somewhere between praise and rebuke~
distinguishing
calls of
bliss
songs of worship
hard to
miss
domestic feuds~
goodbye
kiss
Birdwatching Zeno
Kentucky Morning Zeno
coffee percolator gurgles
in Kentucky ~
time to
wake!
porch birdwatching:
focus,
take!
better morning
doesn’t
make
Sunday Morning on the Johnson Funny Farm
Aside from the usual blasts of neighbors’ target practice gunfire and tannerite explosions just to light up the Pike County Discussion Page at 8:00 on any given Sunday morning, the planes from the local airport flying low and the jets flying high along the flight path above the farm from the Atlanta Airport, and the roosters excited to see the sunrise after the long, dark night, the sweet notes of birdsong from the branches of the Loblolly pines brings peace and serenity.
One of our deer families has learned how to enter and exit the old goat pen, where they feast on breakfast and enjoy a little more security and thus a more relaxed dining experience than they normally have, especially with their little ones.
The white-breasted nuthatches laugh like evil circus clowns with their white-painted faces as they climb up and down the suet trees and keep watch while they eat.
And the hummingbirds engage in full-body air jousting squabbles over the sweet nectar at every feeder.
What I love most about my birdwatching time, despite all the best reasons I’d sometimes love a noise ordinance in our county, is that all deadlines and demands are on hold while I sip my morning coffee, never knowing what I’ll see or hear next.
This is wildlife as I’ve come to know it.
Savoring Saturday
I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for several reasons.
- I’m cooking dinner for a friend who is now cancer-free after radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, and I’ll get to see her today for the first time since early June.
- I’ll finally finish a quilt for my new granddaughter and get to see the true “rag quilt” look of the final product.
- I’ll get to read from the next book in Sarah Donovan’s book club, even though the hammock is out of the question on what is supposed to be the hottest weekend of the summer here.
- The weeds that are completely out of control will get handled by someone else.
- There’ll be some time for birding before it gets hot outside, when the birds are most active.
- There’ll be some time for writing chapters in two books I’m working on with my writing group.
- Some pressure washing might happen.
And the other thing that might happen is a trip to an underground bookstore where they sell these candles that use the scents of things in the books they’re named after, like Alice in Wonderland with the unbirthday cake fragrance, and Anne of Green Gables with some lemon and jasmine. A co-worker told me about this place, maybe an hour from here, where she started Christmas shopping last weekend because of all the unique gifts she’d found when her husband took her there as part of her birthday celebration.
For now, I’m settled into my writing chair, enjoying the early morning silence of the house. I’ve taken the boys out for their morning relief romp, and they all came back in and settled back to sleep right away. I can hear a Carolina Wren singing at the top of its lungs through the kitchen window, and the faintest light looks like pinholes through the tree leaves against the eastern side of the Johnson Funny Farm.
Five minutes from now, at a quarter to seven, I’ll be outdoors with a steaming cup of coffee, starting a bird count to mark the species I hear and see.
And I won’t be rushed to get showered and dressed today. I’ll savor my coffee and my own private bird concert on the front porch way out here in our remote corner under the Loblolly pines of rural Georgia and give a thousand thanks for the blessings of another sunrise to enjoy the spectacular splendor of the woods.
Showing Up and Showing Out
Nature has a way of showing up and showing out.
For weeks, I’ve been watching and waiting for the figs to ripen, and almost overnight the first wave is ready for the picking. I saw the purple-brown fruits last evening and ran inside to fetch a plastic bowl and summoned my husband to bring his long arms and reach the branches down for me so that I could pick them. Together, we got what we could reach. It was too late to fire up the tractor, though. Usually, he raises me up in the bucket so that I can pick from the tip-top of the tree. That’ll happen after work today.
For now, we have our first bowl full, and they are plump and heavy.
But that’s not all that happened yesterday.
I finally caught a glimpse a bird I’ve been hoping to see for the past few years. Up until yesterday, I had only heard them. They live here on this farm, and I hear them in the wee hours of the morning, when it’s still dark. Ironically, I’d conceded our long game of hide and seek in yesterday morning’s post and declared them the winners. It’s as if one of these birds actually read my blog and decided to show a little mercy.
I was in the reading room that overlooks the butterfly garden. From the window that faces southward, I saw a stirring in the trees. A large stirring – – really an extra-large stirring.
Surely not, I thought.
It wasn’t dark. Just a couple of minutes before 8 p.m. on the nose.
It couldn’t be, I told myself.
I ran for my binoculars and searched the dense tree line for the bird, hoping it was still there when I returned.
I turned the knobs to focus and zoomed in as close as I could get.
Sure enough, just as I’d thought.
There it was, sitting on a pine branch, facing the house.
I could barely contain my excitement, yelling for my husband to come quickly, but not yelling loudly enough to scare off my buddy. I handed off my binoculars to him, and counted back the trees, pointed to the limb and actually used fractions to direct him 2/3 of the way up the Loblolly Pine to the Great Horned Owl grasping the branch with both feet.
We stood in awe, watching this great nocturnal bird of prey turn his head all around, watching the ground below for movement, like the embodiment of a Mary Oliver poem with wings.
It was fantastic to see. I still have shivers just thinking about the magnificent stature of this amazing creature and its commanding but camouflaged and silent presence.
After a few moments, he dove to the ground in pursuit of something he’d spotted, and just like that he vanished into the woods to feast on his catch.
And I’m burning with owl fever now, wishing desperately that he had a little camera attached to him like a policeman wears a bodycam, so I could have his night vision and see where all he goes and what he does. I’d have to hide my eyes when it came time for him to kill the bunnies and field mice and other critters, but I’d lose sleep for weeks just watching how he lives his days and nights.
Today was a treasure – ripe figs and Great Horned Owls. Life doesn’t get much more exciting.
Birding Haiku
Birding at Flat Shoals
Seven new species today!
Peaceful excursion
Pileated Woodpecker Fibonacci
Red
heads
drill trees
with their beaks
(I love watching them!)
Pileated Woodpecker pairs!
A Taste of Texas Wildlife in a Canyon
We were driving through Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Canyon, Texas when I spotted him. We’d taken a last-minute cruise through one of the campground loops to see how big the campsites were and whether they had water and electricity hook-ups. I’d just remarked that the awnings over the picnic tables were a blessing of shade out in the brutal heat when I saw something out of the corner of my eye; it looked like a legless bird with a hooked bill, a crested head, and a long tail.
“Stop! Back up a foot or two!” I urged my husband.
There, resting under the picnic table of an occupied campsite, was a Lesser North American Road Runner. At first, I thought it was a Greater North American Road Runner, but now that I’ve compared the notes on the differences, I am convinced that it was the Lesser North American Road Runner. With names like these, I’m wondering whether these birds inspired Dr. Seuss to write The Sneetches.
A Road Runner. Not the kind from the cartoon. This one didn’t say Meep! Meep! and take off running from a coyote that left its outline where it crashed into a rock wall. I asked Google what the Road Runner says, and a Big-Bird-sounding Meep! is not part of its call. It sounds more like an impatient robot strumming its metal fingers on the counter at a Dollar General waiting on a cashier.
Apparently, this bird eats almost anything – rodents, snakes, lizards, other birds’ eggs, berries, cactus fruit, rabbits, spiders, and crickets. It can run at speeds up to 20 miles per hour and has an 18- inch wingspan.
I was conducting a bird observation in eBird when I saw this species I’d never seen in real time. I snapped a few photos to add to eBird’s media documentation and we carried on with our drive, but my heart stayed right there under the picnic table with that roadrunner – – until we saw the remains of a Mohave Rattlesnake in the road. My husband spotted it, and sure enough, it had the black and white tail bands, the greenish hue, and the eye stripe and body patterning that I could still make out to get a positive ID on the snake. I’ll leave its photo at the very end so that if you are squeamish of dead snakes, you’ll have had a heads-up.
We also saw Texas Longhorns, a water snake (observed by my sister-in-law, who despises snakes), a porch full of barn swallows, and several other species of birds, including a pair of Northern Cardinals.
Palo Duro Canyon State Park is well worth the drive for its beauty and its wildlife viewing opportunities. Looking back through the bird observation logs, I noted that a day or so before we were there, someone had observed a wild male hog!
If you love wildlife and enjoy the beauty of nature, don’t miss Palo Duro Canyon State Park! You really don’t know what you might see out there in the big Texas wilderness!
May 16 – Global Big Day – Part 2 of 2
After walking my 3 Schnoodles along the back loop of F. D. Roosevelt State Park and recording 15 species of birds singing from trees, flitting from post to post and diving for food in the grasses and shrubs, I resumed my Global Big Day bird count at the top of Dowdell’s Knob on Pine Mountain in Georgia overlooking the valley below. The dense fog was beginning to lift, making it possible to see more of what I was hearing. I was thinking of my friends who were also out participating in this event – Fran Haley from North Carolina, who was out looking for eagles at a dam with her husband on her birdday birthday, and my colleague Dawn Lanca-Potter and her son Grayson, who were out observing in Pike and Upson Counties in Georgia.
After completing my eBird Essentials course and researching the local hotspots for bird activity, I chose Georgia’s largest state park, F. D. Roosevelt State Park just outside Warm Springs, for my birding adventure. I was excited to live these opportunistic moments observing the plethora of species in this biodiverse area in close proximity to Callaway Gardens. My mother, who had been a lover of birds her entire life, was close – I could feel her spirit in the breeze, her presence in the harmonious, sweetly chirping birdsong.
I had no idea that she would make her presence more even powerfully known in such an unquestionable way.
But that’s exactly what happened.
In 2008, I’d applied for a teacher scholarship to spend a week learning alongside scientists in the field at the Jones Ecological Research Center near Albany, Georgia. Four courses had been offered, and we could pick two of the following: wildlife, aquatics, forestry, and plants. I chose wildlife and plants and completed both of these sessions the first year. I returned the second summer to complete the other two. As part of the grant that funded our teacher scholarships, we received copies of Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a memoir about the author’s days growing up in poverty in Baxley, Georgia and learning all aspects of the Long Leaf Pine ecosystem; and Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, which is in my top three favorite books of all time. I savored these pages, and I return to them often still. They teach me a lot about plant and animal species – especially the rare and dwindling ones, like the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker and Bachman’s Sparrow.
I turned on my Merlin Bird ID to figure out which species were in the area, and I used the tone sensor to figure out where each bird was located in proximity to me. My strategy was to let Merlin’s unmistakable expertise lead, and then to photograph and audiorecord and count the species as I encountered them.
I’d complete a checklist in one spot and move on to the next, all along the mountain. I almost didn’t stop in one particular spot, because the motorcyclists were out on rides in large groups and had a substantial gathering in one of the overlooks as they took a lunch break; I was thinking the noise would deter any birds, but as the cyclists began to leave, I changed my mind and decided to do an observation in this spot.
I sat on a rock and started the checklist. 12:54 p.m. I was hot and tired. I took a long swig of icy water and tapped into my buddy Merlin, who had already led me to Indigo Buntings, Summer Tanagers, Great Crested Flycatchers, and a long list of other birds not too difficult to spot once I knew they held presence in an area.
Northern Cardinal, Pine Warbler, Black-and-White Warbler, Eastern Towhee, Chipping Sparrow, Bachman’s Sparrow……
Bachman’s Sparrow!
No way. This one has to be a mistake, I thought. I watched the tone sensor. These are rare birds, far too shy and rare for a mountainside full of motorcyclists vroooming around.
I thought of Janisse Ray’s chapter on Bachman’s Sparrow. Bird-artist James Audubon discovered the sparrow in 1832 while exploring near Charleston, South Carolina, and named it for a Lutheran minister he had befriended on the street and with whom he was staying, John Bachman. Bachman’s Sparrow has declined since the 1930’s at a stunning rate. It is streaked buff-gray, with a shadowy bill and a long, dark-brown, rounded tail. It measures six inches from bill to tail tip, about the size of most sparrows, and has been called the stink-bird by quail hunters because its ground dwelling can throw off the dogs hot on the trail of a bevy of quail.
Sure enough, Bachman’s Sparrow appeared and continued to light up in yellow highlighting as I searched the trees and located a group of sparrows – and while I never could tell which sparrow was Bachman’s through the high-powered lens focused in the trees down the bank on the side of the mountain, I knew that at least one of these elusive birds was somewhere in that mix. Right there in that tree. Right near me, singing its cheery greeting, lighting up a few times on the app.
On Global Big Day, that Bachman’s Sparrow was my mother reaching down from heaven for a tight hug on Mother’s Day weekend, letting me know she is watching over me, reminding me to be strong in my faith: many times, we can’t see something that we KNOW without a doubt is there surrounding us, and these things are forever real.
God, mothers in heaven, birds. Ever present, forever real.
May 15 – Global Big Day – Part 1 of 2
It’s 9:00 Saturday morning (May 13), and my husband and I are seated in the Country Kitchen near Pine Mountain, Georgia having breakfast. Many camping folks get up and start a fire, “brew” pour-over coffee, and sizzle bacon and eggs over a campfire or outdoor camper kitchen, awakening all the tent campers and anyone sleeping with open windows to a mouth-watering stirring of a new day.
Not us.
We’re heading out birding for Global Big Day, so we came to the Country Store for their famous Callaway Gardens signature grits, scrambled eggs, sausage with sage, buttermilk biscuits with muscadine jam, muscadine muffins, percolated coffee, and iced water in lidless mason jars. We finally got a window seat on the top of this mountain after all the times we’ve wanted one, and as luck would have it, it’s foggy outside and we can’t see fifty feet out. But it’s okay – we’re busy filling up on food for when the fog lifts. It’s going to be a big day full of feathered species as we work together with Merlin Bird ID and the eBird app to create checklists of bird identifications at birding hotspots nearby to help researchers track bird migration patterns and species population densities.
I completed the free eBird Essentials course on the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology eBird website Friday night – something I’ve been meaning to do since I opened my account and created a profile – and then texted Fran Haley to see if she was planning to participate today, too. She is. It’s her birdday birthday May 13, and she and her husband are journeying to a dam to see if they can spot any eagles.
I submitted 3 checklists (one for each morning Schnoodle walk on the back loop of F. D. Roosevelt State Park Campground), with 15 species combined, before breakfast. When she texted at 6:48 (we’re both early birds), shortly after I had returned from walking the dogs on their morning outing along the back loop of the camp, Fran had already recorded 23 species. I’d prayed she would see some rare sightings on her adventures – the best birthday blessings for an avid birdwatcher!
We finished our breakfast, and right there in the Country Kitchen I found a fully stocked table of 50+ UV Protection adventure hats – just the kind I have been hoping to find. I tried several on, but I couldn’t land on a decision. Both Maureen Ingram and Stacey Shubitz made some helpful suggestions last week about hat brands – Outdoor Research and UVSkinz, and I’d gotten both too busy and too tired over the week to give either more than a passing glance. I remained as lidless as my Mason Jar after trying on several kinds and not finding one that grabbed me.
But alas, there are still birds to count and trails to hike, so off we go!
I’ll share Part 2 of the day’s adventure – and the species I found present on Global Big Day – tomorrow. For now, we are headed over to Dowdell’s Knob to begin hiking at the trail with the boys.
Ready,
set,
let’s count birds!
Common Threads 