Tracks That Talk

This snow tracking is taking on a life of its own. The tapestry of events is so incredibly rich that I'm having trouble thinking about much else than getting out to read it. And I'm not the only one who's excited that we finally got a little snow. My neighbor, Rusty Fleeman, found a very interesting set of tracks when he was riding his ATV near his house, about four miles from here. They were interesting enough for him to slam on the brakes. Through the wonders of e-mail, he and Missy asked me if I could confirm their suspicion that they belonged to a black bear. Those of you who live in Minnesota and Alaska may find this no big deal, but black bear sightings in Washington County, Ohio, are usually limited to about three per year, and most of those are young animals seen in the fall dispersal time. Rusty could see fine claw prints, over an inch long, protruding from each paw, five in a neat, forward-pointing row, slicing into the snow. This, and the 6"long, plantigrade heel, as well as the long span between prints, point only to black bear. It's a poignant set of tracks for me, though, because this little bear should be hibernating now, not wandering through the snow. It's been a funny winter, and I think the bear isn't the only one who has been caught out in the cold. As each day dawns in the teens, I think often about the little woodcock that has been twittering up whenever we walk in the meadow at dusk. He's got to be hurting badly by now. There are eastern meadowlarks hunched miserably in the fields, birds that normally pretty much clear out in winter, but that took the risk of hanging around this unusually mild winter.

Today, I had Skip Trask from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources here all day filming a segment for "Wild Ohio," a nature show on cable TV in Ohio. It was a full day, and I hauled out paintings and drawings and answered questions and tried to make a cogent artist's statement while managing Chet Baker, who has a knack for gnawing noisily on a Nylabone or leaping suddenly into my lap just as the camera or mic starts rolling. Finally I asked him to stay in one of the bedrooms, and he understood, but he didn't like it. It was about like trying to film with a two-year-old around. Which, in fact, he is.The hind feet are ahead of the front feet, typical of a bounding mammal. Think of the rabbit's exclamation point !! tracks and you can envision what's happening.
Skip and I went out to do some outside shots, and I looked down as we walked out the sidewalk and noticed a set of tracks that didn't compute. They were too big for a white-footed mouse and too small for a gray squirrel. The thing that really attracted my attention was the span between each set of four bunched pawprints: twenty inches. I knew a chipmunk can't leap like that; about the most you'll see between their tracks is 8". Besides, they're all hibernating now. I hoped it wasn't a Norway rat. We've had them, maybe two in 14 years, coming from who knows where to the bird feeders. But there were no drag marks from a tail, and rats tend to walk rather than bound. The tracks led up to the porch, evenly spaced in 20" bounds, to where peanut feeders hang. Hmmm. The only thing I could arrive at was flying squirrel. I grabbed my Murie track guide, and sure enough! The span of 20" between imprints is just right for flying squirrel! I surmised that it landed on the garage roof, leapt out from there, hit the sidewalk, and bounded up to the porch. Unfortunately, the sun had melted the part of the sidewalk that might have shown the imprint where it landed. Another snowy day, please!

From the porch, it's an easy climb up the rain chain to leap onto the peanut feeders. I'm delighted, over the moon, and you can be sure the Science Chimp and family will be aiming a flashlight on the peanut feeders at random times throughout the ensuing nights, trying to confirm this nocturnal feeder visitor. We had one at a sunflower heart feeder two summers ago, and have never seen another since. When we found that one, we ran out and put two squirrel boxes up just inside the woods. Maybe that effort paid off.
Our front yard is a mishmash of Baker, junco, cardinal, jay, towhee, sparrow, dove, mouse, rabbit and deer prints. I was lucky to notice these in all the background noise.

And now, a set of tracks I love. This mourning dove landed on the patio, the two deep imprints on the right side of the frame. It walked, that little mincing, head-bobbing walk, to the left. Stopped, had a sudden thought, took a right, a little run, and was airborne. The tracks appear and then vanish, with only the mark of the right wing to say how. Beautiful.

White Safari

I love Mary from NC's name for the last post: White Safari. Indigo Hill continues to enjoy snow cover that the rest of Washington and Athens Counties lacks. I love it, though I haven't been able to get out today, and it's driving me nuts. I'll just have to go out in photos. As promised, I'm going to post some more tracks from my last foray. My guide in this has always been the late Olaus Murie's Field Guide to Animal Tracks, published by my own Houghton Mifflin, source of all good things in natural history. I love this book because it's written by a real, suspenders and plaid-wearing woodsman, who could read what he saw in the snow and mud. He's got different patterns for different gaits, and he drew them all himself. What more could you want?
Here's the thing about tracking: The closer and longer you look, and the more you think about what you see, the more is revealed to you. It may seem like magic, but if you just wait for it to come to you, the animal's motivations and actions reveal themselves in its footprints. Little smears and blurs can mean something. You can tell how fast the animal was going, and sometimes what was chasing it.
Cottontail prints are hard to misidentify; that oblong, heavily-furred rear foot is unique. Bunnies do a lot of squatting and shuffling on their butts, so their tracks are often clustered. They also sit in one place for a long time, so you can find melt marks and body prints.Where there are bunnies, there will be other animals, particularly those that enjoy dining on them. Right by the bunny prints were some beautiful fresh mink tracks. I was delighted to find them, and to know we've still got mink. I'll never forget the summer morning soon after we moved here in 1992 when we saw a very bedraggled rabbit come loping out of the meadow into the yard. Bill and I were watching it, and I remember commenting, "That rabbit ain't right." It was listing from one side to another, the fur around its throat matted and wet. And not long after it emerged came a gorgeous ebony-brown mink, humpety humping along on the rabbit's trail. Neither of them looked to be in a particular hurry, but they'd probably been running in circles for a long time. They wove in and out of the tall grass. Eventually we heard the squeal that told how it ended. Mink tracks are typically in pairs, with forefeet landing in or near the hind foot tracks. The span between pairs is about 8-10". The hind foot is longer; the forefoot is rounder. In this photo, you can see drag marks from its tail, appearing as straight swipes parallel to the tracks. Love it!

It takes snow or mud to see the dew claws on a deer track. Big, heavy buck tracks show dew claws more often than do those of the lighter does. This animal was sliding down a little incline. I'm always amused at how much slipping and sliding deer do. Where I tend to fall on my ass, I see that the deer have, too. We use the same trails and cut-throughs. And this is a slippery old ridge.
I've started putting corn out now that the weather's finally gotten cold, and glory be! a couple of does and this gorgeous buck came out to sniff around. I've seen a lot of bucks, some more impressive or magnificent than this one, but I think he's the prettiest ever. His rack is so tall and proud, it looks like he's wearing a crown. The brow tine on his right antler is just a nubbin, so he's probably a seven-point buck. Good of him to hang onto those antlers this late into January, so I could admire him. This, taken through double-pane glass in a snow squall at dusk, is the best I could do without frightening him off. After what seemed like the longest damned hunting season in the history of Ohio, even the bloody muzzle-loaders are silenced now, and I'm happy to know that he (and I) can relax and wander in peace on our land. I'll be watching for him come velvet time, in June. And saying a little prayer that he knows when to lay low.Beauty comes quietly, when no one is particularly watching for it.

TrackSafari 1

To those of you who wonder: I know well how blessed I am to live where I can just walk out the door and discover something, whenever I wish. Life gets in the way, and it has lately, but just knowing the woods are waiting for me is such a comfort. Snow is a dual blessing, because all my neighbors leave tracks, and I get to find out who's come around in the last day or so. It staggers me how many animals are out there. So come with me on a little track hike, just an hour of puttering around in the field and woods. I found so much in that hour I'll have to split it into three posts. The trick, now that Chet's along, is to keep him from overlaying the good stuff with his messy litttle dogprints. Luckily he ranges in ever-widening orbits out to the side, while I stick to the trail, where most of the tracks go. Everyone likes my cut paths; everyone uses them. Makes it nice for them; they don't get poked in the eye with twigs and briars. Makes it nice for me: I get to see the signs of their coming and going. I really, really want a remote wildlife camera. Imagine the pictures we'd get! Here's just a sampling:
A gray squirrel goes unerringly to the spot where it buried an acorn last fall, digs it up and has a meal. Could you find it, under snow? Would you remember where you buried each of hundreds of acorns, under two inches of fresh snow? They're even smarter than they look.
A white-footed mouse or meadow vole hops quickly across the crusty snow. Boing boing boing boing. Mice are always in a hurry, because they are so tasty.
An eastern towhee hops across the white-footed mouse's trail. I'm guessing it's a towhee because it's taking such long leaps, and has long hind toenails.A junco checks out some grass tops for any seeds that remain. It twiddles and shakes the seedheads to free them, then pecks the seeds out of the snow. I don't realize how much food is out there until it snows, and I can see the evidence of its consumption.
A big male coyote stops to pee on a hapless beechlet, leaving his skunky scent behind. The front pawprints are smeared, because he has most of his weight on them as he hikes his hind leg high.
Farther down the meadow, a gray fox looks for mice. These prints are catlike at first glance. I did find housecat prints, but deigned to photograph them. I'd rather forget that housecats hunt these woods. The way I can tell they're gray fox prints is by the way the front toes are stacked in an elongate way--not in a perfectly round circle like a cat's print. The "heel" is hard to see, because it's furry. I painted a gray fox that I watched hunting grasshoppers in this exact spot, for Letters from Eden. It's nice to see there's still one around, with all the coyote sign. Coyotes kill both red and gray foxes, raiding their dens. I have to say that as additive as the songdogs are on autumn nights, I miss my foxes. When we first moved here we frequently saw both red and gray foxes hunting our meadow, carrying mouthfuls of meadow voles to hidden dens. The coyotes took care of that. They do the same thing to foxes that great horned owls do to screech and barred owls: eat them. But it's best to worry about the things that you can change. Which turns out to be not very many things at all.

A Day Well Spent

Howdy! Just home from a day at WOUB, our local NPR affiliate. I drove through four inches of fresh powder on our driveway and township road--innocent of sand, cinders or salt. Slid around on ice on the county road, in the tracks of other intrepid souls. They let us deal with it ourselves out here.
I was on air for part of two hours, exhorting listeners to call in and get their donated copy of Letters from Eden when they gave at the $90 level. We raised $500 for the station. What a good feeling, and what fun to chat with Jeannie Jeffers and Chris Riddle on air. I dig radio.

In that vein, this is just a quick post to tell you that one of my commentaries--on the OK 1902 beech tree I blogged about not long ago--will air on All Things Considered at about 4:55 and 6:55 today. If you miss the first airing, try for the second. It will air right after the sad story of Barbaro, the gallant race horse who, unable to heal from complications of a shattered leg, was finally euthanized today.
If you miss the commentary, you'll find it archived here.
My boyfriend's coming back! winging over Georgia as I write, no doubt. Gotta scramble around and straighten up. Why, who knows. Just feels right.
Bill first found the writing on the beech's trunk about 14 years ago, and it's been a special tree for him all along. He goes down into the woods to check on it. Our checks are more like a wake these days, since it came down.

A Dog Doing Man's Work

photo by Chuck and Nora Kegley
As you may have gathered, it's been a long January. First, Bill was in Florida for five days. He was home for three days. I left for Florida for four days. I came home for two days. He left for Florida again, for seven days. Not that I'm counting, or anything, but my gosh. A girl has her limits. OK, we've been together 15 years. But I MISS MY MAN. He killed 'em, by all reports, at his keynote at the Space Coast Festival in Titusville, Florida. Humor and music are right in his wheelhouse and he serves them up with aplomb. It ain't easy to get up in front of 150 people with only a guitar and your imagination, but he did it, and I am very proud of him. And more than ready to hear his voice rumbling out of his chest, rather than over the tinny speaker of the damn telephone.
Chet Baker does his best to help. He pesters me to play and go for walks.Photo by P. L. Thompson
Mether, I am ready to play. Try to get this rope. Just try.

He nudges me and moans and pinches me with his toenails until I finally get up and lace on my hikers. We took our first walk on Friday, the first since he was diagnosed with some kind of ligament problem in his left hind leg. I had high hopes that a month of total rest would set things right. And he held that leg up more than he had a month ago. Rats, rats, rats. I don't know what to do now, except to haul him back to Dr. Lutz and let her feel his knee again. Maybe he's got an X-ray in his future. Maybe surgery. Maybe he's just stiff from not using it. I dunno. But I'm pretty bummed about it. We both lay around for five weeks, only for this. I'm trying not to think of all the things we missed out there on the trail.

We were well down the trail, though, and I decided to just do the Loop, bum knee or no knee. Part of Chet's job description is Walk Companion, and we were both itching for the exercise. There were lots of vole tunnels to explore.
And there might have been a squirrel up in the pines.

The overlook was a perfect Grandma Moses scene, all stark and cross-stitched in black and white. Color flees in winter, but it makes its return in spring all the sweeter.
I was bummed to find one of our fine shagbark hickories, a line tree no less, had blown down in a storm the other night. RATS! You can see the sign where Bill posted against hunting. I hate to lose a good tree to wind or anything else. Baker inspected and declared it past hope.
It's a matter of hours now until sweet BOTB darkens this door again. I've knocked myself out cleaning the house, to make it nice to come home to. I've made a wonderful beef stew; I have just the right bottle of Pinot Noir to complement it. Hurry home, darlin'. Until then, I'll have to get my kisses where I can.photo by P.L. Thompson. Look at those overgrown toenails! Gotta get out the Dremel.

Ah kin love you like that, Mether.

For Daddy

A couple of snow days this week turned into a golden opportunity for me and Phoebe to do some girl bonding. We studied a single-spaced, front and back list of spelling words for the elementary school spelling bee, held Thursday night. We had a blast, especially with the foreign words.

There was a run of words in the bee that felled kids like sheaves of wheat: Burrito. Chimichanga. And Phoebe got up and spelled Mariachi correctly. She may have been the only kid in that room who's actually heard a live mariachi band. She's heard several, in fact, most recently in a little bar in New Mexico.

Naturally, I burst with pride when the Marietta Times came today with a picture of Miss Coco Chanel spelling Mariachi to take the fifth grade trophy. Her friend McKenzie won for the fourth grade, and her friend Allie won for the sixth. We think the bee on the trophy bears more resemblance to a cockroach, but we'll take it.

Who designs these things??

The Star of Marco Island

From a life sketch of a burrowing owl in Fort Meyers, Florida. To me, these little birds look perpetually annoyed. They have good reason.

My last morning in Florida. I am agog at Marco Island. It seems there are houses on top of houses here. Each one has a little mown lawn and a palm tree. Lots of them have manatee mailbox holders. Now there's a niche market for you. Wonder what Gene the mailman would have to say about a manatee mailbox holder on Whipple Run? That's a thought.
The whole idea of going on a field trip to Marco Island to look at raptors, more specifically burrowing owls, seemed a bit odd. But it was one of the many enticing offerings at the SW Florida Birding Festival. I've seen burrowing owls on the North Dakota coteau region, and sitting on fenceposts in Montana. I've tracked them down in a sprawling Fort Myers subdivision. But Marco Island is so...manicured to the cuticle. So built up. So commercial. So sanitized. I just couldn't imagine any wildlife making a living here. Nancy Richie was about to prove me wrong.
I'd met Nancy at the booksigning the night before. I wish I'd known when I was inscribing her book what I know now. Trained as a marine biologist, she works for the City of Marco Island as an Environmental Specialist. She checks surface water quality and monitors all protected species populations. That includes burrowing owls, bald eagles, osprey, nesting shorebirds, sea turtles, manatees, and gopher tortoises, those hulking heartbreakers that somehow hang on in South Florida. She enforces Federal, State and local rules that protect them. She deals with permits. And she spends much of her time monitoring and protecting burrowing owl nest sites. That's the least of it. Since 1999, she has worked to educate residents and seasonal visitors to Marco Island about these incredible little birds, and why they deserve respect and protection. And she talks to developers, many of whom would rather not hear what she has to say.
The first thing Nancy did when we met at 8 AM at City Hall was to give us a brief natural history of these diurnal/crepuscular birds, who hand-dig their own burrows in Marco Island's sandy soil. (Elsewhere in the country, they use gopher or prairie dog burrows). Feeding largely on insects, herps, small rodents and some birds, burrowing owls can be seen during the day at the mouth of their burrows, which extend from inches to several feet under the sod, and in which they lay up to a dozen eggs.Lesson finished, Nancy handed us each a map, with highlighted X's marking some of the 100 or so burrowing owl nest sites on Marco Island. I stared at the map. 100 burrows! Perhaps 65% of those produce young in a given year, but still! How could this be? Where was the habitat? We carpooled to the nearest site, where two pairs of owls have dug burrows on what constitutes a double house lot. I was stunned. Here they were, carrying on their lives on a perfectly rectangular piece of closely-mown lawn, hemmed in by asphalt and concrete sidewalks on every side. The actual burrows were marked with yellow tape and small wooden posts, and a T-perch had been erected just at the mouth of the burrow. In a subsequent drive around the island, I saw marked burrows on nearly every vacant patch of land I passed.
Though she'd much rather leave them natural, Nancy puts these markers up to prevent lawn-care workers from driving over or collapsing the burrows, and to try to keep people from trampling them or otherwise disturbing the birds. The city stipulates that all vacant lots be mowed; any vegetation over 15" high must go. This manicuring has a negative impact on wildflowers, insects, quail, ground doves, shrikes, kestrels,nighthawks and kildeer. And burrowing owls.
I couldn't believe it when Nancy led us right up to the tape, and we were allowed to peer into the burrow at the beautiful, bright-eyed owls just inside. They glared back at us, as unperturbed as it seems possible for wild owls to be by the sight of twenty humans surrounding their nest site. Like many raptors, it's possible to tell the difference between the sexes just by their faces and build. The male, in the foreground, seems smaller-headed and slighter, even longer-legged , than the bulkier female, behind him. Males are also paler, because they get bleached by the sun as they stand guard outside the burrow while the darker female incubates in its cool recesses.Although it seemed the owls were unafraid, I could feel their tension and read it in their glowing golden eyes. This male crouched when he felt pressed by the crowd, and I suffered with him as each person leaned in over the yellow tape to examine him more closely. When the tension got too great, he'd spring into flight, only to land a couple of yards away. Then, torn by the desire to flee and the need to stay and protect his mate, he'd return. This seemed to me to be a marvel of acclimatization for any bird, much less an owl.
Ironically, the two birders with the longest, most expensive lenses seemed to want to get closest to the little owl. Again and again they crept up on him, and his nervous glares went unnoticed. With the optics they were packing, it seemed to me they must have been trying to photograph the mites on his eyelashes. So tiny he was, so vulnerable, so very brave.The closer everyone else pressed, the farther away I moved. I looked up at the wires overhead, to find a pair of loggerhead shrikes, witnessing this bizarre scene. An American kestrel joined them. No one else seemed to notice the shrikes, but they're hanging on by a thread, too. They call these little vacant house lots habitat, and they eke a living in grasshoppers and rodents, Cuban tree frogs and lizards from what little remains. Nancy tells me there are even gopher tortoises persisting on Marco Island. Such riches on these barren little postage stamps of land, all that is left of what must have been magnificent habitat before we overran it.Photo by Susan Merchant
This is Nancy Richie. Listening to her, looking at the handouts she'd prepared, I flashed back to my three years heading up the Least Tern/Piping Plover Recovery Program in Connecticut. This is a woman who has taken it upon herself to protect a vulnerable species. She will stop at nothing to do it. She speaks to developers, who confide in her that the way to deal with burrowing owls is to put a hose on your truck's exhaust pipe and run it down the burrow. She speaks to homeowners who call her hotline to complain about "this awful bird that stares in my bathroom window," asking her to remove it. She works with city maintenance people and lawn care companies, educating employees about proper maintenance around the fragile burrows. And she despairs at the limp regulations the state of Florida has in place, that actually allow developers to collapse nesting burrows as long as the nesting pair is not in residence. As in: During the winter. So the owls come back to nest in February, and their burrow has been destroyed, and there's another McMansion going up where they once raised their young. I was so flabbergasted at this that I asked Nancy to repeat the statement. Yes. You can destroy their burrows as long as the owls aren't actively nesting there at the moment. The wonder is that there are any burrowing owls, gopher tortoises, shrikes and kestrels left here at all.

"Build out," an ominous phrase, is predicted within 10 years. That means that every vacant lot on Marco Island will have a house on it. How do these birds persist on some of the most expensive real estate in the country, in the face of such relentless pressure? Two words: Nancy Richie. Stop and think for a moment how it would feel to take on such a responsibility. To make each owl's fate your problem. To watch new houses being built atop the vanishing vacant lots on this hotly contested bit of sand and beach. To see known nesting burrows legally destroyed that only the spring before put forth wide-eyed mocha-brown owlets. To make cold calls to homeowners, asking them to dig starter burrows, to invite displaced birds to their own yards. To try to counter the inevitable takeover of every bit of free habitat on this jam-packed island. To care that much.

If the owls could hand-pick an ambassador, they couldn't do much better than Nancy Richie. She's the bomb. She likes people, and even the ones she'd privately like to strangle, she befriends. She's got 25 volunteers she calls, collectively, Owl Watch. When an announcement was made that a beach on Marco Island was being considered for designation as a critical habitat for wintering piping plovers, there was a predictable outcry. Almost nobody in a community like this wants to hear that a threatened species might be using their beach (or their lawn, for that matter). A local jeweler began making pendants depicting dead piping plovers, feet in the air, with X's for eyes. Nancy paid him a visit, and from then on the jeweler began making his piping plover pendants right-side-up instead. And he made Nancy a burrowing owl with emerald eyes. That's the kind of effect, the effectiveness, she has. She is the owls' guardian angel. Thank God for people like Nancy, and for these tiny owls that find a way to live cheek to jowl with people, people who, but for her efforts, might put an exhaust pipe down their nesting burrows. You can make people care, but as often as not you have to take the long way around, and gently show them why they should care. Give Nancy a place to stand, and she will move the world.

Down to Naples

Friday, January 19 was a big day. After my bittersweet morning taking the ecological temperature at Sanibel with my new friends Dan and Judy Davis, I met my old friend Jerry Jackson at noon at Florida Gulf Coast University, where he teaches biology. We hadn't laid eyes on each other since the late 80's. My God. I told him I liked him in gray. He told me I hadn't changed a bit. Men. I laughed and told him he was a liar.As well as teaching ornithology and now herpetology, Jerry does a daily radio spot about nature in the Fort Myers area on WGCU, the NPR affiliate on the campus where he teaches. I met several local birders who told me they get up early just to hear it. Imagine coming up with a script and recording a spot to air each day. Kind of like blogging! (You can hear his segments on WGCU's website, www.wgcu.org Jerry's a much-admired teacher and naturalist. He knows there's no end to inspiration in nature, and he loves sharing it with others. Ben and Judy are taking his ornithology course, which they describe as like a big ice cream sundae with chocolate on top. I'd call that high praise. He thought that while I was in the area, we might as well do a little interview and record a commentary to help plug the Southwest Florida Birding and Nature Festival to be held at the Rookery Bay Environmental Education Center January 19 and 20. And so. with the help of producer Valerie Valker, we did. Photo by Jerome Jackson
I read a chapter from Letters from Eden called "Twice Bitten," about my adventure with a copperhead. Really fun. I love radio, love getting all the way through a three-minute piece without choking, stumbling or gagging on my words. It's a challenge! The piece aired at 5:30 that afternoon.

Then I had to take my reluctant leave. Jerry's been so kind to me, asking me to illustrate ivory-billed woodpeckers for various publications, buying my paintings, occasionally bouncing ideas off me, and ready to help whenever I have a question about log-gods. I treasure our connection. I walked out into the parking lot of the campus radio station where Jerry was recording his pieces, and a pileated woodpecker came yakking out of the palmetto scrub and landed on a palm tree near my car, brilliant crimson crest blazing. Well, hello to you, too! Had to be a sign, of what I don't know, but a good one. I wished I had had time to hang with Jerry, but he runs like a long-tailed cat in a room full of fiddlers, and so do I. I raced over to Naples to check into my hotel, and to get an early dinner with Rookery Bay director Randy McCormick and staff biologist Renee. Lobster ravioli, yummmm. Wonderful company. I hurriedly grabbed a shower and dumped my gear in my luxury room at Olde Marco Island Inn. Thanks, Houghton Mifflin! I feel pretty, oh so pretty! Zow. Being here without BOTB: what a waste of a sexy suite. I especially liked the hot coral walls and giant plastic palms and orchids, and the balcony surrounded by waving palm fronds. There was a cage full of peach-faced lovebirds squeaking right underneath my balcony all night. Better that than idling diesel trucks, which BOTB reports he's enjoying in his Florida hotel tonight.

At 6 pm, it was time to sign books. Guess who showed up? Susan Merchant, of Lake Life! She and Sherm had come to my talk at Ding Darling the afternoon before. I can't imagine wanting to hear the same reading twice, but they did. And we both chose lime green. Susan is terrific, and so is Sherm. We felt like old pals. She reminds me so much of my sister Nancy!Randy had helped me set up the laptop before the book signing, so it was ready to rock. We made a lot of comments to each other about our blood pressure going down 100 points once we got the equipment working. I got a sweet, soulful introduction from Randy, stood up, went to hit the Play button...Wait! There was no Play button. Something was wrong. There was my Keynote program on the computer screen, but I couldn't find any way to make it play. The friendly toolbar had vanished for reasons unknown. Anybody have a Mac in the audience? Murmurs, blank looks. May I call a lifeline? Dialed Bill on my cell phone, and stood for 10 agonizing minutes at the podium, 60 people staring at me and shifting in their seats, trying this and that and that and this and sweating bullets and freaking quietly out and whimpering into my cellphone. Bill launched Keynote on his laptop, held my hand with his smooth voice, and finally figured out what must have gone wrong. "Go up to View and pull down to Play Slideshow! "Bam! My program started. "That's got it!" I hung up unceremoniously on my sweet husband and got on with it. The show must go on. It was alarming, after the silken-smooth program I'd given at Ding Darling, to find out just how close to the edge I have been dancing with my relatively green Keynote skills. We've all been in the audience when the speaker is futzing with his or her laptop, unable to get the show on the road. It's painful, but know that it's way worse for the speaker. Technology is terrific when it works! and terrifying when it doesn't. The talk went fine thereafter.

That ended my responsibilities for the trip, and I was greatly looking forward to tasting some of the natural wonders of Marco Island before dashing to the Fort Meyers airport for a 2 pm. flight home Saturday. I was determined to squeeze the last drop of orange juice out of my too-short trip to Florida. I decided to join a morning field trip to observe burrowing owls. There, I would meet the Star of Marco Island. More anon!

Sanibel is Hurting

How I missed my mate. I thought of him as I watched these two white ibis pick their way slowly down the messy beach. Truth be told, I thought of him the whole time. Tonight, he's the one in Florida, calling to say he's renting a car, driving with the windows down, looking at a wood stork. Sigh. What is this work we do, that separates us time and time again?

Everything had changed this year at Sanibel. For one thing, the famous Australian pines that once graced and shaded the island are all gone, every one of them blown down by the hurricanes. The native canopy trees in the flatwoods are virtually all gone, and the palmettos and ferns bake in the unrelenting sun.The runes on these trees were in bas relief. Still unreadable to me.

But even more had changed this time than it had in March 2006, when we were last there. The first and most obvious change was in Sanibel's justly famous white-sand beaches. I couldn't see any sand, except high up near the dune grass. The beach was covered, as much as a foot deep, in red drift algae. It took awhile, and some questions to residents, for it to sink in on me what the things I was noticing really signified. I'm glad I didn't know what it meant while I was photographing birds. I was just thrilled to be on a beach, near the ocean, weedy or not.A willet makes its way along. I'll bet it misses the sand, too. How do you forage in this stuff?

Red drift algae is a plant that flourishes in the presence of nitrates and pollutants. At Ding Darling NWR, there were mats of green filamentous algae on the bottom of the impoundments, and floating near the top of every body of water. This crud has the same dietary preferences as red drift algae. Nitrates. And where do those come from? Read on. You can see the green mat algae on the mangrove roots in this otherwise pleasing picture of a tri-colored heron.

As I picked my way through the red drift algae out on the beach, I found something I'd never seen before--dying calico scallops. We're all used to seeing their shell halves cast up. That's normal. These were alive and clapping their shells, dying by the thousands. I picked up the first dozen or so that I saw, and winged them back into the water. And then I realized that if I were going to try to help every scallop on the beach, I would be there a very, very long time. I was there quite awhile as it was, until I realized that these scallops were all going to die whatever I did.It was a massive die-off, and it wasn't normal, because healthy scallops don't permit themselves to get washed up. For as long as I watched the gulls and shorebirds, not a single one attempted to eat these large exposed morsels of protein. That seemed really strange. Why would a ring-billed gull walk right past an open scallop? But birds know much that I can't fathom, and they know what is fit to eat and what is not. I saw them as fellow animals, and felt them suffering, these humble mollusks who receive little empathy from anyone. We put them in sauces and serve them with pasta, but we don't think about them as fellow beings. The way they'd close when they sensed me near, then slowly re-open, broke my heart. You can tell the girl from Ohio, because she's the one flinging scallops back into the sea.

So there was a very strong visual element to my distress, but what bothered me most was what wasn't there. Namely, fish-eating birds. No wood storks. Almost no pelicans. Few cormorants. Only a sprinkling of shorebirds, even at low tide. Very few ospreys. And few herons and egrets. I think I saw one great egret fly over Ding Darling, only a handful of other egrets fishing. It was eerie, and wrong, and scary as hell.

What few fish were there were hotly contested by brown pelicans, double-crested cormorants, and a small flock of red-breasted mergansers. You can see the white collar of the drake merganser right under the airborne pelican's right foot. He's periscoping, looking for fish with his head underwater. The drab duck is a hen red-breasted merganser.
So what happened? What is happening?

Well, when the multiple whammy of hurricanes hit Florida, Lake Okeechobee way up north of Miami got really full. Since the lake is surrounded by land owned by an entity referred to by Floridians as "Big Sugar," and stands in heavily sprayed and fertilized sugar cane, Okeechobee gets the worst agricultural runoff imaginable. It's full of nitrates (which act as fertilizer for algae), herbicides, pesticides and other toxins. If nature were allowed to take its course, the cane fields would have flooded. But the Army Corps of Engineers, protecting Big Sugar's interests, decided that that would be unacceptable, and released huge pulses of toxic water into the Caloosa River, whose mouth opens out onto that precious bit of sand and mangrove flat and habitat called Sanibel Island. Flood an ecosystem with toxins and fertilizers, and you get mats of algae, massive fish kills, shellfish kills, bird die-offs, and repercussions untold for years to come.

Ding Darling NWR was quiet, too quiet. I cursed my inquisitiveness, and wished I could just shrug and shake my head like the woman from Michigan who I stopped and asked about the dying scallops. " Never seen anything like it! They're just a clappin' away!" she chuckled, and slogged on through the red algae. Yeah.

The coastal beaches on Sanibel were all but unwalkable, their famous shells buried inextricably in mats of fibrous algae. The mullet whose splashing leaps were such a signature sound and sight of the refuge were completely gone. I saw one lone mullet, cavorting in a mangrove channel, where there were thousands before. (I saw more human mullets fishing than actual fish.) There were no fish, so there were almost no birds. I saw not a single wood stork on the refuge. And I fear for the upcoming nesting season for all fish-eating birds.

But the cane fields didn't get flooded. Ay, oh... way to go, ACOE.

I could tell on approaching this yearling yellow-crowned night heron that he wasn't right. Even a tame night heron shouldn't have his eyes closed when a human's only eight feet away. He swayed on unsteady legs, eyes shutting. His soft part coloration and his eyes were dull. And then I saw his feet, covered with suppurating sores. This heron is not long for this world. Wading in poisons has opened these sores, poisoned his blood.For someone who has seen this refuge in its glory, so many birds crammed into the pools that they have to take a number, it was hard to witness the quiet. I wept inwardly as I wandered from empty pool to empty pool.

So it's up to the mangroves now to slowly filter and heal these waters, to shelter what baby fish are able to hatch in poisoned water.Hurricanes happen. They're nobody's fault, though we have to wonder whether global warming is making more and bigger hurricanes than ever before. As for water releases from Lake Okeechobee, we've let Big Sugar call all the shots; the Army Corps has done what it can to satisfy that entity's economic interests and make sure the cane fields don't flood, and the Sanibel mangroves have a big job, and strangely quiet waters, in front of them.It was good to see a raccoon acting like a raccoon--rummaging through mudflats instead of trash cans. I remembered the book, "Ring of Bright Water." What a lovely title.And yet the red mangroves seem hopeful. Their seeds, among the only ones in the plant world that germinate before leaving the mother plant, send a fine green root down before falling into the mud below. May they do their work well.

A cormorant stares into the water beneath its perch, looking for fish.
When it leaves, the branch springs up: a perfect fish, complete with eye, gill cover, pectoral fin and tail-- but one no bird can eat.

Heartfelt thanks to Dan and Judy Davis, refuge volunteers who took me out to the quiet pools and explained so much to me. Sorry to have a bummer post, but it isn't all beautiful, this place we called Paradise.

Old Dog, New Tricks

So I have this camera, a Canon Digital Rebel that's better, way better, than I am, smarter too. And until now I've put it on two settings, both automatic, one that permits flash and one that doesn't, and I've been utterly at the mercy of whatever light there happens to be out there. So occasionally, when I'm shooting at a white bird on a dark background, the white bird gets overexposed -- blown out-- and the detail disappears. Or if I'm shooting a moving bird in poor light, the moving parts get blurred. And though I've been delighted with what happens then (see the Sunset Beach post!) I've also known there are things I could be doing to counter that.
Enter Lillian Stokes, she who gently nudged me toward a digital SLR in the first place, toward higher megapixels and interchangeable lenses, and I haven't been sorry for a moment that I took the leap.
Don and Lillian were at my talk at Ding Darling NWR on January 18, and I shoved my camera into her capable hands, and she took a ton of pictures of what went on, happy to be given a camera to play with.Photo by Lillian Stokes
She is very skilled; she made me look acceptable! She's a portraitist, among other things, and she knows when her subject looks good and when it doesn't.
The line took over an hour to clear, and I signed maybe 50 books.Photo by Lillian Stokes
I love what happens when I get to meet people who are interested in my work. So many quick but heartfelt conversations.Photo by Lillian Stokes
Here, I'm refusing to sign Don Stokes' book, saying I'll catch him later.Photo by Lillian Stokes
Lillian is really something. I'm sure the fact that I didn't have the faintest idea how to use my nice new camera was driving her nuts. So she offered to meet me at 5, a couple of hours after the signing ended, to show me a few things. I went out on the refuge by myself to bang away at the birds, all the while wondering what new things Lillian would be able to teach me. I'm the proverbial old dog. And I have to confess that when I've looked at professional photographers' work, I have always ignored the f-stop and ISO and aperture stuff as just so much Greek.

An hour with Lillian changed all that. She is a dynamo, and she has a natural way of teaching that makes counter-intuitive things suddenly understandable. We raced the dying sunset to Captiva Island, where there was a bit of beach where we could practice. And there was a group of tourists who saw the opportunity to co-opt Lillian into taking their picture. She made them take off their sunglasses, and she wouldn't take no for an answer. It was so cute! You ask a pro to take your picture, and you hand over a certain amount of control. Even if she's using your tiny point-and-shoot. Lillian can't help it: she's compelled to make the best picture possible under the circumstances.
Lurking behind the tourists was a great blue heron who I feel sure came down from heaven to make sure I learned what Lillian was trying to teach me. It offered itself up and kept coming back and posing for us until the sun sank below the horizon and I finally got it.

The sun was sinking fast when we got there, and without having a chance to ask Lillian any questions, I crouched down on the sand and took some images of the bird against the sunset. Soon I was lying on my side, risking an earful of sand, completely lost in the beauty I was trying to capture.



With the camera set to automatic, without flash, I had only a silhouetted heron. Granted, some very nice images, some I'm happy with. But there was more to learn.
Here's how little light there was when the sun was gone. Practically none. I could barely pick up any features or markings on the bird. Lillian grabbed my camera and said, "Now let me show you something." My last shot, the wind combing the heron's plumes to look like Garuda, a Balinesian god.
She set my camera to AV, which she told me all the nature photographers use because it allows you to program "film" speed (ISO) and aperture (the diameter of the opening that allows light into the lens, commonly known as f-stop).
She dialed the speed up to 400, and opened the aperture up a couple of stops. And magic happened. Instead of the painterly blurs I'd gotten at the first sunset I'd shot, suddenly detail appeared on the bird. Remember, there's almost no light by now, less than when I'd started. The water should have been a blur; the bird a silhouette.Photo by Lillian Stokes
And yet here it is, with features and color, and its legs are sharp though moving quickly, and the wave is frozen in mid-fall. That's the fast "film" speed (ISO) and the wide-open aperture working. I was floored. The Rebel was sucking in light, just like my little point and shoot Olympus does. Oh!
There's still going to be room for the art shots. But now I have the understanding that gives me the choice to make a shot whatever I want to make it. I'm beginning to get it. Serendipity will always play the largest part. And thanks to Lillian's generosity and this one lesson, I now understand something about making a photograph, rather than simply taking it.More on f-stops and light in later posts. A note: I wrote this post at probably the exact same time Lillian was writing hers on the Stokes Birding Blog.
To see the photos that Lillian took of the same scene, check it out! I find it fascinating to see how different our photos are--two photographers, one professional, one trying; same subject. It all makes me think about the art of photography, and the passion each individual is able to bring to it. Knowledge sure helps. Thanks, Lillian!

Alone Again, Unnaturally

I'm sitting by a roaring fire (ahh, wireless!) in our living room. Chet has his paws on my knee and is licking my face. Nobody seems to be getting enough kisses, least of all me. Bill's playing music for a very small brunch crowd at the Blennerhassett. You'd have to be an avid jazz fan with a four-wheel drive to come out in this weather. Small subset of Parkersburgians. Phoebe is reading a book about a mistreated beagle named Shiloh. Liam is ferrying little chunks of snow from the deck to the fireplace, watching them melt, chattering away the whole time. There are maybe three inches of fresh powder on the ground--our first snow of the winter, and here it is January 21! The kids have been sledding all day, and their run has gotten slick enough that it now dumps them in a stand of multiflora rose down along the edge of the woods. Hot cocoa has been imbibed. They had four days off for MLK day right before I left. Chances are there won't be school Monday, either. Moms, can you read between the lines? Gimme a silent scream if you can.

I've spent the day processing clothing. Romantic, exciting... exactly like signing books and schmoozing people, only different. When I'm home, I average a load, often two, of laundry washed and folded per day. So when I'm gone, it piles up really fast. I've plowed through my suitcase and backpacks, and cleaned the living room and kitchen.

Hi, Mommy! We missed you so much!
Hi darling! Mwah! I missed you so much, too! Now pick up your toys!

As a reward for putting myself right back into the yoke of domesticity, I downloaded the last of the Florida shots. Memories...It feels so good to be able to put birds up on the blog! When people describe this as a birding blog I scratch my head. It's anything but. I couldn't limit it to birds if I tried, so I don't try.

It was really disorienting to come from temperatures in the teens to temperatures in the upper 70's, from gray and brown to green and magenta and blue. After the initial confusion, I just reveled in the warm, moist breeze and the feel of sun on my skin at long last. I drove around with all four windows down, scraps of paper with directions on them blowing around the front seat. Every moment with nature was stolen, though, because having two flights, two talks and a radio interview, with two dinner dates thrown in, and each of those an hour or more apart, in only four days meant I had to hit the ground running and not stop. Put 375 miles on the rental car, and another 225 on mine. The rental car was a little silver Pontiac with a hopelessly slanted windshield (impossible to bird through); inexplicably huge blind spots (giant struts like blinders, holding said windshield up) and the turning radius of a school bus. I am only 5'5", and I had to fold myself double and bend my head sideways just to get into it. Bill would never have fit in this car. He literally would have had to lie down to drive. How do they do it? I mean, when they pick cars for rental fleets, do they go to manufacturers and say, "I want the MOST ANNOYING little car you've got! I mean, a REAL STINKER. And I want thirty of 'em!" Not complaining, but allow me to complain some more.

I missed breakfast and lunch the whole time I was there. I lived on a little container of seafood salad, some prefab sushi from Target, Corn Nuts, clementines, and a screw-top bottle of Australian shiraz, gnoshing as I drove from one thing to another. I'd fall into bed at midnight and get up at six. Still, it was really nice not to have to worry about anyone but myself. I could never subject the kids to a schedule and diet like that. It reminded me of college days, when I'd stick my finger in a jar of peanut butter and dip it in my parakeet's millet for texture. Dinner, taken care of. It was a nice change from caring for my family. Bill took that over and did a wonderful job. How I missed them! even as I enjoyed the solo time. Ahh, I wanted my sweetie there.This male osprey is preparing to deliver a fish to his incubating mate. She was shrieking at him the whole time. But male ospreys almost always eat the fish's head before they bring it to the nest. It's like a little tax on the present. They make their mates wait, but they hear about it the whole time. Shreeep! Shreep! shreepshreepshreepshreepshreepshreepshreep!!!

There are birds everywhere in South Florida. They're big and showy and tame. Wood storks stalk the roadside ditches (though there were not nearly as many as before). Herons and egrets are common, since they winter and nest there, too. If you can't get a good picture of a bird on Sanibel Island, there's something wrong with you. So don't be too impressed with these pictures, because the birds just SIT there and let you shoot away. They are completely acclimated to the press of humanity. Wish I could be so cool about it (more on that later). I noticed this little yellow-crowned night heron after I'd taken about twenty shots of a preening brown pelican across an inlet.
The night heron (an immature) was literally right at my feet, standing silently, waiting to be noticed. Or, more correctly, not giving a dang whether I noticed him or not. Here, his nictitating membrane is coming across his eye, cleaning it.
The everyday beauty on Sanibel and Captiva Islands is stunning. Even in raunchy light, these roseate spoonbills took my breath away. I loved the little Degas dancer, preening her tutu in the hard afternoon light. What I could do with this in watercolor! Figures that the most colorful birds were situated in almost impossible lighting conditions.

My friends Judy and Dan, who very kindly took me birding in the closed refuge on Friday morning (thanks a million!!), told me that roseate spoonbills, unlike scarlet ibises and flamingoes, don't need to get carotene from their diet to turn or stay pink. Flamingoes and ibises eat shrimp, and that's where they get their carotene, which they dump into their plumage, enhancing its color. Spoonbills eat fish. No carotene there. Isn't that cool? And nobody figured it out until recently because spoonbills in zoos were automatically fed the same carotene supplements the flamingoes got to "keep them pink." So why would it work that way, that one species produces pink plumage automatically, and another has to make it with the food it eats? Dunno.

Beauty, and its abundance: The residents doubtless get inured to it, but you do see a heartening number of people flocking to the beaches to watch the sunset each evening. That's neat--to see people planning their evening around appreciation of a natural event. It's also nice to be out photographing things, because nobody stops to comment on it or ask questions or stare at you. Since I take most of my bird photos from a prone position, getting in the most unthinkingly ridiculous postures in search of the right point of view, that's a real plus.Morning light bathes some little blue-winged teal and a pair of preening mottled ducks. Mottled ducks are mallard-like, except that they're a distinct species, for now. Males look just like females--a lovely tawny tan with pale tan heads. And catch that shade of teal on the wing speculum! Note that it lacks the white speculum borders that mallards show. Apparently mallards are mating with mottled ducks elsewhere in Florida, endangering them further. Those mallards--they'll mate with anything with a pulse. So we must enjoy mottled ducks while we can, because before too long, thanks to genetic swamping, they'll just be motley ducks.
The only other alligator I saw, besides the ten-footer sunning along Alligator Alley. I doubt this guy was three feet long, but he was lovely, and I was glad to see him.
As you can imagine, I took a LOT of pictures in Florida. So there will be lots of bird posts coming up. For awhile, this will be a birding blog, and then we'll go back to Chet Baker, kids, laundry, trees, suet dough, and general navel-gazing.

Bluebird Suggestions

This is a staredown, bluebird style. These birds know me so well.
A situation has developed on our front porch with an unusually aggressive male bluebird. If I had to guess, I'd say he's got testosterone poisoning, resulting from the abnormally warm winter. Maybe I should call him El Nino. But he defends the suet dough feeder, and he beats the other bluebirds up when they try to feed. This is unusual for bluebirds in winter, expected for bluebirds in breeding season. He's screwed up. Darn him!

So the bluebird pair who nests in our front yard has taken matters into their own alulae, and they've started a campaign to get me to establish another suet dough feeding site, out of sight of the one El Nino is defending. It's working.

This little female sits on the plant hook off the back deck, where in winters past I have fed her suet dough and mealworms, and she stares in the deck door at me. She fixes her beady eye on me and pleads, nay demands, that I put food out there. Think about the thought process here. She knows that I'm the dough lady. She can see me running around inside the house. She knows that she's been fed on the back deck before. She's tired of being bossed around by El Nino. So she makes an appeal to HQ, and it is received. Because I know she's not sitting on that cold metal hook because she likes to. She's sitting there because she wants me to notice her there.

OK, Mrs. B.--I get your message. You're right. We do need a second feeding station.

The other day, I put out a healthy handful on the back deck railing, and it was gratefully accepted not only by the bluebird pair, but by this lovely little junco. Traditionally ground feeders, juncoes will go where the good stuff is. They adore suet dough. I think of them as vegetarians, but they obviously appreciate the lard in this mixture. House finches and goldfinches are observant vegetarians, however, and won't touch the stuff, no matter how harsh the winter. Cardinals eat lots of animal protein, and are delighted to follow the bluebirds' lead.

And along came a white-breasted nuthatch. They always take the biggest chunk they can handle, and process it offstage. This is a male, with jet-black cap. Females are grayer in the cap. I love those busy little birds. Smart as whips they are. I had a nuthatch in rehab for a couple of weeks (a cat casualty with muscle and nerve damage. Dratted cats!) He was depressed in his cage until I moved him in with my other birds, and provided him a shaggy-barked log and a dish of sunflower seeds. That boy got busy and shelled them one by one, pounding away, storing others in every crevice. I named him Hank. I released him, flying rather weakly, but flying, figuring a compromised life in the wild was better than life in a cage. You can read any interpretation into that you wish.

Sorry about the discontinuity, but I am whipped flat from a fabulous day on Sanibel. The talk at Ding Darling NWR went really well. I think there were 130 plus people in the room, and the book signing line took over an hour to clear. The crowd was enthusiastic and knowledgeable and very appreciative. I snuck out onto the Wildlife Drive for two hours afterward, met some wonderful birders from Alabama (is there a sweeter accent in the world?). Then, went on a photo safari with Lillian Stokes and out to dinner with her and Don. Wow! She taught me SO much about what my Rebel can do, in less than a half hour. Just back, tired as can be. I have gobs of glorious photos from today but no time or energy to download or write much.

Friday, I give the same talk at the new Southwest Florida Birding and Nature Festival in Naples. Birding at Ding in the early morning. An interview with the local NPR affiliate at noon. Then to Naples for a reception, talk and book signing. I'm gonna be really fried crispy this time tomorrow. Think I'll take the weekend off to make my way back to Ohio. Hope there's not another canceled flight in my future.

Emergency Chet Baker fix, as much for me as for you: He's in good hands, getting lots of love, and Mission Control checks in with me periodically. My latest instruction to Bill: If he won't eat, put rump roast gravy on his food. I suspect it worked. You gotta love his polka-dotted pink tuxedo. Think this little girl loves her doggie? As wonderful as roseate spoonbills and flowers in January are, I do miss my babies.

Just Barely On Sunset Beach

You know what it's like, taking a trip. You think you have it all figured out, and this time you're going to get to the airport on time...and something always happens. It's always somethin'.

The last detail worked out, I finally collapsed at 11:30 PM. Tuesday. We live two hours from Columbus, and my flight was at 10:30 AM. So I set the alarm for 5:30, hoping to get on the road by 6:30, and slept fitfully, as I always do when I have an alarm set. It took 1/3 of a bottle of Pinot Noir and a Benedryl to finally tame the pacing lion that is my brain and grab four hours of sleep. I was really sawing it off at 5:30 AM, but I sat straight up in bed and stared at the clock. 5:30 on the button. And my alarm hadn't gone off. Because I had set it for 5:30 PM.
I had to flop back in amazement at the simultaneous weakness and sheer power of my poor brain, setting the fricking alarm wrong, then silently counting the minutes anyway until it knew it was time to wake up. If we only trusted that power, who would need alarm clocks? Think about it. I'll bet if you pinned me down, I could tell you exactly what time it was any hour of the day or night. I'll bet you could, too.

Dear B. got up, too, and saw me off, shrugging on a parka to load my suitcase, giving me bleary good-bye kisses. I was at the airport by 8:45. The Delta counterperson apologetically broke the news: my flight had just been canceled. I looked over my shoulder. The sky was blue, I was on time, for once...it seemed a pilot had called in sick. How unfortunate. She said it happens maybe once or twice a year.

ZICK!! WHATEVER YOU DO: Don't get mad at her! It's not her fault! You think your morning is lousy...how would you like to tell 50 people their flight is canceled, then try to re-route them all? Suck it up and change your plans. Smile. She doesn't need to hear how you feel about this. She knows. She's been hearing it from everybody else all morning. The good angel sat on my shoulder, kicking her little pink feet.

So I bit my tongue and silently overhauled my plans, and prepared to trudge back to long-term parking, collect my car, and find something to do for four hours in Columbus. "Well, girlfriend, I'm going to Easton for the day," I said with an attempt at a smile. I was clickity-clacking away, suitcase in tow, when the attendant called after me. "Ma'am? We could fly you to Fort Lauderdale, and you could rent a car and drive to Fort Myers. It's about a two-hour drive."

I considered the offer for a few seconds, and gladly accepted. At least I'd be in Florida during the daytime. I could bird my way across the peninsula. Cool. Little matter it that it turned out to be closer to a four-hour drive. I got to see the northern part of the Everglades, and drive through Big Cypress, with its ghostly winter-gray trees and Spanish moss. There were gobs of waders--white ibis, like these juveniles; wood stork, tri-colored, great blue and green herons; great, snowy and cattle egrets; anhingas and double-crested cormorants; common gallinules and American coots, all ID'ed at 70 mph, cars right on my tailgate, me unable to pull over or raise binoculars or camera. I spotted a gator hauled out on the bank that had to be 10' long if it was an inch, but I was so far past it by the time I realized what I'd seen, I couldn't stop without causing a 30-car pileup. I guess that's why they call it Alligator Alley. I settled for a long Indian whoop. I whooped again at this endless bank of bougainvillea, magenta, better than sex for the winter-weary eye.
COLOR!!! GREEN!! MAGENTA!!! TAKE ME TO MEXICO!!!
OOOHHHH YESSS! YESS!

Why would anyone need a sign along I-75 that says, "Sanibel/Captiva?" Everybody here knows where it is, right? So the highway is innocent of any indication that Sanibel even exists. And the rental car map must have been drawn by Avis' CEO's 7-year-old son. I shot past the well-hidden exit (turns out to be Colonial Boulevard--yeah, that sounds like a beach road) that would have taken me to my much-desired destination. By the time I saw signs for Cape Coral I knew I'd blown it. Too far north by 15 miles. I pulled a U-turn through an Official Use Only crossover, called BOTB on my cell and he fired up my 'puter at home and talked me into the Sanibel Island causeway. Cellphones. Hate 'em, love 'em. Husband. Just love him.

By this time, I had been traveling for 12 hours, and I had a neurotic desire to watch the sunset with my feet in the sand. My eyes were rolling back in my head, but that simple vision was all that kept me going. I fought bumper-to-bumper traffic half the length of the island, helplessly watching the sun plummet down to the sea. The warm, moist breeze played over my arms and ruffled my hair. I tuned out the exhaust and the exhaustion, and tried to block thoughts like: Why do I do this? There are too damn many people in Florida! I could walk faster than this! I miss my babies! Has anyone fed Baketon?
Stopped at a grocery, nabbed a small container of seafood salad and some Terra chips and a bottle of Shiraz (with a screw-on top because I'm sick and tired of buying $6.00 corkscrews every time I go on a trip). Only $29! for a $15 value! Special Island prices! But there were cute parrots and macaws in the courtyard.

Dashed to the hotel lobby, glugged some wine into a Pepsi cup, draped myself in camera and binoculars, and planted myself in the sand just in time to see the last rays of light bathe a snowy egret in pastel. I take back every nasty thing I said about my Digital Rebel in a previous post. It was Kremey Delight in the twilight conditions, focusing on the bird like I asked it to, gathering color from the waves. Look, just look, at the afterimage of the bird's head turning in this shot. Oh. Oh. Oh.
And this one, an Impressionist painting. I haven't the faintest idea what's happening here. I just push the button a lot. My God!!!

A couple walked down the beach toward me, and I noted a Buckeyes logo on the lapel of the gentleman's shirt. "Go Buckeyes!" I muttered, and he chuckled and said, "You still rooting for them?"
"Well, not really." We chatted for awhile, and just as they were leaving, I asked, "Where in Ohio are you from?"
"Marietta." I could tell he was expecting me not to know where that was.
"Me too! My name's Julie Zickefoose."
"Oh! The bird girl! I'm Dr. Spindler." Well, dip me in corn batter and fry me up.
The veterinarian who refers the most busted birds to me. His office is about 9 miles from my house. His vet tech lives three houses down, on our road. I'm not even going to think about the odds here. It was kismet. As was the perfection of this snowy egret and the gentle waves. Alllll bettterrrr.

See how the light gives her wings? See how the light gives me wings? Beauty: the best, the only medicine that really works.

Heal, Already!

This enforced rest for Chet is killing both of us. He's bored to tears. I'm feeling blobby. I miss our power walks so much. Thank goodness it's raining and yuckky outside, so I don't have to sneak out on him. He got up and went outside, then slept this morning until 3:30 in the afternoon, got up to eat, played for a few hours, and now he's working on a Nylabone. He'll be ready to go to bed again at 10. If this doesn't fix his wanky knee, nothing will. Because we are giving a new definition to REST.

It'll be two weeks on Wednesday that we've been without our hikes. And then I have a week of leash walking him. There have been occasional lapses, like when he sees a bunneh or a durr and streaks out the door before anyone can stop him, but overall I'd say he's gotten about 1/10th of the exercise he normally gets, and I expect he's put on some weight, because his appetite seems to have increased. Hey, me too. I think I have pica. If I had to write down everything I eat every day I'd be jotting notes all day. Boston terrier 'tocks. I'm hooked on Cute Overload, and have picked up some of their lingo. (Muzzlepuffs, 'tocks and the like). If you haven't tried it, and you think Chet's cute, look out. It's pretty cat-heavy, and also weighted toward hamsters, but there are lots of puppies, a few Bostons, and baby moose, which look like a tangle of furry coat hangers that someone put together in the dark. The kids and I like to start our day cuddling together in bed with Baker, looking at Cute Overload on the laptop. I have a feeling the proprietor makes a living (and probably a pretty good one) off her blog sponsors. Hmmmmmmm. There's an idea.
I'm preparing a talk about Letters from Eden for my "book tour," and I've gone through something like 13K images in my groaning iPhoto library finding just the right ones for the talk. It's really fun, but probably the most time-consuming thing a person can do. I tell you, it's something, to relive 2006 in photos. I have this giant lump in my throat most of the time as I see spring and summer flying by, Liam smelling Easter lilacs and the bleeding heart blooming, fading and dying and chalk drawings washing off in a warm summmer rain and Phoebe whacking wiffleballs and Bill staring out over a summer meadow and Avis and Luther growing up and flying away (or not)...and then I find Chet, trying to hide behind a little bouquet of zinnas and goldenrod, soaking up some sun in a forbidden spot. He thinks I don't know he does this.A person who gnaws on her dog's muzzlepuffs probably isn't going to worry too much about the hygeinic consequences of having him lounge on the kitchen table. Chet knows this too. But Bill, who still retains a shred of propriety where Chet's concerned, makes him get down.

Larval Humans are the Best

Phoebe holding Oona. Photo by Shila Wilson.

Phoebe should know a good baby when she meets one. She was a really, really good baby. She'd sit there, as my moth