Day 19.214: Night; heron

…but not a night heron.

Great blue heron in the dying evening light

Day 19.213: Abe Emerson Marsh

On our way home from Manchester, we stopped in Candia (definitely a real place in New Hampshire, not an offshoot of Candyland) to visit Abe Emerson Marsh. It was the middle of the day, so not ideal for birding but we had a nice walk and saw some cool things:

This pond was between the parking area and the trail head and was full of interesting plants

Cardinal flower

On both sides

Pickerelweed (or - apparently - pickerel weed in the UK)

White water lily

White meadowsweet

There was a lot all along the side of the marsh and its sweet smell was quite intoxicating 

Also attractive to the monarchs apparently 

Great blue heron

Two quiet eastern phoebes snuck by. We also heard at least two of their eastern wood pewee cousins

It’s also peak mushroom time

Day 19.212: Currier Museum of Art

Here are a few slightly random images from our visit to the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire yesterday. I was rather poor at noting the artists and names of works, apologies for that. 

I think this work is called Family by Marisol Escobar, wonderful and disturbing:

I loved this in a gallery of Realism. I think it is called Hudson Valley or Hudson River but I could be projecting. 

Here is one I took a wide and a close-up of. Perhaps we should have encouraged our kids’ bead phase more?!

Amazing work!

A terrible picture of the three Picasso works they told us about as we arrived:

Another special exhibit was of “Contemporary Drawings of Nature”. Here is one work by Victoria Elbroch:

And a close-up:

Just a few small tastes of a wonderful visit.

Day 19.211: Exile #2’s Sunday Column #561

Exile #2 writes…

We’d heard that there was a lot of buzz about Manchester at the moment, so we thought we’d better see what the fuss was all about. We didn’t find Andy Burnham but we did find the Currier Museum of Art (OK, we were in New Hampshire).

Installation outside the entrance

I’d been craving a visit to an art gallery and seeing that they had a special exhibition of nature influenced art, along with a pleasingly varied general collection, we were in. It turned out to have been a great choice. The museum was big enough that there was plenty to see but not so big that you felt you couldn’t get to it all.

Unexpectedly, I also really loved the friendly docents. I am used to docents standing sternly in the corner of a gallery, occasionally correcting someone if they are too close to the work but two of them stopped to chat about the art and our response to it, which made it even more engaging. The staff had a display of their own work on the lower level and another passing staff member made a quick detour to point his out - a beautiful and whimsical children’s book illustration.

After the museum, we made a stop at an equally whimsical cafe before heading to one more stop on the way home.

Honey Cup Cafe and Tearoom

Day 19.210: At the beach (part 2)

Some more birds from Wednesday evening’s nature group visit to South Point beach.

Piping plover

Semipalmated plover

Sanderling possibly (we definitely saw one)

Piping plover chick

So cute!

Ruddy turnstone

Ruddy turnstone

Ruddy turnstone

Great black-backed gull

Rung-billed gull

American herring gull

Day 19.209: At the beach (part 1)

The middle of our nature group outing on Wednesday evening was at South Point beach. We didn’t get very far having arrived on the sand as there was so much to see from right there.

The teen just right of center with the dark bill is a Forster’s tern. The rest are common terns

Common eider

Black-crowned night heron flyby

Black-crowned night heron

Part of a large crèche of common eider chicks

In the foreground are two young common terns either side of a roseate tern

Common tern

Common tern

Common tern

Common tern