Sometimes I read something about people I have never heard of before and I spontaneously think: wouldn’t it be cool to meet that person? This was certainly true when I encountered the article below, describing Lotte Geeven, a Dutch artist who is passionate about making a concert out of samples of singing sand collected from around the world. The idea alone is ingenious – focussing an audience’s attention on sound that is natural by source (and rare) but now delivered in manufactured fashion – however she plans to do that.

The preparation for such an undertaking involves figuring out where these sands can be found, how people can be approached to send them, and of course how to re-create the sound once the sand is in your possession.

If you click on the short video embedded in the article you can see the process first hand – how she writes to strangers, how they respond, how so much depends on simple kindness and willingness to do the unusual for the sake of art.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/artist-crowdsourcing-sand-around-world-recreate-sound-singing-deserts-180966966/

For the mechanically inclined, here are some sketches of her “instruments.”

 https://hyperallergic.com/394661/lotte-geeven-sand-machines/

Here is a sound sample from our own “backyard,” sand dunes in Death Valley who sing during the summer (at 118 degrees…)

Here they are in Liwa (UAE) close to Saudi Arabia

You can find them in China, Mongolia, Scotland (apparently…) and you can find stand-ins at the beach and the Portland Zoo.

The sands there don’t sing, but I needed photographs for this blog so the elephants’ play ground came in handy. When I went there last week to take these pictures I happened to be in time for the elephant training/feeding session. Thus you get a bonus picture of an elephant’s mouth in all its pink detail….

Maybe singing elephants are next.

She doesn’t think so…. 

Yesterday I posted photographs of painted birds – today I feel inclined to share the real thing. I can never decide which season is the best for photographing birds – so I probably will talk about them for every single one, starting with fall. In fall you have the color of the leaves and berries that spectacularly offsets the shape of the birds.

The light is relatively low at the times they are feeding allowing for better shots.

Some trees are almost bare already from the summer drought or have few leaves left after the onset of the rain, allowing for good viewing.

There is much we can do to help them through the winter – or, as the case may be, we should do little in terms of cleaning up the yards…..http://www.audubon.org/news/to-help-birds-winter-go-easy-fall-yard-work

There is, alas, less we can do for the migrating birds, which are now arriving or gathering in large groups to take flight towards warmer climes. They are killed by the millions from hitting TV and radio towers, and up to one billion birds die each year from flying into windows in urban areas.

The link below describes an interesting study that also looks at the consequences of light – mostly urban, industrial-strength light, that disorients birds enough to loose their migrating paths. On my walks I frequently see signs in neighborhood backyards calling for lights out in the city. I now understand why.

Here are some of the migrating birds you can see in these October/November weeks – geese, cranes, swans, red-winged blackbirds,pintail ducks and snowy egrets.

http://www.audubon.org/news/9-awesome-facts-about-bird-migration

When I walk the fields surrounded by their calls I feel a mix of extreme gratitude to be so close to nature, and equally strong longing that I could just take off with them. There is something so unbound, so untethered about the whole migration, never mind that it is a dangerous travel, and really preprogrammed into your genes, not exactly “free.”

This surgery shortened week is devoted to cheerful passions and preoccupations. For me, birds belong in the former category, graffiti in the latter.

So when I saw this article in last week’s NYT I had to grin – been there, done that, as today’s photographs will confirm. Here is the link to the NYT, click on the picture.

The article is about a fabulous project: painting and spray painting the hundreds of bird illustration by John James Audubon, a pioneering ornithologist, onto surfaces where they can be admired daily. The bird murals are spread across Harlem and Washington Heights, and number so far between 70 and 80 (of an intended 314…) – many more than when I visited in March 2016 trying to scout them out without a serious map.

Audubon was an extraordinary man. His life reads like an adventure novel written by someone like Jules Verne, Daphne du Maurier or Alexandre Dumas, tropical islands, slave mistresses and nursemaids, escape from the Napoleonic Wars, travel with Native American tribes, changing names and nationality, included. He traveled more in his time, on horseback and sailboats across the continents and between them, than most people I know in our own century. He was into birds from the get go and throughout his life which had twists and turns he pursued knowledge about them and painted them all. Reading about him, even on Wikipedia, makes you dizzy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon

The National Audubon Society was founded in honor of this adventurer, naturalist and artist in 1896, with President Roosevelt creating the first national wildlife refuge in 1903. Here is an overview of the history – (including the bit of proper Boston ladies trying to get women to boycott wearing hats with feathers as to protect the birds….)

http://www.audubon.org/about/history-audubon-and-waterbird-conservation

And the next link gives up-to-date info on the Audubon Mural Project.  http://www.audubon.org/amp

Just have to get back to NY, don’t I?

Regular readers are familiar with my obsession with Sauvies Island. It is one of my favorite spots to photograph, or, more importantly, to be. I regularly visit to air out my soul.

Since this week’s blog is devoted to recent encounters, I will report on last Thursday’s meeting with unfettered joy – a sunny Rosh Hashana stroll on Sauvie. I went there to walk and contemplate, so the photographs are incidental; in any case Portland has an uncrowned king of Sauvies Island photography, Ron Cronin.  Check out his work – the variety of landscapes and seasons he captures are unparalleled ( and that is saying a lot in a town that is teeming with talented and devoted nature photographers. http://www.augengallery.com/Artists/cronin.html

Here is one of Ron’s images that someone smart at the art museum added to the collection.

PAM has diverse paintings of Sauvie as well: I can think of Charles McKim’s 1920 landscape painting Sauvie Island

Sauvie Island

and Percy Manser’s Fall Trees near Water, 1928.  

Henk Pander has done multiple water colors over the years there, of which this is one of my favorites.

The funny thing is, I could lead you to the exact views represented by these paintings if you give me a day and pack your rain gear…. little has changed in almost 100 years. Somehow that contributes to the sense of being in some totally authentic landscape, something not marred and something shared with other artists.

I walked the Oaks Island trail last week, a 5 k round that will close by the end of the month until late April, to protect migrating birds and nesting waterfowl. The puppy thought he had landed in paradise, chasing those swallows and eventually flushing out a gaggle of geese – unclear who was more startled, the birds or the bird dog.

The grass was golden, the waters calm, and the trees washed free of the accumulated dust after the recent rains. The red-winged blackbirds gorged on the occasional drifts of wild seeded sunflowers and the herons did not disturb the peace with their squawking voices.

And here they were: the sandhill cranes announced themselves from afar with their cries, then flew by in formation, returning from wherever they travel to for a winter’s rest. My favorite birds this time of year.

“Sandhill Cranes give loud, rattling bugle calls, each lasting a couple of seconds and often strung together. They can be heard up to 2.5 miles away and are given on the ground as well as in flight, when the flock may be very high and hard to see. They also give moans, hisses, gooselike honks, and snoring sounds. Chicks give trills and purrs.” I think the Cornell Lab of Ornithology got positively poetic in their choice of adjectives…. if you push the sound button on the lower end of the attached link, you get to hear them.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/sandhill_crane/sounds

I was trilling and purring for the rest of the week – that is until the German election results came in….