Even Grebes Have Redneck Cousins

About the Flaneur

I walk through my blindness the way I saunter down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, enchanted and engaged by the raw material of the senses. I am a blind flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. If you don’t find me on the street, take a look in the Fair Use Lab. You can browse the archives or contact me.

Brendan the Navigator

Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]

"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. Read more.

Even Grebes Have Redneck Cousins

1 July 10, 2010 at 7:50pm by Mark Willis

I haven’t pursued competitive birding since I was twelve years old. I can’t tell you how many bird species are on my life list now. While I still have the habit of listening to the spring migrants in mid-May, I don’t compile a century count. Today, though, I felt something like the frisson of seeing a new “life bird” even though I had seen it once before, decades ago, in Alaska. Ms. Modigliani treated me to a birthday breakfast of lox and bagels on the Oakville jetty early this morning. We heard an astonishing bird call that sounded like a bleating lamb led to slaughter. I couldn’t name it. Then a bird photographer working near the lighthouse showed us a pair of red-necked grebes at the mouth of 16-Mile Creek. I never heard their call in Alaska. I had no idea they were nesting in the Great Lakes region.

Red-necked Grebe (Podiceps grisegena). [Source: Alaska Loon & Grebe Watch Monitoring Program]