Vulture Spring

I'm traveling through New York and New England. Sitting in a beautiful old guest house on the campus of Audubon Greenwich, the first educational nature center in the country. A Carolina wren has just come to the cedar outside my window, attracted by the light, the life, in the normally dark house. It tip-tilts, calls, makes eye contact. I wave. Hello darling. Yes, it's Zick. If I had a mealworm I'd give you one.

 Tonight I'll give my last talk, for Potapaug Audubon Society at the Old Lyme (CT) Town Hall at 7 pm. Turkey vultures are featured in it. This talk is different. It's equal parts spirituality and avian rehab. Why not? Give 'em something different. As much as I speak, I need something different, too, so it's fresh for the audience and for me.

Last month, I looked up into the warm Costa Rican sky above La Selva Biological Reserve in the Caribbean lowlands, and saw a conveyer belt of turkey vultures headed sedately, serenely north. None of them moving a wing. Just rolling, rolling, rolling on the air currents, conserving energy, headed home.

There are 314 vultures in this photo. I cannot convey the amazement of watching so many vultures roll over for so long. I thought about passenger pigeons, the way people wrote about their limitless flocks. I stood there, open mouthed, in wonder.

They looked like fleas, so high were they in the sky. And it occurred to me that every day, birds do things that we cannot conceive of and would not survive. We have to buy a ticket and get on a jet to get from Costa Rica to Ohio. They lift off and soar there.

Not two weeks later, Phoebe and I had a girl's night out back in chilly cold McConnellsville, Ohio. And here they came. I stood jabbering in a parking lot. Wondering aloud if these were the same birds I'd watched in Central America. Marveling. And feeling so lucky to see them again, home. 

We've done our part to make sure they feel welcome. 

A deer carcass in our field proved a powerful attractant. We set up a game camera. At first it took lots of pictures of grass, with bits of TUVU.

Best count was five at once. That's the carcass, with game camera on it, at lower left. 

The first night I was awakened by the incessent, piercing screams of a gray fox. And at dawn, there he was, full-furred, magnificent, crossing the meadow. I could not photograph him in time. But oh what a beauty. I was so glad to see him, to connect the screams with the animal. That's what the fox says: YEEEEEAHHHROW!! YEEEEARRRHOW!! over and over until you want to holler back.

Maybe my favorite game cam pic. Crow with house.

Sasquatch! They often sample carrion, but not if it's too rotty.

Having a deer carcass in one's field is a fun and lucky thing. Definitely an asset, and it's nice to have it deliquesce in a place where all the animals feeding on it won't get disturbed by cars. Carcasses disappear quite quickly when the clean-up crews can work undisturbed. As you will see...

How I love my vultures. And I think they love me too.

This one's for DOD. He'd be 102 this June. Each year I try to repot my bonsai trees on April 10, the day he died in 1994. Can't do it this year, so it'll have to wait 'til I get home. But I know he's smiling to see my redhead watering the greenhouse while I'm gone. Especially the tomatoes, which are now forming fruit. He loved tomatoes.

The Carolina wren who came to spy on me before dawn just brought its mate and they both yawped at me through the window here at Audubon Greenwich. Word's out. Zick's in the house!

Sarapiqui River Morning

A morning trip on the Rio Sarapiqui into La Selva Biological Reserve was just the tonic we needed.

And it was off to a good start, with a colony of long-nosed bats clinging to the underside of the dock!

Right off the bat, I'm happy. These little characters roost in fairly conspicuous places, often in charming vee patterns. I've seen them in Guyana, clinging in staggered lines to vertical palm trunks near the water. Right out in the open, but looking like marks on the bark. The outflung wings are characteristic--quite a different roosting position than most bats. I marvel that they can cling perfectly upside down on concrete. It makes me wonder if there is some suction capability in their feet, in addition to sharp claws. Everything about bats amazes me.

A closer look reveals mouselike faces and a fabulous fiddle-shaped pattern on their backs.

I don't know why some bats are so ornate, but I'm thankful for it. Sorry for the lousy photo--it was the best I could do in the dark and distance.

Sunlight flooded the river, and there was an endless parade of life forms to admire. 

Drinking from Mom, while she's drinking. This reminded me of the days nursing my kids when I'd fill up a quart jug of water and have it drunk down by the time they were done. I felt like some kind of vending machine, turning all that water and food into milk. That's a pretty incredible thing to ask one's body to do, and it fascinated me, getting in touch with my mammalian heritage.

Green iguanas perched high in the trees, always a jolt of surprise to see a lizard in a tree...

or scurrying along the bank. This is a lovely youngun'. They get a bit less gaily marked as they age.

A noble-looking black river turtle watched us slide by.

This female anhinga turned jerkily as we passed, giving us every possible angle for our cameras and making us all giggle.

Here. How about this side? Like this angle?

A green heron stalked the shallows. Whether I see it in a West Virginia backwater or a Costa Rican river, it always delights me with its subtle combination of rust, maroon and oiled verdigris.

The same goes for the wintering spotted sandpipers, constant companions on the Muskingum and the Sarapiqui alike. Who knows. This bird may come back to nest in Ohio.

But this one won't--a long-tailed tyrant! Now those, we don't have. That's a mighty fancy flycatcher, perching out in the open on a river snag, waiting for a hapless insect to fly by.

And here's the bird that caused such a stir at last November's Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival--the Amazon kingfisher. My friend Jeff Bouton, a rep for Leica, found it, and all hell broke loose in the birding community. This one seems unaware that, if it only flew a couple thousand miles north, it could be a star. Egad, what a face. Give it some skin-stretched wings, and you've got a bitchin' pterodactyl.