I tend to visit botanic gardens by myself. It isn’t that I’m being unsociable—I’d love the company! It’s that I move at a pace that most find excruciatingly slow. I have been known to stop and examine every flower, every shrub, and, in this case, every leaf on every tree. And then, on top of that, I take photos. Hundreds of photos. Photos of the flowers, shrubs, trees, and yes, sometimes even the leaves. I can turn a two-hour garden visit into a 6-hour marathon. It drives most people crazy, hence my lack of companions.
But sometimes, that kind of close inspection pays off.
Dorian isn’t the first hurricane to pound the Caribbean, although she was definitely one of the biggest. Now she has churned her way through the Bahamas—dumping four feet of rain in some places—and along the southeastern coast of the U.S., causing tremendous flooding, demolishing buildings, and taking lives. Pete and I visited South Carolina and Florida last winter, and we’ve sailed the Abacos Islands in the Bahamas. Birds were everywhere. Now, I think of all those birds struggling to survive in the midst of those 150+ mph winds, and I wonder—how do such fragile creatures survive a hurricane?
Mountain Plover 