The Lady Vanishes

I started this post before I left for Ecuador October 24. I wound up leaving only one day to pack and prep for the trip, so it has been orphaned for awhile, floating around in cyberspace, hoping to become a whole blogpost. I'll leave the first part as it is,  and finish it up. Heads up: It's going to be tough going for people who aren't used to looking at kills. Proceed with caution, and, I hope, with the same sense of wonder and curiosity that I have.

I've been working really hard lately to get Saving Jemima as done as I can get it before I go to Ecuador. I've barely looked up. One good thing about having no one around is I can work a 14 or 16-hour day and not offend a soul. So that's what I've been doing. I have loved every minute of it.

I glance up a lot, watching the blue jays at the feeder, watching the red and white- breasted nuthatches, the cardinals, the woodpeckers. I'd been seeing turkey vultures sailing over all day, which I found unusual for late October. I thought about it and wondered what was up.

Late afternoon came and it was spitting rain. I wanted to get out and see the sky, but I knew better than to start a run. So, uncharacteristically, instead of heading out on foot, I climbed in the car to drive out into the country. I took my big camera along. I just had a feeling.

And there they were, lots of them, circling over a big hayfield on the corner of my road and the county road. Glory rays streamed down. They looked so fine up there.

I parked the car to take some photos and wonder what they were up to.

I decided to head into the hayfield to see. I had a feeling I knew what it was. There were too many vultures for it to be something small. And bow season has just started here.

Yep. Knew it. In early November of 2016, they killed my crooked doe Ellen this way. Just a small, inconsequential doe, an animal nobody would miss, a little something for live target practice. Maybe the same person who killed Ellen had turned his truck into the approach to this field, just one over from ours, fixed this doe in the glare of his headlights, and taken her down. What sport, what fun. Just getting in shape for the season, sighting in the bow or gun.

I know the poachers are stalking when I find things like this, when the beer cans start to accumulate along my road.  They show the same disregard for beauty as they do for life.

I didn't know this animal, thank goodness. Though it would be hard to tell who she was now. Now, she was nothing but a carcass.

I made some images. How could I not? The grass was flattened all around her where the vultures had been tramping. I could see that no other animals had been there, because the carcass was opened only at the back and front, the way vultures do. 

They'd been working on her all day. I stood there, with the fermented contents of her rumen scenting the air, thinking that at least she'd go to feed a nice flock of vultures, to speed them on their way to Central America.

I left her then, and went on to see some old house friends on up the county road. It was that kind of day, glowering and gloomy, and old houses look good in this kind of light.


If there's a classic Ohio farmhouse, this is it. Although the beveled corner is atypical, the porch and foursquare design is not. There's a ramshackle addition off the back, which adds to its interest. Gosh, I'd love to go inside. But I have never tried the door.

 

 Across the street, two other dwellings are slowly deliquescing. 

 

I like the addition on the big house, like a sloping rump off the back. Sooner or later, people ran out of space, and then they'd tack something on the side or back of the house to give them a little breathing room, a place to hang some coats, stack some boots, keep the egg baskets.

I'm not sure what the little building is off to the side. A summer kitchen?

 Whatever it is, it's sweet, and it reminds me of North Dakota. 

The birds have been perching on what little furniture remains inside. 

I'm thinking that's an eastern phoebe's latrine there. 

 

 I love this little scene. The table isn't much good any more. But oh, the patina on the walls and floor.

Heck of a view out the window: cattle moving easily across the land. While I was shooting the scene, an osprey flew over. A late osprey! They usually like to be gone before it gets very cold, as they don't have down feathers.

 

It was getting so dark I figured I'd head back home. A pale spot in the woods border resolved into a young red-shouldered hawk. If you click on the photo you'll see it can't be anything else. Well, I could see that. So many things go into telling me that's a redshoulder and not a redtail or a Cooper's hawk. I'm not even considering broad-wing, because they're long gone, having migrated in September.

  

It's got big blobby markings on its belly, and no belly band--the blobs are just scattered across the white. It's got really small feet. Redtails have big feet. The tail is banded, but nondescript, as would be that of a young redtail. Overall it's small but chunky, not lean and long like a Cooper's hawk would be, or urn-shaped like a redtail. And it's just a-settin' there, redshoulder style. Yep. For whatever reason young redshoulders just pop up this time of year. Maybe that's where they get the old name, Winterhawk. 

I passed the carcass site again, and the vultures were still wheeling very low. I left them to their meal.

The next morning, I came out early to see what had happened to the carcass overnight. 

When I last saw her, she looked like this. Entire, but for some missing bits.

There was still a vulture coursing low, unusual for so early in the morning.

 

As I approached, a great flock of crows rose up cawing. It was such a beautiful ragged sight I had to make a video. One vulture was already up and feeding.

             

I walked up to where the doe, who had weighed more than 100 pounds, had been, and she was simply gone.

I hadn't expected that!

Nothing but the stain of her last meal remained. 

But there were plenty of clues. A stray bone:

One ear.

I could see the drag mark where she'd been pulled away toward a distant line of firs, originally planted as a windbreak for the farmhouse that no longer graces this field. I stood, stunned, thinking about the power of the coy-wolf or coy-wolves that must have done this.

 

A forelimb!

 

I continued to follow the trail. Here's the other ear.

  Finally I found all that was left of the doe. 

I was flabbergasted. 

 

How many coy-wolves would it take to reduce her to a ribcage and a head, overnight? 

 

A single turkey vulture feather, black with a surprising white base, reminded me that the coy-wolves had had help.

There she lay, in the dancer's point in which they'd left her, dragged by one hind hoof hundreds of yards down the haymeadow. And there they had finished her off.

I could only marvel at the efficiency of the operation; the day shift of vultures and crows starting the cleanup, and giving way after dark to a pack of coy-wolves. She was gone, overnight.

In the ditch, a brace of asters and the spent heads of Queen Anne's lace gave a shot of fresh beauty to my wondering eye.

Back home, the flowers bloomed as if there were no tomorrow

 

and the bonsais promised to peak while I was away. 

 

when I left October 24

I don't want to leave in late October, ever again. There is too much beauty, both harsh and soft, all around.

when I got back Nov. 3

Dead Deer, Live Deer, Vulture, 'Possum, Coy-wolf

In less than a week, the scavengers had reduced a deer carcass in our field to a torso and attached bones. They started at the haunch and kept going. A gray fox opened the haunch, eating most of one, and the vultures, who'd been waiting for an opening, gladly went ahead and finished the job.

Snow fell on the carcass, and this buck came by to investigate.

Everything in his mien said revulsion and apprehension--the pinned-back ears, the hunched back, the tentative steps. 

I figure he knew this young button buck.

He circled the carcass, kept coming back.

Finally he walked off, shaking his foot as if to rid himself of the feeling of coming upon one of his own, dead.

Others were much happier to discover the carcass.

I was elated to have a chance to finally get some decent vulture shots. I needed them for my new talk.

When the coy-wolves found the carcass, it went from food to bones overnight. 

At dawn, I found a fat opossum gnawing on it. And opossums being who they are, I was able to walk slowly out in the meadow, shooting as I approached. When he looked up at me I stopped, took a last photo, and walked back the way I came. He never left, just went back to his stanky breakfast.

What a gift this carcass was to so many animals. 

The next morning it was gone! But it wasn't hard to find...see the white dot in the woods border? And the trail of white belly hair leading all the way to it? Coy-wolves, dragging it into cover, not wanting to be spotted feeding. They're strong animals. I'm teaching myself not to call them coyotes any more. 

They're part eastern wolf. Just wrote an article for The Marietta Times called Coy-Wolves: Evolution in Action. 

This photo taken in our meadow a few winters back. Visually inseparable from an eastern (red) wolf. That's because he's got a big dose of those Canis rufus genes, from the interbreeding that went on between western coyotes and eastern wolves in northern Ontario. What we've got in the East is a genetically stable hybrid. Not a coy-dog. A coy-wolf. A new canid, longer of leg, bigger of foot, shorter and deeper of muzzle, smaller of ear and heavier of body and fur than the scrawny pale western coyote.

 And they live and feast and yammer and howl on our land every night. They den on the north-facing slope. So far, they have chosen not to kill Chet Baker, though I know they could in a heartbeat. And I'm grateful they have kept it to deer and rabbits, turkeys and woodchucks, voles and feral cats. I think about it every time I let him out to do his nightly business. And I think he does, too. He hurries back, flaps his ears, shivers. I spank him as he runs by, hug him, thankful each time that he comes back to crawl under the covers with me. Life in the country.

When I hear them howl I tuck what tail I have and run for the house!

The stash.

Every morning, a surprise. The turkey vulture's namesake, partying in the dawn light.

I'll miss my vultures. Must see if we can rustle up some more grub for them. 

You've heard the word catharsis. It refers to the relief, the cleansing collapse you feel after a big emotional event. 

Cathartes aura. The Golden Cleanser. 

Vulture Spring

I'm traveling through New York and New England. Sitting in a beautiful old guest house on the campus of Audubon Greenwich, the first educational nature center in the country. A Carolina wren has just come to the cedar outside my window, attracted by the light, the life, in the normally dark house. It tip-tilts, calls, makes eye contact. I wave. Hello darling. Yes, it's Zick. If I had a mealworm I'd give you one.

 Tonight I'll give my last talk, for Potapaug Audubon Society at the Old Lyme (CT) Town Hall at 7 pm. Turkey vultures are featured in it. This talk is different. It's equal parts spirituality and avian rehab. Why not? Give 'em something different. As much as I speak, I need something different, too, so it's fresh for the audience and for me.

Last month, I looked up into the warm Costa Rican sky above La Selva Biological Reserve in the Caribbean lowlands, and saw a conveyer belt of turkey vultures headed sedately, serenely north. None of them moving a wing. Just rolling, rolling, rolling on the air currents, conserving energy, headed home.

There are 314 vultures in this photo. I cannot convey the amazement of watching so many vultures roll over for so long. I thought about passenger pigeons, the way people wrote about their limitless flocks. I stood there, open mouthed, in wonder.

They looked like fleas, so high were they in the sky. And it occurred to me that every day, birds do things that we cannot conceive of and would not survive. We have to buy a ticket and get on a jet to get from Costa Rica to Ohio. They lift off and soar there.

Not two weeks later, Phoebe and I had a girl's night out back in chilly cold McConnellsville, Ohio. And here they came. I stood jabbering in a parking lot. Wondering aloud if these were the same birds I'd watched in Central America. Marveling. And feeling so lucky to see them again, home. 

We've done our part to make sure they feel welcome. 

A deer carcass in our field proved a powerful attractant. We set up a game camera. At first it took lots of pictures of grass, with bits of TUVU.

Best count was five at once. That's the carcass, with game camera on it, at lower left. 

The first night I was awakened by the incessent, piercing screams of a gray fox. And at dawn, there he was, full-furred, magnificent, crossing the meadow. I could not photograph him in time. But oh what a beauty. I was so glad to see him, to connect the screams with the animal. That's what the fox says: YEEEEEAHHHROW!! YEEEEARRRHOW!! over and over until you want to holler back.

Maybe my favorite game cam pic. Crow with house.

Sasquatch! They often sample carrion, but not if it's too rotty.

Having a deer carcass in one's field is a fun and lucky thing. Definitely an asset, and it's nice to have it deliquesce in a place where all the animals feeding on it won't get disturbed by cars. Carcasses disappear quite quickly when the clean-up crews can work undisturbed. As you will see...

How I love my vultures. And I think they love me too.

This one's for DOD. He'd be 102 this June. Each year I try to repot my bonsai trees on April 10, the day he died in 1994. Can't do it this year, so it'll have to wait 'til I get home. But I know he's smiling to see my redhead watering the greenhouse while I'm gone. Especially the tomatoes, which are now forming fruit. He loved tomatoes.

The Carolina wren who came to spy on me before dawn just brought its mate and they both yawped at me through the window here at Audubon Greenwich. Word's out. Zick's in the house!