rocky mountain arsenal wildlife refuge

Friday Haiku + surprise

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

As I often do on Fridays, I went in search of a photo to use as a haiku prompt and landed on one from a visit to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in August of 2021.  This image reminded me of childhood when our mother tried to wrangle the five kids for a decent photo that was inevitably ruined by someone flashing bunny ears behind a sibling or making a face or turning away from the camera. Clearly, these cormorants couldn’t care less about me getting a good shot.

And so I wrote this haiku:

many cormorants
but majority headless
group photo challenge

Before posting it I took a closer look, zooming in on the birds nearest the center of the photo, and decided to crop the image to only show those four cormorants. And that’s when I discovered something I’d missed. Do you see it?

A skull!

Holy guacamole. This calls for a whole new haiku:

glossy birds sunbathe
pronghorn antelope keeps watch
sprinting days over

Please join in the fun and comment with your own haiku for this photo!

Twofer Tuesday: cormorant edition

/ Tracy Abell / 4 Comments

As we walked along the shore of Lake Ladora at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge last week, my friend interrupted to point and say, “Watch the water right over there. Something’s going to pop up.”

She was correct.  A Double-crested Cormorant emerged and then went underwater again, only to reappear next to the lone cormorant I’d been calling The Sentinel.

August 20, 2021

The Sentinel had been perched alone on that rock while a sunning** of approximately 15 cormorants gathered on a cluster of large rocks about thirty feet away and I wondered whether the swimming cormorant was making a play for the sentinel role by loudly splashing with its flapping wings. Or, maybe the lone cormorant wasn’t keeping watch at all. Maybe that particular water bird is like me and requires time alone to recharge. Perhaps a better name would be The Introvert.

Confession: I’m taking especial delight in not only having a photo of two cormorants for this edition of Twofer Tuesday, but also the fact that they’re Double-crested. 🙂

** collective nouns for cormorants also include a “flight,” “gulp,” “rookery,”  and “swim.”