A day overflowing

Today, awake at 5 am to chase a Western Kingbird at the Oxbow with Les.
No kingbird, but still.
A day overflowing:


A quiet, chill Sunday morning
Perfect for watching the world with a like-minded soul



Adding to my ever-growing list of things that fly

(Tennessee Warbler)


We watched a thousand swallows dance over
A million sparkles of light



The smallest things caught my eye and became beautiful


A small animal in need found us and came home with me

(He's not staying.)

Afternoon: Germantown Metropark with my family.

A different place but the same feeling of overflowing

Enjoying an elegant lady resting


Dancing with dogs,


Catching baby leeches by accident


And pursuing an Eastern Tailed-Blue by choice,

Showing that elusive blue, just a glance, like fancy petticoats under a printed muslin.

It's not really about the birds all the time...

On a bird walk at the Cincinnati Nature Center this weekend, it was less about the birds and more about plants and things underfoot.

I am so thankful for Nina. Not just because she is a sweet, wonderful person, but also for her brain, chock-a-bock full of nature info. She was able to point out new plants for me:

Dogbane


Agrimony...I will always remember the name of this plant, because it rhymes with "alimony" and I started calling it the "Give it all away plant".

I found a nice big skull in the underbrush, so we puzzled away at who the previous owner might have been.

It even had teeth marks from mice just trying to get their RDA of calcium.


(Brain case)
"Must....have...braaaaaiinnnnsss........."

At the end of the walk, Kathi squirreled it away and weaseled the answer out of one of the naturalists, I guess. It was a raccoon.

Ultimately, as you have read on this blog and others, it's really about the people you bird with:

Nina


Kathi (pointing out the yellow-throated vireo that I barely saw) and waaayyy in the back is Mary Ann, of Facebook fame. Mary Ann doesn't have a blog, the poor dope.

(I feel that half of my life is on the blog and the other, juicier half is on Facebook. If you aren't on Facebook, go try it.)
Mid-to-late summer isn't the best time to go bag a lot of birds, but who cares? A morning spent with the Cincinnati members of the Flock and a poor dope without a blog (but she's fun and nice, anyway!) is an excellent time to catch up, laugh until we fall down and scare off what few birds there are to see.

Stillness

As a person of nature, it is imperative to go out and embrace it whenever possible.

When the day-to-day grind wears down and you fly to find yourself in a sunlit field.

When the large eludes, you instead find the small, the overlooked.



Giving up on the skies, you instead look to the ground.


The remains of a feast of dragonflies.

In a wide open field, you can feel yourself expand with it, and in that expansion, a constriction down into yourself, where all is quiet, still and at peace.

In that stillness, the mind can focus on minuscule water drops, beading on a wing left behind.



You have to turn over coreopsis leaves to see the nursery underneath.


A dragonfly trusts you just long enough to gaze into your eyes.


The path narrows and coneflowers brush your face.


For a minute, dipping into the woods for its cool shade rewards you with a treasure growing right at eye level.


And stepping back into the sun, a tiny moment is frozen and stretches forever.

My own personal Yoda

Birding can expose you to so many things, can't it? New places, new faces...
This morning found me getting out of bed at Zero-Dark-Thirty to go meet Les (from this post) all the way over on the other side of town for some birding.

With his schedule, it's tough for him to get bird time other than banding, and I have such a poor sense of "bird" hearing, we both jumped at the chance to get out to the woods.

Les has great ears. There's a vast knowledge base in that brain of his, and I used it as much as I could today. And just like our first meeting, there was more to see than just birds...


I took this photo just for Delia's friend Matty. He laughs like a 12-year old boy when anyone says anything remotely vulgar. (I can hear his voice now, saying "Hehehe...you said "knob")
Delia, please make sure Matty sees this.


Pawpaws are starting to develop fruit...and that reminds me that I need to move the pawpaw trees I planted last year. Stupidly planted them in full sun. Duh.



A rare moment of seeing jewelweed in the sun.



Initially thought this was some kind of mint, but we decided it was beardtongue. (Which might also send Matty into fits)



We had no idea what this was....maybe Jim McCormac or some other plant geek could tell us? We assumed it was an exotic invasive, since there was so much of it.
Looks like a pea plant with "fern" foliage.


This one brought up a funny story.
This is a buckeye nut, before it ripens into the typical shape we are used to. Reminded me of the "infamous buckeye" picture from Cape May last year.
I told Les the story. He approved.

He also agreed that I shouldn't put this in my cleavage. Too spiny.



And the inside of a buckeye before maturity:

Three little wet "lima bean" things...it smelled good. Smelled green.

And yes, Laura...I have blue nail polish on today. Laura seems to take offense at my choices of nail color.
She thinks it must be some "Midwestern Thing"...and she thinks it's weird.
Which is exactly why I do it.


A very tired Mourning Cloak butterfly:

I've never been able to get a picture of one of these, but I see them in the spring and summer flitting about. This one was very tired and sluggish in the shade on the road, so I picked him up and placed him in the sun. That woke him up a bit.

I got ONE bird picture today. And it's not even a good one:

There's a blue-gray gnatcatcher in there. I promise.


Les got me a lifer today. We both heard and saw a Kentucky Warbler.
Did I get a photo? No, of course not.
That makes 219 on my Life List.
We also got fleeting looks at a few broad-winged hawks.

Les made it his mission to teach me as many bird calls as he could today.

He taught me that the Kentucky Warbler sounds like a "musical horse" galloping,
the Yellow-breasted Chat making a zillion different sounds,
the wood thrushes "night song",
White-eyed vireos say "Pick up the beer, Check!"...though I like this mnemonic better: "Pick up a realllllllll CHICK!"

...he is my own personal Yoda. Except he is way taller than me. And he's not green.


Thankfully he didn't quiz me at the end of our walk...but he did text me on the way home as I was listening to songs on my iPod:
"Are you studying those bird calls?"
I said, "Yes, YODA."
He responded, "Bird calls learn, you must."

What a kook. Must be why I enjoy his company so much. :)
And his company is a jewel. No one is 'born' a birder, and it's interesting to hear how others came to be these twitchy, nutty types who go to great lengths to see and hear birds. His story was way more interesting than my "cherry tree and birdbath" story.
(Geoff got me a bird bath and weeping cherry tree for my first Mother's Day and it's exploded from there.)

Talking with Les, I discovered how similar we are in humor, opinions....nice to find your "People", isn't it?


Here's a quick video of a White-eyed vireo singing, and me begging it to sing some more:

A walk in the woods with a complete stranger, RELOADED

A few more photos from my walk in the woods with a complete stranger:

A robin was extracted from the nets, but was not banded:

This is the leg of a robin infected with avian pox. As you can see, this leg ends in...mostly nothing.
Avian pox is caused by a virus that infects the mucus membranes, and featherless areas of the body (eyes, beak and feet). Transmission can be via mosquito bites and through direct contact with an infected bird. (This is NOT a disease that has been shown to affect humans).

There is no known treatment. Captive birds can be vaccinated with a live virus vaccine, but wild birds are on their own.


The disease had begun on the other leg, too. The skin of the right leg showed signs of skin breakdown and a few of the toenails have degraded.
This is also NOT avian conjunctivitis.

This robin was released without a band and we wished it well.


A band recovery:

For the life of me, I can't remember what kind of bird this was. (UPDATE: Female Wood Thrush)
Les can tell us. And he can also tell us if he got any info on when this bird was banded. (UPDATE: Last year)

Ever wonder what a brood patch looks like? Well, here ya go:

(Les is blowing the feathers while I shoot the photo)

Brood patches show up on birds during the breeding season. This featherless bit of skin is highly vascularized to transfer heat to incubated eggs. Most birds lose the feathers in this area automatically, but some species like ducks and geese, pull the feathers out themselves and line their nests with them.
As Les so eloquently put it, "It's like a coat with a zipper." :)

The position of the brood patch varies by species. Some species have a single patch, like the above bird, while others, like shorebirds, have a patch on either side of their belly.
Gulls and galliformes (game birds) can have three patches.
Gannets, pelicans and boobies (stop laughing) do not form brood patches, but cradle the eggs on their feet while incubating.
If the male and female of the species both share incubation duties, both of them can develop brood patches.

All that you ever wanted to know about brood patches, but were afraid to ask.



There is so much more in the woods than birds:

I seem to have gotten over my oogie-ness with holding bugs, I guess since Paco handed me a huge inchworm at Muddlety.

Even the evidence of long-ago bugs is cause to grab the camera:

Can't wait to get back out there....

A walk in the woods...with a complete stranger

I take chances in my life...but I'm not stupid.
When I "Friended" this guy on Facebook, I knew that he had once volunteered at RAPTOR and he was a bird bander. That alone would have made him okay in my book, but in a conversation with my husband, I also found out that Geoff had interviewed this bander for a Cincinnati Post story about 10 years ago.
A sign at a church I passed yesterday gave me my new motto (okay, so it's always been my motto):
TAKE A CHANCE. YOU MIGHT LIKE IT.


Well, I like it.


When Les Peyton asked me if I would like to come out during one of his M.A.P.S. banding sessions, I jumped on it.
I made the mistake of telling my Mother that I was going out into the woods with a strange man for a whole day.
BIG MISTAKE. I may never hear the end of it.

Today dawned very early...why is the prettiest part of the day the time when I least want to be conscious?
I knew the day would be good when I encountered a fox (Yard Mammal!) as I backed out of the driveway:



I accidently came between her and her breakfast of yard bunny, so I apologized and headed out.


Here's Camp Les, in the middle of Miami-Whitewater Forest:


Les has been working this site for 11 years...with 10 nets spread out over 20 acres.
That didn't sound like a big deal...

The tools of the trade...Peter Pyle's Identification Guide to North American Birds, ruler and banding pliers:

I whispered to him, "Raptor banding pliers are bigger..."

We headed out to check the nets, and the walk was okay, even pleasant...until Les told me the last leg would be "challenging".

Hurrumph. What am I? A SISSY??

That thought stopped in its tracks when I saw the large tree we had to walk over...oh, and did I mention the deep ravine that is under the tree? Or that the tree had no branches to hold onto in the middle of it?


Crap.....deep breath. You can do this.
Halfway across, Les took my camera and got a shot of me doing the tightrope thing:

I did okay until Les made me laugh and I almost went over.
Me: "Stop making me laugh! I am GONNA FALL!!!!!"
Les: (hee hee hee)...."Sorry!!!"

So here's the maybe-lunatic that I spent the day with:


He's very fierce.
(And he actually has a blog...The Lamest Birder...but there is NOTHING on it. If we work at him, he might get it started...So now you are going to get blog traffic, Les. Time to start writing!)



He went out a few more times to check nets, but after sweating every drop of water out of me and crossing the Tree of Despair, I bailed on the net checks.
There was plenty for me to photograph and enjoy while I waited for Les to return with bags full of birds:

Mayapple, with huge fruits just waiting for a box turtle to come along...


Jack-In-The-Pulpit fruits...


Jewelweed...I have seen this plant on plenty of nature walks, but I never knew what it was.

(Les is also pretty darn knowledgeable about botany, so he was very helpful in identifying all the greenery. He showed me how jewelweed seeds will actually explode from their pods when you touch them, so I collected some to scatter in the yard. Good food plant {NATIVE!} for hummingbirds)

The birds caught were common species, but fun to see up close. Cardinals, lots of robins, chickadees, titmice, wood thrushes:

Is that gorgeous or what? "Oh-la-leeee...oh-la-laaaay..."


This was the "highlight" bird of the day:

An Acadian Flycatcher! If it was countable, that would have been a lifer for me. Oh well.

A beautiful little bird...

Look at those cute little rictal bristles around the bill!


And they aren't just cute...they think they are ten feet tall:

"Fear me! For I am the Big, Bad, Frightening Acadian FLYCATCHER! Roarrrr....???"

So I may never hear the end of it from my Mother, but a trip to the woods with some strange man...was worth it.
Thanks, Les! Take me out there again!
But could you build a rope ladder for that ravine?