Wildlife Kaleidoscope

A canoe is a floating blind. You're there, but not there for the wildlife. They're much less afraid of a silent seated half-human in a little barque than they'd be of a walking whole human. You're sort of a water centaur, blending beautifully in.

I was standing on the pier at Lakeside, Ohio, when a couple of local folks started up a conversation. A cormorant flew by. The man exclaimed, "I HATE those birds!"
Really? Why?
He launched a litany about how they "clean out all the fish" and "crap all over the islands and ruin them."

Oh.
I guess you don't eat fish or crap, either? But I didn't say that.

Instead, I said, "Hmm. Lots of people say that. But they overwhelmingly eat fish that people aren't interested in. And yes, they crap a lot. Did you know they're actually small pelicans?"

At this his wife piped up. "You love pelicans!" Which was sweet and helpful of her, and it gave me a silent inward chuckle.

 I thought somebody had to stick up for the cormorant, but I knew he wasn't going to change his view of them in one conversation on a pier sticking out into Lake Erie.

Well, I, for one, like cormorants. Especially when they fly gracefully against a white pine backdrop, which is not very often. 

Eastern amberwing, Erythemis tenera.

Eastern pondhawk, E. simplicicollis. I  adore its cool slate-blue body and green face. It reminds me of a decomissioned World War II fighter jet, with the paint oxidized, sitting in some little midwestern town green, tethered and forever hovering on a tilt 10' over the clipped grass.

The snazzy Halloween pennant, Celithemis eponina. Just getting my feet wet in dragonflies. Could be wrong. Often wrong.

Eastern spiny softshell. Probably the coolest-looking turtle in Ohio. Spooky, too. I was happy to get a photo that showed its wary eye before it slipped backward into the drink.

a gorgeous little red-eared slider, the only other turtle species I saw this day. You'd think it'd be lousy with painted turtles and mud turtles, but not today.  And come to think of it I don't know that I've seen painted turtles here. Still thinking about that.

A great blue steps along a log, one of the snags I'm talking about that are in the process of falling down. Sigh. Would they could stand forever. But every time I canoe at North Bend, I work my way around more logs.

You beautiful lanky thing you. I've always loved lanky.

Two mallard drakes in eclipse plumage rest. Thank you for leaving your fabulous violet blue speculae out for me to admire. No matter what miserable molt mallards might be in, they keep that badge shining.

North Bend Magic

North Bend is my magic place. It's too shallow for power boats. Only trolling motors are allowed, and even then, you have to be darned intrepid to want to take anything bigger than a one-man canoe in its snaggy shallows. 

Just the way we like it. I coaxed Bill out for a few hours this sunny September Sunday. We took two cars, because once I get to North Bend I never want to leave.

I think I caught him relaxing. Quiet water will do that to you.

There are great blue herons around every bend.

You can see this bird just above Bill's left elbow. It's great fun to glide quietly and shoot as you go.

Gorgeous wildlife tableaux everywhere you look.

As I glide closer, a couple of geese decide the water feels safer.

I try not to bother the wildlife, try not to force them to change what they're up to. 

I like it when they feel comfortable enough around me to go on sleeping. Birds can sleep and peek at the same time. They let half their brain sleep while the other half runs the peeking eye. I'm pretty sure I can do that too.

One of the cooler things I saw this day was a leucistic crow. It had a couple of white secondaries, symmetrically placed in each wing. This patchy leucism is common enough in crows that David Sibley included it in his tour de force field guide. This is the third such crow I've seen. The first two were flying together past our tower. I figured they must have been siblings, with a mutation like that.

It's very difficult to get a photo of a crow who knows you're trying to get a photo of it. I chased him for several hundred yards.

I got a bunch, but this is the best one. Ah well. 

Just a beautiful place to drift and watch and empty your mind of all else.

Watery Retreat

 
Me, out of Custodial Mode. A very rare photo by Bill of the Birds.

I don't know what's happening to this summer. I feel like I'm running constantly just to stay abreast of all there is to do. It might have something to do with having the kids home and needing meals all the time, something to do with processing two large loads of laundry each and every day; something to do with a huge fast-growing lawn and gardens needing weeding that go on and on; with the fishpond filter that clogs with algae every day, with the Bird Spa needing to be scrubbed and refreshed; with countless planters and hanging baskets and bonsai trees suddenly drying up and needing to be watered each day; with all the creatures from fish and turtles to macaw, dog, flocks of brilliant goldfinches and hummingbirds that need to be fed and cleaned up after every day. Add doctor, dentist, orthodontist and optometrists' appointments, music lessons and frequent travel onto that, and I guess I've figured out what's happening to this summer. Please ignore my antic punctuation in this paragraph. I got lost somewhere between the semicolons and the commas. I'm just lost in general, wandering around in Custodian Land, trying to figure out how it all got to be so too much.


I think I do a whiny I-can't-do-it-all post like this every July. I love summer with all my heart, but the chores seem to magnify then multiply, magically. Sometimes I hum "Lazy Crazy Hazy Days of Summer" and just laugh. I would love to be lazy. Even for ten minutes.

I would like to have just one thing to do at a time, like a woodpecker feeding its young. I'm sure she'd trade with me...

When it all gets to be too much I go back in my mind to North Bend, to the quiet waters.

To the miniature islets, planted just so. 

To the sunbathing heron, standing with her wings akimbo, baking her body lice. Lazy girl.

 I drift closer and closer until she breaks the pose and sets about catching some fish.

She waded in and caught an early dinner soon after these images were taken. I was glad not to have put her off her task. 

That's what I love most about canoeing. It's easier to slip in and out of birds' lives in a little watercraft. 

And no, you can't sex a great blue heron. I was just guessing. Something about the way she was holding her wings.

I  loved watching the kids discover nature with the help of David and Mary Jane and their big canoe. Liam was cautious about bass. He kept asking me if bass have teeth.

I kept flashing on the wings of red-headed woodpeckers. It was a magical day, a fecund day, full of all the things I love best. 

Best of all, the birds we came to see were busy making more red-headed woodpeckers.

and more noisy flickers.

and more great blue herons

What a treasure North Bend State Park is. What a glorious place. You really don't have to look too far in West Virginia and southern Ohio to find some really special places to hike and canoe. I'd wager that's true for a lot of places. One of my readers commented:  You're seriously making me want to get a canoe or kayak, although I don't think I have anywhere that beautiful and bountiful to use it! 

Well, I didn't think I did, either. You have to check out the parks. Maybe you've driven by the sign for a local park a hundred times without ever exploring it. They're waiting out there, and I've had tons of fun exploring the ones in our area one by one. I'm always surprised at the beauty and serenity that's waiting there in the shallow waters where the speedboats can't go. Canoes: That's what they're for. 

They're for sneakin' up on things.

 photo by Bill of the Birds

Blue skies and puffy clouds and dragonflies on the shore.

My totem turkey vultures circled and tilted, telling me this was a good place for my spirit to rest.

If one could have a totem butterfly, the Z is for Zebra swallowtail would be mine.

Phoebe would soon discover the next wonderful thing I needed to photograph. "There's a bird here that looks like a pewee, but it has yellow underneath. It's got a nest here."

Give 'em binoculars and what do you get?  Little poults who find wonderful things, and return the favor by pointing them out to you!

Those mystery birds to follow.

Danger Rocks

On the weekend Bill took the kids whitewater rafting in West Virginia, one of the things I did by myself was go canoeing on quiet waters. It was kind of a protest. I wasn't too happy about having my family on whitewater, being a rapidophobe myself. I had to chuckle when I saw this warning buoy at Wolf Run:

No, actually, it doesn't. Quiet waters rock.

Phoebe and I were on high alert this day when we went out together, and it paid off in spades, because the beavers I'd spotted on my last visit to Wolf Run were around again. The first thing I needed to teach her was to be conscious of keeping the paddle from hitting the sides of the canoe. I told her that you can spot a rube a mile off over the water by the clunk-clunk of paddle hitting canoe sides. You should always paddle as if you're sneaking up on something, because in all likelihood, you are.

There is great pleasure in silent conveyance on still waters.

In the first cove we checked out, a beaver floated quietly, watching us. It circled, always keeping an eye on us.

Finally, it drew close, and I could tell it was winding up to smack its big flat leathery tail on the water. I could just see it in that glittering eye. So I focused on his back and was ready when it happened!

He's taking a big breath in. Something's going down.

KER-SPLOOOOOSH!

This is one of my favorite pictures of the summer--it shows the enormous webbed paddles the beaver uses to swim so swiftly and dive so deeply. There is a big roostertail of water on either side of the tail, which has been smacked down on the water. Gosh, beavers are so cool. Beavers do this to let you know they see you--it's analogous to a white-tailed deer flashing its big white flag at you. Hey you. Don't bother chasing me. I'm already gone.

Herons were everywhere. I took a lot of heron photos. And no, I don't use the "burst" or rapid-fire/multiple frame function when shooting birds in flight--though I must try it soon. Probably would have been useful for the beaversmack.

Big birds that sit still and then flap off majestically are irresistible to me.Who says pterodactyls are all gone? His croaking rasp only enhances the metaphor--it sounds like someone opening a stuck root cellar door.

Speaking of irresistible, I saw a water naiad on the shore. Where's Maxfield Parrish when you need him?

Another heartbreakingly beautiful September 11 in southern Ohio. Soon enough, rain will come--all these hurricanes have to amount to something. But for now, it's pellucid and clear and the cool afternoon air is like a draught of Riesling. This morning before dawn I stood in the dissolving dark and listened to the calls of dozens of migrating thrushes--pips, peeps and queerps!--headed for destinations only they know. Most of them Swainson's, but maybe a grey-cheeked in there, too. There were so many, calling unseen from horizon to horizon, just as the shivering light broke. We marvel at them, so brave! flying through the starry night, but they have a clearer idea where they are headed than do we, and they have the wings to go.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

from The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

For you, of course, sweet B. Thanks for the sweet canoeing companion and the scowly little Art Elf; thanks for the 15 (17) years; thanks for the acreage and the warblers, and thanks for sticking around. I love you.
*thank you for this poem, Kris.