Julie Zickefoose

A Lovely Pear

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:23:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:00:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:30:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:11:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:00:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Sun, 04 May 2008 19:00:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:47:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:01:00 +0000

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.

Fuertes and Other Luminaries

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:51:00 +0000

As promised, we'll walk down the halls at the Lab of Ornithology, savoring the paintings that hang on its walls.

Here’s one that’s the rarest of the rare: A Fuertes study of the extinct Cuban macaw. Of all the extinct birds in the world, the Cuban macaw is one that gives me great remorse. Imagine: A small macaw, perhaps the size of my chestnut-fronted macaw Charlie, but colored like a huge scarlet macaw. Wow, wow, wow. Looking at this painting, I could see that Fuertes painted it from a study skin. This colorful little macaw was extinct in the wild by 1864, and gone from the face of the earth by 1885.From the Smithsonian Institution's web site, here is a picture of ornithologist Katie Faust holding a mounted Cuban macaw. People always smile for photos, but I'd bet she's sad, too. What a massive bill this bird had for its size. One wonders what hard nut it had to crack. It was unique in so many ways, such a loss to the planet. But Cuban macaws were edible, and they probably ate fruit that people wanted for themselves, and for that, they were extirpated, and another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one will be seen again.

Just down the hall was a stunning gouache of a gorilla, a frequent subject for Fuertes. I’m always impressed by his handling of hair. Take it from me, when you’ve been painting feathers all your life, hair is kind of a stretch. This guy jumps right out of the frame at you. His hair is perfect. Gonna order up a plate of beef chow mein. I have GOT to do some portraits of Chet Baker in his young prime. Just have to. If LAF can master a gorilla, I can paint a shiny little dog.
I adored this gorgeously drawn study of a whitetail buck—another unexpected treasure from Louis. My guess would be that he worked from a mounted head; a photo of him working in his studio shows several on the wall above his easel. The sweep and structure of the antlers is so convincing and three-dimensional; the treatment of the deer’s various textures utterly convincing. What a wonderful subject for “life” drawing the ubiquitous mounted deer head would be. We all ought to try it. Those things are everywhere. Well, they're everywhere where I come from.

There are other bird artists represented here, as well. Robert Mengel is one of my favorites—he was a painting ornithologist whose works are possessed of great accuracy, vigor and life. Here’s a running bobwhite by Bob, who passed away in 1990, another painter I would very much have loved to meet.It’s really hard to paint something as intricately marked as a quail without getting too fussy. This is a masterpiece of understatement and grace. It has the mark of Fuertes, and Sutton, with whom Bob studied informally, but it is all his own, and instantly recognizable by its almost careless painterly beauty and truth to the species.

Peter Scott was a British artist who simplified even further, and in my opinion has never been surpassed in his mastery of waterfowl in flight—even (or especially) by the legions of hook-and-bullet painters to follow. How many paintings of waterfowl flocks have been churned out--but are any of them as true or beautiful as this? Look how each swan in this flock has a slightly different angle and wing position; there are no cookie-cutter birds in Scott’s paintings. Flocks are among the hardest thing a bird artist can attempt to paint, because the slightest variation in size or proportion can make the viewer think there’s a different species tucked in there. In addition, perspective demands that distant birds be depicted smaller—but making a convincing statement without suggesting that some of the flock members are miniaturized, or of another species, is extremely difficult. You can see me, hunkered over with my camera, reflected in the glass, wondering at the perfection of this small, seemingly simple but utterly exquisite painting.

This has got to be one of the coolest Francis Lee Jacques paintings I’ve seen. Anyone who’s been to the AMNH in New York has seen Jacques’ work in the dioramas. A peerless painter of landscape and wildlife, Jacques could put birds and animals in space better than anyone before or since. I love how he dwarfed the barn, giving us a (doubtless frightened) frog’s-eye-view of sandhill cranes. Jacques vastly preferred painting waterfowl and waders to songbirds. A paraphrased quote from him that I love: “The difference between warblers and no warblers in the landscape is very slight.” That little gift, from my friend, painter Bob Clem.

An incubating female common nighthawk, painted from life by George Miksch Sutton. Sigh. Again, Sutton’s handling of the intricacies of the nighthawk’s vermiculated plumage—something an artist could fall into and not get out of—is masterful. To me, this bird fairly breathes; she is aware of being watched but holds tightly to her job.
I'm grateful to Charles Eldermire, Benjamin Clock, and Alan Poole, who took me to hidden areas of the Lab where many of these paintings hang. It was a privileged peek at a treasure trove of ornithological art.

The Fortunate Tooth

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:45:00 +0000

When I was eight years old, an extra tooth pushed through the roof of my mouth. My mother had had the same thing happen as a child. I doubt the extraction of my extra tooth by oral surgery was much nicer than hers in the 1920’s. To soothe the pain, Ida took me to an old bookstore in downtown Richmond near the dental hospital, the only time I can remember having anything bought for me in such a place. If I remember correctly, my dad met her at the bookstore and helped pick out just the right book for me. I remember picking up a weighty forest-green hardcover book from a table in the center of the dark, wood-paneled reading room, and knowing that this would be the finest book any child could have. It was A Natural History of the Birds of Eastern and Central North America, by Edward Howe Forbush and John Bichard May. I know now that the slightly florid but vivid writing style of Forbush and May, the expert integration of natural history information in readable anecdote and liberal quotes from direct observers, had a massive influence on my writing style. But though I read each species account many times over, it was the paintings I thirsted for most of all, and in particular the paintings of Louis Fuertes. I had never heard of him before; didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. I just knew that he got it right. His birds were alive.

In fact, Louis Fuertes died on August 22, 1927, his car struck by a train at a crossing. Ida, my mom, would have just turned 7 at the time. He’d been at dinner with friends; he’d brought his finest work, the bird portraits he’d painted in Abyssinia, along with him. They were flung free of the wreckage and miraculously unharmed; Louie was not so fortunate. I wonder where that crossing is, if anyone still knows. I’d like to go there, to see if any of that gentle man’s spirit still hangs in the air. I know I would have adored this man. I know it from reading his writings (To a Young Bird Artist by George Miksch Sutton is the perfect place to start). I know that just looking at his paintings.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a mecca for bird artists, with its vast collection of original Louis Fuertes paintings, as well as those of other luminaries. If you’ve hours to spend looking, Cornell has many of them up on the Web. What a gift, what a service to artists everywhere! Thank you, Lab! (and thank you, reader Harlow Bielefeldt, for alerting me to it).

Click here: The Fuertes Gallery at Cornell

If you don’t mind lousy pictures taken through glass in dim hallways, I’ll show you some of the paintings I was free to look at while prowling the innards of the Lab on my recent visit.
A golden eagle dives on a ptarmigan. Remember, in looking at these, that Louis had very little access to photographs of birds in flight. He likely worked from a mount here, though I don’t know that to be true. The birds’ wings are beautifully observed, even though the eagle’s somewhat static pose, with bill open, is a bit stylized and indicative of the fashion of the times. Modern photography of such action scenes would show the eagle’s feet flung far forward, directly under the head; the wings swept well back. I can only imagine the wonders Louis would have created had he had access to the kind of resources we take for granted.

I love this oil of a goshawk mantling a spruce grouse; the intensity of the hawk’s pose, the rounded curve of its arching wings. The grouse is particularly lovely, and I imagine Fuertes observing captive hawks and falcons and sketching them in an effort to capture this pose. There’s a gorgeous dawn glow in the sky.

Fuertes did a series of paintings for Arm and Hammer Baking Soda, which included them on collectible cards found in each package. Man, as little baking soda as I use anymore, it’d take a lifetime to get a decent collection, but my dad remembers eagerly searching for each one when his mother got a new package. Seeing my delight with the Fuertes paintings in the book he and Mom gave me, he spent years looking for a set of them for me, writing letters to Arm and Hammer, asking if they might consider re-issuing them. My dad was a letter-writer, patient and persistent. So far, it hasn’t happened, but I did see a traveling exhibit of the paintings at the Boston Museum of Science in the 1980’s. This exquisite little kestrel was one of them. He’s so perfectly captured the strange, boxy head and elfin look of the little falcon, I almost expect to see it rapidly bob its head as it peers at me.

Walking through the Lab is such a treat for a bird painter; treasures abound. I think my favorite treatment was this one of a magnificent Fuertes mural, depicting a peregrine on the hunt over Fisher’s Island, New York. I spent some of the happiest days of my life bicycling Fisher’s Island as a field biologist for the Nature Conservancy. It is a little jewel, full of piney maritime forest, open grasslands, marshes and salt ponds and dunes, and all the birds that go with those habitats. This painting of a ring-necked pheasant's last flight perfectly evokes the sweep and scale of the island, the sparkling summer salt air, and the tantalizing knowledge that in a few hours, you can pedal its length and breadth, and see what there is to see.

I think that Louis would have glowed with pride to see the places of honor where his work now hangs, so beautifully integrated into a bustling ornithology lab.

More Cornell treasures await.

Spring in Marietta

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:44:00 +0000

It’s spring in Marietta.

The deciduous magnolias dance in the breeze, their softly perfumed flowers blowsy and extravagant. This time of year, I drive slowly down Marietta’s brick streets, marveling at the sometimes perfect pairing of house to tree. This is one such, a gracious cream-colored house with a rosy magnolia confection gracing its flank. Oh, perfection.

The petals remind me of a fawn’s ear, delicately veined in pink.
Inside, the zillion stamens proclaim its tribe: the Ranales, or magnolias. They include tulip trees, sweet bays, Carolina pineapple bush, and the classic Magnolia grandiflora of Tara. Summer afternoons in Virginia, I’d bury my nose in the creamy, waxen flowers of our shiny-leaved grandiflora, vying for perfume with orange and black beetles. I can still recall the scent, though the tree has long since been cut down.I'm posting this from the parking lot of Curley's Motel in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I'm so busy taking pictures of birds up here that I haven't taken time to download any. I don't know when I'll get Net access again (I'm poaching at Curley's), so I decided to post this Sunday afternoon as I'll be traveling all day Monday.

Despite the frantic nature of my previous post, I began having fun the minute I got behind the wheel on the way to the airport on Friday. It is ever thus with big trips--the preparation is awful, but the trip itself almost erases that angst. If I didn't have so many other cherished life forms depending on me for so many things, it might not be so hard to get away. Talks went great. Whitefish Point Bird Observatory Spring Fling Festival, really fun. Terrific, kind people. Sleeping like a rock. Go figure. I guess I have to go to the Upper Peninsula to get some sleep.

Weather report from the U.P.: 38, snow squalls, peeks of sun. Don't want to guess the wind chill factor. Seen today: northern goshawk, long-eared owl, saw-whet owl. Common loons in breeding plumage. Yeah. This isn't Marietta. I have worn absolutely everything I packed--four layers including long underwear, two hats, two pairs of gloves. Off to find lunch at a restaurant near a spectacular high falls. You'll see it all in time.

Crazy moment: Cellphone rang while I was watching a common loon in breeding plumage powering by my frigid perch on a hawk observation platform. It was Bill, watching a least tern from his platform at So. Padre I. in Texas, thinking about me.

Life is good again.

April Madness

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:09:00 +0000

Spring is many things to me, but the last of those is relaxing. There is nothing relaxing to a die-hard gardener about warm, sunny weather. Warm sunny weather means weeds growing toward the sky, things needing to be planted out, things cooking slowly in the greenhouse, things needing to be watered and pulled and mulched, cleaned, mowed and trimmed. Warm sunny weather means festival season, means travel and packing. For instance, this weekend Bill is in south Texas, and I am in Whitefish Point, Michigan at the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory's 2008 Spring Fling. In a way, it will be good to get away from all this burgeoning vegetation and all this weeding and planting, and go back to early, early spring. I need a break. It's all happening too fast. Winter into summer, that's what this spring has been. 30's to 8o's.

I wish I could relax. I wish I could sleep. Both elude me. I am alternately a zombie and a weepy manic counterwiping floorwashing freak. Something about having all four of us in different places, having to arrange care for Phoebe and Liam and Chet and Charlie and Shoomie the turtle and the ancient bonsais and my teeny new tomato seedlings and all those gorgeous greenhouse goodies I've grown all winter makes me insane. Something about the end of April makes me sad. It's all coming too fast. I'm a tired bird trailing the migrating flock, trying to catch up. I can't stop it; I can't control it, so I sweep and wipe. Dirt, at least, I can control. Shila helps me. Shila is a healer. That's what she does. Here is photographic evidence. Not long ago, Chet Baker had a terrible couple of days, womitin' bad, sorr. I didn't know what he'd gotten into, but it was bad. He'd go out in the meadow and graze like a miniature Angus bull for an hour at a time, then clean himself out over and over. Shila came over, just to talk a bit and enjoy the spring and the daffodils. Chet vaulted up into her lap and turned to her with his most hangdog expression. I am sick, Shila. Maybe you can fix me. Will you try?

So Shila draped Chet over her lap and commenced gently stroking his ailing stomach. He relaxed immediately and completely, this poor dog who'd been rigid with cramps for two days. Look at his hind legs. Limp as a noodle. He snored gently. Shila and I think this picture looks like Silence of the Lambs, with a Tulumia orchid instead of a hawk moth over her mouth.I met Shila after I'd given birth to Phoebe, when I was in total shock about what having a baby really meant. It meant having this little person, this houseguest, who never planned to pack up and leave, who was here to stay, who might need anything at any hour or minute of the day, and generally did. It meant that I was suddenly in service to someone else, someone who didn't answer to a reasonable request to scale back the demands or maybe go somewhere else for dinner, give me a break once in awhile. It meant saying goodbye to the sleep patterns I'd taken for granted; it meant giving a couple of pints of my bodily essence to her nourishment every day. I quit sleeping and wandered around like a haggard zombie. Shila helped. We became friends. She's known both kids since they were babies, and she was often the only person other than Bill and me who could hold and soothe cranky Liam. I'll never forget handing him to her on New Year's Eve, when he was not even two months old. He went limp as a homemade egg noodle, from squalling like a banshee.

I watched her work her magic on Chet and marveled at the treasure that she is, at how lucky I am to call her friend and confidante. The first time she touched me in the course of craniosacral therapy, I asked sleepily, "How long have you been a healer?" There was a heat radiating from her hands, an energy and soothing power that I've never felt before.Clearly, it crosses species lines. Shila has worked on sore horses as well as infants and children and insane nursing mothers. Now she can add pukey Boston terriers to her list of the healed. He was fine from then on. When he got down from her embrace he walked over to his bowl and cleaned up yesterday's untouched dinner.

In this crazy, busy season, I wish you peace, and dear friends who know just what to say and do. Or, as in Chet's case, when to say nothing at all.Mr. Popcorn Paws, at peace.

Things You Never See

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:04:00 +0000

Ithaca turns out to be a good place to see things you never see otherwise, especially with Alan Poole as my guide. I had never seen people riding unicycles in my life. Maybe I saw a chimp ride one once on television. But here were these two dudes going along a very narrow, very fast road with nothing but two pedals and a wheel between them and Eternity. It's the mother in me, I'm sure, that made me gasp and immediately begin to worry for them. Think about it. They've got nothing to grab should they hit a rock or a pothole or a squirrel or a dead possum. How in the world do they dismount safely? How do they go down huge hills? Why don't they get down off those damn things?
I was completely in awe of them, and I couldn't stop taking pictures of them, something they found very funny. My inner Gomer was gaaawww-leeeeee-in' all over the place.I did get to see them dismount and remount near Taughannock Falls. There was a whole lot of arm waving going on as they attained their balance and rhythm atop those dreadful wheels. I was glad they were wearing helmets, at least. You couldn't get me on one of those things on a dare. But then, I won't even play volleyball, and I suit up in steel wrist guards to roller skate. I break a wrist, I'm S.O.L., and the workman's comp plan for freelance artist/writers is raiding the piggybank.
That said, they made excellent time, almost beating us to Taughannock Falls. But we were birding.

Taughannock Falls was a pilgrimage for me, because it was there that ornithophotographer Arthur Allen shot his famous peregrine photos, when a pair nested naturally there in the early 1900's. It looked like a piece of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, plopped down in the Finger Lakes country. That's Alan for scale.
I believe Louis Agassiz Fuertes also painted those peregrines at this spot, where they nested just to the left of the falls. Just knowing my greatest bird art influence had stood on this spot filled me with awe.
Chet Baker came with me on this trip, and it was absolutely lovely to have him along. Almost nine hours on the road each way, Baker kept me company and showered me with kisses. We talked and I ran my hand over his muscular little thigh as we drove. We ran around after squirrels at the rest stops and jumped creeks in the woods. Alan took an immediate shine to Baker, and was amused at how he'd leap atop walls, catlike, to walk along the tops.Baker was not allowed in the Asian Art floor of the Johnson Museum on the Cornell campus, so he spent the afternoon curled in bed instead. The sheer age of most of these artifacts filled me with awe. Here's a cloisonne Chinese dragon vase.

A beautiful man, carved from an elephant tusk. His backward lean is thanks to the curvature of the tusk, but it perfectly evokes the weight of the ivory basket he carries. I am sure there were carved fish inside the basket, but I couldn't see inside it. How do you carve a fishnet out of ivory? I could only shake my head.

A painting of Kali, my favorite Indian goddess. This is me, oh, about one week a month. Look out, demons and wrongdoers. I am riding the lion with my sixteen arms. Mess with me: I will slice and dice you. I find it interesting that Liam makes the same bloodspurts on his headless people that this artist did several centuries back.

Looking down on the magnificent Cornell campus. Because of its history of great ornithologists, this was the college I most wanted to attend, but when my parents drove me all the way up there from Virginia, an admissions officer told me I'd never get in as a biology major with my crummy math SAT scores. He told me I'd better emphasize that I wanted to major in journalism. Which I didn't. So, being a timid but principled high school student, I didn't even apply. That's OK. I got educated anyway. Still, the visit made me wistful, remembering and appreciating the vision of my father and mother walking little baby me up these same sidewalks. Dad was looking for a good ice cream place. He said college towns always have the best ice cream places, and he knew Cornell had a dairy somewhere. That was Dad. I sought out a local ice cream factory in his honor, where Bacon and I shared a hotdog and a coconut almond shake. Dad would have ordered maple walnut ice cream.
Because I knew the daffodils wouldn't be blooming yet in Ithaca, I cut a huge bunch of mine and took them up for Alan and Charles. I was sitting across from Alan, with the still-cold spring light coming in the window, and was struck by the beauty of the scene. It was a Vermeer interior, timeless and serene.
These are my two favorite photos from the whole trip. For me, they evoke the peace that animals bring to us, with their quiet, caring presence. If you want to see me happy, give me a cup of tea or a glass of Shiraz, and sleek little Chet Baker on my lap.

For Mojo Man

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:43:00 +0000

This essay aired today on All Things Considered, in honor of Earth Day. You can hear me read it here. I couldn't have written it, much less felt it, without a letter that Mojo Man, a self-described frustrated forester, wrote to me more than a year ago, when I was complaining about selective cutting. In essence, he said, "Get over it. Think of the alternative. Logging is a sustainable use of a forest. Forests are dynamic systems, and even logged-over woods beat a housing development."

Sometimes we don't know the impact a few well-chosen words to a friend can have. Mojo's letter got me through the logging, got me through the snarling chainsaws and the shrieks and cracks of dying trees. Did I enjoy it? No. Would I allow it to be done to our forest? Never. But I repeated Mojo's wisdom to myself over and over throughout February and March; I repeated it to Bill and the kids; kept it in my head as I spoke respectfully to my neighbor, and it truly got me through. This old earth is a renewable resource, bouncing back after unthinkable injury and insult. Think of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the healing that's gone on in those diesel-soaked beaches. We owe her so much more honor, love and respect than we'll ever give her, but like a good wife and mother, she keeps coming back, taking care of us even at our spoiled, self-centered and destructive worst.

Our neighbor is logging his woods. We listened as the bulldozers and chainsaws moved closer each day. One by one, the big trees fell. The loggers were taking everything over 18” in diameter, leaving the smaller trees to mature. After three weeks, there was only one giant left, the tulip tree we called the Privacy Tree. We called it that because it shielded our house from the road, made it feel like a secret.

I knew the logger was saving the biggest tree for last. He couldn’t have overlooked it. It was time to say good-bye. I walked out through the snow, meaning to wrap my arms around it, and had to spread them for a good-bye hug. I know, I’m a tree hugger. But it’s something, in this cut-over, degraded forest, to find a tulip tree that’s 36” at breast height.

“Can’t we ask them not to cut the Privacy Tree?” asked Phoebe, her voice plaintive. “Doesn’t the logger have a heart?” Well, no, honey, we can’t ask him. A 36” tulip is worth money, and it’s on our neighbor’s land, and that, dear, is that.

While she was at school, I did call my neighbor and offer to compensate him for the value of the tree if he’d leave it standing. It was a reckless act, born of a mother’s desire to fix what’s wrong. I had no idea what it was worth, figuring I’d either be able to meet the price or not. I just wanted to buy it, to leave it standing, so the tanagers and wood thrushes could still perch in it and sing. He turned me down flat. “Nope, I’m gonna cut it. If it dies and falls down, I can’t get anything for it. And I don’t want it lying on the ground. Trees are a crop, just like anything else, and you need to harvest them before they fall down.” I suggested that trees might have another value as habitat, even after they fell down, and we hung up, agreeing that we saw things differently when it came to trees.

Two days later, my husband and I watched in silence as a chainsaw snarled into its base. The Privacy Tulip trembled, groaned, spun slowly, and smashed down, taking five other trees with it.

Four years ago, I watched with dismay as another forest I loved was logged just like this one. I’d drive by every day, watching it get thinner and thinner. The loggers took all the big trees, piling them like Lincoln logs on a flatbed truck, hauling the forest away in a cloud of diesel fumes. I ground my teeth and muttered as I passed. The next spring, underbrush sprang up in the newly opened woods, from seeds that had been waiting for decades in the soil for just such conditions.

Within three years, new, strange bird songs rang through the opened stand: Wild turkeys, American redstarts, blue-winged, prairie, hooded and Kentucky warblers flocked to the thick young growth that sprang up in the wake of the cutting. Come spring, I’ll park my car where the logging truck once sat, and watch jewellike birds fetching insects and nesting materials in the flickering sun, in the new growth racing toward the sky.

For birds like these to survive and thrive, some trees must fall, some sunlight must strike the forest floor. Even as I mourn the Privacy Tree, I know that my neighbor’s is a changed woodland, and not necessarily for the worse. Come spring, I’ll be listening for new songs.A postscript:
Even before the branches had settled, five hawks appeared in the sky directly over where the Privacy Tree had stood for so many years. Two red-shoulders and three redtails circled and screamed, keening an unearthly chorus in the space where the tree had been. Their cries tore through the pearly sky. Who can say why? I think that we are not the only ones who mourn it.

Old Bread Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:00 +0000

Ithaca is gorges. It's waterfalls and snow, and for me it was also daffodils just peeking up through still-cold ground; phoebes just arrived and singing tentatively. I keep traveling north this spring, and I act like a big baby when I have to get my down parka and gloves back out. Looking at the bright side, it makes it all the more delicious to return to sun and warmth, such bits as we have. This is a view of the valley plowed out by the glacier that passed through what is now Ithaca. Winter keeps a grip on the place for a long, long time.

And yet...the first Ithaca Farmer's Market of the season was happening, and I joined my old friend Alan Poole for a visit to the land of hearty-looking breadladies and spun maple sugar. We got some white bean soup and braved the cold wind off the lake to enter the open-air barn that houses a very robust farmer's market. Oh, what wonderful things!We bought bread from this artisan stand. I bought a loaf of Amadama bread, a curious thing...it rolled around and around in my mind; I knew I'd baked it in the past; I knew I loved it, but I couldn't remember any more than that. Alan jogged my memory. "It was a recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book." Yes! Back in the late 70's I lived in a big old house in Petersham, MA, where we baked breads from that collection of monastery recipes. So I bought the loaf and brought it home--so sweet and brown and good. Here's what I've found about it on the Web, from a Los Angeles Times article from 1922:

"Amadama Bread--One pint of boiling water poured slowly over one-half cup of
Indian (fine corn) meal, stirring all the time. When cool, add one bread spoon of lard,
one-half cup of molasses, one dessert spoon of salt, one-half yeast cake
dissolved in one-half cup of luke-warm water, and flour to make a stiff batter.
Knead well and rise in again, let rise in the pans till almost double in bulk,
and bake."
...
The name "Amadama" is a curious one. It is almost impossible to find anyone
who can explain its origin convincingly. Perhaps the most feasible story
regarding it is the following:
...
When Mrs. John Johnston of Gloucester, MA first introduced the bread, she called
it "Epidemic Bread,"which name was mispronounced by an ignorant maid in one
customer's home, who called it "amadama" housewives clamored for it and it became
most popular. For this reason Mr. Johnston called it "Epidemic Bread," which name was
mispronounced by an ignorant maid in one customer's home, who called it "amadama"
bread (instead of "epidemic.") From that time on many customers, who heard of
the maid's mispronunciation, called it "madama" in fun--which name became a fixture.

I'm doubting that these women have lard anywhere near their kitchen, so perhaps butter would suffice. As you know, lard is a staple in my kitchen, if only for Zick dough. The amadama bread is the toasty looking loaf at the very bottom margin of the photo. I was to regret my purchase upon climbing on the scales back home. Bread and pasta are now struck once again from my diet. Sigh. Travel eating is the worst. Somehow, you think it won't count, until you get home. Why do carbs have to taste soooo good? Begone. No more.

I always get a kick out of kids in college communities like Ithaca. They all look like fortune-tellers.

There were some mighty thrifty looking winter carrots and taters, too. Alan says the carrots are incredible.

Later, Alan and I went to the Johnson Museum of Art, where there happened to be an Easter egg hunt and celebration going on. I was amazed at the biomass of mini-people crammed into the lobby. In my college days in Cambridge, children were an anomaly, evoking double-takes on campus. Things have changed. Graduate students and professors now reproduce. I was also amazed at the fortitude of this single stalwart folksinger, armed only with a gut-stringed guitar, who was belting out "Puff, the Magic Dragon" without benefit of mic or amp to what felt like several thousand chattering kids.
This would, for me, define the Gig from Hell. Give the man a Pignose.

Our Swinging Orangutangs gig at the Whipple Tavern last Friday night was anything but. We had a steady full house and the most marvelous time, and our tips plus the spaghetti dinner hosted by the tavern brought in over $500 for pocket money for the sixth grade class trip to Pittsburgh. We played a mini-set of songs from "Boogie Nights" that I'm fairly certain have never been played in that space, including "Best of My Love," with screaming female vocal harmonies between me and Jess; "Jungle Boogie," sung by Bill of the Birds, "Get Down Tonight," sung by JZ, "Brick House," by BOTB (he does a real nasty job on that one.) Jess does an amazing job on the vocal and antic keyboard of Chaka Khan's "Tell Me Something Good." Yes, it was something completely different. It was such fun that we looked up and it was 12:30.

More Ithaca anon.

Ruby

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:13:00 +0000

When you live in a place long enough, and you're lucky enough to be able to work at home and stare out the windows at the birds for part of each day, you can get to know them as individuals. It helps when a bird has distinctive markings--maybe missing feathers on the hindcrown, like one male indigo bunting who nested here for many years. Perhaps there's a drooping wing, like that of the bluebird we called Mr. Troyer. He nested in our yard for eight years, and I still miss him. There's a long story behind him, but that's one for the next book.
Speaking of distinctive markings, this is Snowflake (who I began calling Queen Frostine), a leucistic female dark-eyed junco who has been with us for three winters, growing whiter each year. She's a Zick Dough freak, and I'd love to think that we've just sent her to Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire or Ontario with an ample pad of fat for the flight, and a good start for the breeding season ahead. The last juncoes left on April 17 as they do every year. You can imagine how excited we'll be should Queen Frostine show up again next winter. She's our friend.

Ruby is a beautiful female red-bellied woodpecker. This is her third year with us (that I know of). Year to year, she's displayed a consistent mark: two tiny red bindis in her otherwise gray forecrown. She's also got really red nares just above the bill, which is a sign of her maturity, as is the faint wash of red along her malar (jaw) area).
Those two simple feathers, and the fact that I happened to notice them, elevate her status from that of Just Another Redbelly to a Named Bird, a friend. It's a human conceit, of course, that she's special because I've named her, but it helps me to feel a bond with her from year to year, and it makes me more interested in watching her behavior. There's value in that, if only for me as the observer. She's certainly interested in my behavior; she waits each morning in the willow or on the chimney for me to pop out with the Zick Dough. Recipe here. She's probably noticed that I have more gray streaks in my forecrown this year than last, and a bunch more than three years ago. Ruby, we'll talk.

Sometimes she's dainty about helping herself to dough
and sometimes she grabs the biggest glob she can find to bear off and cache.
I never tire of watching Ruby, of noticing what, besides those two little red feathers, makes her an individual.
Wouldn't you think she'd spread her wings for the leap down to the railing? I think she wants to avoid knocking the dough to the ground with the backwash from her wings, that's what I think.

I like Ruby; I like knowing that she knows me and looks forward to seeing me, too. She's not a pet, but neither is she just another bird to me. She's my neighbor, my friend.

A Raven Comes to Call

noreply@blogger.com (Julie Zickefoose) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:55:00 +0000

We live in Appalachian Ohio, but just in the foothills. What we have are hills, not mountains. The common raven nests at high elevations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but there may be but one pair nesting in all of Ohio, as we are short of mountains. Nevertheless, in the last five years, we've had four records of common ravens flying over our yard. As our eloquent friend and Ohio Rare Bird Records Committee poobah Jim McCormac put it, that makes us "the only Ohio backyard with multiple records of this jumbo croaker."
This is Liam's willow, planted the summer of his birth. Just to show you that it's indeed in our backyard.

The first record came on March 15, 2003, when my artist friend Cindy House and I were standing in our backyard. Bill was inside playing the guitar. Groop groop groop groop! croaked a raven. Cindy heard it and didn't give it a second thought, since she was visiting from Vermont where common raven was a yard bird for her. I heard it and started jumping up and down and flapping my arms and hollering for Bill. We saw the bird flying over the orchard, croaking all the way, but by the time I got Bill out, it was gone. Arrrgh. Anyway, it was #180 for our yard list. It was headed southwest.

On September 29, 2005, our friend Wezil Walraven, a professional bird guide, contender for Funniest Man on the Planet and all around sharpie, was lying out in a chaise in our front yard, skywatching, when a common raven flew over, croaking, and disappeared headed north. He figured it might be a good record, even though he was visiting from Arizona, so he mentioned it at lunch. I jumped up and down and flapped my arms again.

On April 7, 2008, while I was in Ithaca, Bill heard what sounded like a common raven flying over, but then a bunch of crows started cawing and he wondered if perhaps it was just an odd vocalization from a crow.

On April 9, 2008, Bill and I were preparing to take a birdwalk around the yard. "I'm going to leave my camera inside," he said, and I said, "OK, I'll take my long lens, in case we see something good that needs its picture taken." We had just rounded the corner of the house when we heard the unmistakable groop groop groop of a honking common raven. Our eyes bugged out and we shouted, "RAVEN!" at the same moment. The bird was huge, coming low over our driveway and the roof of our house, hollering all the way. It landed on our roof and croaked some more. This may have had something to do with the fact that Bill and I were croaking like ravens for all we were worth, trying to get the bird to linger long enough to be immortalized by my Canon. While flipping out that a raven was sitting on our roof, I was frantically trying to get my autofocus to listen to me. "Get it, Zick! Get it!" Bill urged, which helped a lot. My autofocus ground away fruitlessly, focusing on everything but the bird, so I switched to manual focus and managed to fire a couple of shots, to document common raven in our backyard at long last. Like the March '03 raven, it was headed southwest. A phalanx of crows came out to harrass it. I felt sorry for the raven, just croaking away, looking for one of its own kind. Bill realized that his bird two days earlier was probably being harrassed by crows as well.
The tail was a bit molty as you can see. The heavy bill and eagle-like wings are typical of common ravens. Man, it's nice to have a picture, however dull.

I've had a bit of friendly static from people who want to hear all about Ithaca and the Lab of Ornithology. The problem is that there is too much going on right now to carve out the time to write it up and edit all the photos. I've been working like a mule, reclaiming the yard from the grip of winter, tilling and planting, mowing (thanks Bill!) and weeding. I cleaned the pond, bleccch. Sucked up about ten billion toad eggs and then they laid ten billion more. Beats sucking up tadpoles, I figure. The peas and lettuce I planted April 9 are coming up! Meanwhile, both kids have softball practices two nights a week, which means I have to magically produce dinner by 5 pm and drive them to different fields for a four-hour block of time. Whee! While rehearsing for a Swinging Orangs gig tomorrow night. Here's the poster that Andy Hall, our awesome drummer/designer made.

Something about it makes me belly laugh. We are very much looking forward to playing for other parents from the school, and to making lots of tips which we'll donate to Phoebe's class trip to Pittsburgh. I have no idea what to wear, but it will not be cropped pants, nor will it be hula pants, nor a purple squall jacket. It will be something in between, or perhaps beyond. Purple cropped hula pants?

Have a wonderful weekend. We will!