Cornell Plantations in the Rain

Last week, I traveled to Ithaca, which is a solid nine hours from southeast Ohio. I haven't been home very much lately; seems like I'm always loading the car for the next thing. My last two trips were so close together I just kept the car loaded. Writing now from a hotel room in Columbus. Missing my bed and my boys and the time just to be with a hot cup of tea.

I had two talks to give, one on Monday night at the Lab of Ornithology, hosted by the Cayuga Bird Club. The auditorium, one end of which is wood paneled and decorated with oil paintings by Louis Fuertes, one of my favorite-ever bird painters, was full. So was my heart. I'd made the trip up two years ago, only to have Superstorm Sandy cut the turnout to about 15. This made up for that! I'm pretty sure the talk I gave was unlike any other given at the lab--a personal view of how birds inform and inhabit my spirituality. 

On Wednesday, I was to present "Personal Habitat" for the Elizabeth E. Rowley Lecture at Cornell Plantations. 

Part of my speaker's welcome was a tour of the Plantations gardens by Betty Rowley herself! 

The heavens opened on us as our tour began, but Betty was slickered and umbrellaed. I was wearing a brand new, untested Eddie Bauer ultralight windbreaker/slicker. Best to find out how it would perform in actual field conditions. 

These white pines were planted in 1912, the year my DOD was born. I couldn't believe a hurricane hadn't brought them down, and just as I was thinking that Betty said that these are all that remain of a much larger plantation, hurricanes having brought the rest down. 

Part of the fun of an arboretum or plantation is seeing plants and trees from all over the world. These are Japanese katsura trees, with their small round leaves like gold coins. 

I think I was most impressed with the "Bioswale," a water-purifying streambed designed and planted to take water runoff from the parking lot and sidewalks, purify it with roots and gravel, and send it into a nearby stream which feeds into Cayuga Lake. 

The young sugar maples were at peak color, and they just took my breath away with the golden katsura trees, asters and grasses interplanted.

I love the notion of putting plants' root systems to work in purifying runoff water. And they chose such gloriously colorful plants. I couldn't imagine the Bioswale being any more beautiful than it was at this moment, in this hard rain, and I was thankful to be there to behold these landscape architects' handiwork.

This plant is from Texas and it has "blue" in its name. How embarrassing. But I couldn't pull my little notebook out to write. It was raining too hard. 

I knew this one: castor bean. It was in a medicinal plant garden. Mmm. Love those leaves. Every placard had something about the plant's use or connection to literature. I could have strolled and read for hours.

A large and lovely catalpa tree dominated the decorative plant garden, which was adjacent to the herb/medicinal garden. 

A spectacular Viburnum in blazing fruit. 

It was obvious that a lot of thought had gone into creating a landscape that would change interest and color with the seasons. 

The Tropical garden still had banana trees out, but it was clear the landscape there would change radically with the first frost. These red coleus, for  instance, would liquefy...I was glad to see them before that happened. 

And still the rain came down. I spotted several Plantations employees, weeding and deadheading and cleaning the gardens even in the rain. With their hoods up, they looked like wraiths popping in and out of the vegetation. It reminded me that no garden stays this beautiful without constant maintenance.

I discovered rather quickly that my nice lightweight slicker had two seams in the armpits that admitted a steady trickle of cold water on either side. Said water ran down my flanks to my stomach, where it pooled above my belt and soaked me from armpit to waist. Meanwhile, the water was running off the hip-length slicker and onto my trousers, which were saturated by the end of the tour. I was every bit as soaked under my slicker as outside it. Altogether a highly unsatisfactory performance for outdoor gear. Which I bought at a factory outlet. The phrase "You get what you pay for" probably applies. To be fair, what tags were on it made no claims for water resistance. Not sure what it's good for--windbreaker? Who gets wind without rain?

This is going to sound a little strange, but one of the things I enjoyed most was the pavement beneath the trees in the parking lot. As the leaves fell, their tannins interacted with the concrete, creating dark

prints.

 

Under each katsura tree was a great dark print of hundreds of fallen leaves. The leaves had been raked away, but their round ganged imprints were still on the concrete.  I found it so beautiful, this unbidden art made by trees. I couldn't do it justice in photos. It was all the more beautiful because no one could have anticipated it would happen. Sonja, who took wonderful care of me throughout my stay, agreed. It was nice to find that others noticed and appreciated the tree art.

A drip on the chin of the Yarb Lady, much like the one hanging off mine. I spent the rest of the afternoon slowly drying out.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Building. Hmm. My friend Tim said it looked like it might rise up and stomp on cars. I agree. Kind of a lurky Transformer vibe to it.  Cornell's campus is a melting pot of architectural styles, that's for sure. Something like this arises, cheek to jowl with something like this.

Pretty sure this was a redtail, hangin' out on some ironwork high above Cayuga Lake.

I know for a fact this is a redtail nest stuffed in a light fixture, because Sonja told me it was featured on a Lab of O Webcam. The female's name is Big Red, the male is Ezra, if I remember correctly.

Oh look. It's starting to rain.

Hmm. Wonder how this slicker will do? I left my heavy-duty one home...

In the photo below, that's scaffolding on a cupola under repair, transforming it into a magic, temporary pagoda against the sky. A lovely sunset, just the Lord's way of saying sorry about the wet pants.

A Living Building

The Lab of Ornithology appears to me to have been designed around two major aesthetic concerns. First, the trove of bird art, like that in the Fuertes library and the Fisher’s Island panel, which have been beautifully integrated into the space. A second goal was to showcase the natural wonders in the wetlands just outside, visible through huge windows all around. It’s like the biggest blind you’ve ever seen.

Though my time was limited, I was determined to take in just a bit of the gorgeous swampy bit of Sapsucker Woods immediately around the building. It’s truly another world, quiet, laced with mulched paths, swarming with birds. Canada geese were living their lives, getting it on, preening


and making a general honking ruckus. One pair has claimed ownership of a part of the path near the bird feeder, and challenges passersby in a quiet way. I saw several toddlers try to pet this bird. Not recommended.Does this goose look intelligent to you? It does to me. There's really something going on in those eyes. It hisses and intimidates people who come too close. You don’t want a bite from that bony, serrated bill. There were a couple of geese with permanently injured wings, making a good living, mates by their side, at the pond. One bird acts as an unofficial greeter, hanging out right by the entry. It's neat to see birds the second you pull into the parking lot of the Lab.

Mallards kept bombing over and dropping in, and I played at photographing them, with some pretty cool results.As a young bird painter, I devoured a book called Prairie Wings, by Edgar M. Queeney. Using the rudimentary black-and-white equipment of the time, he captured amazing photos of ducks in flight. If only I could go back in time and hand Mr. Queeney my little Digital Rebel. What fun he'd have.
A mushmouse swam by a resting hooded merganser (the white spot directly back of the rat).

A pair of common mergansers. When they hauled out on a log, I could see the bulk of their bodies. They’re like icebergs. Note the wood duck nesting boxes, which common and hooded mergansers may also use. The place is set up for birds, and the resident geese know and exploit that.

I had to chuckle when the black-capped chickadee I photographed turned out, on closer inspection, to be color-banded. This is the Lab of Ornithology, after all. Who knows what secrets these birds have revealed?

The incandescent glow of a mallard’s head. His mate hides in shadow.

I was stunned to see a big brown bat flying in daylight, dipping down to drink. I never thought my photos would be acceptable, but they aren’t bad, considering that I was focusing manually, and the bat was dipping and diving like, well, a bat. This is a really neat shot, and it's even, finally, in good focus.
I hoped he wasn’t ill; bats all over the Northeast are turning up with “white-nose syndrome,” a disease of apparently fungal origin that is killing them by the thousands, and sending them out of their hibernacula much too early. Please be well and travel safely, brown bat.
This ends my sojurn at the Lab. The "Letters from Eden" show hangs through mid-July. Please check it out if you're in the area.

The Fuertes Library

The old Lab of Ornithology was a humble block building which subsequently grew to include a string of offices housed in mobile homes in the woods. I doubt that anyone who worked in the old buildings misses the good old days, when the organization’s needs and staff outgrew the original structure. I was eager to see the new building, and it didn’t disappoint. One of the things I was most impressed with was the loving, careful reconstruction of the jewel of the old Lab: the wood-paneled library, adorned with Fuertes paintings. The paintings all appear as they originally did, though it seemed to me the ceiling might have been raised considerably. It’s still warm and intimate and exquisite, and a local artisan contributed handmade chairs with a nodding heron design to finish it off.

Here are some of the panels in the library. I adore this old man turkey, and the winter pastels of the landscape around him. There’s such a mood in this piece. And there's a victorious peregrine with bufflehead buffet. Fuertes did terrific upside-down dead birds, probably because he had one right in front of him to draw from.
A magnificent tryptich of snowy owl, king eider, and Canada goose.

The same owl, with scaup and scoters.

An autumnal gem: a strutting ruffed grouse in glowing sugar maple and white pine woodland. Don’t’ you want to walk with him? Look at the perspective and handling of his tail. I love this piece. I can hear his soft footfalls in the leaves and smell the curing forest litter, hear the calls of migrating jays and feel the melancholy of autumn seeping in.

More panels, these of puddle ducks and a red-shouldered hawk, in situ. You can see a little peek through to the fabulous Wild Birds Unlimited shop just beyond. They sold quite a few copies of Letters from Eden during the show and talks!

The whole works. What a room.

Half of my show, spitting distance from Louis’ work. Happy sigh.

When I was a baby bird artist in the mid-80’s, I gave a talk in the old Fuertes Library, awed that I was surrounded by my hero’s work. I was no less humbled this time, especially by hanging my simple watercolors in a room immediately adjoining the library. Though the Letters from Eden show comprises over 60 paintings (with another bunch still waiting to be framed), we had to cherry-pick the ones we most wanted to hang, and in the end had room for about half of them. In hanging the show, Charles Eldermire and I had to balance our desire to show all the work with the realities of the space. The system involves clips and wires, such that the paintings are suspended from molding near the ceiling, so there was a lot of scurrying up and down a ladder on Charles’ part; it was like a two-day Stairmaster marathon for him. My role was mostly that of fussy arbiter. We were in sync, though, and the hanging went smoothly, even though it took a lot longer than either of us anticipated. There was an international symposium of migration biologists meeting at the same time, so we could work only at night, after the meetings were over. Here's one wall of paintings.
And the second one. We struggled to get the important things up, without overcrowding things. It makes me happy to think that, at least until mid-July, the same air molecules will be circulating over Fuertes' work and mine; that people will be able, perhaps, to see the influence of the master in a student he never knew. If staring holes in book plates can teach a kid how to paint birds, I learned. Here's my favorite plate from Forbush and May's A Natural History of Birds Of Eastern and Central North America. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for that first Fuertes book. It was $3.95 well spent. I remember trying so hard to write straight as I made it all mine.
Come see me at the Scioto Bird Club's one-day bird festival on Saturday, May 3, from 7-noon at the Mound City Group Visitor's Center in Chillicothe, Ohio. I'll be giving my Letters from Eden talk at 10:30 AM and leading a bird walk at 9 AM, as well as signing books. I know at least one blogreader who's coming!