Drops of Beauty #237

November 5, 2024

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. (I’d make that brothers and sisters!)

Hello friends. I’m going to ignore the giant elephant in the room and focus entirely on peace, connection and community (the feathered variety). Pretty sure we could all use whatever keeps our hearts steady today! If you haven’t voted and you are eligible, please do!

One quick note: Substack is offering people free one-month subscriptions where Substack actually pays the fee - which means if you accept one for Life in the Real World, I get paid and you can cancel before you ever have to pay anything! My understanding is these will go to the most engaged readers, so if you get one just know it’s real and it does benefit me if you accept it!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled content. Here are some current photos and favorite videos from past years to calm and uplift your spirit today:

Sunrise, November 1, 2024 - Peace

Probably my favorite video all time and one of my greatest experiences in nature was this day in April of 2018. This is a vision of cooperation and working together:

Avocets looking so peaceful as they glide past me in the air.

Another video of connection, community, and cooperation is this video from October 2023 when more than 10,000 Franklin’s gulls came through one morning:

Franklin’s gulls on the ground, getting along so nicely.

Grackles at the community watering hole.

This video is from 2019, the day a few loons decided to sing for me in the marina:

My crow friends only let me take photos one at a time but they are always in groups and they are always talking to each other, sometimes from great distances!

Most mornings a group of pigeons fly over. I have no idea where they are coming from or where they go!

Pied-billed grebes sometimes travel in groups and often I will see them two at a time. One fall I counted more than 300 on a still, cool morning! I’ve never seen anywhere near that number since.

I certainly will never forget this experience from 2015 of giant baby pileated woodpeckers!

Yellow-rumped warblers travel in groups, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one alone.

Juncos are another bird I never see alone, always with their best friends traveling together.

Here’s one last video the beauty that is created when we all work together, this time starlings and robins in the fall fields, from last November:

The peace of a flock at the end of the day.

My biggest wish today - may love prevail. As Anne Lamott often says, “Grace bats last.”