When June Comes!

Phoebe drowning in honeysuckle. Photo by her daddy, Bill Thompson III.


But when June comes
Rench my throat in wild honey and whoop out loud!
Spread them shadders anywhere
I'll get down and waller there

from "When June Comes" by James Whitcomb Riley, the "Hoosier Poet."

My father's favorite poem. Aw, I'm bawling again. That's no way to start a post.


Long shadders, leaf shadders.



When June comes, I get to go out in the meadow with my dog.



I get to open bluebird boxes and find one all full of little gray bluebird girls.


And one all stuffed full of chickadee.




I can look out the window and see a newly minted bluebird contemplating her world.




Or see an indigo bunting sharing a bath with a cardinal.


And not sharing it with a phoebe.


Dear Mrs. Passerina,

Your son does not always play well with others. Please speak to him about sharing.

June is overwhelming. I love it so much. I just wish I could take some of this bounty and spread it out through the rest of the year, that's all. I wish June lasted three or four months, so I could take it all in. But everyone's in a hurry, everyone's nesting, everyone's blooming, everyone's singing, and I can't keep up. I just grab little bouquets as I go.

Adventure in Beaver Creek

There is a remarkable thing going on in Beaver Creek, Ohio. For twenty years, an extraordinary group of citizens, scientists, teachers and naturalists, all of them de facto conservationists, have been working to save a complex and diverse system of wetlands that winds through this beautiful community not far from Dayton, Ohio. Over 900 acres have been brought under protection in those 20 years, each one of those acres seething with birds, herps, amphibians, insects and a remarkably diverse and intact native plant community. There are fens and streams, swamps and sedge meadows and wet prairies. The Beaver Creek Wetlands Association wants to protect them all, and the priceless aquifer flowing beneath them. A slight slope of the land keeps water flowing through the wetlands, draining into Big Beaver Creek, one of the myriad creeks in Ohio that was "improved" by channelization. We always think we can improve on nature. The BCWA knows perfection when it sees it, and they make contact with landowners to secure conservation easements or outright ownership of the many jigsaw pieces of an irreproducible puzzle.
Common yellowthroat, Siebenthaler Fen.
I was honored to be asked to speak at the BCWA's Twentieth Anniversary banquet. Here assembled were biologists, boardwalk builders, weed pullers, land donors (including Mr. Siebenthaler!) and financial backers, all brought together by a common goal. I felt abashed and useless, as I often do in the presence of people who accomplish concrete things in conservation, but I tried to entertain them anyway. The talk went well. I was pampered beyond all reason by my gracious hosts.

Sunday morning, we made an excursion to Siebenthaler Fen, the jewel in the BWCA crown. It's a special sort of wetland that is underlain by a water-bearing gravel deposit left by the Wisconsin Glacier as it melted 15,000 years ago. Cool water continually circulates to the surface, nourishing a plant community that includes cottonwood, sycamore(see the oriole?) and box elder forests, open shrubland dominated by shrubby cinquefoil, swamp rose, willows and dogwoods, and squishy fen with queen of the prairie, sweetflag, bur reed and countless other wetland plants. It's a tremendously exciting and inspiring place to be, especially since the Ohio DNR and BCWA cooperated to build a mile-long boardwalk that winds through all these communities. You can be in the middle of a fen, birding with perfectly dry feet, in habitat that would require hip waders to negotiate. What a gift to give the community. Without the boardwalk, the fen would be all but inaccessible, all its wonders off-limits to any but the hardiest naturalist. With it, those in wheelchairs and strollers can go birding in a marsh. To see landscape and habitat photos from the fen, please go to Nina's gorgeous blog, Nature Remains. She posted about it ages ago, right after it happened, but it takes a blog ant quite a while to catch up. Nina and her husband Anton came to experience the fen, and it was so wonderful to see them again. Here we are, with Anton behind the camera and the swamp forest behind us.G's Cottage came, too. I really enjoy meeting people whose blogs I read. You have so little catching up to do.

Birds appeared as if on cue everywhere we walked. A pair of tree swallows was flaunting the obvious intent of the person who built their nestbox. Two indigo buntings were singing in the parking lot, hurling birdy insults--even singing over top of one another. This is the avian equivalent of making a very rude hand gesture. I like this photo, with his mouth lining lit up by the morning sun.

While we waited for everyone to show up, I fired away at the little songboxes, the color of a summer evening sky just before it drains to tangerine.There are certain angles and lights that show indigo buntings to best advantage. I like them best when they're turquoise.
With a lens that goes to only 300 mm., you have to be right on top of your subject to get decent shots.
The buntings were so engrossed in their border dispute that they paid little attention to me as I stood quietly near the contested corner. I took a lot of pictures, none of them publishable, except for here. That's what's fun about a blog. We'll explore more of the fen on Monday. I'll leave you with bunting overload.

I'm preparing to head over to Murphin Ridge Inn tomorrow in Adams County, Ohio, in the heart of Amish country, for a weekend writer's workshop. Boy, that sounds enticing to me, but doh! I'm giving it...I'll do my best to make it fun and informative for the participants. There's still room for people who want to come on Saturday; I'll be giving a morning workshop on nature journaling, and then we'll take a walk with superb naturalist Chris Bedel, ending in a fabulous picnic lunch at the Edge of Appalachia Preserve, a north-meets-south sanctuary where both whip-poor-wills and chuck-will's-widows sing. Saturday evening, I'll talk about Letters from Eden and the writer's life. It's all happening this Saturday, June 14, at Murphin Ridge Inn.

You won't find better, fresh, local gourmet food in Ohio--it's the most gorgeous rural inn, nestled in the hardwoods and fields of Amish country, with the most delicious meals and delightful proprietors. If it sounds enticing, well, it should, and we'd love to see you there. Call 1-877-687-7446 for more information. They're at 750 Murphin Ridge Road, West Union, Ohio.
That last picture in this lineup is me, giving you one-on-one instruction in nature writing. Heh.

All This Useless Beauty

Nashville warbler in a young cherry tree.

It's all happening too fast, going away too fast. The blackpoll warblers are in; they're the latest migrants. I'm starting to see female warblers coming through, another sign that migration is winding down (males migrate first, so they can set up their territories before the females arrive). It's been a beautiful spring, what we've been able to see of it through the constant travel and the pouring rain. Everything is lush beyond belief; my gardens are burgeoning. I planted some zinnia seeds today, looking forward to July blossoms for the butterflies and hummingbirds. Everything grows when it rains all the time. I'll have mesclun and arugula (rocket!) tonight.

I'm off again this weekend to give a Saturday talk and lead a Sunday morning field trip at Beaver Creek Wetlands near Dayton, Ohio. Praying that whatever digital projector they come up with will talk to my Mac laptop. Hoping it doesn't rain for the field trip, but figuring it will. Why break precedent with the rest of the spring? Nursing a whopper of a sinus infection, sore throat and all, trying to get my voice in shape to record some commentaries tomorrow before I leave. I sound like Timmy at the bottom of the well. Schlepping kids to sports events 30 miles away. Whoops, gotta go to town on the way and buy red tube socks and black pants for the uniform, gotta buy a third ball glove for Liam, who has a knack for leaving them wherever he happens to be. Hope whoever found them is enjoying them. Cleaning house, again. I wouldn't mind it so much if I didn't have to do it every week, if it would just keep for a bit longer. How does a boy not notice he has a Driscoll strawberry stuck to the sole of his shoe? They're big.

All right. Enough about doing too much. We all do too much. Outside, it all goes on without us, all this useless beauty*, and we can go out and look at it, or we can keep running on the gerbil wheel. Outside, the hooded warbler sings his syncopated song, higher than you'd think to look.He checks his flank for a louse.Right across the driveway, the Kentucky warbler answers with his galloping trill. He doesn't willingly grant a glimpse, much less a good picture, but he's so worth the effort.How did we get so lucky, to have both these birds breeding along our driveway?

Back on the deck, facing the day, I see an indigo bunting, a piece of lapis snagged in the willow top.He flies to the sycamore we transplanted from the vegetable garden to the back yard. How it has grown--it's a little giant, an open-grown, symmetrical beauty, just beginning to show leopard spots on its bark.Its other choice was to be pulled up. I'm glad we transplanted it. It drinks the water that comes off the roof and pretends it's on a riverbank.

Such riches we're given, bounteous treasure for free, and most of us don't even stop to collect it. I count myself in that number, most days, as my gerbil wheel of the things I should do turns.

A Nashville warbler finds caterpillar after caterpillar in a young cherry.
He shows me his ruddy crown
and strikes a pose that pleases.
Thank you, warblers.

Try to catch the last salvo of spring migration, wherever you may be. In the far North, it's just getting going. In the South, birds are already fledging young, the migrants long gone to their breeding grounds. It all goes on around us, and it's good to gather it in, like a flower that will soon be spent.

*thanks to Elvis Costello for that album title

Birds of Passage

A molting juvenile male indigo bunting gets a shower from a field sparrow.

They’re gone, almost all gone, the birds of passage. Every year, the Big Sit rolls around, and it seems uncannily timed for the moment that the last warbler of autumn quits the place entirely. Sure, we usually see the first junco of the year on Big Sit Sunday, but many of the birds that peopled (or birdled) our trees only two days earlier are gone like a puff of smoke.

The nights have turned cold lately, finally. It feels final, anyway. It feels like time to haul plants into the greenhouse . It feels like time to take the last desperate measures to propagate plants whose cuttings didn’t root, or give it up and dig them up and bring them in as mother plants. It feels like time to get the garden cart and load it up with tropical mandevillas and bougainvilleas and grunt it down the side hill to the Garden Pod. Time to fire up the little gas heater in there and bask in warmth. I am thinking these thoughts, this same person who was cursing the 90-degree days just a couple of weeks ago.

And I've spent the entire day outside in the first nice weather for what seems like two weeks, hauling plants and digging geraniums, planting a serviceberry my friend Cindy gave me two years ago, planting a daylily Margaret gave me for my birthday, planting the beautiful blue rose of Sharon I got at Chautauqua, planting two propagules of the heirloom lilac bush. I've pulled the pond pump and drained the filter and taken it all inside. I've drained the hoses and taken them in, too. I've cleaned the Spa and made sure it's bubbling furiously so as not to freeze. I've filled the feeders again. I've mowed the lawn for the last time (I hope) and I can hear the growl of the weed whacker as Bill trims the long hair around the beds and edges. I'm going to go out before dark and cover the huge red mandevilla with a sheet, maybe drape some sheets over the salvia beds. I brought in the Pig of Good Fortune, who is made of terra cotta and who is slowly sloughing away, nose first, and found the cellophane of a monarch chrysalis that had hatched out, affixed to his belly. Good fortune, indeed.

My legs and back ache and I'm tired to the bone, a good tired. It's a good thing it's getting dark; I'm collapsing. The greenhouse is bursting with beautiful flowers in fresh new pots and it's all clean and sunny in there and it makes me look forward to the winter, to know I have it to go to when I'm needing a dose of green and fragrant things. I filled it last week and put some more plants in there today. I think I've got everything I'll need for the winter...heliotrope, mandevilla, hibiscus, impatiens, fuchsia, geraniums, my big ol' cacti, the jade tree with a trunk as big around as my arm, my rosemary tree...on and on. It's lovely in there.

The Carolina chickadees are looking sleek in their new winter plumage. As Mary has pointed out, this is a hard bird to get in the frame, much less in focus. Ahhh, Mary. Are you ready for your new Digital Rebel yet? Ooh, I love to tease you, especially with chickadee pictures. Once you get your new camera, you'll try to catch the highlight in a chickadee's eye, instead of trying just to catch the chickadee. Easier said than done!
Looking back at the birds of passage: I photographed what's probably the last indigo bunting in the Spa on October 12. This is a gorgeous first-year male, just coming into winter plumage. It reminds me very much of the cordon bleu finch of Africa (and aviculture). Immature male indigo buntings undergo an extra molt in the fall that gives them some blue nuptial plumage. Most birds would travel to the wintering grounds in first basic plumage. It's an energetically expensive thing to do, so there must be a reason for it, right? It's thought to perhaps confer competitive advantage on the wintering grounds, where they're fighting mature males for territory. But we don't know that for sure.

Chipping sparrows have massed and largely departed, making way for the juncos and tree sparrows. They appreciate our wild “lawn,” studded with crabgrass of many kinds. The nice thing about crabgrass if you’re a bird is that it makes so many little seeds, and it heads out so quickly that there are always crabgrass dinners available. The nasty thing about crabgrass if you like a neat lawn is exactly the same thing. Good thing I look at crabgrass as chippy food. Here’s a little klatsch of chippies under the Bird Spa, going at the seedheads. Love it!

One from the seed eating bunch flew up briefly to perch in my studio birch. I really like this shot. Such a pretty little sparrow. I miss them when they leave, and I’m so happy when they come back in April. Something to get me through the winter. I'll be saving hair clippings all winter for them to weave into their nests come April.