so many plumes out now

On my way out to LA to see my daugh­ter and her fam­i­ly this past week, I get a call from her that COVID has struck her and family. 

So there in New Mex­i­co I turn around and dri­ve home to KC, ar­riv­ing just in time to ush­er in the new year with Rick. 

Sad turn of events … but I did get some great pho­tos and saw some won­der­ful birds. 

Here are a few of them: my lemon­ade from lemons as they say.
 

Short-eared owl was my first in­ter­est­ing encounter.
 

Short-eared owl.
 

Rough-legged Hawk (that I keep want­i­ng to be a Zone-tailed, but I don’t think it is)
 

Rough-legged hawk.
 

Fer­rug­i­nous hawk.
 

Fer­rug­i­nous hawk.
 

Prong­horn. I al­ways wor­ry about any an­i­mal that mi­grates as hu­mans have fenced in so much land and caused so much habi­tat loss.
 

Prong­horn.
 

Prong­horn.
 

Gold­en Ea­gle (saw a few of these).
 

Gold­en Eagle.
 

Gold­en Eagle.
 

Rough-legged Hawk. At some point head­ing west they far out num­bered Red-tails.
 

Snowy Owl … tak­en with 600mm lens and cropped sen­sor cam­era … or about 230x en­larged. I say this be­cause it is im­por­tant to keep the dis­tance from all wildlife and not dis­turb it, es­pe­cial­ly this bird that is out of its nor­mal habitat.
 

Same pic­ture as be­fore, only cropped. Love the eyes.
 

Duck hunters’ gun­shots caused the owl to take flight. Got lots of good pho­tos, but I like this one be­cause it looks so fluffy and soft.
 

An­oth­er be­fore and af­ter crop­ping shot of the Snowy Owl … be­fore (but still at about 230x)
 

I left it alone af­ter it land­ed, hap­py to have had one of the three Snowy Owls in pho­tog­ra­phy range.
 

The best plumage I saw was on this Na­tive Amer­i­can in San­ta Fe who was danc­ing for heal­ing on the an­niver­sary of Wound­ed Knee 29 De­cem­ber 2021.
 

Dri­ving pro­vides a lot of time to think … and with COVID and cli­mate change, I thought a lot about hu­mans’ time on earth (en­hanced by the au­dio books I’ve lis­tened to).

We are a cre­ative, co­op­er­a­tive, ex­plorato­ry species at our best, and an ex­ploita­tive, bru­tal, and mur­der­ous species at our worst.

This dancer-for-Wound­ed Knee came to rep­re­sent both to me … and to make me vow to make more ef­fort to chan­nel our bet­ter side in the com­ing year. 

 

Hope your year starts off bet­ter than my daughter’s did. Stay safe … and en­joy the new year. 

Peace.

 

—jill bell

Flom­mist Jill Bell is a let­ter­ing artist and type de­sign­er. Copy­right © 2021, 2022 Jill Bell.

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