another rainy day not at the beach

Rain this morning. Once again I am not at the beach. I feel like I'm letting down my remaining three readers with my lack of riveting stories about not seeing piping plovers not to mention the coffee of the day. Well, I am drinking coffee from Plum Island Coffee Roasters, but here at home brewed from beans I bought there a couple of weeks ago. The mug I'm drinking from is a souvenir of the Farmer's Diner in Quechee, Vermont. We stopped there on our way to visit VINS in 2006. That was on our fabled fall snow geese vacation. Fall in Vermont is special and it was WAY special with this up close look at a Harris' hawk.

I know it doesn't count as "life list" bird, but it was still pretty cool because I'd never seen one in the flesh before. I'm not big on listing anyway. I just like to experience the birds. Even common birds can be special, like this great blue heron at the Dead Creek Management Area in Vermont appearing out of the mist looking like he's part of the water, not just in it:

The high point of that trip was, of course, the snow geese at Dead Creek. What, you thought I was going to say the locally grown food at The Farmer's Diner or the pancake breakfast at the Addison Fire Department? Sometimes a New England vacation can rival falling off a cliff in Hungary looking at ferruginous ducks or maybe even the Ushuia dump.

And sometimes a coffee mug can spark a semi-decent blog entry even if I'm not at the beach.