Come Lope With Me

There's a line in This is Spinal Tap, where the 80's hair band is trying to make the best of a somewhat flaccid set of engagements, and Nigel Tufnel says something like, "People should envy us. I envy us!"

That is just one of dozens of lines from that brilliant Christopher Guest/Rob Reiner film that I love, that pervade my life and get repeated weekly. 

People sometimes tell me they want to grow up to be me. Which is very sweet, but also odd, when you think about it,  because I feel like I still haven't grown up. And don't ever want to. At some point I will have to concede that I'm old, but I guarantee I still won't have grown up.

That said, I never envy me more than on a May morning, when I get to check my bluebird boxes.

It's like Easter, every stop. You never know what the bunny might have put in your basket.  

Ritchie box, 05/05/15. This pair of eastern bluebirds got a late start, because they were waiting for me to clear the massive briars that had sprung up around their box. I also had to bring my sledgehammer and some stakes and reset the leaning box pole (the guy who cuts that hayfield always seems to clip it with his deck). I think she started building her nest the same afternoon I finally did that. I could feel her hot breath. 

So I was headed to drop Liam off at the bus, then run Duck Creek Road, one of my favorite resorts of late, to get a big fat bird list, "run" 4.5 miles, and check the two new boxes I just put up out there. I told Bill to take a morning to bird from the tower. He was delighted to do just that, logging 60 species before he had to take off for work! May.

A wisteria-covered barn said good morning! If it were my barn, I'd cut that crap off of it, but I'm sure glad the owners don't seem to care it's there. I borrow its beauty for the one week it's beautiful. I hate wisteria with a passion the other 51 weeks of the year. 

Speaking of invasive exotics, European garlic mustard is just now invading Washington Co. Ohio, and is just coming into bloom in shadier spots. You really can't find it until it blooms, and then you see it freakin' everywhere. I saw red when I spotted this big clump just blooming on my treasured wildflower safari road. It would all die, starting immediately. This is just one of about sixty reasons why I can never do a timed run. Too easily diverted by bird, butterfly, flower, sky, cloud, weed...

Before. You can see the tall spindly white-topped spires of garlic mustard (and hear my teeth gnashing).

And after my savagery. Now you can see the Virginia waterleaf, false Solomon's seal, yellow impatiens, and celandine poppy the garlic mustard was already smothering. The thought of this horrid exotic getting established and outcompeting the wildflowers on Duck Creek Road literally makes me sick. It loves disturbed soil, like the road grader makes, so it makes its first inroad along the road, then marches unstoppably through the woods, making a botanical desert of solid GM wherever it goes.

While I was pulling and throwing the budding mustard plants into the road, our elected Washington County Court of Common Pleas Judge and his wife stopped to chat and ask what I was doing.  They've been seeing me loping along past their house for months and took that chance to figure out who I was and why I'm always out with my little doggie. I was delighted to give them a quick lesson on GM identification and control. They'd never seen it before, and like most people, weren't aware of what it does. Randy offered to take the huge wad of plants home and burn them for me. I gladly took him up on it, warning him not to lay them anywhere first lest they release seeds. I told him I feel a sense of stewardship toward this county, and he said he does, too. 

Just a few hundred yards along, I found the biggest stand of twinleaf I've ever seen, and the white stars of Trillium grandiflorum. That whole green carpet is twinleaf and Dutchman's breeches. Ahhh. This is why I pull garlic mustard.

In front of the judge's home, a lost little least sandpiper was mucking around in the ditch. Poor baby. So tired, having flown all night. I let him be, wishing him a good feed and a good migration. Not one of my best bird photos, but I have only my phone when I run. He was species #29 for the morning, on a morning when I'd log 76 in three hours!! Ah May. May may may may MAY.

The fog persists well into the morning along Duck Creek. I love it, and make sure to get out by 7:15 so as to get max fog. It extends the birds' singing time, and cools me as I lope along. 

All too soon it will be hot, hot, hot. 80's all this first week of May. Arrgh. Not running weather, unless  you get out early and run in the fog.

The Bacon appreciates the cool, too. When he begins to lag behind me, I know my Dogmometer is getting too hot.

A not-so-old homesite, with remnant lilacs telling the tale of habitation, of where the front walk went.

By and by, the blue struggles through. 

And the woods is so full of song and promise.

In my next post, we'll check all my bluebird boxes, and see what's inside them! 

Incident at Duck Creek

You never know what you might find in a good creek. Along its banks, tall ironweed and tickseed sunflower light up the meadow.

Down under the bridge, some unexpected animal tracks light up my switchboard. Anyone know what these are?
If the blunt, round front toes don't tip you off, maybe you'll slide into the answer here:Spoiler alert!

One of my favorite mammals of all, known for its playfulness: the otter, Lutra canadensis.
Oh rapture, oh joy. Otters have been the subject of reintroduction programs in this area, and I hope they're busy making more otters. I feel grateful to live in a state where otters and ospreys, American burying beetles and Karner blue butterflies are thought worthy of reintroduction. Ohio's Division of Wildlife is not just about turkeys and deer. Maybe someday we will see Lutra arrowing through the pools or hallumping along the banks of Duck Creek.

Phoebe repairs to her dreaming log.

Liam skips stones, peers into the deeper pools, and searches for nothing or something in particular. Looking for crawdads or salamanders, he turns over flat rocks. There is something very strange under this one. He turns it over in his hand, over and over.He takes it around, to ask what it might be. Everyone is mystified, even Margaret.

No one knows what it is, not even Mommy, but she's sure it's a claw, and not a tooth. It's too big for any bear that might be here in southern Ohio--too big for any bear on the planet. What could it be?Duck Creek has given up some of its secrets, but there are so many more to discover. We will track down this mystery by finding someone who knows...Boneman.