Jemima on PBS Nature! Tonight!

Jemima's last visit was Christmas Eve 2017. But she has achieved immortality!

Way back at the end of June, a magical thing happened. Mark Carroll, a natural history cinematographer absolutely dripping in awards (his latest, an Emmy for his work with filmmaker Ann Prum of Coneflower Studios on PBS Nature's "Super Hummingbirds,"), arrived at Indigo Hill.

Through the magic of social media and college connections, Ann, wife of my birding buddy and fellow Harvard classmate Rick Prum (himself a MacArthur fellow for his work studying bird plumage, his book the Evolution of Beauty, and mating systems), had become aware of Jemima. It occurred to her that Jemima might be the perfect semi-wild bird to play the Avian Predator in Coneflower's butterfly special, in production for Nature.

Jem had been free since the 11th of June. Could I keep her around, train her to come in for caterpillars; get her to cooperate for the shooting? From those questions hung a big story and a LOT of stressing on my part. I laugh every time I think of it.

 

Working with Jemima and Mark to get video of her, in the wild, bashing and eating caterpillars, is a rollicking story in itself. For obvious reasons, I won't tell it here, but it's one of my favorite chapters in Saving Jemima, the book I'm working on for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Due out October 2019. I keep saying that so I will meet my deadline of Oct. 1, 2018. Yikes that's coming up fast.

It was such an honor to be able to make this sequence happen for Mark Carroll and Coneflower and Nature. As I'll relate in the book, it was allll up to Jemima whether or not to cooperate. You probably can't imagine what that was really like. Arrrrgh.

Jemima tickles Mark Carroll as he sets up a shot on a hot June day in our yard. Photo by Bill Thompson III

The result of Mark's work and my worry will air TONIGHT, Wednesday, April 4, at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, on PBS's Nature. I will probably be bawling my head off in awe and wonder as my tatty blue daughter does her worst to hapless caterpillars right on the TV screen in the living room where she played. I plan to put my iPhone on a tripod aimed at the TV so I can watch it over and over (I lack the ability to record otherwise). I hope you'll be watching!

News from the Hill

Two festivals back-to-back--one in Tennessee, and one in Florida, have just about laid me flat. I breathed something in on the germ tube to Tennessee, and it hit me the Saturday of that festival, and by gum it's still here, 12 days later. Sick as a dog in Florida, but managed to muster enough voice to give a talk and sing a two-hour gig with the Rain Crows. One thing I'll say, being that sick and having to soldier through makes one re-examine one's priorities. I've got one more year of total craziness coming up, with a couple of dozen festivals and talks, and then, by God, I'm gonna stay home and do my real work. I've been slathering myself in Vick's Vapo-rub, sucking on Fisherman's Friend lozenges, and going to bed at 8:30 every night. Tell the coroner when they find me to check for menthol overdose. 

With few exceptions, all I really want when I'm away is to come back home. I think about my neighbors and friends and know they're missing me. 

Buffy definitely misses me when I'm gone. She looks pretty good this winter! She's easily 9 or 10, but her weepy left eye looks a lot better than usual, and she's keeping the weight on. Proud of her.

I never see Buffy without Ellen's daughter Flag. I love seeing them together, love believing Buffy adopted Flag and Pinky when Ellen was murdered. And I wonder where Pinky might be keeping himself. Haven't seen him since fall, but I'll know him when I see him.

Weirdest thing: my chipmunks have stopped hibernating. They're here every day, no matter the weather. You'd think they'd crawl into a well-lined burrow and sleep away the single digits, but no. What is with that? Anyone else noticing chipmunk activity year-round? O Powers that Be, what does this mean?

The males are fighting a lot these days, which I always find amusing to photograph.

Whoop! that's two chipmunks in a pancake and syrup blur of motion. I'm thinking of the tiger running around the base of the tree until he turned into syrup in the problematically titled story Little Black Sambo, an 1899 vintage kids' book still popular when I was young. Dating myself, much? Man. I'm older than dirt. This happens when you blog for 13 years.

In case I had any doubt as to their gender, I figured it out when they took a breather...mighty fine pair there, sir.

I really dig photographing chipmunks. They're always up to something. And one really nice thing about them is that when they strike a pose, they tend to hold it for minutes on end. That's hard to find in a mammal. 

In other news from Indigo Hill, the greenhouse is beginning to show signs of life. Toughest winter yet for my plants. Most of my beloved geraniums have a black stem rot that is killing them off, and they're dropping like flies. I suspect it's fungal, or perhaps bacterial, and it seems there's nothing I can do about it. It just keeps spreading. This little alpine geranium, Erodium reichardii from Cyprus and Corsica, is a welcome exception. As in: Not croaking. We like that!

 The other geranium that isn't croaking is "Happy Thought Red." Great Scott, what a plant it is!! I took this photo today, with my glove for scale. Yep, she's 5' across and going for 6. Here's to plants that aren't dying. I'm so glad this one is prospering. I've taken a bunch of cuttings just in case.

If you're going to be overtaken by a geranium, this is a goodun' to be overtaken by. I adore this plant. Its velvety lime leaves, splotched emerald; its brilliant scarlet-cerise flowers. What's not to love?

One of my occasional fantasies was to be a grower of specialty geraniums. Root rot has put the kibosh on that dream. Let it go...

There are other plants to love, like this "Weeping Blue Ginger" that's actually a spiderwort, Dichorisandra. 

Speaking of letting go, I haven't seen Jemima since Christmas Eve. I've no idea where she's gone. A big flock of 13 swept in right around Christmas, when the severe cold came in, and they stayed until the cold broke. It seemed they replaced Jem's clan, which disappeared altogether. Now I've got seven jays in the yard, and I don't recognize them. Sometimes I think I'm seeing Maybelline and Darko, but I just can't be sure. My frame of reference is gone. I sure am not seeing my Jemima. Even though I put out the good stuff every day. Jay stuff. 

The letting go was incredibly difficult. Having Phoebe home for a month really helped with that, gave me some perspective and welcome diversion, someone else to love and care and hope for. I am given to obsessing, and I still look carefully at every blue jay I see, hoping one will turn out to be Jem or one of her clan. I've made progress though; I don't watch and hope all day long now. No, I just watch. 

I lost my favorite rabbit Notch last summer, probably to Cindy the bobcat. I then fell in love with a rabbit I named Red, a languid, lanky animal who lounged around artistically in the heat.

I'm now trying to figure out if the rabbit I've been calling Julie Fatbottom could be Red, disguised in winter fur. Her ears look too short to be Red's. But maybe it's because her fur is so thick? They share a wide thin white collar...I just can't be sure.

The only other thing Red and Julie seem to share is a deep red blaze between the shoulders. Maybe with spring and thinner fur, the mystery will be revealed. Maybe Julie Fatbottom is really Red. It doesn't really matter who the rabbit is, I know. But I reach, again and again, for these connections, this continuity, with the wild things around me. It keeps me going, keeps me hopeful. It gets pretty lonely out here.

My heated dog dish birdbath crapped out on me in the middle of the coldest period. I called every feed store and hardware in the area, and finally had to drive 1.5 hr. to Athens to get another because they were all backordered. I get such a kick out of this simple device. I understand from retailers that they rarely last two years. If there's anything I dislike it's built-in obsolescence, and having to throw out a perfectly good looking dish that no longer works. Ugh! But I'm hooked on the birds who are hooked on it.

I think that the female flicker who uses it may be the same one who visited the year I first acquired mine. This photo was taken Dec. 8, 2014. This little gal, to my great delight, was one of my first customers at the heated dish!

And lo and behold, here's a female flicker looking very much like her on Jan. 31, 2018. Coinkydink? I think not. Flickers aren't that common around here in winter, and female flickers who visit heated dog dish baths are an even smaller subset. Grasping for a thread of connection, again. I grasp with joy.

And while I was photographing her yesterday, wondering if she might have been visiting the yard for four years, a drop-dead gorgeous jay landed on the bowl beside her. WOW. What's gonna happen now? I can tell you, if that were a red-bellied woodpecker, there'd have been a rumble!

But she didn't bat an eye. She regarded the jay calmly. Dipped for another drink.

There's room here for both of us, she seemed to say. 

And my heart swelled like to burst when the jay dipped its head and drank, too. Little matter that the flicker could have put its eye out with one quick strike from that scimitar bill. The jay seemed to know she wouldn't. 

Ahh, birds and little plug-in dog dishes. They bring me such joy. 

So the winter days roll by, and I work and cough and cough and work. I've just put the finishing touches on a slideshow about the Vienna snowy owl. I never dreamt I'd be working on it for weeks, but I have been. When all was gathered together, I had 15,000 words and 160 images to sort through. I realized that, over the past month, I've written a book on that owl. I know why I did it. It's because Jemima left. I needed another focus. Gathering his story together and tying it all up with a bow has been a deeply absorbing pursuit, one I'm grateful to have had. I'll present it Tuesday, February 6, at 6:30 pm in Athens, Ohio.

Maybe I'll see you there. Until then, grab that last light of day. Get out there.

This evening marks Imbolc, an ancient pagan holiday that celebrates the midpoint of winter and the turning toward spring. I learned that from my friend Gale on Instagram. And I am ON IT. Listening for the woodcock, grabbing at those connections.

I'm Back! Where's Jemima?

It's been a week, but I feel like I've just now returned from 12 days away, ten of them spent in the Ecuadorian Andes and foothills. I left on Opening Day of our weeklong gun season for whitetails, so I missed the whole bang-bangy thing.  It was very wet and not warm in the Andes, so these frigid Ohio temperatures weren't much of a shock. I had an 18-hour journey home, getting up at 4 AM in Quito and finally walking in the door, loaded down with luggage and fresh groceries, at 10 PM Friday night, December 8. The trip was incredible, awesome, fun as all getout, full of fabulous birds and wonderful friends who were all grooving on it together. I'll return. I have to!! There's so much more to experience!

 While I was in Ecuador, I dreamt of birds every single night, except for the night that I dreamt of my DOD. All the birds needed me to care for them. They kept getting into trouble, losing feathers, breaking wings.  Obligations, things I wasn't taking care of, birds that needed me--the theme of every night's dreams while I was away. I may have been having fun as a bird guide all day, but at night the birds reminded me of my true work. Finally, I was home.

After a fitful night full of dreams of--get this--living in a house with glass-free windows, where birds kept getting trapped-- blue-gray tanagers**, cedar waxwings, and hummingbirds that kept getting into trouble, all of which I had to help--I jumped out of bed, wanting only to see Jemima, at 6:30 AM. I hadn't had nearly enough sleep, but before it got fully light, I filled all the feeders and washed and refilled the bird bath and put all the best food out. Whole corn, cracked corn, sunflower hearts, black oil, peanuts in and out of the shell. And in the Secret Studio Window Feeder, diced cooked chicken thigh, walnuts, pecans and unsalted cocktail peanuts. Yep, got 'er covered. I was sitting vigil at my usual post when along came Flag!

**This is a cool thing the brain does in dreams. Blue-gray sounds like blue jay. So when I'm dreaming of blue-gray tanagers, chances are my brain is substituting them for blue jays. It's always about Jemima!

 Flag still wears her wide white eyerings, her surprised look.

She was closely followed by Aunt Buffy, a stout little dachshund among whitetails. I love Buffy. She looks terrific, considering that she may be nearly as old as Ellen. Her eye, while still squinty, isn't weeping any more. Progress!

 My two wee does made it through hunting season! Not surprising. That's why I let myself fall in love with scrawny little does. The big bucks? I look, I admire, but I try not to let them take my heart, because they're all marked for death. If they make it through the bloody first week of December, well, that's a bonus, gravy. Good for them.

And that morning of December 9, I watched and photographed an armload of blue jays, but not The Blue Jay. I amused myself photographing them, gathering data, trying to tell one from the other in the flock of seven. I felt rusty, out of practice. This is Darko. He's had three different nicknames, until I realized that I was lookingat the same bird the whole time.

That super white face, contrasting with the dark breast and sides, is one good marker. Also his broad black eyebrows.

This is Lilac. Notice anything about this bird's overall color, especially in contrast to Darko? Yep. Pale. Lilac. Low-contrast. Even the lower throat is lilac-colored. Thin eyebrows. You see the subtlety I'm talking about. These are two extremes in coloration. Most are barely discernible from each other. I have to see a jay a bunch of times and take a bunch of pics before I can identify it with any confidence. I'm a real beginner at this.

But even as I watched and waited and wondered where she was, I knew she was here. I could feel it. My heart was happy and full of anticipation. Liam and Bill had been faithfully putting her chicken and peanuts, corn and sunflower hearts out each morning. At 9:07 AM she finally comes in. I photograph her without knowing it's her at first. Only when she takes several hops and jumps up onto the trunk of a birch do I figure out it's Jemima. These are little things a normal jay wouldn't do. A normal jay would spread its wings and fly. But she's here and Hallelujah! she's made it another twelve days without me around fuss over her! The boys had reported that her meat and peanuts were completely gone every night. The pessimist in me figured that the chipmunks must have defeated my homemade baffle around the tree by her feeder, because Jemima had never finished her meat. Surely something else was taking her food.

  Jemima grabbing corn to cache, Dec. 9

Pigging out on chicken, Dec. 11

But the Jemima I saw on December 9 was a different bird. She was ravenous, taking gullet after gullet-ful of meat. And what was different about that was that she was carrying it away and obviously cacheing it in the woods. When I left in late November, it was still warm--60-degree days. I was intrigued to see that, while she cached large amounts of corn and seed, she always swallowed and ate her chicken. If she did carry away a big gob of chicken, she'd fly to a nearby tree to process and eat it all. She knew that, when it was warm outside, she couldn't hide meat without losing it to decay. It was a different story now. I filled her meat bowl four times, and thrilled to see her visit at least ten times. She was in and around the yard from 9 until nearly 2 pm. At evening every scrap of chicken was gone, and I knew that Jemima had taken it all.

When she flew out the driveway, I followed her. I talked and sang to her. She turned around and flew toward me. No sweeter welcome home. If she could have said MAMA'S HOME!! I think she would have. She showed me how she uses the tangles to navigate to her feeder. Tree to tree she flutters. 

She was here with me for two days--December 9, the morning after my return, and she was back on December 11. And then she vanished again.  I haven't seen her or Maybelline since then. Is it driving me nuts? You bet your bippy it is. But Jemima taking off for a week at a time is just another thing in the great continuum of Things Over Which I Have No Control.

This continuum includes pretty much everything in my life. Jemima is here to teach me more about letting go. It's the one thing I'm worst at. My pitbull tendencies serve me well when it comes to writing my column, finishing books, getting that last illustration done under the deadline, and just generally persevering in the face of obstacles. But letting go of the people and creatures I love is a real challenge, because there inevitably comes a time when you have to. I think I'm programmed to love and hold onto them forever, no matter what. Jem's working on that in me.

I've held vigil at the studio window for six days. Maybe she'll be back on Day 8. Stay tuned. Until then, I'll be editing Ecuador photos. And you're gonna love 'em!!

I'm Having Blue Jay for Thanksgiving

Thank you for the overwhelmingly positive and beautiful response to "The Thing About Jemima." I  spend way too much time worrying about reader reaction to this or that revelation that's been bothering me for months or years until I finally up and say something. It was just wonderful to be able to say, "Here's the deal, and here's the kind of reaction I can handle, feeling as I do about it, so please let's stick to that." And to have everyone, to a person, come through with flying colors, writing lovely positive sentiments that are actually helping me through the glory, the wonder, the hope and, let's face it, the pain of it all. 

My Instagram and Facebook friend Denise wrote, 

"Thank you for sharing her plight. I can now pray for her safety."

To which I replied, "Oddly, that makes this near-pagan feel a lot better!"

Denise: "Ha ha! You be you, I'll be me. We both are for Jemima!" 

So thank you for keeping Jem and her anxious foster Ma in your hearts. When I got up November 20, I hadn't seen her for five days. But it was an easier wait than the eight-day Jemima-free marathon I'd lived through before my last series of sightings. The weather this week had been lousy, cold and cloudy, then warm, with torrential rain, then cloudy and cold, and it just didn't feel like blue jay weather to me. And I barely saw any blue jays around the feeders or yard. That didn't keep me from my vigil. I watched. I waited. I got a little writing done. I did not curl into a ball. But mostly, I hung in there and had faith that she'd come back at least to check in. Baby steps, improvement. 

I raised the blinds on the morning of November 20 and saw the red stain of sunrise spreading into a clear blue sky. Ahhhh. I will see my Jemima today, I thought. 

And sure enough, as soon as I put the corn and seed out, jays were bouncing all over the place. But not The Jay. 

So stuffed with cracked corn they look like bad taxidermists' mounts. Look at the leftmost bird. Glurp!

They're not Jemima, but oh they gladden my heart. I'm trying so hard to tell them apart as individuals, but it's really tough when the cast keeps changing.

A chipmunk (one of the scrappers from a previous post) streaks through and startles a jay into a little corvine capriole. Boing! Ha ha!!

Once again, Chippy sends the jittery jay airborne, while a red-bellied woodpecker says, "Ga-aaw-lee! What's up with you two?" Even brazen blue jays never quite get used to small bloodthirsty mammals zooming right under their feet. Nor should they.

Gosh, I look at those immaculate, intact wings, and just sigh. Jemima should be so lucky. But then it occurs to me that if she were that lucky, she might be in Georgia right now. It is what it is, and I am tremendously blessed to still be seeing a bird I released in mid-June, in November!

I tell Liam, "I know Jemima's going to show up this morning. I just have to be patient." The new bunny who is frequenting the feeder area (post the mid-August cleanout by Cindy the Bobcat) is amusing me greatly. This bunny has rather short ears and a very fat bottom, and it has a habit of coming out of the tangle behind the rhubarb, squirting up into the air with friskiness, then running back in. Soon it will be corn-fed and even fatter of bottom. Maybe I'll call it Julie.

So I watched the bunny for awhile.

And then she appears, at 8:53 AM, flying in from Stage Left. I'd know those tatty wings anywhere.

I start dancing around the studio snapping photos and laughing. I'm transformed from my everyday loose bundle of hope and anxiety to something approaching pure joy. I call Liam in and we holler endearments to her through the glass. She doesn't mind. 

What were you ever worried about? I don't understand you and your handwringing. I'm off doing my stuff. You go ahead and do your stuff. We'll get together now and then. That's how it goes.

My wise friend Margarethe, who has raised several corvid species and studies them always, has been sharing her experiences. Nothing like the voice of experience! She advised that Jemima's absences could get longer and longer as she builds independence and social networks.  She imparted this wisdom:

"You are both lucky and terribly exposed to hardship because you live right in Blue Jay territory, so Jemima could stay around. But as a juvenile, she still might have to join a more distant flock and find a new place of her own. Her disappearance could have any kind of reason. You seem to be extremely lucky as a mother. Now your Jay is giving you the experiences of anxiety that many face with their human teens. Open your heart and both joy and pain are inevitable. Lucky you."

Agreed on  my luck as a mother to humans. And agreed on that open heart--how, being open, it's ready to love, and to hurt, too, always. I tell myself, "She's a BIRD." She's a bird. 
How does a bird get so deep into my heart?  

She picks up some corn and flies up to the birch. With a good leap and a lot of flapping, she can get some altitude. Enough to get off the ground and into a tree. Yay for that.

And she appears at her buffet, this glorious stained-glass medley of blue, black and white, and you'd never know there was anything amiss, really, unless you noticed that she has no primaries poking out from under those gaudy tertials. 

She loads up on chicken, swallows some of it, then comes back to stuff her gular pouch full.

Ahh is she not the most beautiful? To think she used to let me kiss the top of that sweet head. 

Full up, she hops to the top of the arbor vitae and exits stage left, toward the back yard. This is a new direction! She flies to an ash tree, hops up to near the top, then launches herself into the clear blue air.

Her flight is lopsided, because she has more feathers on her left wing than her right. Phoebe: "She looks like some kind of crazy falling leaf."

But by God she makes it into the crown of the big pine, one of three that Bill and I planted in the winter of 1992. It's the last pine standing. The other two fell last spring. Jemima needs this tree. I need it, too. Please keep standing, Pine. You're a very useful tree.

She disappears into the needles and I can see the branch shaking as she disgorges and pecks apart the wad of chicken she brought. Her moveable feast.

Full as a tick, she puffs out her feathers and lets the sun warm her belly. She rests for about ten minutes. I'm so proud to see my Jem in the very top of the pine. Altitude is her friend. It's her 

hardest -won treasure. 

When she's done resting, I'm lucky to see her launch back toward the feeders. She uses the altitude she gained to have a really good flutter-glide back into the yard, making a grand entrance as jays love to do. I'm agog and thrilled at this bird's adaptability. At the fact that she can disappear for 5 days, 8 days at a time, then show up fit as a fiddle and twice as fat, to gladden her Ma's heart once more. 

How I would love to know where she's been. How far she goes. And how she does it.

This time, she comes in and finishes her chicken, which had been faithfully refreshed each morning, but lying untouched all week. Then she loads up on dry-roasted peanuts and heads toward the east hill. 

I run to the front window just in time to see her launch off the phone line on her long diagonal flight (the 130' one, but who's counting) to the east hill. She amazes me. The robin is also impressed.

I know I probably won't see her again today. And since Liam and I are heading east for Thanksgiving, I know I won't see her for at least another five days. And then I'm home for two days, then headed to Ecuador for ten days. Am I a nervous wreck about it all? Of course. Do I think she'll survive my leaving? Yep. If she needed my subsidy, she'd be there every day. 

But now I'm writing this post, all aglow with the thrill of having seen her at all. I learn so much from her every time she stops in. 

I turn back to my work and, through the closed windows, I hear the croak of a raven! Ravens are rare vagrants to southeast Ohio, but I've had a real run of sightings in October and November. I think I've seen two different pairs and maybe 3 singles. Oh, bring them on!! When I hear a raven I run out onto the back deck, because I have the best chance of photographing them over our meadow. I'm pretty sure that when we take in the game camera, there will be ravens on it. I don't think it's a coincidence that they inspect that part of the meadow--the meatpile is there! 

Sure enough, I'm incredibly lucky to see a raven, being harrassed by a crow.  And even luckier to get a sharp shot of the action (with willow tree photobomb).

Every time the crow dives close to the raven, the huge bird goes tokatok! It sounds just like someone knocking on a hollow log. A most amazing, loud, sonorous, percussive sound. 

My friend Greg Neise did a little Photoshop magic on my photo to better compare the relative shapes and sizes of crow and raven. Crow: top. Raven: lower bird. Look at the difference in their bills! And the length of that raven's wing! 

Seeing this pair of corvids, right after having such a wonderful session with Jemima, feels to me like a great  blessing, a benediction. A lucky sign.

What better Thanksgiving bounty than three corvids in one yard? And Jemima, well and independent and still, somehow, flying free. Keep her in your heart.

This post is dedicated to my sweet friend Melanie and beautiful Alex

 @myecocentriclife on Instagram. Go give her some love.

Sending it with a chorus of blue jay yells and all the love in the world.