Chet Baker's Big Sit!

Sunday, October 11, was the Big Sit! People all over the country sit or stand in a 17' diameter circle and count all the birds they can see, hear, or otherwise perceive (there are some gray areas) from there. We do it dawn to dusk, invite a few friends over (sometimes more, sometimes less); eat, laugh, eat some more, look and listen hard for birds.

Marcy, Dawn and Zick scanning for hawks.

photo by Bill Thompson III

The 2015 Big Sit Indigo Hill team. Small, but lazy.

Dawn is exciting, when we hear the thrushes going over, the owls going to bed and the cardinals waking up. We even heard a woodcock dancing! (And I heard him again the morning of October 12th, too!)

Bill and I are both running on a bit of an energy deficit, he after seeing through the launch of the Midwest Birding Symposium, and only two weeks later, smashing the champagne bottle on the bow of an enormous ship called The American Birding Expo, held at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center in Columbus. Both were great successes. Vendors from 40 countries and way more attendees than expected!

I'm still a bit jet-lagged, but forcing myself through each day and going to bed early has gotten me through the worst of it. South African time is 6 hr. ahead of EST. You can imagine. Eating dinner at my midnight; going to bed at my 3 AM. My days seem endless, the nights too long. But I'm almost done with that.

So the Big Sit was small this year, and we had an all-time low of species (57, in comparison to our record of 72) but it was very very fun. Nobody cared that the birding was spectacularly slow. A bad day birding is still a lot better than a good day at work, right? 

Life Is Good. Steve, Royal Meteorologist for the Whipple Bird Club, who blames his interest in birdwatching entirely on me and Bill,  wears the birding shirt we gave him. Marcy emphasizes the point.

But nobody had more fun than Chet Baker. He loves company. Loves being part of a gathering, loves the petties and the kisses and the laughter. He gets his feelings very hurt in the early morning when it's too cold to have him up in the tower. Until the sun rises high enough to beam down into the tower, it's really chilly up there.

But when it does, I carry him up the two flights of tower steps, slung over my shoulder, and he basks like a hairy hairy lizard.

He paws up piles of newly-shed jackets and make hisself comfy. 

He's got such a sweet little stop on his brow.

He wasn't the only basking shark. The weather was so beautiful we all collapsed sooner or later and just soaked it in. Bill told us to wake him if he snored. We let the poor soul go.

The Bacon had an agenda, and that included snacks.

He can look very charming indeed when he wants a bite of whatever it is you're having.

Boston terrier against barn red--what's not to love?

Hey little doggie with the sun in your eye. I love the way you're trimmed in white, tuxedo and jockstrap too.

Guv me a Timbit. Guv it me now.

Chet's other duty is to see off and welcome anyone using the tower trapdoor. 

My bref isn't what it used to be. It is far worse.

But oh, Miss Marcy. It is not THAT bad, is it? I must stand here and welcome people with kisses. And bid them farewell with kisses. Even if my kisses bear the taint of death.

Miss Carol does not mind my kisses. She says her doggie's bref is worset than mine.

She knows how to hold me so I can see who is coming and going in the yard far below.

Which might include my brother. That boy is getting tall!

Mether calls this photo "Doughnuts, Fruit and Extraneous Minutiae."

Daddeh fills the trug with brefkits and Mether cranks it up into the tower using the Dinner Hook.

Me, I relax and let the sun pour down. I let the people massage my brisket and back. 

But at the end of the day, this is the lap I love most. Even if it is not quite big enough for all of me. She is back from Africa and she is going to stay home awhile. 

Life is good.

A House in Use

The Big Sit was a housewarming, really, many of our favorite people coming from all over, bearing carbs for our table. There was a preponderance of doughnuts and baked goods made with apples, and it was all delicious!

I got to listen to Steve the Royal Meteorologist for the Whipple Bird Club give his weather report for the day. He has this radio voice I love, very resonant and authoritative.

Margaret and I arm-wrestled. These are actual, unretouched photographs of Zick beating someone, anyone, at arm wrestling. Beating Margaret!! who's been workin' out. Guess all that laundry totin' and lawn rakin' has had an impact.



Yee-haw! Ain't tellin' what we wuz wrasslin' fer.

Towertop was very very beautiful.

Having so many friends come was a treat in itself. But there was one housewarming gift I'd been looking forward to for months. Terry Lobdell came from northwest Pennsylvania with our sweet and wonderful friend Dallas, bearing bat boxes he'd made himself. Three of them. Not just bat boxes like you'd get at a nature shop. These are bat manses. Bat Taras. Bat Taj's. This is Mimi soaking up some of Terry's amazing bat wisdom. I didn't manage to get a photo of Dallas.

They're huge and heavy and well-insulated, with room for hundreds of bats inside three compartments. And Terry mounted two of them on our deck, and he put the third (an observation box you can OPEN UP so you can PEEK at the BATS through PLEXIGLAS) yes I am shouting

on a 4 x 4 that supports my clothesline. It was featured in the previous post.

Terry's van, which is a rolling hardware store. He is the cutest. He knows so much about bats, and yet he told me he learns volumes each season. I know how he feels. There is so very much to know about bats.

 I love that there are people on this earth going around doing things for bats, spending their own time and money helping creatures that terrify most people. That wasn't very well put, but you understand. It just moves me.

From the amount of time and thought Terry and Dallas put into mounting these boxes, I am sure that if there are bats to be got here, we will get them. Mimi, who loves bats more than I, if that were possible, came away with a serious case of bat box envy. We'll have to do something about that.

Terry broke for lunch in the Air Chair. Yes, he fed Chet Baker. That's what the tongue action's about.

Soon, it was time for a fashion show. Phoebe came out in her homecoming dress.

Oona led the processional.

Yes, That Oona. See her (and Chet) in 2007 here. OMgosh, Chet looks like he just came out of the dry cleaners, doesn't he? So crisp, so spiffy, so very young. Two, in fact. Lawd. And in December, he's about to be nine...

Speaking of things growing up right under your nose...

I made Phoebe take off the horse head for at least one photo. We like her color choice. It's a red red year here.

There was a whole lotta hangin' out going on that Sunday. The new porch, a huge hit. And technically, it still fell within the 17' Big Sit Circle when people were on the porch. So you could "birdwatch" from towertop or porch and still count what you saw, if you saw anything, which mostly we didn't.

Mimi and Marcy and Creeper Phoebs.

Later that afternoon, Ohio University English professor Mimi took Phoebe in hand for a trip through the Common Application for college. Yikes. This is something best done with a non-family member, Phoebe tells me. So much the better when it's a super-literate university educator huge Pirates fan musician singer bat loving and beloved non-family member.

Pawpaw processing will still happen, whether I can eat them or not. Now I just get to share them.

Sun will slant across the new front porch and the bonsais will turn red, then orange, then crimson

and the man who set it all in motion will finally exhale. Thank you, Bill.

And thank you to our friends at Before and After Remodeling.  Mighty nice work!

The Big Sit! with Dog

This is one of the hardest-working homes in southeast Ohio. Four and often five people using it as a bivouac for their busy lives. And a steady stream of guests. For a place that's stuck in the middle of nowhere in a "depressed" area of Ohio, it does pretty good. Yes. I know "well" is the word to use there, but I'm being Appalachian right now, thank you. Been here a long time. It happens.

One of the really nice things that happened when the new front porch was built was that my bonsai bench had to be moved farther out alongside the house into the north bed, where it's easy to get to, to tend and admire. It had been stuck in the notch between the house and porch before. Hard to get to, and you couldn't see the beautiful trees. My oldest maple is doing its best to match the new siding as it turns toward fall!

Another is enjoying the sun on the far side of the new porch. I must say the colors set Chet Baker's shiny black coat off very nicely. He looks fab, doesn't he? And this shows you how big that little tree has gotten. Venerable. Chet can stand under it!

We were really hoping to get the new windows in before the Big Sit, which happened October 13. Donny brought his whole crew out on Friday October 11 and they did a window installation blitz with the newly arrived CORRECT Pella windows. Got them ALL in. Amazing. And they are so beautiful. We're seeing things in the landscape we have never seen before. 

New view out the east BR window. 

The middle box on the pole is the Observation Bat Box. Squeee! You can open it up and see BATS in it if you're lucky enough to get them. There's a sheet of plexiglas in between you and them if you're at all squeamy which I of course am not. 

South BR window view, orchids happily in place. Yowza!

The glorious huge living room window and its view of the meadow. We've truly never seen it from here, in 21 years.  That's the bell Piper the indigo bunting sings from.

But back to the Big Sit.

On the appointed Sunday, people started showing up. Chet Baker waited in the towertop to wash each face that came up the drop-down stairs into the towertop. You had to get many, many kisses from the Gatekeeper to be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Birding.

And if you had a cookie, you were expected to pay the Gatekeeper with a tithe.

He would remind you with gentle toenail prodding. Oinking, if that didn't work.

A Dog at the Big Sit by Seymour Butz

We attempted to counter his ButtVision by putting Chet Baker on his own special stool, but he only had eyes for cookies. This is him, asking to be helped down so he can beg some more. He spent the morning with us, and the afternoon hanging out with bored birders and a Kookerhondje named Wally in the front yard. It was a good day for Chet. Jason brought him a big red ball to pop.

 Kind of a slow Big Sit, with only 55 species logged (we try to break 70 in a good year). Probably the highlight was a passing peregrine in the afternoon doldrums, which lasted about 7 hours. That's OK. For us, it's a social event. Birds are a bonus. Because most of them leave here about two days before the Sit starts.

A few Cape May warblers hung around.

But the Lincoln's sparrow didn't. C'est la vie. Birds are where and when you find them. All birders know that.

The Big Sit! Chet Baker Style

Chet Baker, watching for new birds in the towertop, wearing his Official Midwest Birding Symposium bandanner that Jen made him.

As much of the Northeast tries to stagger back from a freak Halloween snowstorm, I find myself wanting to go back. Back to mid-October, back to September, back to June. I don’t really want to go into gray November.  And we don’t even have snow on the ground here in Ohio. I send my sympathy out to those who’ve had an especially early autumn. Our cold, dreary weather came early, too. But we have power. My Connecticut and Massachusetts sisters don't. And I'm thinking of them and sending them strength.

 So I’m going back just a couple of weeks to the Big Sit, held at our place on October 9, to remember the friends and the foliage, the fun and the bugs and the birds.

It’s an excuse, that’s what it is, to stand all day up in the tower, to invite friends to come and help watch, to share good food and fellowship. It’s not just about birds, though birds make it wonderful. 

Bill of the Birds has been blogging about the Sit. Here's where I reveal my true nature: Birder, dilettante, bugster, social butterfly. I love the Sit for all the reasons he does, and maybe in a few different directions, too.

I think my favorite part is going up to the tower early and hanging out with Bill and maybe Jim and Jason and just watching the light come up on the land.

The colors come shivering out of the night and the sky brightens and it is, unbelievably, a beautiful day, a high predicted in the 80's. Amazing. Seems like it should rain, we've invited people over to be outside all day, after all. Excuse me. I'm already tired of winter and it isn't even here.

And we hang over the tower wall and watch some of our favorite people come up the walk.

It's Mimi and Bob Scott!

and Mimi has a picanick baskit and in that basket is a shrimp quiche that is to die for and just the thing for a sunny cool morning in the tower with friends. No surprise there. Bob Scott doesn't tell anybody but it is his birthday, and I think he had a darn good one even though he didn't get a cake or a rousing chorus of that Awful Song, because he didn't TELL ANYBODY.

Mimi gets along beautifully with Jim and all our friends most of whom she's never met, again no surprise, and of course they are all over Chet Baker who is sitting holding court on his own personal dogthrone in the corner, accepting caresses and kisses.

Jim loves the Pied Mountain Boar, as he refers to Chet.

And the Pied Mountain Boar loves him.

There is a lot of love going around. What a fun day it was.

The Bacon has the most fun of anybody. Imagine if you could just sit there and have people come up to you and massage your scalp and back and kiss you on the nose just because they love you for being you. That's what it's like being Chet Baker.

It would not be bad coming back as a Boston Terrier.