Looking Back on Fall

Man, it was such a beautiful fall. In the midst of all the mishegas going on in this country, we here in Ohio had that, at least, and it was a lot. I look at these photos and can't believe the meadow ever looked like this. 

But it did, it did, and I was out there every morning I could be, photographing it and reveling in the million little cigarette lighters the goldenrods held up, saying Thank You Fall, We Loved It! Play One More!

I had an absolute blast with monarchs, watching them chomp six potted Asclepias, bringing them in so I could be there for their special moments. And there are so many special moments with monarchs. I have reams of them on video, and I must get to them. So when winter finally arrives, I will have a busy studio, humming with industry. I don't intend to twiddle my thumbs.

I wanted to show you a few of the birds who came across my little bit of Appalachian ridgetop this fall. There were so many bay-breasted warblers! You can tell them by their lead-colored legs and sweet open faces. Blackpolls have orangey feet and a more severe look about the eye.  

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Same baybreast, preparing to go. 

Here's a blackpoll for comparison. If you click on the photo, you can see its orangey (not cool lead gray) feet. See the facial expression? Sort of calculating. Not as innocent as the baybreast, whose eyes are framed in pale crescents.

And there was a late flush of blue-headed vireos, and I don't think a BHVI is ever more beautiful than in fresh fall plumage. Look at that snowy white throat and breast! The shading of olive at the sides of its chest are just delicious. And those shining white spectacles. Hard to miss this bird, and it's quite vocal in fall as well, voicing a squeaky, chirrupy, slow, Cheree! Cheerio? Squee? 

They love willows, even our beat up old weeping willow. This one sidled down a willow whip almost to the ground.

Blackburnian warblers have the mostest eye stripes! This is a superciliary (over the eye) line. Look how long and pronounced it is--and orangey. Also note the pronounced back striping. The central pair down the middle of its back will be whitish on a Blackburnian.

It's pretty easy to identify the diminutive black-throated green warbler. Males keep a good bit of their coloration in fall. The stark black throat is overlain by white scaling, which is just fresh feather fringes. Those will wear off by spring.  The big golden head sides are a good tipoff for ths species.

The sycamores are almost done dropping their tremendous leaves now. Each one falls with a kind of slishy thud, which is pretty freaky to listen to in the dark. The sycamores, of course, don't care whether they drop them in daylight or dark. I like thinking of the leaves falling all night long. Some of these leaves are a good 10" across, making our sycamore a frustrating tree to bird in, until you see one calmly perched atop a leaf. Don't try that with a maple or a birch!

One of the most common fall migrants here is the Tennessee warbler, notable for its plainness. There are almost always traces of wingbars. Tennesses have short, sharp bills and a short-tailed cobby shape. They make constant lisping notes as they forage together, and when they take off they invariably drop a sweet shower of tsit notes as they go. Over the years and the annual waves of fall migrants, these little cues tell me what I have--I don't even need to see them to know they're around. 

White undertail coverts help separate the Tennessee from the similar looking orange-crowned warbler. Tennessees are whiter below than orange-crowned, and only rarely have any streaking on the breast. This is a Tennessee, taking off from a bath in the Bird Spa.

Finally, the waves of warblers and vireos were replaced by the hardier migrants. We had gobs of eastern Phoebes this fall, as well as a tolerable number of eastern wood-peewees. Listen for the phoebe's soft Chip! note and watch for its bobbing tail. Pewees are more elegant, keep their clothes cleaner, sit up straighter--phoebes who have been to charm school. 

Above: sludgy lil phoebe; below, natty lil peewee.

I love to see the field sparrows coming through. I know the juncos can't be far behind. 

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers had a good showing. Most of them are immatures, which makes for some very nondescript woodpeckers. But note the big longitudinal white wing panel. This is surprisingly easy to pick up at a distance, and when coupled with their swoopy flight style, usually ending as they stick a vertical landing on a tree trunk, you can amaze your friends with your long reach woodpecker ID's. I hope I get a peanut/suet freeloader again this winter. I love sapsuckers. They pound my birches to pieces, but that's OK with me!

So I passed an agreeable and lovely fall, walking the paths and watching the birds. Watching the meadow change every day was a thrill--waiting for them to throw the main power switch that would light up all the goldenrod at once. 

And the Maximilian sunflower glowed.

 

Liam is TWENTY-ONE!

 He really was a cute little boy, with a mop of white hair and a penchant for bacon. And he hasn't lost any of that, the white mop or the bacon or the cuteness, either. 

                                        

We had a Zoom birthday for Liam tonight, with family and special friends, and Liam made us all laugh so hard with his unique brand of humor, which cannot be described, but always catches you off guard. He said he didn't have a birthday cake, and every woman on that screen did a quick mental calcuation about what might be involved in getting him one, instantly. That's the kind of kid he is. You just want to do nice things for him because he's so appreciative. Mighty fond of good food. But this is as close as he has ever gotten to being a chonk. Well, he was a spherical baby, but that doesn't count. Look how cute he is!! squee! Talking, of course. 

Oh, the memorable meals of this past summer! 

Time was when I made him a ninja Lego cake for his birthday. Or a Cars cake. I would, in a heartbeat, if I could. 

But instead there we all were on Zoom, and Liam showed us how he taught himself to move his nostrils independently, up and down, so we all tried it. Ha haha!! 

It's really hard to be away from him for his 21st birthday. But prudence dictates that he remain at West Virginia University until he is able to get tested and come home for Festivus, which runs from Thanksgiving through New Year's. I can't wait to have my buddy home again! Then, there will be maple cake!

I keep thinking back to this past spring and summer, when we three got to be together from March-August. It was amazing. Here I am, not actually pointing out a bird. Ha ha! Photo shoot for New River Birding's not-festival this spring. And so it goes. We're all rolling with it, the not-actually happening of it.

I am so proud of this young man for adapting to the new constructs that have been forced on us all. When I think of my college life in the late 1970's (wooohooo), I can't imagine carrying on in a mask, but you do what you must. And Liam does it with style.

He does send me photos of his current mood from time to time. Often it's like this

                                                                            Or this...

my son, dripping like a Dali clock off a bench at the art gallery where he works. 

I prefer to see him with his beloved Curtis, at peace

and soon we'll get to do that. And I'll bake him a cake and take him shopping for some new clothes or some skateboard accessories! (I got him a nice skateboard for his birthday, with protective gear because MOM). 

Phoebe will get a short Thanksgiving break and we can all be together again for a few days. That will be the best present of all.

If all this quarantining has taught us anything, it's that spending time together is the most important thing of all. That's a beautiful lesson, one I think a lot of people have learned, now that they so often can't be together.

Now, to remember Bill, I'm going to do an awful thing. I am going to post the photo that Bill always posted on Liam's birthday, because for some reason he loved it. Sorry, Liam. Gotta do it. You both look like little blind cave fishies, freezing your fins off, jumping at Daddy's behest in the January surf somewhere off Titusville, Florida. Brrrrr! Notice there's nobody else out in the water except a couple of snow-white Ohio kids.

Fast-forward to Christmas, 2019, to see what these blind cave minnows grew into, soaring over Tenerife's volcano in one of my favorite all-time shots of them together. 

Liam, know that you delight everyone who takes the time to get to know you. Thank you for endeavoring to persevere, and making the best of the situation we're all floundering in. You're keeping a handle on your grades (as far as I know...) and your job, taking your classes seriously, staying away from parties and bars, and running out every chance you get to slish through the autumn leaves. No mom could ask for more. Thank you for being so kind, sweet, considerate and funny, and for calling me all the time. 

Two weeks and you'll be home again

and there is someone waiting to smother you in kisses,

someone waiting to take a bunch of photos of you, to cook for you 

and talk art with you

and make you chop things and haul things around.

And being Liam, you'll do it with a smile. I love you, sweet boy. Happy birthday! You are loved! So much!

xoxoxo Ma

When Hummingbird Meets Butterfly

Staying home a lot is not a bad thing when you love your home. Magical things can happen when you stay home. 

 Making your home a lovable place is work, but if that work is done with joy, you don't feel it, except in your muscles when you get up the next morning. It is a gift you give yourself. 

This past summer I learned how to make and use outdoor rooms. It's pretty simple. You run some extension cords from the basement, get some comfortable furniture and a Yeti thermos full of something nice like lemon mint water, and set up with your laptop, camera and binoculars in the shade of a handy tree, say Jemima's Japanese maple. This is now your office, and you get to work out amongst the salvias, with orthopteran music as your soundtrack.

On this particular late September day, some late rubythroats were working the salvias and zinnias in my terraced bed. My bedsheets flapped gently in the warm breeze behind. I couldn't stop snapping photos. The cream-colored sheets add a dreamy touch, don't you think? 

Salvia greggii "Cherry Chief" is a favorite, as it always has a few fresh scarlet blossoms full of nectar to offer each day, floating high on wiry stems where it's easy for hummingbirds to access them. 

Salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" is a favorite of mine. Last fall, I cut them off and saved the roots to these plants in long planters set on the cold floor of my greenhouse, so I wouldn't have to go looking to buy them again this spring. When it warmed up, they sent out new growth and we were off! Saved a ton of money and made another successful experiment. I love this shot, with the hummingbird glugging down nectar or perhaps a tiny flying insect.

I heard a persistent buzzing, as of a hummingbird investigating something, off to my right, and that was how I found out that the chrysalis I had hung on a tomato cage, thinking it might be a bit off, had hatched successfully!  I watch the chrysalides I bring into the house for safekeeping over the two weeks it takes them to metamorphose. If one looks a bit off-color or anything other than perfect, I take it back outside just to be safe. I don't want anything infecting my precious jewels.

Well, this one was a bit off color but turned out to be perfect anyway, and a beautiful female monarch had emerged without my knowing it only an hour earlier!

And wouldn't you know, there was a hummingbird pestering the poor creature!

Who knows what the hummingbird had in mind? Just deviltry. This is a juvenile male, as evidenced by its darkish streaky throat. Figures.

The monarch wasn't having any of it, and she snapped her wings open and closed to try to startle the hummingbird into leaving her alone while she finished drying her new wings. 

In the end, I had to holler at the durn hummingbird. I think it's the first time I've yelled at a hummingbird...no, no, I have done that before. I used to yell at Bela, one of the four hummingbirds I raised in the summer of 2003, because he was soo bad, first to fly and constantly pestering the other three before they were ready for release. 

Bela was just as unpleasant as he looks here. He was much better once he got out in the yard. 

Aren't we all? (I loved him just as he was). 

Oh man. I just realized that the bonsai behind him is the one that got so big I couldn't keep it in a pot any more, and I planted it out on Bill's grave last spring. Wow. It's coloring up out there; it made it through the summer OK, even though May froze its leaves off twice. Pfffft. 2020. 

The four orphaned hummingbirds' story is told in my book, The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds, in a huge chapter that threatened to take over the whole book. At one point I was considering calling the book My Hummingbird Summer and Other Stories.

Where was I? Yelling at a hummingbird, right. Well, the whole point of this post is to say that something very special has happened with me and monarch butterflies this fall. Starting in early September, I began work on a photography project that I am still working on now. Yes, my last caterpillar just writhed around and became a chrysalis. It's 9:40 pm on October 11...late for me, and wicked late in the year, but I was determined to stay up until it happened, to record the event with my iPhone on timelapse setting. 

Guess when I started making timelapse videos of this caterpillar? Around 8:45 this morning. With monarchs, you have to BE THERE or you'll miss it. I've probably got 50 timelapse videos to delete now, ones where nothing much is happening, but I got it, and I got it good. The timelapse is still running.

All this makes me nostalgic for the old days. My love affair with monarchs started in the summer of 2010. I had sketched and painted the various stages of metamorphosis, but I knew there had to be a better way to capture it--get the whole thing, not just snapshots. So I put my tiny Olympus point and shoot camera on a little bitty tripod, and I sat next to the metamorphosing caterpillar, pushing the shutter button every few seconds, through the entire caterpillar to chrysalis transformation. Then I waited two weeks and was somehow miraculously THERE for its emergence as a butterfly. I did the same thing, click click click click, for the emergence and wing drying.

In the end, I had 1250 photos. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, but at least I had the data.

So, as I often do when I'm trying to figure something out, I wrote about it, and one of my pieces ended up as a commentary for All Things Considered, back in the good old days a decade ago when I contributed natural history commentaries. Imagine! We had something else to talk about but spreading disease and beastly human behavior.  Oh, for those days...In the end, I wound up giving the 1250 photos to NPR, where a brilliant producer named Mito Habe-Evans stitched them together into the animation you see below. It's still one of my favorite things I've ever done. And all without iPhones or timelapse or anything but persistence and a little Olympus camera. Oh, and being there. Enjoy it! 

The "new Blogger" is giving me fits; won't let me into html to load the video. I've tried twice to embed it here. If you're reading from your phone and you see nothing in the space below, scroll down and tap View Web Version at the bottom of the post. If that doesn't work, here's the link to the video on YouTube.  Monarch Metamorphosis