November 20, 2011 Mount Auburn Cemetery

Mild, sunny

Driving by Auburn Lake today at Mount Auburn and I noticed some ducks swimming around in the middle of the lake. I had never seen Hooded Mergansers live before but recognized them by the males distinct crown immediately.   They circled around and around for quite some time just out of range of my 250mm lens; I got some decent shots, but nothing spectacular.  Wendy noted “They didn’t really do much, they just circled around in the middle of the lake”.  I’ll let them know that next time they should start throwing fire-crackers at the people on –shore. 

For a while what I thought was a flicker was bombing around the suet cage, and screaming from the tops of the trees.  Apparently though someone pointed out it was actually a red-bellied woodpecker.  Not sure how I never noticed that before.   Most of the pictures I have taken in the past have been of flickers, but I’m sure some that I’ve spotted have been red-bellies.  You’ll note the red belly on this bird, as well as the lack of the black marking on the cheek, the ‘whisker’ is missing.  It’s quite the boisterous bird, and it kept patrolling around the lake for some time.

Since it was bright enough out, and the mergansers weren’t lighting anything on fire, I decided to see how fast I could get my shutter speed while aimed at the feeder, I wanted to get some bird in flight shots.  I got several, and what follows is among the best; I got the shutter speed up to 1/1250^th of a second. 

The cemetery is really beautiful this time of year, it feels more like a cemetery and less like an arboretum at these times; something about the leaves dying and the ground turning fallow. The silence that hangs in the air, punctuated only by a distant chickadee or the woodpecker returning.  It’s so still; during the summer even if there’s nothing around there’s always a hum in the air, a distant buzz of an insect, the wind rustling through the leaves; a certain expectation of movement and excitement.  Now in the autumn the earth is sleepy, there are no leaves, and the insects have gone away.