When will I ever learn?

I have a couple of standing rules, among them: Always take a book along, and keep the camera handy. And every time I break them, I’m sorry.

Case in point: Yesterday I took a quick swing through the park in preparation for my guided walk today. Since I’m familiar with the park, I merely wanted to decide my route and have a fresh look around, when suddenly – there it was – an albino gray squirrel on the tree leaning over the creek. And me without my camera.

So I had to settle for aiming my phone while trying to close in on it through a thick layer of noisy dry leaves. This was my best shot.

Unfortunately, with a couple of noisy kids in my group, today’s walk in the park couldn’t duplicate yesterday’s serendipity.

So for now, I’m left with just the low-res evidence. What a difference a digital SLR with a zoom lens could have made when it was needed. Note to me: keep your camera ready!

Magical toadstool town

Out for a delightful walk in the early autumn woods, I stumbled across a colorful little community of fly agaric toadstools tucked against a stand of old pines, framed with scarlet virginia creeper and shed pine needles. So pleasantly picturesque in its miniature natural setting, so visually appealing in its arrangement, and so intrigueingly inviting, I had to stop and explore its existence.

Even without ingesting its toxic and hallucinogenic properties (!), it wasn’t hard to imagine the tiny toadstool town as a miniature Brigadoon, complete with fairies, gnomes, and other magical woodland creatures, that appears in our midst only occassionally—but for some very special purpose.

Yet that is, in fact, what it does. Conjuring itself into existence each fall, it works its ancient magic to recycle organic material and render the earth a little more lush, a piece more productive, and a bit more beautiful.

Rocky roosters

While marveling at the natural beauty of the surf-carved sandstone cliffs of the southern California coast, I noticed a rocky roost populated with brown pelicans, cormorants and gulls. While the tide rose and the sun fell, the gaggle of water birds preened in the fading light of another day of fishing for a living in the sun and surf.

Surf striding

Our candid camera has caught the strangely elegant white ibis—normally head-down in methodical probing of the substrate—in purposeful mid-stride, exhibiting its lovely pink-orange legs at the Cape Canaveral National Seashore.

A mud-daubed sidetrack

While on my way to meet my wife shopping in Kohl’s department store, I got sidetracked at the entrance by a pair of swallow nests pasted to the upper corner of the overhang. (And, apparently, a guy staring up at the ceiling with a camera sidetracks others: “What are you looking at? Are those bees’ nests? What is that?” I hung around awhile to watch their comings and goings—which they did very quickly.

This image confirms the users as cliff swallows, as I captured one displaying its distinctive buff-colored rump and squared-off tail just before disappearing into its equally distinctive, mud-daubed, gourd-shaped nest.

Fortunately for me, I hung around long enough that Carol met me outside the shopping door I never had to enter that evening…

A good year for sighting snappers

An obese snapping turtle greeted me on the road the other day as I fetched the morning paper. Even though snappers cannot pull their head and limbs inside their shells, this one’s flesh bulged at every opportunity, appearing as if it was expanding much faster than its foot-long plastron. As I jacked up my purple umbrella and circled it on the rainy road, the cantankerous creature sidestepped to face me all the way around. We do-si-doed several times.

From my own and other’s observations, there hasn’t been a year in memory to match the casual snapper sightings as this rainy spring. A golf course superintendent reports seeing them every morning; Carol’s co-worker and friends have spotted three in one day; sister-in-law Karen photographed one today traversing her city yard; I’ve even seen an upside-down road-kill at the median barrier of the four-lane Route 33.

Perhaps the season’s extraordinary dampness coinciding with the snappers' breeding season has enticed more widespread ramblings this year as they seek higher, drier land for digging the nest and depositing their eggs.

Fostering a stronger breed

On a recent great day in mid-May, Philadelphia Zoo officials and the Pennsylvania Game Commission teamed up to foster a zoo-hatched bald eagle into a wild nest already holding two eaglets in Bucks County.

The six-week-old chick, a biologist, and a tower employee rode a basket suspended by a crane to introduce the eaglet to its new family high atop a manmade tower.

Thanks to similar fostering and hacking programs over the past 25 years, the bald eagle population in Pennsylvania has been increasing at about 15 percent annually, and is no longer classified as endangered in the state.

Taking just minutes to cap what has taken years to develop, the eaglet quickly joined its new siblings and its readily accepting foster mother—shown above—in another happy episode to a tremendous conservation success story.

photo: Joe Kosack/PGC

Bear tagging

I was recently invited by the Pennsylvania Game Commission to accompany the state bear biologist in tagging newborn bears in their winter dens.

With the highest black bear reproduction rate in the country, and a population of over 15,000, the state is a leader in black bear research. The PGC tags cubs to monitor their population and reproduction (age of mother, litter size, sex ratio, den reuse, etc.); and to perform maintenance on the mothers’ radio collars.

Amid a steady snowfall on the mountain (although it was the first day of spring), we opened the first den to find a mother with three cubs. But instead of the cute little eight-week-olds we expected, these husky yearlings weighed 40-50 lbs each, and needed to be sedated along with their mother. As soon as they were darted, however, they bolted—only to fall over somewhere in the woods. So we then had to mount a search to locate them in an area of extremely dense brush and saplings.

With a wildlife veterinarian monitoring their vital signs and recording other data, the cubs each received a pair of metal ear tags and a tattoo on the inside of their upper lips—all before waking up with mom back in the den just an hour later.

Enjoy this unique capture of bear behavior by the USGS:

Anticipation

An ambling, Friday-afternoon, no-worries walk in the late winter woods does a soul good. The early March sights, sounds, and smells are signaling a good run of true Spring.

Red maple branches broken in last week’s winter-hurrah now run wet with escaping sap.

A lone mallard drake escapes my company from the pond at the wood’s edge.

A red tailed hawk pair, calling and courting in the treetops, choose each other’s company and swoop out of sight.

The kuk-kuk-kuk of a pileated woodpecker calls out from a distance, but I sight fresh wood chips on the ground, betraying its new nest just 30 feet above me.

I spy the abandoned hanging nest of a white-eyed vireo pair, woven from strips of wild grape vine and suspended by its rim from a forked branch. It’s still strapped in place with insect silk and spider webbing. The white-eyeds are summer residents around here—they’ll return.

I crush a spicebush twig and sniff its fragrant essence—in wide-eyed anticipation of Spring’s reinvigorating return.

Chapter Next

This setting, this blog, one year ago (Misplaced Ambition) told a tale of two trees and a rogue beaver.

Although the twin oaks survived the beaver’s advances, you can see it’s been a struggle ever since.

The year’s growing season spurted a sheath of shoots around the base of both damaged trunks, as the trees sought a way to recover and regenerate. The nasty notches have darkened with exposure but have not healed.

But the damage is done. In its weakened condition, Left Oak cracked under the additional strain of a January storm, snapping at the beaver’s unkindest cut. For now, its upper reaches have snagged an embrace with other supporters, preventing it as yet from toppling to the stream 20 feet below. Meanwhile, gravity, while relentless, is patient; and Right Oak stands a frozen witness to its own eventual fate.

Winter looks

Look up. Deciduous trees in winter are objects of stark loveliness: leafless and lean, cold and comely, bare and beautiful.

Look down. Recent winds rattled those trees. My yard’s littered with branches and twigs abandoned to the dual wills of wind and gravity. In the woods, the snow and leaf litter are now liberally seasoned with white ash seeds.

Look out. I joined my grown kids sledding on a grand hill; its icy sheen afforded many slick trips and great wipeouts. We gamely gave face time to the chain link fence at the bottom—resulting in one black eye, one cut nose, and one diced 23-year-old. As for me, I shot sideways off the sled and spun a dozen bouncing barrel rolls before watching the sky continue to spin long after I did. Sledding is all about racking up at the bottom, you know. Becky says: “it helps if you scream.”

Look away. The storm on the 24th forced me to live out a country song: waiting for a tow in the cold rain at a truck stop on Christmas Eve. Oh, baby.

Look in. Winter ushers in a new year with new opportunities; time for reflection, resolutions, and re-creation. May 2009 be your best ever.

All that is

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

The purple headed mountains,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning,
That brightens up the sky −

The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden −
He made them every one

The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
We gather every day −

He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell,
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.

—Cecil F. Alexander

Signs of the tines

In recent days I’ve observed a number of white-tailed bucks crossing my pathways. While none seemed to be in a hurry in those particular moments, they did share a passion for purpose and destiny: They were males on a mission.

Such are the days. As they grow shorter, darker, colder, and grimmer, the crowned heads of the forest instinctively seek out ways to extend both a future and a legacy.

Every year it's the same thing: time to paw and scratch, mark and scrape, threaten and fight, conquer and mate. And after months of living the good life in the lush greenery of summer, body fat is restored, protein is replenished, the fur coat is replaced, and new antlers are raised.

The real signs of the times are those antlers. Annually shed and re-grown, this year's rack has been growing since spring, triggered by lengthening daylight and nourished under velvet wraps by a network of blood vessels. By autumn however, the blood flow nourishing the bone that builds the antlers dries up, and it's time for the unveiling of a formidable primal weapon. With its main beams and prongs, the antlered crown of the buck is both an excellent offensive and defensive armament.

But first, they take off the gloves, so to speak. The white-tails look to saplings and shrubs to rub off their velvet and leave a scent for those who follow. This year, one has employed a clump of gray birch in my back yard for that purpose!

As testosterone levels increase, so do the bucks’ interests in the does. Aggression between bucks surfaces only if they come too close. Most sparring is usually painless and short-lived.

But with others, it can get ugly. Seemingly reluctant to tangle, two whitetails may circle each other warily, sizing up the opponent. A challenge begins suddenly, and a shoving match ensues. The loser runs off.

The scene repeats throughout the range: The largest and most experienced bucks fend off the challenging ambitions of the younger males and outsiders. The prize: ready and willing does, the passing of the victors’ genes, the establishment of a new generation. The scraps: wounded egos, broken tines, injured bodies, the losers' chance for “next time.”

With the breeding battle won—or lost—the need for the homegrown weapons is past. The rut has diminished the males' health, and they face the future devitalized. Winter arrives, and efforts turn to survival. The noble antlered heads drop their battered crowns to the ground. Discarded to litter the wintertime woods, the remnant relics remind us of the eternal cycle of the seasons, and wild hope for the future.

Of wits, wings, and windowpanes

I was sitting at this very computer when a bird suddenly mistook my office window for a clear passageway and discovered it wasn’t—the hard way.

I left my seat to search for the little wallbanger and discovered a tiny, feathered ball of a bird clenched to the edge of the outdoor steps. Its bright yellow crest and stripy head proclaimed its gilded name: golden-crowned kinglet.

Stunned by its abrupt encounter with the invisible force field, it sat there glassy-eyed and quiet, and calm enough for me to approach within inches to take its picture. With its head tucked in and its feathers puffed out, it appeared only slightly bigger than a golf ball with tiny talons.

Kinglets are petite birds—only 4 inches in length from the tip of its slender bill to outstretched tail—that tend to travel in mixed company with chickadees, warblers, creepers and other small songbirds. My bewildered tourist may have been southward bound for the winter when my windowpane rudely interrupted its expedition.

Fortunately while it rested—and our cat’s curiosities were engaged elsewhere—it was able to reconnect its wits to its wings, and soon resumed its flight with the songbird squadron.

A foxy accord

We both noticed the other at the same moment and froze in our tracks: me, walking along the road—and the vixen just a dozen feet away in the tall meadow.

It was a calm acknowledgement of each other’s presence as we stared into each other’s eyes.

Then, with our mutual non-aggression pact settled, she picked up a rodent at her feet, calmly turned and trotted into the woods, with nary a look back.

And I resumed my walk, already refreshed by the brief encounter.