Robins in February

We're drowning in Ohio. The Ohio River is predicted to crest at 38.3' (down from 39.5' (ohhhh noooo) on Sunday afternoon. Watching the predictions, which mean the world to those affected, has been nervewracking. They keep revising them upward, and the latest jump (9 pm Saturday) was a durn foot!! Up here on the ridgetop, it's a minor inconvenience not to be able to get into town by our usual routes, but in Marietta, it's disastrous. Days of deluge have turned my yard into a pond and flooded our route into Marietta. I tried to talk Liam through a route to town on Friday so he could help evacuate the boathouse where he rows crew.  I sent him down some iffy muddy roads and inadvertently got him hemmed in by quickly rising water on either side of him, albeit a couple of miles apart. Couldn't go forward, couldn't go back. He, with one bar of 4G on which to communicate. Me, in intermittent text contact with him, back home, frrrreeeeakkking out.  Bill had to jump in his car in town and find a route so he could come down by a back road over a ridge and lead Liam out. That was my quick, lovely nooner panic attack--thinking of my kid surrounded by milk-chocolate creek water with nowhere to go. On the phone afterward, Bill said, "When things like this happen, you can't panic."

Oh. Except that I did, and I do. I guess I have to stop doing that when my kid when last heard from was in his car with floodwater on either side of him and 40 minutes have gone by in total silence. Anyway, rescue effected; Find my Friends on my iPhone pinpointed his location; cellphones and mama and daddy love saved the day. It's probably good for a kid to get in a sticky wicket now and then. It's just not much fun when it's your kid.

Poor Marietta is caught once again with its pants down by the rains and the swollen Ohio and the fast-running Muskingum, by Duck Creek dumping all that runoff into both of them. The last flood, just a month ago, carried off $30,000 worth of docks from the boathouse where Liam rows. So, big fundraisers to replace those, on top of all the fundraisers it takes just to keep these kids in rowing shells. Thank goodness the replacement docks have yet to be built, because those would be gone, gone, gone now. The boathouse itself is about 1/3 underwater; the rowers got all the shells out and carried them to safety, but oh, what a terrible mess. Front Street in Marietta is under, which means bad, bad things for the wonderful businesses there. It's a resilient town, but spring flooding gets old, and it results in empty storefronts in a town that struggles to remain as vibrant as it is.

 If only we could funnel this rain to places out West that need it so badly. This climate change, and the odd jet stream that has formed since the ocean water is so warm, is tough, bringing Arctic cold way farther south and east than usual, while it visits arid drought on the West. And it's not fake, and it's nobody's imagination. Nobody makes up a flood like this. It's here, the unfriendly neighbor, creeping up the front steps.

If I'm only going to see the sun first thing in the morning, by gum I'm going to get out and greet it.

 

And the unexpected gift this day: a peach glow to the northeast

 

and a big flock of American robins, bringing indescribable beauty and peace in their songs and their brick-red breasts. Robins, studding the haymeadow like cloves in a pale ham.

 

I watch them leaning over to pluck Smilax fruits and remember that I've left a mystery unresolved. 

 

I posted this photo of an epic pileated woodpecker poop on Facebook, saying that it was full of carpenter ants and sumac seeds, and a knowledgeable friend, the kind that's good to have, asked if that wasn't a Smilax seed instead. So I'd made a mental note to go flesh a Smilax fruit and determine if he was right.

I knew it was pileated woodpecker poop because there was this kind of working all around where I'd found it.

 

Also because I am in the habit of looking for, and finding, pileated woodpecker poop. You should try it. You can often find awesome turds where they've been working for awhile, close to the ground.  An undisturbed pileated woodpecker has tremendous sticktoitiveness. (I use that word in irony, as it's one of my least favorite words in the universe). I mean, that bird will work for hours on a stump or fallen log. So of course it's going to have to go, and if it's on or very near the ground, the poop is deposited gently. That way it doesn't disintegrate when it hits the ground, and you get these fabulous J-shaped cylinders. 

So when the robins were done eating and had flown, I got a Smilax fruit and chewed the flesh off it, finding it pleasingly sweet but very stainy, like hackberry fruit. And sure enough, there was the big round puffy warm-brown seed that my friend James Ferrari had spotted. Smilax. Perfectly good diet item for a winter pileated woodpecker. Sumac, too. Poison ivy, though that's all gone by now. They take a lot of fruit.

 

Right near the Smilax patch is a woods road that's had a lot of erosion of its bank. I am always finding little bulbs exposed here. I used to think they were spring beauties but now I'm not so sure. Perhaps they're snowdrops or crocuses, escaped from an old homestead. A bulb is an incredible thing. It may persist for many decades, and it should be buried pretty deeply. 

 

This little bulb was exposed through the terrible cold, the single digits that we had for weeks after Christmas. And it is sending out shoots. What kind of antifreeze does it keep in its cells?? I cannot imagine. The least I could do is replant it. After:

 

And its suffering companions, too.  Before:

 

and after.  

 

Another little Science Chimp errand--keep checking to see what these shoots become. Hoping for flowers.

I try to leave the world a better place, even if it's only in small ways, whenever I go anywhere. It won't be long before I can go check on the ones I saved and maybe see this.

April 3, 2017--not far from where I replanted the bulbs.

Small good deeds...

Even as replanting bulbs gives me a warm glow, picking up trash on my road invariably sends me into the foulest of moods. There's something about dumping out tobakky chaws and getting brown spitgoo on my hands that sends my mood corkscrewing into the ground. I had my arms absolutely loaded with trash after only about 200 feet, and I came upon this. Awww!!

 

Thoughtful of them to bag up their car trash for pickup. Beats having to pick up each item individually. Thanks so much!  I've learned that trying to carry everything I've found only makes me crankier, so when my arms are full I make trash stations along the road, then come back to get it all in my car. The sole plus of picking up my neighbors' trash is not having to look at it any more. Well, I have to admit there's also the anthropologist's thrill of discovering what constitutes "food" for litterbugs. Mountain Dew, Busch Lite, Little Debbie, McDonald's, RedMan. None of those things are getting in my cakehole, ever.

Back to more wholesome things...I have a constant aesthetic tug-o-war with the dratted plastic-wrapped haybales. While I like the way they catch skylight and define the landscape, I loathe the wrapping. I can't walk by without wondering where all that miles of plastic goes when they're unwrapped for cattle to feast on. As a photographer, I ask myself:  Do I frame them out of each shot, or shrug and include them? They lend a surreal, giant blancmange air to this shot. I saw a titmouse drop down and disappear entirely into the rotted top of a fencepost. When it emerged, it had a nut in its bill. Perhaps it or another bird had cached it earlier. Off it flew with its prize. I love seeing what birds eat when they aren't cadging peanuts and sunflower seeds.

 More robins on Smilax. You might call it greenbriar, or catbriar.

 Robins, with the dratted haybales again.

I jockey around, and finally decide that placing the robins above the distant bales works best.

 

 If I stand in just the right spot, I can see the porch light from the farmhouse through a barn window. It's a Stonehenge moment, but you'll have to click on the photo to see it.

 I'm not done walking. I need more miles. So I head on out our road and walk the perimeter of a large hayfield that narrowly escaped becoming a drill pad for an oil well. Had that happened, I probably would have had to leave my home. There's a vulnerability to living atop the Marcellus Shale. You're at your neighbors' utter mercy, if they have any. And living at their mercy is a far bigger deal than having to pick up their litter.

 

I love how the road looks, like a smooth gray bushmaster, snaking off through the hills.  I never tire of this vista. That's a heavy sky, after a faintly promising sunrise. There will be more rain today.  I walk the edges of the hayfield, and find all that's left of a small deer I saw poached and lying in the field a couple weeks ago. No vultures in yet to clean it up, but the coy-wolves took care of it.

Everywhere are the reminders that this beauty I imbibe so deeply is fragile. That none of it can be counted on to always be here. These giant firs were planted many years ago as a windbreak for a classic Ohio farmhouse that I loved. It's been long since razed and burned. A bunch of jonquils and a few naked ladies (pink amaryllis) still come up in the field where the house once stood. I may be one of only two people on our road now who even remembers that house, or the man who once lived in it.

 

People and buildings die; landscapes change.  Logging lays bare a view I'd never seen before. We are always chewing up the land here. Nothing stays the same.

 

I listen to the robin's song

Saying not to worry

           

Turkeys in the Straw, Geese on the Levee

In our birding safari, we proceeded from the Harmar Bridge in Marietta, Ohio, to the Levee, where Canada geese gather to stare out at the river, poop, honk, and wait for the people who feed them. This gentleman liked their lineup, and got down low to photograph them. It's not often I see people doing the things I do.

Several photos taken, he strode off.

I swung the lens around just in time to catch another smooch in progress. My goodness those young people do a lot of smooching.

I'm sorry. I can't help it. It's just so sweet. I'll leave you alone now. I'll go photograph somebody else. 

I found some hipsters taking pictures of each other. 

They were extremely skinny, and the guy had a big ol' bee beard. Somebody please explain to me the big ol' bee beard thing, especially when it's paired with super skinny cigarette pants and knit hats. I don't get it. Nah, that's OK. There's no explaining fashion to me. Fashion left me in the fog years ago. These people clearly know what they're doing. I'm wearing the same dung-colored clothes I've always worn.

We walked toward the confluence of the Muskingum and the Ohio, where it's legal to feed ducks and geese (they don't let people do that on the Levee. Too much poop.)

There was a young musician practicing guitar there. What a nice thing to see! On this murky warmish day, people were out doing interesting things. I love walking around Marietta. It's waking up in so many wonderful ways.

And there was Greta, Queen of the Levee! I love seeing my good old friends. She was looking strong as always. 

A pretty good looking black duck...but I had a feeling it had mallard genes, or it wouldn't have been sleeping on the levee with me standing right there. 

A sleepy mallard drake peeked at us, then closed his eye, then peeked. His eyelids are white. I explained to Liam how birds can sleep with one half of their brain at a time, and keep the other half engaged and peeking around for danger. I think I do something like that, too.

I was searching the levee's earthen slopes for a familiar shape. 

Mr. Lonely! the hybrid goose (Canada x Chinese swan-necked) who I saved from entangling monofilament back on Nov. 3, 2016. 

photo by Dorothy Lowe

I always fancy he remembers me. He looks like he does. I was pleased to see his feet healthy and unswollen once again. What a guy, what a goose. I love his spirit. 

He showed me how well his feet work. 

The next thing we did was drive across the river. We were driving along the flats in Boaz, WV, just across the river from Marietta, when we saw a zillion dark specks in a cornfield. 

We piled out of the car at an historic cemetery to get a closer look.

Ivy climbs the old oaks, and yuccas mark the graves.

I love cemeteries. Without this one, there'd surely be a housing development there. But such old cemeteries represent sacred ground, and nobody wants to mess with the people sleeping there.

We peered out of the trees at the massive flock of wild turkeys feeding on waste corn.

When they finally clumped together to adjourn to the forest, I counted 72--my largest flock ever.

I would not be surprised if this spectacular abundance of turkeys is a direct result of the periodical cicada brood of the summer of 2016. Every poult that needed something to eat got it, in spades.  The biggest flock I'd ever counted until now was 17 years ago, during the last cicada outbreak, and that was 41 hens and poults right in our meadow. And they were all eating cicadas.

Our last bird of the day was a rattling kingfisher, somewhere in the mists on the mighty Ohio.

Well, the time has come for another fiddle tune from the Talented Mr. Husic and the Talented Mr. Thompson.

This KitchenMusic tune comes with snap peas AND cauliflower, and a girl eating that cauliflower! Here's "Squirrel Hunters!" I love this one because Bill and Corey are nice and loose from an afternoon of sledding with Liam and Phoebe. I did not partake, for shingly reasons. I could not imagine sitting on a plastic sled, bumping over frozen ground at a high rate of speed. I may never be able to imagine that again.

 Please pardon my hillbilly hollering at the end. I get excited. I love having live old-time music in my kitchen!!!!! WOOOOO!!!

Saving Mr. Lonely

I met Dorothy Lowe and was formally introduced to Mr. Lonely and Greta on February 16, 2016. I was about to give my very first talk on Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest, to the Marietta Natural History Society, and I was uncharacteristically nervous. The first outing of a talk I've worked on for many weeks is always problematic.  I hope it'll all hang together. I hope people will like it. I hope I'll come in under 50 minutes. I hope the projector setup will work, and nothing will go suddenly black. I didn't even have the book yet; it would come out in April, so sales would be nil. I was just hoping I'd get through it.

It was a frigid evening, but there was a fabulous sunset going on so I walked from The Levee House, where the MNHS would be having a little speaker's dinner, down to the levee itself. I wanted to breathe, take some photos, look at the ducks and geese that hang around there all day long.

And there was a little figure there, bundled up like an Eskimo, feeding corn to the geese and ducks.

We fell to talking, of course, and I liked her right away. The faithful kind, the kind of person who doesn't let freezing wind and onrushing dark stay her from her appointed round with the birds she obviously treasured.

Don't miss the gigantic barge steaming by, pushed by a big tug.

Dorothy introduced me to Greta, a domestic greylag, who helps herself right from the bucket. She's the Queen of the Levee. I was charmed, all around. I like people who love animals and do what they can to help them. We talked about nutrition, and I said I was glad to see the geese getting corn instead of bread, which can cause deformities like angel wing, rendering them flightless. Dorothy knew all about that. One of the reasons she feeds the geese and ducks is to educate people who throw bread to them, to give them something better.

It was good to see the birds filling up on corn before the bitter night came. This is what keeps Dorothy visiting the Levee, day after day, year in and year out.

Greta, believe it or not, mated successfully with a Canada gander who gave her three just slightly not Canada children. A bit heavy in the beam, with pale flesh legs and indistinct chin straps; they're nevertheless fully flighted.

Anyway, speaking of hybrids, there's been a goose down at the Marietta Levee for years. Best I can tell, he's the product of a Canada x Chinese swan-necked goose. I see that in his longer neck, and in his high forehead, and the square black top of his deep bill. Dorothy calls him Mr. Lonely, because he's never taken another mate since he lost his a couple of years ago. 

On November 2, Dorothy tagged me in a Facebook post. She'd found Mr. Lonely all tangled up in monofilament. It was wrapped around both his legs. Thanks, slob fishermen; you are legion, and you must clean up after yourselves. Monofilament fishing line is deadly stuff, and it can take months to kill a creature that gets tangled in it. You need to care about that and pack your snarls out with you when you leave. Least you can do!!

 He'd been footbound for four days at least, and he was stuck, she thought, in the rocks on the levee. She wondered what could be done to help him. By the time I saw the post, it was night. I immediately offered to come and see what I could do the first thing in the morning. Before going to sleep, I packed my kit, laid out my clothes, and was ready to go at 7 AM. Had to wait for it to get light!

There he was, with Dorothy standing guard. I love that woman. I'd worn my hiking boots and brought a staff because the footing was iffy. Dorothy thought the monofilament must be caught on something because he hadn't moved for more than a day. I picked my way down the rocks, using a staff for balance.

I was just about to pick Mr. Lonely up when he spread his one good wing and lurched away, into the deep water. D'OH!!! Oh no!! He hadn't been trapped at all. And I wasn't ready when he made his move. He swam with one foot paddling all the way out to the middle of the Ohio River, taking care to avoid the wake of a barge being pushed silently by. Dang it!!

Dorothy and I were undeterred. We were going to get that goose. I made backup plans to drive the 18 miles back home and get my canoe. I called Liam and asked him to bring our net hammock so I could throw it over Mr. Lonely.  To find the snake tongs and throw those in the car, too. We'd get that goose. Dorothy called and shook her pail of corn, and by and by Mr. Lonely came about and swam toward us. She decided to lead him slowly toward the levee, where it would be easier for him to come ashore. His right leg was bound up high against his side, and he was swimming with only one foot. Combine having one foot out of commission with a long-since broken left wing, and he was severely compromised.

Dorothy lured him in. At that point, I started moving quietly in. Mr. Lonely was suspicious of me, since I'd tried to grab him once before. He wouldn't come closer. I realized that I was thinking intently of just how I'd grab him if I could get close enough. Duh! Clear your mind, Zick! He can see your pictures!

I stopped, became still, and cleared my mind completely of such acquisitive thoughts. I replaced them with a mental picture of Mr. Lonely filling his crop with corn, out of my hand. I knelt with a handful of corn, and played a little movie in my mind of Mr. Lonely swimming up and eating. And he swam up and shyly began eating from my hand. Oh man. This was too good to be true. 

It's called thinking in pictures. It's what animal whisperers do. You can do it, too. Practice on your pets!

I kept that mental picture going, refilled my corn hand a couple of times, and very gradually brought him closer to shore. I knew I would have one, and only one, chance to grab him. He was eating from my left hand. I slowly brought my right hand nearer, and when he was gobbling most happily away, my right arm lashed out like a striking rattler and grabbed him firmly by the neck.  I hauled a very surprised Mr. Lonely onto the levee, threw my arms around his thrashing wing and legs, and ran up high onto the grassy bank so if he managed to get away from me, I'd have plenty of room to chase him back down. No swimming back out into the middle of the river for him!

In my vest pocket I'd put wet wipes, triple antibiotic cream, tiny manicure scissors, and just in case, a clipper that would sever bone. I didn't know what I'd find when I finally got him in my arms, so I needed to be prepared for any eventuality. 

I was very relieved to find the monofilament had yet to cut through his skin. And it wasn't looped over his wings. Oh, hooray! He could still move the bound foot, and it was still fairly warm, which told me there was some circulation getting through. It wasn't as warm as the unbound foot, but it was alive, with only a little swelling. Good, good, good. In this video you see me discovering that his left wing is attached to his body only by the patagial membrane; the humerus had long since been broken, years earlier. Nothing I could or would be able to do about that, so I kept at what I could fix. 

Dorothy shot this video, and I've brought it to you via the just-discovered magic of Facebook video sharing. They'll give you a code to embed the video in your blog. Whoot! 

             

Sweet Mr. Lonely. He seems to know that I'm helping him. I imagine how it feels to have sharp, cutting monofilament cut off your feet after four days of being tightly bound, and am not surprised that he's more or less supine in my arms. Oh happy, happy day. You lucky goose. This does not keep him from voiding twice, on my pants. That's OK. That's why I love nylon pants. Cleaned it off with wet wipes (thanks Dorothy!) and wore them the rest of the day. Helps to be unfussy if you're going to muck about with ducks and geese.

Thank God almighty he's free at last! And I was so happy to be able to help him and Dorothy, too. Right after this photo was taken, I sent it to Liam and told him to go on to class; we wouldn't need the hammock or snake tongs. Hooray!!

Mr. Lonely put his right foot down gingerly; held it  up again; put it down, then slowly walked down the levee toward his safe place, the river. I blinked back tears to see him realizing he could use both legs again.

I went back to get a photo of the Virginia creeper setting the riprap afire. 

I came back the next day looking for Mr. Lonely, but found only the creeper, now lit by the sun. That was enough. Lost the bridge reflection, but oh those piles of clouds. Oh oh oh the sun on the water. 

Last Saturday I had to be in town for several reasons, so I went back down to the levee. It had been nine days since I put Mr. Lonely down to walk away under his own steam. I hoped I'd see him this time. 

And there he was, sitting atop the levee with a few Canada friends. 

I hated to make him get up, but I drew close enough to get a good look at his legs, and make sure they were working well. Yes indeed. Mr. Lonely was whole again, as whole as an old one-winged hybrid goose is going to get. I marveled that he has beat the odds, being unflighted, living here on what he can scrounge from kind people, somehow avoiding the bald eagles that fly up and down the river year round now. I don't understand how he does it, but I'm glad he does. He's a good goose.

When I got back to my car, there was a quack-in going on all around my car. It was almost all boys. I smiled and squatted down to talk with them awhile. It felt like a benediction. I walked very slowly through the quackus, thinking how enriching it is to have a relationship with birds and animals; to have some rudimentary lines of communication to the Other Nations. To love them enough to stop and help, and be loved right back.