Wild Places: Best When Shared

Just back this afternoon from a wild and wooly Fri-Sat-Sun, entertaining 34 hearty and kind Bird Watcher's Digest subscribers at our fifth, and perhaps most successful, BWD Reader Rendezvous. 

They were wonderful people, appreciative and soulful, and North Bend showed her best side. 

We worked our buns off making sure everybody got what they'd come for. Bill, Wendy, Dawn, Kyle,  Mollee, Keith and I never once rested, except when we fell into bed for the too-short nights before the 5:30 wakeups. But it was worth every bit of effort. There were a bunch of people there for whom this was the first birding event of any kind they'd ever attended.

We felt the responsibility of making sure it would be the best, too.

It was magic. We were humbled that 34 BWD subscribers would travel--some from as far as Washington State, Florida, Michigan and Georgia--to be with us at this heavenly place Bill and I discovered in 2009, that has become so important to me as a place I can go to soak up some of my favorite birds on its still waters. 

 Ann drove from Florida by herself just to be with us. Keith came from Fayetteville WV, where he helps run the New River Birding and Nature Festival each year, just to help us pull off this event. And he took Ann for a dreamy ride amongst the snags and nesting birds. Friends. What would we do without them?

A female eastern bluebird at her natural house

soon followed by her gorgeous mate.

This was my earliest visit in June since 2009, and hordes of tree swallows are finishing off their broods.

This satiny tree swallow embellished its nest with a great blue heron feather. Its young were well-feathered and soon to boot out of their low snaggy cradle.

Everywhere were eastern kingbirds, nesting out in the open, conspicuous and fearless.

A kingbird hauls a fecal sac from its three babies in their open snag cradle. 

A summer tanager sings his lazy, halting song, back to us. He don't care.

Common bluets dip and couple on the quiet waters, the males clasping their mates behind the head in an oddly beautiful ballet. 

And everywhere around, the stars of the show brought gasps of delight from our rendezvousing readers.

 Taken this morning--a red-headed woodpecker feeds a soon-to-fledge youngster, as a tree swallow buzzes by in this precious watery nursery for cavity-nesting birds.

I floated right up to this bird, busy processing a large insect in one of its many larders.

I think every one of us realized how lucky we were to be here, seeing these things. Tracking down a black-and-white warbler at the hemlock-sheltered picnic area. 

It was an honor to share one of my favorite places with so many good souls. 

Sneaking Up on a Buck

The canoe, Lois, is my cloak of invisibility. When Marcy and Shila told me they'd spotted a buck bedded up on a steep slope, under cover of trees, I paddled quickly but silently over. Gave a few strokes, drifted motionless ever closer, then hung onto a snag to anchor myself for photography.

He was unperturbed by my presence. I was not something to worry about, floating in a small boat out on the lake. 

That's how I like my deer best: Unperturbed. Not simmered, seared, sauteed or with a side of wild rice. Unperturbed.

Quietly grooming himself.

Arising, preparing himself for an afternoon's foraging. He'll be a five-pointer. 

Those velvet antlers itch. A well-placed sharp hoof does the job. 

Thus groomed, he's ready to go. 

And I am blessed by his presence, by witnessing his toilette, his peaceful reverie, which becomes mine.

Such incredible beauty awaits those who float silently. These multicolored birds with their raiment of bronzy green and wine. Who could dream such a beautiful little heron?

Death to minnows and frogs, life itself to me.

The work of a pileated woodpecker in live wood, excavating for carpenter ants. These huge rectangular holes open out the ant galleries, and the pileated sits there lapping the larvae, eggs and adult ants up as they run by. 

And everywhere around me, the kwirrk and churr and constant pas de deux of the Snag Kings, the Woodpeckers to Beat All Woodpeckers, the Flying American Flags, my darlings the red-heads. Raising up their young by the dozen in this Nirvana for birdwatchers, deerwatchers, heronoglers. North Bend State Park. You really must visit.

The Best Woodpeckers of All

I call North Bend State Park in Harrisville, WV, my happy place. I also call it Birding Valhalla. That's because there's no place else I can think of where you can see 80 red-headed woodpeckers in a single day. 

They're here because the forest that was flooded to make the lake killed a lot of big trees. 

And those big trees were perfect for red-headed woodpeckers to drill out for their nesting cavities. 

To my amazement, we saw a bird making a cavity on July 25. Well after one would think they'd be excavating a nest cavity. Perhaps it's to be a roost cavity, even a winter roost hole. It was pecking away!

David laughed out loud to see it dip in, take bills full of sawdust and chips, and ptoo! them out into the breeze.

I was delighted to capture the moment for him. PTOO!!

All around us, red-headed woodpeckers were feeding fledged young, doing crazy loop-de-loops after dragonflies and dog day cicadas in the big spaces over the lake. It was wonderful.

There really is nothing I don't love about red-headed woodpeckers. The best woodpeckers of all.

But even as I enjoy North Bend, I know it's a limited-time offer. For the nesting snags they use, after more than a decade of standing in water, are falling into the drink. More are down every time I visit.

I was trying to shoot a poignant photo of two cavity trees in mud when this little character gave a metallic chip and bobbed into view.

It's this year's young Louisiana waterthrush, assuring me that, snags or not, there will always be something interesting going on at North Bend.

The double-crested cormorant and the great blue heron agreed as they posed against the elegiac wrecks of trees. Such riches from dead wood.

We stopped to examine the hollow bole of a sycamore, and I remembered why I love Mary Jane so much. She stuck her head in the space and sang a mysterious and compelling Native American song, her beautiful voice resonating and echoing across the quiet lake. Now, who does that? My friend Mary Jane, that's who. 

Because I look down so much, gazing into the water, looking for dragonflies and fish and water plants, I often miss what's overhead. David and Mary Jane pointed out this second Science Chimp stumper. Now, how did that snakeskin get there, 12' up in a dead snag that's standing in several feet of water? Did a snake somehow climb up there to shed? Nope.

They had just found a great crested flycatcher nest. The snakeskin had been airlifted up there. Great crested flycatchers like to trail a snakeskin out of their nestholes, perhaps as a deterrent to avian predators, but maybe "chust for nice." When I was a kid, I found a GCFL nest in our woods in Richmond, Virginia, by seeing a long trailing strand of Fiberglas insulation, stolen from a house under construction, trailing from a cavity. 

The snakeskin waved in the breeze in the most delightful way, and I felt lucky to have friends who can spot such things, and doubly lucky to be the one who gets to tell them how such mysterious things come to pass.

If canoeing North Bend with me sounds like something you'd like to do, there are still some spaces left in the Bird Watcher's Digest Reader Rendezvous coming up August 22-24, 2014.

Check it out here: Birding Valhalla With Julie Zickefoose

And in a lovely bit of serendipity, my pal Floridacracker has just posted a fascinating photoessay on a Florida park that's managed with fire for woodpeckers, including the endangered red-cockaded and the beloved red-headed. His post is called  A Place for Redheads. Go read it! With red-headed woodpeckers, it's all about living amongst large trees with an open understory. Whether that understory is water, as at North Bend in WV, or savannah, as at Ochlockonee, they need that kind of space between the trees because they're flycatching woodpeckers. I thought it was pretty cool that we two blogosaurs (Floridacracker started blogging in the spring of 2005, and I followed in December of that year) were groovin' on the same birds at the same time, many hundreds of miles apart.

Heronarama and a Science Chimp Mystery

Oh did I have fun with the herons of North Bend on my late July canoe trip. Great blues are everywhere, croaking and flapping prehistorically off when disturbed. This one is in some pretty impressive molt. Look how the fresh new dark slate feathers are replacing the worn and tired pale gray flight feathers. I'm not sure, but this may be an immature bird. Anyone?

But the real star of the show was this adult green heron, in glorious plumage and condition, who was hunting hard, probably to feed a hungry brood. Green herons breed much, much later in the season than do great blues, who start nesting in March and April in Ohio. 

The deep chestnut neck, the glossy dark-green back, the lanceolate(rather than rounded) lesser wing coverts, bright orange-yellow legs and clean white double streak on the neck underside all point to this being an adult bird. 

Lesser wing coverts lift up, functioning as flaps as the bird brakes to a landing.

It steps quietly along through the shallows, looking for minnows, dragonflies and bluegills. Toward the end of its photoshoot, it stabbed a 3" bluegill and gulped it right down.

I keep watching green herons whenever I can, hoping one will use bait to fish with. There's a video of a bait-fishing green heron that a lot of people have sent me on Facebook. Yep, they do it! At fish farms, they learn to get fish food pellets from dispensers, drop them in the water and wait for lunch to rise up to get them.  In the wild, they'll use a small twig or leaf, drop it in the water, and wait for curious fish to come.

This bird was getting food the old-fashioned way, though, by hunting. The water was so scummy and covered with algae that he couldn't have used bait anyway.

I would hate to be a minnow under that gaze.

It was divine to be ignored by this gorgeous little heron, to watch it going about its business and fishing successfully. I love love love birding and photographing from my Wee Lassie canoe, Lois.

I love it because everyone ignores me and goes about their birdy bidness. In this case, processing a large cicada.

Browsing in the underbrush--a second buck in velvet.

Or just lighting up the shore with beauty: swamp rose mallow. Native, lovely, showy, ahhhh.

It wouldn't be a North Bend outing without at least one myskery. David saw this object high in a broken snag. "Is that an EGG?"

I paddled closer, burning with curiosity. "Yes! It's an egg!"

Now, there's only one kind of egg that could be, being almost the size of a hen's egg, and that would be a wood duck. I figured out what was going on by noting that it looked like the snag had cracked in half, exposing the heretofore closed cavity. Unhatched, broken or addled eggs are often left in the bottom when the ducklings depart. And the black mulch? Well, having examined a number of cavity nests in downed snags, I'd say that mulch is made up of organic matter, including but not limited to sawdust, feces, other unhatched eggs (see the one a few inches below the top one?), and dead birds. See the bird bone sticking  out of the mulch? Eeew! and EEEEE!! Science Chimp heaven!

We're looking at years, maybe a decade or more, of accumulation of organic matter. I wanted to get in there and tear through that mulch lookin' for other clues, but it was too high for me to reach, even with overarm brachiation.

Image shamelessly nicked off randalrauser.com, who, the Net being what it is, could have stolen it too.

If canoeing North Bend  with me, trying to figure out what's in dead duck mulch sounds like something you'd like to do, there are still some spaces left in the Bird Watcher's Digest Reader Rendezvous coming up August 22-24, 2014.

Check it out here: Birding Valhalla With Julie Zickefoose