Extreme Rhino Love

January 14, 2012 was the Ohio Ornithological Society's annual Winter Raptor Extravaganza at The Wilds, a 10,000 acre conservation breeding and research facility about an hour north of us near Caldwell, Ohio. It's the largest such facility in the world. Here. In Appalachian Ohio.  Breeding southern white rhinos better than anybody else. Can you hear my buttons busting?

Baby charges!! Eek!! The crowd scatters!

One of the supercool things The Wilds' staff does when we come to bird there is to let us into the rhino barn, where these tropical animals spend cold winter days. (They let them out to gallop around on mild days).

Lovely Tricia West gets her hands on a southern white rhino. Everyone was transformed by the nearness of these incredibly gentle and kind animals. Such smiles lit up the barn!

Some people commented on the smell, a horsy odor with strong notes of pig.

Some people never took their fingers off their pinched noses. But she loved every minute, anyway.

And one person (and I ain't sayin' who) got right down there and scored three wet rhinokisses. Real kisses, right on the soft muzzle. While other people kept their noses pinched. That person, the one who got the kisses, also did not shower until the next afternoon. Because she actually likes the scent of rhino in her hair. Please note the wet elbow of the parka, courtesy a couple of mouthy Asian one-horned rhinos. 

The January visit is perfectly timed for rhinobabehs. This year, there were THREE. 

A more winsome little animal would be hard to find, with its big swivelly aardvark ears, its gentle eyes and its rubbery padded feet. 

Rhinobabies are quite frisky and easily excited. They bog their heads and suddenly wheel around to run! And then they come back to be loved on again. My babehs were in love

immediately. They leapt at the chance to come back to bird The Wilds and commune with rhinos once again.

We got to see a baby southern white rhino stop running around long enough to nurse.

Let's zoom in on that sweetness. Yes, they're mammals underneath all that armor, with a nice little udder and the sweetest mouths.

The bond between mother an baby is profound. This mama was a little jealous of her baby...she wanted all the attention herself! She kept holding the baby back with her horn, then hurrying up to be petted.

She knew she'd been upstaged. Oh, I know the feeling!

My wonderful partner in Science Club, Mrs. Hendrix. She shows the kids new and wonderful things every Wednesday afternoon. Every bit as big an animal freak as The Science Chimp. We both would like to work full-time in the rhino barn.

This yearling was a little babe last year, and obviously remembered being petted by many birders at once. It wanted more.

More, more, more said the baby.

One of this year's new calves flopped down and presented its belly to Daniel, who was only too happy to give it a rubdown.

Mrs. Hendrix loves rhinos almost best of all. She would like to work here. Instead she is one of Liam's most awesome teachers, something we are very happy about.

Daniel came and got us and Liam and I moved in on his cuddly rhino babeh action.

Really, it was all we could do not to crawl right through the steel bars. Wherever you are, happy Valentine's Day!

Swans in the Snow

At the Ohio Ornithological Society's Winter Raptor Extravaganza at The Wilds, January 14, we found a red-tailed hawk feeding on a roadkilled whitetail. It was loath to leave its food source, and gave us a beautiful look from our auto caravan.

Finally the tension was too much and it took off, flashing its best field mark.

The day was filled with such moments. One of my very favorite sights was trumpeter swans against the smoky blue hills of this reclaimed strip mine.

I really love being a photographer. In fact, it's the best thing that has ever happened to my aesthetic sense. When you are used to documenting what you see, you become highly sensitized to what's beautiful. To light in all its moods. To composition. You're constantly composing the next shot.

These swans nearly brought me to my knees. I was so, so happy they lacked plastic neck bands. Because not only would that have ruined my photo, but their naked state meant they might be the offspring of captive-bred birds. Truly wild. Truly ours, Ohio-bred..

I wheeled as they went over, snapping madly away.

I love a white bird against a dark sky.

Especially wild trumpeter swans against a dark Ohio sky.

Trumpeter Swans in Ohio

SWANS! Wild swans! But not just any wild swans--these are trumpeter swans!

Y'all know how I love hayrolls. There are plenty of them at The Wilds.

But there's something else there besides hayrolls. For one thing, there are northern harriers coursing low over the meadows.

There are expressive sweeps of brush and field, with hayrolls for punctuation.

And there are trumpeter swans at The Wilds.

I did not know that the trumpeter swan is the largest waterfowl species in the world. Heaviest and largest. Wow! Seventy-two inches long, weighing up to 30 pounds, with a eight-foot wingspan?!? Holy cow.

It will probably not surprise you to know that by the early 20th century the trumpeter swan was all but extinct throughout its North American range. A bird that big, with fabulous down feathers for clothing, and edible too--well, reason enough to wipe it out. You know those white muffs that stylish ladies warmed their hands in? Trumpeter swan skins. Yuck. Quill pens? Made from the wing feathers of trumpeter swans. A high use for a vanishing bird. By 1900, they persisted only in Alaska and very remote parts of the western US.  Where we couldn't get to them, basically.

Captive breeding efforts began in the early 1900's, with limited success. In 1982 the Toronto Zoo figured out how to captive-raise trumpeter swans, releasing over 180 into the wild, and many other institutions have followed their lead. Ohio got in the act in 1996. 150 birds were released at Magee Marsh, that mecca for warbler lovers on Lake Erie. Zoos and aviculturists contributed young swans to a swan conservation program at The Wilds, and these birds were augmented with eggs from wild nests in Alaska. Cleveland Metroparks Zoo hatched the eggs and kept the cygnets until they were three months old, and then they were sent to The Wilds in groups of 10-15.

Release sites are carefully selected for quality and forage.


 The Wilds has a bunch of swans still hanging around. What I really love is seeing birds without big colored plastic neckbands. I'm guessing that they're the offspring of captive-reared birds. In Ohio, trumpeter swans can be seen at Magee Marsh in Ottawa Co., Mallard Club in Lucas Co., Pickerel Creek in Sandusky Co., Mosquito Creek and Grand River in Trumbull Co., Killbuck Marsh in Wayne CO, and Killdeer Plains in Wyandot Co.  Cedar Point NWR also has released trumpeters.

These birds tend not to migrate, but to travel around just enough to find open water and something to eat (submerged aquatic vegetation, mostly).

We were incredibly lucky to find the water still open at The Wilds on this Sunday, January 14. By the next morning, all the ponds would have frozen over, sending the swans elsewhere.

This sign always makes me smile and think of my dad, Dale Zickefoose. He always wanted to live in the country again (he was born and raised on a farm in Iowa.)

We were lucky enough to see some trumpeter swans take off from a distant lake.

I was mesmerized by their beauty. A 20-30 pound swan has to run over the water for a long time before it can become airborne.

Their great webbed feet leave splashtracks everywhere.

They also make quite a racket as they lift off.

Finally, they were airborne, their great clean wings slicing the air instead of slapping the water.

And as they flew against the snow-dusted hills, they simply vanished from sight.

Which we hope they will never do again in Ohio, or anywhere else. 

This is a thank-you to all those wildlife biologists and zoo personnel who have worked so hard to give us a sight like that. A thank-you to The Wilds for its big part in bringing this miraculous bird back to our skies and eyes. They're on Facebook, too. Aren't we all? (Yes, Mether, we are. Or at least I am).