Vigorously relaxing

Despite the clouds and rain here on Martha's Vineyard this week, we've been getting in birdwatching and beach time every day. I have gone a little nuts with bird identification thanks to my great new Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America book. I wrote in my KidsOutAndAbout.com newsletter yesterday that beginning birdwatching feels very like when I learned physics as a teenager; it opens up a rich new layer of the world around me that I hadn't known existed. Then, I suddenly saw everything in terms of motion, mass, and objects' relationships to each other. Now, I see the whole flying world in terms of beak shape, and wing span, and breast color, and flight pattern, and we all rush to open the book to figure out what it is. Ella and I saw an eastern towhee on Wednesday. I got a pair of binoculars with a digital camera in honor of having won the bird stuff, but it takes miserable photos, as you can see from this one, which is the best of them:



What can you expect, though, from a $29.99 pair of binocular cameras from CVS. That's a female pileated woodpecker, I think.

Anyway, we are relaxing with our customary vigor:

Investigating what gets into our snorkel masks:



Running away from the waves as the surf gets stronger:



Whining when the surf knocks us over:



Mugging the Ross Scowl into the camera:



Dashing frantically after our floaties when they get away from us in the wind:



And we don't let no stinkin' rain get us down when we want to walk through the cute little Victorian Methodist camp in Oak Bluffs: