Milton

Friday, 28th August

  Milton S. Ray collected many an egg from the Farallones and elsewhere in the west.  He also took photographs and wrote poems, including many about this island.  Below is a caption from The Farallones The Painted World and Other Poems of California, Vol. 2.  The photograph is of adult and young Western Gulls perched beside the rocky shore on West End:

"...the dreary solitude

Where towering cliffs ever sullen brood

Beside a barren, desolate sea,

Whose rough surf roars monotonously..."

--excerpted from the poem Destiny

  We must disagree with his assertion that the sea around the Farallones is barren--perhaps "...beside a fecund, desolate sea..."  Less fecund, though, than during Milton's days. Overexploitation and environmental change threaten to make true Ray's poem--the seas filled with plastic and devoid of fish, the skies barren.  A prosaic future.  A foregone future?  One can certainly hope not.

  I'll be adding more poems from Milton Ray over the next few weeks on the island--and not all so bleak!

  Until then, here is a portrait of a Common Yellowthroat:

A young male Common Yellowthroat.  What route did this bird take to get here?  Where is it from?  I wish that we could know.

And here's a commissioned portrait of a bull California sea lion:

"I own North Landing."

The drought worsens...here's our eBird checklist of only 27 species.

SEFI: 63
SCI:   54