Rural Light, Rural Shadow

Scrolling through photos for the last post, I came upon a forgotten photo safari. The images were too beautiful to let them die in my library. So here's a little flashback to the lush beauty of early November along an Appalachian Ohio run.

On Voting Day, November 4, Chet and Bill and I went early to our tiny community hall in Dalzell to vote.

We were the sixth and seventh people through the door, and probably the first and last Boston terrier of the day. (He had to inspect the booths, meet and greet).

It being a very cold and damp but sunny morning, I decided to run a nearby road as far as I could, then turn around and come back. Which turned out to be three miles out, three back.

It was BEAUTIFUL and I was so glad to be out, even though it was terribly damp and cold down along 15 Mile Creek and I had not remembered gloves. I think I finally warmed up around Mile 4.

Two hundred fifty

Waxwings trill and coalesce.

Pileated yaks.

Hermit thrush whispers

Rings silver bells in my soul.

A perfect morning

on a dirt road near town hall.

We blackened ovals.

The light being perfect and golden and the morning shadows being long, the photos came out well.

There are a couple of ways to see this: A cross commemorating an accident where a child perhaps died, or a panda crucifixion. Either way it's an odd image. I'm sure I could get the story if I half tried. Just have to talk to the right people.

 How would this barn look painted red? Let's see. Slap some paint on her...

Along the roadside, the witch hazel was in bloom, sending out a scent like freshly printed mimeo paper. I'm glad I remember what that smelled like, when the teacher would bring the purple-blue tests, still wet and cold from the printer, and we'd smash the paper against our noses and huff the smell. That was the nice part about taking tests in elementary school.

I have gotten in the habit of sticking my iPhone up to cracks in barns, to see what's inside. I love the patterns, the light, the mystery of it all. These are scenes I can't see with my big ol' eye. The cracks are too small.

Egad, the shadow of this simple chain and padlock.

Long winter shadows

Old rough boards...may they never

cease to fascinate!

One thing we've got here

is long winter shadows and

old rough boards. Plenty.

Chet sniffs out mysteries of his own. His coat shines like burnished iron.

This is a good good road. We should take new roads more often.

These cobwebs were blowing back and forth in the draft coming into the barn, giving them a wonderful blur of motion.

What's inside? Do you see a gently smiling gorilla face? Mona Lisa Gorilla?

The interior.  

So many lines and rectangles.

Virginia creeper makes crazy caterpillar shadows.

It's one of those mornings when I'm finding little paintings everywhere I look.

This is a hideous exotic Miscanthus grass that I kill wherever I find it on our land. Not everyone shares my abhorrence of it; some of my neighbors dig it up and plant it in their yards because they think it's pretty. Knock yourself out. Before long that's all you'll have in your yard. And you might try to walk through a stand of it before you decide to plant it. Your funeral.

I never see a house like this, standing patient and abandoned, but I want to move in and write a book there, mice and musty air and all. I come to these little roads to move my old bones, to dream.

The Best Thing I've Ever Bought

You know that good feeling you get when you find something that WORKS? It may not be expensive or particularly beautiful, but it just WORKS.

I was reading galleys for Bird Watcher's Digest, which I've been doing since about 1991 in my position as Contributing Editor. I read the copy for science accuracy as well as flow and pesky typos. So, if somebody's written an article about their trip to Costa Rica, and they mention seeing a seriema,

lifted from Wikipedia.org

I'll go 

THERE ARE NO SERIEMAS IN COSTA RICA 

in big red letters in the margin. 

That kind of thing.

I happened upon a column called "My Way: The Water Bowl" in the Jan/Feb 2015 issue. It was by BWD subscriber Lorna McKerness. A resident of Alberta, Canada, she's faced with below-freezing temperatures for much of the year, and she'd hit upon the idea of using a heated dog water bowl as a year-round bird bath. She had tried any number of commercial products, but they were often very expensive and lasted little more than a year in those punishing environs. In the article, she said she was at the feed store buying two more, and the woman behind her in line added a heated dog water bowl to her order, too. That made Lorna happy.

Within a day or two of reading that, I found myself in the feed store, as I often do, and I was in the process of buying several hundred pounds of fancy food for the birds I adore, so that none would go hungry

and I remembered Ms. McKerness' piece, and lo and behold, down on the lowest shelf around the corner I found my next purchase.

It comes in green or swimming-pool blue. Neither of which would be colors I'd choose, but hey. The point in the dead of winter is not necessarily beauty. It's providing open water for thirsty birds.

All I'd have to do is plug it in and run an outdoor extension cord to a GFCI-equipped outdoor outlet. I could do that. I'd put it right where the (frost-vulnerable) Magnificent Bird Spa reigns supreme in warmer temperatures.

The price was right: $22.99. I grabbed one.

That same afternoon, the feeders filled up with pine siskins

and a pretty yellow-trimmed pine siskin was the first taker on the new bowl! 

Pine siskins are big drinkers.

As you can see, I've stacked three big flat rocks in the bowl to make a flat, level surface for a bird to stand on should it wish to bathe. I'd had my doubts about the slippery plastic as a friendly perching surface, but the siskin didn't hesitate. He was thirsty. 

Since installing it November 3, 2014, I've had the best time documenting the heated dog dish's inaugural winter. Herewith follows a gallery of ugly photos of beautiful birds slaking their thirst.

American goldfinches:

A pair of bathing house sparrows. Here you can see the coil-protected cord.

A tufted titmouse drinks. We're having a banner year for TUTI's.

A female white-breasted nuthatch, with her shadow-grey cap, appreciates the flat rock for perching. She has very long toenails and doesn't like the slippery plastic.

One of the very first visitors to the new bowl was Peg, a blue jay of whom I've grown very fond.

Peg has but one usable leg (you can see her useless right leg dangling). I'll tell her story in another post dedicated to her. Seeing her getting fresh water in freezing temperatures makes me feel good. 

I was on the phone with Bill, who was calling from Uganda, when a yellow-shafted flicker hopped up to the bowl! We hurriedly ended the conversation so I could document this spectacular visitor.

 Oh how I love a flicker. Probably my favorite bird to paint of all. This is a girl. No black moustache. Please appreciate those googly eyes all over her breast and belly. Swoon.

As you might have surmised, I am totally in love with my ugly green heated dog bowl, and I dream of manufacturing something similar, but more beautiful--rock-colored, rock-shaped.  I'll say this--with its simple round reservoir and smooth surfaces, it's a snap to clean and refill--the work of a minute. I just bring a bucket of hot water out, give it a little scrub, then rinse it and the rocks and refill. Maybe it doesn't need beautification. The birds do that. Maybe I need to stick to writing about them and painting them.

I am not the only one who likes watching the birds and chipmunks use the heated dish. (Yes, this post is from 2015, when I had Chet Baker stealing my seat each time I got up. I miss The Bacon.)

Now the ante's upped. I'm going for more and more thrilling birds. Managed to snap only the male, but for a fleeting moment a pair of eastern bluebirds graced the bowl. I just know I'll get a flock on some warm winter day...

If I've given you something you can use in this post, something that's not necessarily beautiful, but that WORKS, that makes me happy. But what would make me happier is your subscribing to BWD, where I've found Lorna's article and so many more useful, informative and awesome articles over the 44 years I've been associated with it. It's a print magazine you can hold in your hands, and also available digitally. With its rebirth in July, 2022, it's now full-sized and more beautiful and informative than ever. I am Advising Editor and I write a column and usually something else for each issue, as well as contributing art for its pages. 

Maybe it'll be the best thing you've ever bought.

Click here to learn more and subscribe.

Chet Baker Steals the Butter!

These holidays have held so much joy for us. Corey comes to visit. We went birding on New Year's Day and found all three falcon species (kestrel, merlin and peregrine!)

Bolt upright, regal

Ohio River falcon

dresses up a bridge

To know where she is

Make the pilgrimage on foot

So much like worship

She, our own Horus

iPhonescoped photo by Bill Thompson III

 We also have been playing a little music (more on that later).

Corey and Phoebe toast our sighting of the St. Mary's Peregrine in a hobo's swing under the bridge,with some muddy beer bottles.

And those chirren bake. Oh God, do they bake. This photo is from January 2014, but they did the same dang thing yesterday. Cranberry orange cream scones. There really is nothing better under the sun, and I'm helpless around them. Just get them out of my sight, please, because if I have to look at them I'll have to eat them. And I did, 2 of them. And now I have to go run again. A lot.

Chet Baker has this thing where he begs for boxes. If he sees someone finishing up a box of cereal or Cheezits, he MUST have the box. He will rip it to smithereens, and then I will pick up the smithereens.

These are things that never change. 

So Phoebe and Corey were finishing up four quarters of butter, and he was begging for a butter box, leaping up to grab it. She jokingly asked him if he wanted butter and waved a stick at him. And he grabbed that stick of butter out of Phoebe's hand and took off!

When he realized how delicious was his treat, he began to drool, and he took off to find a place where he could enjoy it, and blow out his pancreas at the same time. (Large amounts of fat are really bad for dogs).

Well, that was not going to happen. We all gave chase, laughing as we went. This set off a game of Keepaway, which as we all know is the Boston Terrier's forte.

Chet's cave is beneath the kitchen table, so after a few turns around the living room, he repaired to his cave.

He was a bit surrounded: Phoebe behind him, and Corey in front, taking these photos, and me to the side, admonishing him not to eat that butter!

Uh-oh. Now Mether is going to crawl under the table. I feel a spitbubble forming at the corner of my jowl.
I am unrepentant. I want to eat this butter. I want to eat all of it.

And given half a chance, I would. But Mether is using her growly voice now. She is escalating.

I told that bad little dog to sit and stay and I got the butter back from him and I told him he was very naughty. With kisses afterward.

He was not sorry, not one bit. And now...NOW...when we take butter out of the refrigerator, he roos at us. As if we're going to just spontaneously grant him a whole stickabutter for hisself.

Dream on, bad little black dog. Dream on.

Last two photos by Phoebe Thompson. The rest by Corey Husic. Badness by Chet Baker. 

That dog is SO BAD.