How Do You Spell "Shitepoke?"

This is all you usually see of a shitepoke. They're shy.

My father had stories he’d tell, time and time again, and one of them was from his one-room schoolhouse when he was a farm boy in Iowa. The teacher asked the kids to make a list of all the birds they knew, and they were busy scratching away with their pencils when one boy raised his hand and asked, “Ma’am, how do you spell “shitepoke?”

Dad would always laugh, sometimes with a little snort, when he hit the punchline on that story. And I would laugh too, but I never quite got what was so funny about the story. I thought it was quaint that a child would ask the teacher to spell a colloquial name of a bird—“shitepoke” is an old country name for a heron. Kind of a funny name. I wondered about it then, and I've been wondering about it until just today.

I spent the day in my little canoe, drifting along on Seneca Lake and Wolf Run, messing about with herons. I got close to two green herons and three great blues, banging away with my 300 mm. lens, trying to get a decent photograph. The herons were less than thrilled with my attentions. One of my sharper photos was this one.

A dark but otherwise o.k. portrait of a green heron, only slightly compromised by the giant dollop of fish emulsion exiting its cloaca.

I looked at that photo, thinking at first the white thing was a branch, and when I realized what I’d photographed, I burst out laughing. And, perhaps the recipient of a cosmic tap on the shoulder by my Dear Old Dad, I started to think about the name, “shitepoke.” Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the derivation of “shite.” It’s a polite way to pronounce it, to make the i long, but it’s still feces. And poke? What IS a shitepoke? And suddenly, like a bolt, it hit me that  "poke" is an archaic word for a sack or a bag. Pig in a poke. So “shitepoke” means “sh-tsack.” Aggggh!

Anyone who’s ever flushed a heron and watched it fly away, a streamer of white trailing out behind it, knows what a descriptive name that is. "Chalkline" is another colloquial name for a heron. Shitepoke. I….love….it.

I sat alone in my canoe in the quiet little cove, laughing until I made the boat rock, laughing until the ripples spread out around me, and I felt my daddy right there, laughing with me. I’ve been trying for most of my 50 years to figure out what was so funny about that story. DOD, I finally got it.

A-Birding from a Balcony

Like I told Bill of the Birds, who felt bad each time he had to leave me to take another birding trip, there are far worse places to be stranded alone than Hotel Via Maya. The balcony made all the difference. And then there was the location--on the edge of a large lagoon patrolled by herons, jacanas, bat falcons; even host to sungrebes, which some were lucky enough to see. For Lynne and Mary: A Guatemalan stinker, lookin' innocent.
Closer by, tropical house wrens burbled and chattered. Zick , following with the telephoto, trying to get a clear twig window through which to shoot. Gotcha! you little sneak.
A magnolia warbler, doubtless beginning to think about the black spruces of its Canadian forest home. Goin' home to see Sara and Kelly.

A black-and-white warbler peers into some rootlets, or perhaps they're hyphae. One never quite knows in the tropics. Maybe there's a spider there he can eat before it jumps out at April.
I'd like to think this American redstart is planning to bring coals to Indigo Hill.
Wood thrush, will you bring your flute to our forest?
Our neighbor cut down all the big trees where you usually nest, but you can come over on our land.
Pretty bug, you can stay right here in Guatemala.
In the afternoons, a soft, accelerating whoop, ending in a growl, would sound from the trees off my balcony. I'd struggle up out of bed, knowing that this is the call of the black-headed trogon. Oh, so worth getting out of bed to see, I finally got a passable picture of him. He's 11" long--quite a bird, with his ice-blue eye ring, his white-tipped tail, yellow belly and contemplative gaze. A fine thing to see from one's sickbed. Thank you, trogon. Persistant high chirps, sounding like a tiny bird scolding, resolved into the display song of a rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl). Yes, hummingbirds often sing--our Anna's is a great singer! but not many of us stop to notice the song; it's like the voice of a Who.
His throat puffed, he gives it his all, which, if you're a female tzacatl, is just enough.

Crane Confrontation

Watching the sandhill cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR is an education in itself. They travel in family groups, often two adults with their two kids from the year, and they talk constantly, gutteral, resonant purrs from the adults, and tweedling chirps from the juveniles. Seeing them pal around must be hard for a solitary great blue heron. I watched in amazement (and remembered to shoot pictures) as a lone heron flew over to join a small family group of greater sandhill cranes. What could he have been thinking?He's in their personal space. The cranes dawdle over closer to him. How touching. Or not. I had a pretty good hunch that the cranes would send the heron packing, and sure enough, when they got closer, they raised their stately necks and inclined their bills, giving a clear cross-species threat to the heron.
You can see that the heron is already gathering its neck in for takeoff. Wise move.

Cranes, by the way, fly with necks extended, and that's a quick and easy way to tell them from herons in flight. Cranes also lack a functional hallux, or hind toe, so they can't land in a tree like a heron can. They are open country birds, who can't perch but must stand on solid ground or in shallow water. This impacts their habitat preferences and natural history in lots of ways. (Thanks to Paul Tebbel for some thought-provoking conversation on cranes while we drove around in his truck).There are two species of sandhill crane at Bosque del Apache, the greater and lesser sandhill cranes. Lesser sandhills are much smaller than greaters (the bird in the middle with brown wings is a lesser sandhill). They also tend to "paint" their wings more heavily with iron oxide, so they really stand out in a crowd. Yes: cranes decorate their feathers by painting them with red-staining mud. That's why you'll only see the stain on the parts of their bodies they can reach.
Cranes on green, a lovely sight. The second bird from the left is probably a lesser sandhill crane. In the photo below, the brown-winged lesser sandhills are easy to pick out, markedly smaller than the pale greaters. How I miss their resonant calls. Cranes are addictive.

It was a snowy day here; the kids were home from school, and so was Bill. What a nice feeling, to have us all together in a warm house. Kids played outside much of the day. Bill built them a mogul right before dark and they caught some sweet air going over it in the toboggan. Baker frisked around for about ten minutes at a time and then came in all shivery and grunty, wanting to be wrapped in a down comforter. I got some cute pictures of him googling along in the snow. All in all, we got about 8", and there are high hats on all the bluebird houses. I shoveled out the cardinals before dark, and left some corn for the deer out under the pines. Did two watercolors, diverting myself between washes with an excellent and thought-provoking discussion of sandhill crane hunting. You guys are the bomb. Thoughts were firing back and forth in private e-mails, too, about aesthetics and hunting and whether we have the right to hunt cranes. Nobody hunts flamingoes. What if sandhill cranes were lucky enough to be pink?

Time to fix dinner--a chicken, but not a prairie chicken. Life is full of ironies. Stay warm.

French Creek Interlude

Last Sunday, I threw the boat in the back of the car, packed a backpack of play clothes, took the kids to church, ate too much at the All Members Potluck, dropped Phoebs and Liam off with cousins and took off by myself for French Creek, on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River. French Creek will live in infamy because it's where Bill and I spotted (and I sketched thoroughly) West Virginia's First of State Little Gull (Larus minimus). NOBODY else we called to come see it managed to see it. This was B.C. (before digital cameras). And so, despite pages of may I say perfectly adequate Zick sketches from life, comparing it to the ring-billed gulls all around it, it remained as "Hypothetical" on the WV Rare Bird list. Please. How could Bill and I mistake a Little Gull with its slaty underwings and minuscule size for anything else? This is a question I've asked of rare records committees before. Substitute this question: How could Zick mistake Ohio's first of state Eurasian Collared-Dove for anything else? Durn thing flew by our birdwatching tower below eye level. I saw its collar, its large size, its pale sandy coloration, its square-tipped tail and its red eye, for Pete's sake. Sign me, "Hypothetical."

Digressing again. That was winter. This is the end of summer. That was about rare birds records committees. This is about boating. The tulips are turning yellow, a few maples are ablaze, it was hot hot hot--I believe we will be catapulted from summer straight into winter this year-- and rather still and I was swaddled in the only shirt I'd thought to bring, a heavy denim long-sleeved affair, with a thick PFD atop that. But I was alone and peaceful and having fun. There were a bunch of great blue herons striking poses wherever I looked,
Love the spray of wild iris behind this bird, and the two posts. Herons are so decorative.and I got some decent shots. I really like this one, with the spray coming off foot and wing, and the accidentally good composition (I was just leading the bird so it wouldn't fly out of the frame, and gave it room to fly in the picture). While I know these are not the only decent photos of great blue herons (possibly the most photographed bird on the planet), they're mine and I like them.

Wood ducks exploded out of every cove. Here's a pair, hen in the lead. I couldn't get the binocs on them fast enough to tell, but when I blew up my photos I could see that some of them had been drakes in full nuptial finery. Gorgeous! We're so lucky to have this ornate little duck as our most common breeder--yes, more common than mallards in this sycamore-laden biome. Yeah!I love doing that--taking a photo, just sort of randomly firing away at something you can barely see with your darn new bifocals through the viewfinder, and then finding that the camera saw all the detail you couldn't see, and did its best to identify the bird for you. It's a bit tricky getting the focus dot on the bird when it's doing about sixty and you're twisting your torso around trying to follow its trajectory without tipping your canoe. I'd love to say I can approach birds more closely in the canoe than I could otherwise, but all the birds at French Creek were super-spooky on Sunday.

A great egret circled overhead. I could see the bones in its wing as the light came through it. I never expect to see great egrets. They're always such a creamy white delight, and they always fill me with surprise and awe.Belted kingfishers scolded and rattled ahead of me. If there's a spookier bird, I haven't seen it. Those birds are just impossible to get close to. Bye, Sucka! You'd think they tasted wonderful, as leery as they are of humans. I got a couple of identifiable shots with the 300 mm. This one, where she's framed in sugar maple, is pretty nice, if you're not worried about seeing the bird.
And then I finally got a little closer. Obviously, she's wound tight as a spring, but she's still sitting...That's the wonderful thing about a little canoe. Mine is absolutely silent and smooth as silk on the water. When I see a bird ahead, I give it a few power strokes and then drift on my momentum as close as I can, firing away as I go. I wish my shutter were as quiet as my vehicle.

Though I was only paddling for about three hours, the things I saw and experienced will have to last me all week. I can't tell you what a difference it's made in my life to get out on the water. It seems the perfect anodyne for all that troubles me.

The only problem I've found is that I spend much of my mental energy now daydreaming about the serene waters I'd rather be paddling. I have friends who say this pleasant affliction/addiction will only get worse.