty Blackbird I have seen in Maine. You have to be looking at the right time, just about now, as they move from their winter grounds to the south of us, to their breeding grounds to the north of us. They don’t actually live here. They just pass through. However the species is in deep decline. There are not a lot of them left. There are a lot of reasons. Primarily the draining and cutting of the wetland forests in the southeast where they winter and the climate change induced drying of the wetland forest where they breed. Also mercury poisoning and increasing acid in rain. And the change in the seasonal cycle has an impact on their food sources. All those factors added together paint a bleak picture for the Rusty Blackbird (and, of course, for us!). As it happens the Universe is a self healing system, and despite recent setbacks, I have confidence that we will come to our senses in time. Or at least I still have hope. Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 cropped to about 2000mm equivalent field of view. Program with bird and wildlife modifications. Processed in Photomator.

Carolina Wren: Kennebunk, Maine, USA, March 2026 — One wren deserves another, don’t you think? Maybe even two. Lots of personality—or rather wrenality. No mistaking a wren for anything else. Oh, you might think a Brown Creeper is a wren, but you would not think a wren is a brown creeper. I sometimes have to pay attention when I see a Red-breasted Nuthatch, which I can mistake, at a glance, for a wren, but I never mistake a wren for a nuthatch. Funny how that is. Actually, wrens are more closely related to Mockingbirds and Thrashers and Gnatcatchers than to Brown Creepers and Nuthatches (so Gemini tells me). And that is funny. Just wrening around here. 🙂 Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 at approximately 800-900mm equivalent field of view. Program with bird and wildlife modifications. Processed in Photomator.

Carolina Wren: Kennebunk, Maine, USA, March 2026 — We come back to the birdies today and a more relatable subject. I think we relate much more easily to what has a face—eyes, nose equivalent, mouth equivalent, etc., and birds certainly qualify (though the nose and mouth appear as a single feature—kind of). Anyway, the Carolina Wren is a super relatable being—full of character and energy—full of what might appear to be a mysterious purpose. But only if you are not paying attention. The mystery disappears when we realize that the wren’s purpose (to live, to grow, to birth and foster the next generation of wrens) is also our primary purpose, and indeed the purpose we both inherit from the Living Universe. That is why we identify with them 🙂 That is what we enjoy watching. Because that purpose is such a joy. In the wren, in us, and in the Living Universe. Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 at approximately 900mm equivalent field of view. Program mode with bird and wildlife modifications. Processed in Photomator.

Kennebunk, Maine, USA, March 2026 — One more, perhaps the last, in the Strange and Wonderful series. A blade of ice. A saber of ice and light. The physics behind this one is beyond my ability to explain. I can only sit back in wonder and wonder how. The why I understand. I see the purpose, the mind behind this design even if I do not understand the technique…and that, my friends, is as close to the deduction of a miracle as we are going to get. So this is a miracle in ice and light…just to remind us all that we are daily surrounded by miracles. We walk a straight and sometimes narrow path between miracles, too often too busy with our own issues to notice. Look up! There is a miracle waiting wherever and whenever you choose to look. And a miracle makes the path easier any day…makes the path broad and easy…and life a wander through one miracle after another. And that is what life is supposed to be. Or that is what I think. Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 at 127mm equivalent field of view. Aperture program with macro modifications. Processed in Photomator.

Kennebunk, Maine, USA, March 2026 — My recent strange and wonderful posts have demonstrated one thing pretty clearly. It is harder for most people to identify with light and form and texture in ice than it is for them to identify with light and form and texture in a living bird or beast. My bird photos get, not only more responses than my nature’s detail shots, but exponentially more. Six to 600. 10 to 1000. (Sometimes 1 to 1000.) Fact of life. I won’t stop posting the strange and wonderful. It is not a popularity contest. This is the way I see, and it is, really, all I have to share with you. What I see in this shot is those same little swirls of intention that I saw under the ice in the first in this series, only here it is happening on a larger scale (dinner plate size) and right at the meeting point of liquid and solid. The water is moving so slowly here that the little whirlpools right at the edge of freezing are able to grow large, and because they are still on the surface of the water they do not have to resist gravity, which is another of the reasons they are so large. I also notice that they really do look like concentric circles. You really have to work to trace the spiral. I feel a kinship with these little whirlpools, the same as I feel for the first fat robin of spring or our eternal bluebirds, because I recognize that I am just such a swirl of intention, caught just on the edge between liquid and solid, alive in a universe that is the same swirl of intention becoming solid, being reborn to many times a second for our human minds to count. Which does not matter as long as we are in harmony with the intent of the universe, moving with the same current. If that is not what you see in this photo, I challenge you to try to imagine it. That is all I can do. That is all I have to share. Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 at 247mm equivalent field of view. Auto Landscape Scene selection. Processed in Photomator.

Kennebunk, Maine, March 2026. Continuing our emerging theme of the strange and wonderful shapes ice takes on a good ice day. If you look closely, you will see that the tail on this ice globe looks like it formed around a little thread of bark hanging off the main twig. If you look closer, you will see that what looks like bark threads inside the ice is actually the focused image of the twigs behind the ice globe. You can see other images of the surrounding twigs in the main body of the globe. The tail was probably formed when the weight of the ice in the globe became too much to resist gravity, and the ice began to flow down rather than build up on the globe itself. You can see this “sag” at the top of the globe too, only there the presence of the twig itself is doing as much pulling up as gravity is pulling down, forming that little peak. Strange indeed. Did I see all that when I took the photo? Of course not. I just saw a shape that spoke to me, and what it said was “take my picture.” I did, and now I have the leisure to look more closely, and so do you. 🙂 Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 at 140mm equivalent field of view. Aperture Program with Macro modifications. Processed in Photomator.

Among the many ice formations I photographed on my visit to the river on a great ice day, this has to be among the most wonderfully strange. Each blade of grass generated its own ice bubble, or rather its own crystal ball, in a cooperation between crystallization (freezing layer by layer), gravity, and air pressure. It is a perfect demonstration of the natural harmony of the Living Universe. Absolutely no randomness here. No plan, obviously, but a steady purpose. A plan would not have created this strange beauty, but a purpose is capable of the highest art. All the time. What a privilege to be here to be surprised by such beauty! Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 at 78mm equivalent field of view. My macro modifications to Aperture preferred program (f10 for depth of field). Processed in Photomator.

Unexpectedly, yesterday was a perfect ice day along the river. Not nearly as cold as it was a few weeks ago when the river was almost completely frozen over, but just the right temperature for these delicate ice formations. I think the shore and branches are colder than the water…in other words, the air temperature has to be just right to chill solids to below freezing, but not to freeze flowing water. Then when the water encounters a solid, it freezes on, and then when the water encounters that ice, another layer freezes on, etc. So the shape grows. The little whirlpool shapes are places under the ice where the water flow is actually a tiny whirlpool, standing still against the current of the river, helped to stay in place by the ice already formed above it. Moral of the story: Don’t stand still until you freeze! Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300 at 25 and 74mm equivalent fields of view. Auto Landscape Scene selection. Processed in Photomator and assembled in FrameMagic.

3/18

The river runs free of ice

for the first time in months

while the marsh behind,

above the stream inlet,

is still clogged

with the wreckage…

blocks three, four feet thick

in places, piled haphazardly.

You can feel the store of cold

still in the water and the ice,

making a liar of the thermometer,

and reminding us that winter

is not done with us.

Still it is good to see

the river running free:

a promise of the spring

and warmer days to come.

———————-

Sony a6700. Sigma 16-300mm at 16mm (24mm equivalent field of view). Auto Landscape mode selection. Processed in Photomator.