Big Days in May

American redstart

Bill and I love to do Big Days. For those of you who aren't habitual birders, Big Days involve trying to see as many birds as you can in 24 hours. Or 18 hours, or whatever suits you. Dawn to dark, you bird. We try to do them while covering as little ground as possible, so we spend the first half of the day here at home on Indigo Hill, then branching out to other parts of Washington County. We take our kids. They like it too, albeit with some initial complaining and frequent requests for snacks.

Shila and Steve, the other members of the Whipple Bird Club, came along on Day One, and Shila made the most excellent suggestion that we check out a little nature reserve called Boord State Nature Preserve. Named for the family which donated the land for conservation, it's a little jewel.

State nature preserves, as opposed to parks, have minimal development and minimal facilities. Only low-impact use is permitted.  The whole idea is to maintain the area in as natural a state as possible.  Thanks to Debbie Woischke of Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources for the information. You can find more about Boord SNP here. 

Hemlocks dominate the forest, which is very unusual in this oak/hickory dominated county. A little gorge is the reason--it makes a cool microclimate that hemlocks need. I thought I was back in Connecticut, before the wooly adelgids hit, or in a ravine in West Virginia.

Liam and Phoebe had to shed their shoes and wade

and I had to document it, and kneel amongst boreal wildflowers I never thought I'd see in my county. Here's nodding trillium, Trillium cernuum.

See how the flower looks down? I like the name whip-poor-will flower for it, though I don't know why it should be called that.


The most beautiful falls spilled into a deep pool

and my kids felt for things with their bare toes


and I was completely happy.

Babies, Bill, Baker

At the brand-new birding festival in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia at the end of September, Bill and I hosted a birding clinic for kids. It was a hoot! It was raining lightly, but there were gobs and gobs of bluebirds and cedar waxwings and woodpeckers, and we just put the spotting scope on them and handed out binoculars and had a ball hearing the gasps and exclamations of kids getting their first good look at a bluebird or a flicker. Great Swarovski optics help. Yes, that was a product placement, but one for which I receive no compensation. I'm just sayin'.

Look at the hands on this little guy. His mom is telling him not to touch the scope, and he's doing his best. Ohhhhh....baby hands, curled up, does that do as much for you as it does for me?

Barely more than a baby, he was so intrigued by what everyone else was seeing (bluebirds) through Bill of the Birds' scope that he insisted on having a look for himself. I'm not sure he got much satisfaction, but at least he got to be a big kid for awhile. Swarovski binocs, no less, dimpled knuckles. OK. I am a baby freak.
Sooo sweet. Agggh. He brought me to my knees. Gimme one of those. Of course, I was flashing back heavily to Liam's baby days when the only name he answered to was Po Po. I have a weakness for little blonde boys. I am the kind of person who chooses the grocery line that has a baby in it, so I can mess with the baby, talking to it, trying to get a smile; talking to the mom, just digging that baby. I was always a little afraid of them until I had my own. Now I can't get enough of them. I can feel Nature preparing me for the next life passage--watching my own "red-headed, limber elf" grow up. And someday have her own. Who I will walk off with for hours at a time, rocking side to side.

I was talking about Bill before I got onto babies. I miss him. Thanks to our mutual travel schedules, we'll see each other for parts of only five days in five weeks. Days which will be spent packing and unpacking. He returned from a week away in Panama on Monday, flying into Columbus, while I left for a week away on Monday, flying out of Akron. We did not meet in the middle. Not even a shared burger at Max and Erma's. Glamorous as all get out, traveling is.

So I'm feeling like looking at pictures of my absent mate. Holding a baby, so much the better. Sigh...

Bill is very generous in helping others see birds. He's famous for it at festivals nationwide.

He even helps little brindle people see birds.
Oh, yes, Daddeh. Now I see the vulture. Thank yew.

Chet Baker, that is a bluebird.

It looked bigger in the binoculars. Well. Do you have any new toys for me?

All right. That's enough sweetness and light. If you read the mountaintop removal posts here
and here, and they moved you, I implore you to read this editorial in the New York Times. It's short. One page. Read it.

In short, because both Barack Obama and John McCain have expressed opposition to mountaintop removal mining, the Bush Administration is rushing to remove the last environmental regulation remaining that slows permit applications for mountaintop removal mining, leaving more miles of Appalachian streams open to being buried in valley fill operations.

Somebody explain to me why coal companies should be exempt from environmental impact regulations. Because they completely destroy the environment, so there's nothing left to impact? Oh, I get it.

Isn't 1,200 miles of streams buried too much already? The huge coal companies, with the regulation re-writes by Bush administration lawyers, are tearing our mountains down around us, burying and poisoning our rivers and streams, burying and poisoning the people of Appalachia. Please, please read it, and then go here to take speedy action. You'll go to a page on ilovemountains.org that will help you both to find your Federal representative and virtually instantly email your opposition to this race to destroy Appalachia before a more enlightened administration is able to take hold. It is a nation of termites, getting that coal now, getting it fast, leaving a wasteland behind.

If you like this blog, you gotta pay for it somehow. Do it. Thanks, Patty, for the heads up on this fresh, sneaky and devastating assault on our mountains, our streams, our wildlife and our people.

Bringing the Kids Along

One of my favorite images from the trip:
And what of the kids? How does that work, taking your kids along while you're birding and shooting endless photos of a single little longspur? (Here's Bill, with his tiny subject over on the right side of the picture, just to give you an idea of the scene:) Well, it works very well, if your kids are Phoebe and Liam. They were into it. They love North Dakota, and our friends treat them kindly and make them feel a part of things. They wander in and out of the scene, fetch forgotten bits of gear from the car for us, read their books (at 7, Liam is already devouring chapter books, at least one a day), eat copious and usually verboten candy bribes, and just generally mellow out. Liam amused himself making rockpiles on a rockpile. When I came closer, I could hear him humming softly and sweetly, and I made out the tune: "What Hurts the Most" by Rascal Flatts, a song that makes him very sad, and that he won't listen to any more, but obviously still loves. As sweet a sound as any singing meadowlark.
North Dakota is a state of mind. It's immensely calming to be out on the prairie in the mellow evening sun, to breathe air fresher than any you've ever breathed, to hear the burbling of western meadowlarks and the buzzing of grasshopper and Savannah sparrows. It worked its magic on kids, and they never fought or complained; they ate dinner with us at 10 pm when the sun finally disappeared, and went to bed at 11, and we dragged them out of bed at 6:30 AM for field trips, and they were absolutely great about it. This is the reward that was waiting when we were getting up several times each night to feed and comfort them as infants. They're full-fledged agreeable and adorable people now. Ahhhh.Phoebe and Liam explore an old engine and caboose at a little historic rail museum.The snowplow spoke silently of a different North Dakota--one buried under yards and yards of snow. That is a snowplow what am a snowplow.And a happy man, doing what he loves most, with his family close at hand. Blessings? We're soaking in them!