A Lovely Pear

Speaking of flowers gone by, I would like to show you some pear trees. We have an ancient pear tree on the old home site. The pears are hard as rocks, no matter what you do to them. You can wrap them in newspaper, you can put them in a brown paper bag with a ripe apple; you can dance the tarantella on them and they remain astringent and resolutely inedible. But the deer and the question marks and commas love them; the woodchucks and raccoons and opossums eat them too. The pear is a tree of great value, and not least for its spring blossoms. It’s a blizzard of white. I remember rocking Liam in the old Scotch rocker two springs running while he nursed, watching that tree ready itself for the fruit to come, watching it come into bud and burst into dazzling bloom against the rainclouds.

Phoebe against the pear, with her new glasses.

A lone pear in our neighbor’s hayfield, wearing her party dress.

Our pear, losing its petals, springtime snow. Liam and Phoebe were enchanted, standing in the warm blizzard. “Does this happen every day at this time??” Liam asked. “No, sweetheart, it’s only happening now, and we must enjoy it while it’s snowing.”

Blue spruce catches spring snow.

Coming home today from the New River Birding and Nature Festival. They had gorgeous weather until I arrived on Thursday. It commenced to rain as I turned in to Opossum Creek, and it rained and rained and rained. (They told me the same thing at Whitefish Point two weekends ago...it was in the 70's until you got here, and then it started to snow...) Saturday, my new friend John and I took an intrepid group to Cranberry Glades, where it was 42 degrees, with a blowing cold misty rain. Yeah! But one thing I love about birders is that they roll with it, and they're happy for what they're able to see and experience. A couple of friendly warblers (Canada and Blackburnian) saved the day. Home again, home again, jiggity jig. Happy Mother's Day.

The UberLilac

I’m torn in spring between telling you about my travels and showing you the things that are blooming at the moment. As I write, the heirloom lilac is at its absolute peak, every floret open. The entire yard, all the way out to the vegetable garden, smells heavenly. It wafts into the house. A rain last night brought some rust-brown edges to the oldest florets. Sigh. It's almost done. I’ll miss it so when it’s finished.photo by Bill Thompson III

Just look at the color and size of the clusters. The individual florets are nearly the size of a quarter; the trusses are almost a foot long. Any other lilac looks wimpy by comparison. I mean, they're all nice, but this one is a superhero. Not only that, but it blooms a full week longer than conventional lilacs, having slow-opening buds and tremendous holding power.

For those new to the blog, this lilac grew on Bill’s family farm in Marietta for many years. The Highway Department grabbed the farm property by eminent domain, and Bill’s Great Aunt Lolly saved the lilac, some American hollies, and a Magnolia grandiflora to bring to their new home in town. They didn’t want to leave the farm; they didn’t want to sell it. They were run out. Now it’s a highway interchange, Exit 1 on Interstate 77. But I have a child of Aunt Lolly’s lilac, given to me by Bill's mom and dad, and I treasure it beyond any other plant on the farm. We planted it in 2000. It's as old as Liam. At eight years, it's enormous.
When the buds were about to open, we had a frost scare—it was supposed to drop to the 20’s for two nights running. Having watched the lilac freeze black while in bud last spring, I was not about to give up those flowers, that scent. So Christo came to Whipple. I emptied my linen closet of its bedspreads and sheets to protect my gardens. I topped the lilac off with a tarp, hanging it as high as I could reach. It was not easy. I had the one of the kids hand me clothespins and the other hold the ladder as I teetered and reached.I hadn’t realized how big this plant had grown until I tried to cover it. I managed to secure only about half of it. As it happened, it didn’t freeze after all, and the buds swelled

And opened.

I’ll look at these pictures in late summer and remember when the lilac bloomed in May. There is no finer lilac on the planet, for size, color and fragrance, but it’s the history behind the plant that makes it even more special. I love it. Every time I pass by I bury my face in it. I tried to pose with dignity but it seduced me.photo by BT3

Big, fat homegrown asparagus and my favorite lilac. Life is good.

Turkey Days II

Yesterday I left you hanging. Well, at least those of you who didn't immediately scramble around, chimplike, to find the answer. Why should the base of the beard of a turkey gobbler be richly supplied with nerve endings?Ooh, I love this picture, a perfect bronze gobbler bathed in afternoon light right by our mailbox!

The answer lies in the mating behavior of wild turkeys. When the gobbler is excited, he’s puffed up to three times his normal apparent volume, every feather on end until he’s practically spherical. Like anyone who’s climbed on the scale with a bit (or a lot) of a pot belly, it can be hard to see what lies below; you either have to suck that belly in or crane your neck. In mating, the hen turkey lies flat on the ground, her head sticking straight up, wings out to the side. The tom climbs aboard and treads her shoulders with his feet. As it happens, his beard brushes the top of her head. (We've seen this twice in our own backyard!) Maybe that’s nice for the hen, but it’s essential for the tom. Because he can’t see over his own massive bulk, it’s how he can tell he’s in the right position to mate successfully. He keeps his beard in contact with her head throughout the treading and copulation. And so the beard seems to have a function besides the decorative, and those nerve endings make all kinds of sense in light of their behavior and the mechanics of copulation.

When the Warrens tell me some bit of natural history lore, I listen, because they’ve gained their knowledge through direct experience with wild things. When I tell them something, they listen right back. It’s good.
Jay lowers the turkey back into the cistern, a natural refrigerator.
I know that there are many who will look at these pictures and be repulsed by the sight of a wild turkey, sprawled out, turned into food. But the more I think about how and what most of us carnivores eat, the more sense it makes to me to walk out on your own land and with a couple of shots, fell a bird that will feed you for several days. Surely it is more in harmony with nature than eating a steak from a cow that was fed grain—a diet that doesn’t agree with it, a diet that makes it gassy and bloated-- in a Montana stockyard, slaughtered and trucked halfway across the country. I felt only a twinge of sadness on seeing the bird, knowing that there are a lot of turkeys around, knowing that it only takes one dominant gobbler to father many broods of poults, knowing a little about their impact on the understory vegetation and on the vanishing ruffed grouse in our area.I have to tell you, the best book on wild turkeys I have ever read, or ever expect to read, is Illumination in the Flatwoods: A Season with the Wild Turkey by Florida naturalist/artist Joe Hutto. He raised a brood of 14 from a clutch of orphaned, pipping eggs and walked with them in the woods to learn their ways and protect them, and return them gently to the wild. If you read nothing else, You Must Read This.

After the turkey viewing, we sat on the hill, enjoying the warm sun and soft breeze. Chet Baker cried until I let him out of the car and he went from Jay to Jeff and back again, meeting and greeting, snuffling, leaping and licking. They worried that he’d run away; I knew he wouldn’t. For a Boston terrier, home is where the heart is, where the people are. They’re such happy little dogs, so loving and sociable. The Warrens are nuts about him. Jay always sings "My Funny Valentine" to him.

Funny Valentine he is. His mouth is a little weak. But his figure is completely Greek.

When he’d get off on the trail of a rabbit or vole and begin to stray, a quiet, “Hyah, Bake!” would turn him on a dime and bring him smiling back to us.
I always dreamed of having a dog like that, a dog who listens, a dog who cares. A dog who responds not to shouted commands but to normal quiet tones; to English words and whole- sentence suggestions. It’s a two-way dance. To have a quiet dog like that, you must be quiet yourself. To have a dog who comes back at a word, you must first let him off the lead.
so take the darn thing off already. Ah, but Bake, there are cattle in the pasture below. Sometimes a word is not enough.

I don't know how a discussion of turkey beards turned into a Baker fix. It's been awhile, and he's just such a good doggeh. I thought you wouldn't mind.

Tomorrow morning bright and early, the rest of us head to Fayetteville, WV, to join Bill of the Birds in entertaining the happy festivalgoers to the New River Birding and Nature Festival who want to see Swainson's warblers, golden, cerulean and blue-winged warblers, and a plethora of other fabulous Neotropical migrants. I'll be speaking at Opossum Creek Resort Thursday night, a talk on the biology and natural history of migrant warblers. Bill and I, along with our fabulous faithful bassist Clay, play music for the Friday night gathering, and we're leading field trips Friday and Saturday mornings. It's festival time. But I'm happy because we'll all be together, even that good lil' doggeh, the Mayor of Opossum Creek. He will not be on the lead. He will be going cabin to cabin, meeting and greeting, bumming hamburgers.

Turkey Days

When we go out on these balmy soft spring mornings, it’s not long before the air is shattered by the explosive gobble of a wild turkey. Something about this call makes me laugh; it’s more like a sneezing fit than a song. Turkeys are doing well around here, despite coyotes and great horned owls, raccoons, opossums and free-roaming cats. They’re doing so well that wherever they appear, ruffed grouse seem to vanish. I’ve seen the changeover on our own land. Granted, I may not have the whole story; other factors such as a maturing forest could have more to do with grouse disappearance than does competition with turkeys. But if you think about it, turkeys and grouse eat essentially the same thing, but turkeys have a much higher reach for buds and seeds than do grouse. I don’t know. It’s a theory, like almost everything else in natural history.

I’d rather feed turkeys than hunt them; I’d rather watch them court than call them in to shoot them. I do have a certain admiration for anyone who can get close enough to a turkey in the woods to shoot it, though, because as a deer hunting friend once said, “Deer are deaf, dumb and blind compared to turkey.” Turkeys don’t miss much.
You have to go out before dawn and camo up and be still, and you have to be good with calls.

I was checking bluebird boxes along a country road near our house when I saw my pals, the Warren boys, in a red pickup ahead. Like turkeys, the Warren boys don’t miss much. They recognized my car in the their rear view mirror, pulled over and got out. Jeff pulled out his crow call and cawed to me. I cawed back. That’s how we make contact in Whipple. They were dressed in camouflage and grinning ear to ear. “Got a 20-pounder this morning,” Jeff drawled. “Ooh, can I see it?” I always like to see wild things up close, even if they’re dead.

“We put him in the cistern to keep him cool.” So we drove up to the barn and the Warren boys grunted a big slab of sandstone to the side, uncovering a magnificent shallow cistern half-full of water. Dangling just over the surface was the turkey, relieved of his innards. There was something spooky, mysterious and ooky, about the giant bird slowly twirling over the cold murky water.
They hauled him up and laid him on the grass for me to admire. Jeff showed me his short, straight spurs, suggesting that he was in his second spring. I showed the Warrens the brown vermiculation on his tertials, suggesting the same thing to me. We traded bits of information.

“Ever feel the beard?” Jay asked, and I was intrigued to find it just as stiff and tough as horsehair, stronger even, perhaps. The feathers are without barbules, black and wiry. Now it was my turn to tell them something. “Recent research suggests that the beard isn’t just decoration. It may be a sensory organ that helps the tom mate.”
Apparently, on dissection, ornithologists discovered that the bony pedicel, or base, of the beard was richly enervated. Now, why would a decorative bunch of bristles need a lot of nerve endings? I will tell you tomorrow. Tee hee hee.

Looking for Bill of the Birds?

Blogger rejects any and all of my dear husband's attempts to post this past week. It's a known problem with anyone who posts via FTP; i.e., anyone who's not hosted at Blogspot. And it must be a big'un. In desperation, he's changed his address, but he can't even post THAT on his poor benighted becalmed befuddled blog. So please, go find Bill of the Birds here:

http://billofthebirds.blogspot.com

Do leave a comment so he knows you've found him. He'll be at the above URL until further notice. Chet Baker thanks you, I thank you, and BOTB thanks you.

Visiting Dr. Payne

The finale of my trip to Ithaca, the plump maraschino atop the sundae, was a breakfast invitation by bioacoustician and writer Katy Payne. In the 1970's, Katy and her husband Roger blew the world of cetacean biology wide open with their work on the songs of humpback whales. They were the first to record, study, and try to decipher the astounding underwater songs of what whalers used to call "sea canaries." What a wonderful name for a multi-ton animal.

More recently, Dr. Payne has worked with elephants in Africa. It started simply enough, with a visit to an elephant house at a zoo. She felt, rather than heard, a rumble in her breastbone, the same kind of thrumming you get when you feel, rather than hear, a ruffed grouse. It was more like a thrill than a sound. She turned to her friends and said, "There's something going on in here." That moment of enlightenment led her to her discovery that elephants communicate in ultra low-frequency infrasound, and that communication may travel over hundreds of miles. Yes. What are they saying? I'm reading her book, Silent Thunder, and it is setting me afire.

Katy Payne's grandfather was Louis Agassiz Fuertes.

She never knew him, since he died so young, but I have studied pictures of him and I can tell you that he is there in her eyes, in her warmth and kindness, in her sensitivity to animals, her inquisitiveness, her deeply artistic way of thinking, and in her writing. I was almost overwhelmed on meeting her; I had a jolt of recognition that came from somewhere other than mere physical resemblance. I felt as if I were meeting Louis himself.

There are some L.A.F. paintings in Katy's homey, naturalist's living room. One is this little crow study.
"Remember," Katy said, "that he had no photographs to work from. He had to figure out the wing positions on his own."
What a gorgeous wing, what a gorgeous little painting, so full of crow lore and winterchill. Look how the shading on the distal half of the crow's raised wing makes it bend out toward you. Ahhhh.

I was utterly arrested by this Fuertes life sketch of a ferret, perhaps a black-footed ferret. How perfectly he understood how its weight is distributed, how its fur flows and reverses; the sacklike bunching up of the abdominal skin. You can see how it could turn inside that loose skin, as weasels are said to do. And there's something birdlike about the neck and head. It could only have been done from life.

As Katy and I talked and looked through photographic scrapbooks of the Merriman Arctic Expedition, of which Louis was a vital part, I felt as if I'd known her all my life. And especially so as she dithered about the soy-milk waffles she made for us, which were quite delicious, but which she felt weren't quite up to snuff. Sounded just like something I'd try, just like the things I'd say. Chet Baker could see he was in for a long haul as we talked, so after casing the entire house and watching squirrels outside for awhile, he jumped up in a comfy chair and pawed up a hand-loomed throw just so, flopping down and curling up with a piglike grunt. "Make yourself at home, Bacon!" I said, and we laughed. Sometimes you meet someone like Katy and you wonder why you haven't been friends forever, but you feel like you ought to get it started already. Even our cowlicks are mirror-image. Pfffft.
photo by Alan Poole. Thank you a million, AP.

What a gift to the world is this scientist, this writer. Read Silent Thunder. Louis would be so proud.

A Living Building

The Lab of Ornithology appears to me to have been designed around two major aesthetic concerns. First, the trove of bird art, like that in the Fuertes library and the Fisher’s Island panel, which have been beautifully integrated into the space. A second goal was to showcase the natural wonders in the wetlands just outside, visible through huge windows all around. It’s like the biggest blind you’ve ever seen.

Though my time was limited, I was determined to take in just a bit of the gorgeous swampy bit of Sapsucker Woods immediately around the building. It’s truly another world, quiet, laced with mulched paths, swarming with birds. Canada geese were living their lives, getting it on, preening


and making a general honking ruckus. One pair has claimed ownership of a part of the path near the bird feeder, and challenges passersby in a quiet way. I saw several toddlers try to pet this bird. Not recommended.Does this goose look intelligent to you? It does to me. There's really something going on in those eyes. It hisses and intimidates people who come too close. You don’t want a bite from that bony, serrated bill. There were a couple of geese with permanently injured wings, making a good living, mates by their side, at the pond. One bird acts as an unofficial greeter, hanging out right by the entry. It's neat to see birds the second you pull into the parking lot of the Lab.

Mallards kept bombing over and dropping in, and I played at photographing them, with some pretty cool results.As a young bird painter, I devoured a book called Prairie Wings, by Edgar M. Queeney. Using the rudimentary black-and-white equipment of the time, he captured amazing photos of ducks in flight. If only I could go back in time and hand Mr. Queeney my little Digital Rebel. What fun he'd have.
A mushmouse swam by a resting hooded merganser (the white spot directly back of the rat).

A pair of common mergansers. When they hauled out on a log, I could see the bulk of their bodies. They’re like icebergs. Note the wood duck nesting boxes, which common and hooded mergansers may also use. The place is set up for birds, and the resident geese know and exploit that.

I had to chuckle when the black-capped chickadee I photographed turned out, on closer inspection, to be color-banded. This is the Lab of Ornithology, after all. Who knows what secrets these birds have revealed?

The incandescent glow of a mallard’s head. His mate hides in shadow.

I was stunned to see a big brown bat flying in daylight, dipping down to drink. I never thought my photos would be acceptable, but they aren’t bad, considering that I was focusing manually, and the bat was dipping and diving like, well, a bat. This is a really neat shot, and it's even, finally, in good focus.
I hoped he wasn’t ill; bats all over the Northeast are turning up with “white-nose syndrome,” a disease of apparently fungal origin that is killing them by the thousands, and sending them out of their hibernacula much too early. Please be well and travel safely, brown bat.
This ends my sojurn at the Lab. The "Letters from Eden" show hangs through mid-July. Please check it out if you're in the area.

The Fuertes Library

The old Lab of Ornithology was a humble block building which subsequently grew to include a string of offices housed in mobile homes in the woods. I doubt that anyone who worked in the old buildings misses the good old days, when the organization’s needs and staff outgrew the original structure. I was eager to see the new building, and it didn’t disappoint. One of the things I was most impressed with was the loving, careful reconstruction of the jewel of the old Lab: the wood-paneled library, adorned with Fuertes paintings. The paintings all appear as they originally did, though it seemed to me the ceiling might have been raised considerably. It’s still warm and intimate and exquisite, and a local artisan contributed handmade chairs with a nodding heron design to finish it off.

Here are some of the panels in the library. I adore this old man turkey, and the winter pastels of the landscape around him. There’s such a mood in this piece. And there's a victorious peregrine with bufflehead buffet. Fuertes did terrific upside-down dead birds, probably because he had one right in front of him to draw from.
A magnificent tryptich of snowy owl, king eider, and Canada goose.

The same owl, with scaup and scoters.

An autumnal gem: a strutting ruffed grouse in glowing sugar maple and white pine woodland. Don’t’ you want to walk with him? Look at the perspective and handling of his tail. I love this piece. I can hear his soft footfalls in the leaves and smell the curing forest litter, hear the calls of migrating jays and feel the melancholy of autumn seeping in.

More panels, these of puddle ducks and a red-shouldered hawk, in situ. You can see a little peek through to the fabulous Wild Birds Unlimited shop just beyond. They sold quite a few copies of Letters from Eden during the show and talks!

The whole works. What a room.

Half of my show, spitting distance from Louis’ work. Happy sigh.

When I was a baby bird artist in the mid-80’s, I gave a talk in the old Fuertes Library, awed that I was surrounded by my hero’s work. I was no less humbled this time, especially by hanging my simple watercolors in a room immediately adjoining the library. Though the Letters from Eden show comprises over 60 paintings (with another bunch still waiting to be framed), we had to cherry-pick the ones we most wanted to hang, and in the end had room for about half of them. In hanging the show, Charles Eldermire and I had to balance our desire to show all the work with the realities of the space. The system involves clips and wires, such that the paintings are suspended from molding near the ceiling, so there was a lot of scurrying up and down a ladder on Charles’ part; it was like a two-day Stairmaster marathon for him. My role was mostly that of fussy arbiter. We were in sync, though, and the hanging went smoothly, even though it took a lot longer than either of us anticipated. There was an international symposium of migration biologists meeting at the same time, so we could work only at night, after the meetings were over. Here's one wall of paintings.
And the second one. We struggled to get the important things up, without overcrowding things. It makes me happy to think that, at least until mid-July, the same air molecules will be circulating over Fuertes' work and mine; that people will be able, perhaps, to see the influence of the master in a student he never knew. If staring holes in book plates can teach a kid how to paint birds, I learned. Here's my favorite plate from Forbush and May's A Natural History of Birds Of Eastern and Central North America. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for that first Fuertes book. It was $3.95 well spent. I remember trying so hard to write straight as I made it all mine.
Come see me at the Scioto Bird Club's one-day bird festival on Saturday, May 3, from 7-noon at the Mound City Group Visitor's Center in Chillicothe, Ohio. I'll be giving my Letters from Eden talk at 10:30 AM and leading a bird walk at 9 AM, as well as signing books. I know at least one blogreader who's coming!

Song for the First of May

I've been haunted lately by this beautiful song from Kris Delmhorst, formerly of Redbird, a roots-folk group whose work I love. It’s one of those rare ones where the melody and lyrics mesh perfectly. It captures that gentle and overwhelming obsession when your every thought is filtered through your feelings for someone you love. I can't get it out of my head.

So many love songs celebrate the obsession of infatuation, the fun, first part; the fire whose own heat gradually but inexorably melts it into something quite different, more complicated. It's so easy, so alluring, to run with infatuation, which is so uncomplicated, so unburdened by history, shared experience or disillusionment. It's tricky and demanding to abide with its aftermath, to stick around for the long train ride into the unknown. Listen to country radio if you want to hear about infatuation. Listen to Kris Delmhorst if you want something approximating real life.

I’m thankful for artists like Kris Delmhorst, who walk on the uneven ground.


Birds of Belfast Kris Delmhorst


The field grew wild all that buzzing summer
We dozed a while, woke a little younger
Hung your clothes, waited on the weather
Thorn and rose twine and grow together

When did all the birds of Belfast learn to sing your name?
When did all those silver ashes breathe into flame?
Who are you without your sadness? Who am I without my shame?
When did all the birds of Belfast learn to sing your name?

Which was right, the fight or the surrender?
You my light, my solitary mender
Still the sun will rise on every weeper’s mourning
Tearstained eyes, pearly light adorning

When did all the birds of Belfast learn to sing your name?
When did all those silver ashes breathe into flame?
Who are you without your sadness? Who am I without my shame?
When did all the birds of Belfast learn?

Who am I to sing a love song? Who are you to do the same?
With our weary little hearts full of broken little claims?
Will they even recognize us? Should I give you a new name?
And then all the birds of Belfast would sing it just the same.