We’re back again with readers’ photos, but this is only one of two batches I have left. Please send ’em if you got good photos.
Today we have plants (and one video of flamingos), and different views of one species of plant from reader Eric Cabot. Eric’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Following Wallace Stevens, I’d call this “Eleven Ways of Looking at a Lotus.”
Here is a series of photographs featuring the American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea), taken at a roadside pond in Middleton, Wisconsin, in mid-August, 2018 There are few things as comforting as a quiet boardwalk-stroll through a flotilla of this beautiful plant towards the end of a fine day.
I was unsure of the plants’ identity until I found this statement on an informative website (https://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/): Lotus leaves are circular but do not have a notch/sinus—they are continuous all the way around.
Unfortunately, the pond and the paths and boardwalks associated it were completely washed away by a deadly flash flood the following spring. The pond has since been rebuilt, but not the boardwalk. I haven’t gone back to see if the site has any lotuses. For now the images will have to do.
Here a video of pink flamingos the I recorded in “Cabo” a few years ago. [JAC: Keep watching for the displays and weird cries.]
Camera: NIKON S9300
Interesting!
What a beautiful and peaceful place to be. Thank you for this lovely post.
Do you have any idea what set the flamingos off–that is, either squawking or flapping? They seemed to be so peaceful, then almost by group agreement, started “commenting” or flapping. There didn’t seem to be a threat in the area, as they didn’t seem to be alarmed.
The lotus photos are so peaceful–much needed.
Reminded me like a Dancercize class or something, where the coach calls out a movement and they all do it. Pretty amazing whatever was happening!
Very lovely! Thank you for sharing.
Great pictures and video. It was interesting how clear it was that the flamingos take their cues about how to react to changes in the environment as much from each other as from the environment itself.
Also loved the poem by Wallace. I rewrote stanza II to be about the flamingos:
I was of one mind,
Like a pond
In which there are five flamingos.
Lovely. I’ve rarely seen lotuses the wild, even in Sth Asia.
One is on the national coat of arms of Bangladesh. Lots of standing water there, I learnt in a month in Dhakka in 2008, but not the lotus type!
Cute flamingos also, evolution’s little punch lines.
D.A.
NYC
“out of the mud comes the lotus”, was S.F. DonSherwood’s morning greeting as I grew up
Beautiful shots of the pond, difficult to imagine the magnitude