looking back 4

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Continuing with my ten favorite photos of 2009 in chronological order: in May, a week after the azalea, the sweetbay magnolia outside my office window at Ijams Nature Center was in bloom.


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looking back 3

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Continuing with my ten favorite photos of 2009, the azalea's were especially robust last spring.

Here's a photograph I posted in early May.


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looking back 2

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Ten favorite photos of 2009, in chronological order: another one from April.

Sweet Betsy trillium (a.k.a. "bloody butcher") at Ijams.





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looking back 1

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Year end. Dull, brown and gray outside.

I thought I'd take a look back at some of my favorite photos of 2009, in chronological order. This first one I took at Ijams in the spring.

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brushstrokes

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A walk early with just enough morning sun to light the way, finds the ground crunchy like eggshells.

The shallow water still standing in low lying wet places has frozen into the most remarkable patterns—swirls and slashes—reminiscent of the broad brushstrokes of artist Franz Kline, except he seemed to prefer black not white.

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manuscript

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Status: Somewhat exhausted, after four years of work, I delivered the manuscript for my second book to acquisitions editor Kerry Webb at UT Press today. I still have an illustration to finish, but that will happen. Drawing is easier; so easy even a caveman can do it. Humans have been drawing for millennia longer than we have been writing books. Pick up a stick with a burnt end and you can draw. If you have a little ground red ochre, you got color. Does anyone have a cave wall they need decorated? I'm pretty good with aurochs.

Drawings are quick, energetic dashes. They're left-brained.

Books are hard, long, slow, tedious, grueling marathons. Time consuming, especially if you write non-fiction. (You know, if you write fiction, you can make the whole thing up.)

Books are whole-brained, plus kidneys, heart, liver, spleen (so that's what that is for), cuticles, follicles, curlycues, muscle, sinew, bone.

Speaking of bone: my head-bone is tired. I've used all the words I know, some of them more than once. I'm ready for a long winter's nap. No more getting up at 6 a.m. Why am I sitting here at the computer? I have shopping to do.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

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breadthest

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What the last sycamore leaves of the season lack in color they make up in breadth.

- Photo taken on the Third Creek Greenway

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the imagined fox

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Somehow, we imagine foxes to be more than they really are as author Josephine Johnson confesses,

“The fox seems fast and fearless, clever and cunning, and without manners or moral or scruples, a legend of freedom, and I had long found release in this private image in my heart. When harassed by those affairs in life for which I am not well fitted—those which require grace or authority, political acumen, wit or social ease; weddings and meetings, funerals and gatherings; or when, bewildered by the constant domestic matters where the warm maternal wisdom and patience are drawn in as though they were from an unfailing spring, instead of a cistern much in need of rain—then, tormented by conflicting voices, by inadequate responses, by lack of wit or wisdom (or even the answer to Who-the-hell-are-you?) the self sought relief in the heart’s image of the wild free fox.”


-From “The Inland Island” by Josephine Johnson

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cockle bird

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It is always difficult for me to pass a common cocklebur and not think of the extinct Carolina parakeet. On the surface, the two species—one a bristle-seeded plant, the other the most colorful bird to ever fly through our skies—seem to have little in common. But the two are inexplicably linked because the spiky plant’s seeds were reportedly the birds’ favorite food. Go figure. But we all have to eat something.

Cocklebur invades farmlands and can be poisonous to livestock, including horses, cattle, and sheep. “Some domestic animals will avoid consuming the plant if other forage is present, but less discriminating animals, such as pigs, will consume the plants and then sicken and die,” reports Wiki. Poor pigs! And the seeds are the most toxic parts but the parakeets fed on them with no ill effect, yet they are the ones now extinct. But, something else did them in, not the cocklebur.

I wrote about the colorful member of the parrot family in my book Natural Histories.




- Photo of cocklebur taken along the Will Skelton Greenway at Forks of the River Wildlife Management Area.

- Painting of Carolina parakeets on cocklebur by John James Audubon.

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thanks!

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Special thanks to Will Roberts and his AP environmental science class at Powell High School.

The students read my book "Natural Histories" in the fall and invited me to their classroom on Monday to discuss it. We also talked about swimming snakes and the taste of cicadas and osage oranges. Since I've eaten the former but never the latter, I therefore learned from one of the students that it's like eating white tar.

Merry Christmas and have a happy holiday break!

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what to be

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"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."


- From "Mother Night" by American author Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

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Japanese lanterns

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Finding joy in the simple things—the frost on the grass, the bend of a stem, an early morning fog—is far easier than seeking it in more complicated packages. I was never that thrilled with complications anyway.

In this case, it's the caramel-colored seeds of river oats, a.k.a. Chasmanthium latifolium; but that's a mouthful, let's stick with the former, it's simpler. The waning days of fall find this native grass browning, producing seeds that hang like miniature Japanese lanterns.

- Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center

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legacy

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Twelve years ago on this date: December 10, 1997, Julia Butterfly Hill climbed 180 feet to the top of a 1,000-year-old redwood in Humboldt County, California. She was not being playful. Her act was one of civil disobedience. The Pacific Lumber Company was about to cut it and the trees around it.

A small platform, barely big enough for two people, covered by a tarpaulin had been constructed for her “tree sit.” Hill thought she might be off the ground for two, maybe three weeks, but her vigil took much longer. Her feet did not touch the ground again for 738 days. Over two years! During that time, she endured thunderstorms, winter snows, harassment from the lumbermen and legal actions against her and her group.

"Fierce winds ripped huge branches off the thousand-year-old redwood, sending them crashing to the ground two hundred feet below. The upper platform, where I lived, rested in branches about one hundred eighty feet in the air, twenty feet below the top of the tree, and it was completely exposed to the storm. There was no ridge to shelter it, no trees to protect it. There was nothing. As the tree branches whipped around, they shredded the tarp that served as my shelter. Sleet and hail sliced through the tattered pieces of what used to be my roof and walls. Every new gust flipped the platform up into the air, threatening to hurl me over the edge. I was scared. I take that back. I was terrified," writes Hill.

But she endured. More than endured, scampering barefoot around the uppermost branches, she found peace in the aged tree she called “Luna.” Volunteers on the ground brought her food and water every day, carrying away her waste she lowered in a bucket.

She became an international celebrity. Famous people climbed to the top of the tree to visit her. And eventually her courage and fortitude were rewarded. The lumber company finally agreed to spare the tree and forest around it. It was a moral victory by a barefoot woman named Butterfly and not a single shot was fired.

“Living in Luna had already taught me that one of best ways to find balance is to go to the extremes,” Hill writes.

There is a color photograph on the back cover of the book. Hill is standing at the tippy top of the tree. Clad in a bright red jacket, her arms are outspread. She looks superhuman and, for perhaps those 738 days, she was.

This is an empowering story Hill wrote herself while living at the top of a tree. From such a lofty vantage point, one is bound to achieve clarity.




"The Legacy of Luna" written by Julia Butterfly Hill.

pert busybody

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“This pert little winter wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence, diving under the rubbish here and coming up yards away, — how does he manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive always in the nick of time?”

The little busybody “does he travel by easy stages from bush to bush and from wood to wood? Or has that compact little body force and courage to brave the night and upper air, and so achieve leagues at one pull?”

Asked John Burroughs in his 1871 book "Wake-Robin."

I've wondered much the same thing. How do they get here with such short little wings? Do they hop from brush pile to brush pile to brush pile. I'm sure winter wrens have already arrived in the Tennessee Valley but I have yet to see one of the little ground-loving busybodies this season. But somehow it's a comfort just knowing that they are there.

And speaking of winter wrens, special thanks to Ruth Anne. As part of the second annual Beaver Creek Water Association Winter Bird Count and Birding Workshop, I spoke about the winter birds of the Tennessee Valley (the species that only spend their winters here) last week.

After wards, Dr. Bob Collier outlined his plans for a bird count to be held on Saturday, January 9.

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sculpted

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"Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality."

- British environmental sculptor Andy Goldsworthy

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steadfast

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Two days ago the Carolina rose provided the only color, today it remains steadfast but frozen.

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could it be snow?

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And what to my wondering eyes should appear?

When I arrived at the nature center this morning, three visitors—Gaia Robilio, Lily Flynt and Vince the Wonder Dog—were already at work fashioning a rather round man made out of some sort of frozen white confection. Dare I say: Could it really be snow?

-Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center.

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native rosa 2

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Six months down the road, winter rapidly approaching, and we find ourselves much like Baby Suggs in Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved.” We're already starved for color.

Exactly half a year after my first posting, Carolina rose, a true native rosa, is still producing some reds and yellows when everything else has turned to various shades of brown and gray.

- Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center

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lost species

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Yesterday Kathleen asked about a "beautiful book with paintings of extinct birds."

My favorite is A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals by Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten. It really has more in it than birds, there are a few mammals and reptiles, but the lost feathered ones are well represented, the dodo on the cover is a fine example. Flannery wrote the tragic story of each extinct species and Schouten did the wonderful illustrations.

The book was published in 2001, so it might be a little hard to find but we still have a few copies in the Ijams gift shop.

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knock out

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I have owned a copy of “The Song of the Dodo” for several years but at 625 pages, 178 chapters it seemed a bit daunting to dive into. There never seemed to be enough hours in the day. But after reading Quammen’s ”The Reluctant Mr. Darwin,” I felt it was time to give it a go. And go I did.

I think a good editor could have probably cut this tome down to 623 pages, which is my backhanded way of saying that "TSOTD" is a monumental book on natural history, well worth the time you need to invest into all 178 chapters. You'll never look at the natural world in the same way again.

Quammen does a skillful job of balancing scientific chapters with his worldly travels and adventures, taking us to exotic places around the globe with historical or environmental significance. But the real power in the book is his exploration into the development of ecology, basically beginning when the science found its chops, i.e. the data it had been collecting was actually put to use.

After finishing “The Song of the Dodo,” I feel that I have earned the equivalent of a PhD in island biogeography. (I wonder if I can use this on my résumé?) If I had read this book 25 years ago, I would have found my way to an ecology department at some university.

Early in the book the author describes the stack of photocopies of scientific papers “weighing eighteen pounds including the staples,” he has on his desk. By his own admission, he could have used the assemblage in the back of his truck to provide extra weight on icy roads in winter but instead, Quammen chose to read them and synthesize the information for us; presenting them in layman’s terms, explaining the jargon: minimum viable population, area-species relationships, equilibrium theory, inbreeding depression, et cetera. Lucky for us he did.

By the end of the book we have a real sense of just how endangered endangered species really are. The dodo was only one of the first to go.

Powerful book. David Quammen can write compelling science with a sense of humor.

In a five star world, this is a six star book.

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summersweet

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With a common name suggestive of July—summersweet, i.e. Clethra alnifolia—today we find it bridging the gap between two other seasons. Still wearing the autumnal ambers, the seed sprays are beginning to anticipate the coming new year and spring.


-Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center.

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great catch

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And speaking of fish-eating birds of prey, recently I posted about watching an osprey flying overhead with its lunch at Cape May.

Sue Wagoner sent me the above photos she took around the same time at Folly Beach in South Carolina. She was lucky enough to catch the bird fighting its way out of the surf and just after it had lifted off carrying its meal. I've seen osprey plunge into the water in one of our placid East Tennessee lakes, but taking on the ocean surf adds an extra layer of danger. Several years ago I saw the same display of strength several times just off Cherry Grove Beach north of Folly.

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boldly ambitious

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A bold, even ambitious climber, the vine Virginia creeper can reach heights of 20 to 30 feet. It’s taking over one side of my house but I really do not mind, in part because of the fall color.

The plant is native to central and eastern North America. In Canada it’s known as "Engelmann's Ivy” named in honor of George Engelmann (1809 – 1884) a German-American botanist instrumental in describing the flora found in western of North America.



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soaring

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Bob Davis stopped by the nature center the other day. He reports seeing two adult bald eagles—perhaps a mated pair, perhaps even the pair that nest upstream on the French Broad or Holston rivers—soaring over Island Airport on Sunday, October 25. The airport that opened n 1930 is located within a mile of downtown Knoxville.

The eagles were at play, leisurely enjoying the afternoon. After awhile, they were joined by a couple of red-tailed hawks. Bob is a pilot, quite comfortable in the same sort of thermals that the birds of prey were taking advantage of that day.

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evergreen?

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Yes, even evergreens drop some of their leaves at this time of the year. Nothing lasts forever.

In this case, it's a white pine, the only conifer in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains with five needles in a bundle. One needle per letter in its name: w-h-i-t-e.

Yet, in nature, where there is death, there's often renewal. The four seeds in the photo waiting to germinate next spring are from a tuliptree.

Let's wish them good luck.

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ootheca

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Recently, I posted about praying mantises; it was their mating season.

Once mated, the females can lay as many as 400 eggs depending on the species. Eggs are deposited in a frothy mass--much like meringue but not as tasty--that is produced by glands in the abdomen. The froth hardens to a consistency something like that of Styrofoam, creating a protective casing. The resulting egg mass is called an ootheca."

The other day I found my first ootheca (Great Scrabble word: four vowels) in an ironweed going to seed at the nature center.

- Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center

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local young eagle

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Wow!! Local photographer Bob Howdeshell posted this wonderful photo of a juvenile bald eagle he found recently at Kyker Bottoms in Blount County near my home.

As Bob noted, "The crows were mobbing something so I headed in that direction only to be surprised as a young eagle flew by! I was fortunate that it landed in a tree that was close and I was able to get a few photos."

For more of his photos, visit Bob's online gallery.

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golden days

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His drive home was uneventful but golden. He caught himself singing "Golden Years" by David Bowie...

"Don’t let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel. Come get up my baby, Look at the skies, life's begun, Nights are warm and the days are young, Come get up my baby."

Obviously, life was taking me somewhere, up a mountain road into the setting sun, so the day wasn't young, and the night was actually going to be rather chilly, but you get the idea. It was golden.

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one week later

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Well, I think the flu is over and I can return to work. One week, start to finish. Like a mini-vacation without any of the thrills. After being in bed for seven days, I wonder: Why am I so tired?

Didn't French novelist Marcel Proust write most of "In Search of Lost Time"—seven volumes, 3,200 pages and more than 2,000 characters—while he was sick in bed. How did he do that?

After seven days, more or less, out of it, I feel like I need to go in search of some lost time myself.

At least there is still some autumn left to enjoy.

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ill, part 3

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Another day ill, H1N1 has me flat of my back.

The upside? This is the view out our bedroom window. I watched hundreds, even thousands of leaves flutter and fall to the ground. Have I mentioned we're surrounded by woods.

The downside? Somebody is going to have to rake them up and chuck 'em into a compost pile someday soon. And that someone is the sick boy in the bed.

If you dance all night, you pay the piper in the morning.


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ill, part 2

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If this is H1N1 that has me flat of my back, then NyQuil Cold&Flu is doing a good job alleviating the symptoms and knocking me out. I think I’ve slept 50-hours in the past three days.

What day is it?

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ill

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I'm at home today ill with symptoms that suggest H1N1. It started Saturday with a slight tickle in the back of my throat and within a few hours I felt like I had fallen off the back of the potato truck and some of the spuds rolled off with me, leaving me achy, coughy, fevery, sneezy, dopey and a few of the other Seven Dwarfs that I never met.

They say it's "going around." Well, to paraphrase Harry Truman, "the bug stopped here."

So the next few days I'll be blogging from memory and antihistamine-lightheadedness.

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changes

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Day to day, you never quite know what to expect, this change of seasons: the foggy mornings and golden afternoons. If you follow this journal daily, you know that change is the order of things. All you have to do is go outside and look.


“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside.”

- Anne Frank (1929-1942) German-born Jewish author, died in Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp

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feathered power

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And speaking of ospreys! And sheer feathered power! Feathers? Power? It's difficult to imagine something as light and wispy as a feather and brute force in the same package, but in an osprey they coalesce beautifully.

Ker-splash! The white and brown bird-of-prey dives into the ocean surf disappearing completely under the water then fights its way above the surface and flies to a nearby tree carrying a chunky, struggling fish that can weight almost as much as the bird. Such raw power.

One of Audubon's most dramatic prints is that of the coastal "fishing hawk" carrying away its catch: a weakfish. (The origin of its name is based on the weakness of the mouth muscles, which often cause a hook to tear free, allowing the fish to get away. Escaping an osprey's strong talons would be another matter.)

Karen Sue and I recently saw several ospreys at Cape May. One afternoon, while I was lying in the grass, one flew low over my head, against an azure sky, past the famous red and white lighthouse. The fierce hunter was carrying a rather large fish just the way Audubon portrayed the species. He was a keen-eyed observer. I whooped and hollered with each heavy wing beat.

Oh, to be alive at such a place and time!

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osprey-eyed

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On the surface, David Gessner’s wonderful book, “Return of the Osprey” is about just that: the return of a thriving, sustainable population of osprey, once known as “fish hawks,” to the Atlantic coastline.

The author digs in and watches a season of osprey nestings and the raising of their families on Cape Cod.

“A new clarity illuminates the days. Honeysuckle sweetens the air and the post oak’s leaves wave big and waxy, no longer mere drooping half leaves. We approach the solstice, the annual climax of light, the days when we see longest and clearest. The other night a luminescent apple core, cleanly split in half, stood in for the moon, and later fireflies sparkled. I sleep rocked by a larger rhythm, the ocean breathing in and out. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand why ospreys choose to live near water. On some nights I walk down to watch the world’s eye sink: the sun drops into the water of the bay, staining the sky with pinks, yellows, and oranges,” writes Gessner.

And there it hangs. Any great book is about more than it purports to be, and Gessner’s is about slowing down and actually seeing: longest and clearest. Seeing with the heighten eyesight of a raptor.

“An osprey’s vision is almost eight times greater than a human being’s but that only hints at their acuity,” he reports. Call it awareness, totally in tune with their natural world.

As Gessner ensconces to watch ospreys and the marshland around them he writes, “That’s the central paradox of slowing down: it leads to excitement that is often dazzling. What, after all, surprises and delights us? Speed. Growth. Quantity. Vibrancy. Variety. These are the qualities the natural world presents if we simply sit still and open our eyes.”

To seal the deal, Gessner goes to Harvard’s rare book collection at Houghton Library and visits some of the handwritten journals of the master of transcendence Ralph Waldo Emerson, who viewed the world with a “transparent eye.” Emerson is noted for being the cool analytic, free of emotion, but Gessner notes that the handwriting of the master of the well-measured sentence becomes “less legible when he grew excited and rushed.” We sense the pounding, enthralled heart of the engaged Ralph Waldo and then Gessner and, now, even myself.

Published in 2001, “Return of the Osprey” is a superb, textured read.

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on their way

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Sue Wagoner sent me this photo from Illinois. The hermit thrush was passing through headed south for the winter.

One place they overwinter is here in the Tennessee Valley and at Ijams Nature Center, although I have yet to spot one along one of our trails. As the name suggests, they are loners but are NOT shy and will often give you a good look.

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fire engine red

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Truth is, before I started this blog I believed that sweet gums or oaks were my favorite trees but the group that I keep coming back to time and time again are the magnolias. The ancient magnolias that have been around longer than bees, which is why they are pollinated by beetles. (Some plants in the Magnoliaceae family go back perhaps as much as 95 million years.)

Most species native to our area are deciduous but not all. I've posted about the evergreen Southern magnolia before, now they are producing seeds. Fire engine red seeds! Wow.

-Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center.

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a warning

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The fifth morning in a row for heavy fog and oddly-shaped trees.

Is it an omen, a warning?

Yes. Probably for oddly-shaped trees: Do not grow near a power line or the utility company will prune you into some grotesque towering topiary. I think the tree on the left is supposed to look like a macerated Godzilla.

If you happen to be a tree. Beware where you set your roots!

-Photo taken in South Knoxville near my home.

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have not lived

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“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”


Passage from "Walden: or, Life in the Woods," first published in 1854.


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fother-thrilla

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I first introduced fothergilla to this blog in a post last April.

In addition to having a remarkable flower, this native shrub's autumnal leaves can be spectacular.


-Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center.

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sharpy

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I didn't take this wonderful photo of a sharp-shinned hawk; Dario Sanches took it. I do not have a crisp telephoto lens, so unless I can get only a few feet away, most birds elude me.

The photo does show the bird's namesake, its flattened, thin "shin" or shank.

I’ve been thinking a lot about sharp-shinned hawks the past week because Karen Sue and I have seen several. The photo also shows how difficult it is to tell a sharpy from a Cooper’s hawk, from most angles, they can look identical. Most guides list one of the defining field marks is that a sharp-shinned has a blunt, or "squared" tail and a Cooper’s tail is rounded. But in this photo, the tail appears to be rounded.

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unchanging?

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The adult leaves of pines are called needles, perhaps for obvious reasons. Depending on the species, needles can live from 1.5 to 40 years, which make them evergreen, almost. But it does pose the question: Just how ever is evergreen?

Because they tend to be ever green, you seem to notice when they are not. I encountered this branch of golden dead needles on a short walk at Fall Creek Falls State Park.

“Green pine, unchanging as the days go by,
Thou art thyself beneath whatever sky”

- From a poem by Augusta Davies Webster, although as I found out, sometimes green pines do change.


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book talk

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Special thanks to Lisa Phipps and the Tennessee Federation of Garden Clubs. (Fun group!) I did a presentation about my book "Natural Histories" at their 56th annual Conservation Camp held this week.

Their meeting was at the Inn at Fall Creek Falls State Park in Van Buren and Bledsoe counties in Middle Tennessee.

The park surrounds the upper Cane Creek Gorge, an area known for its unique geological formations and scenic waterfalls. The Cane Creek Gorge is a large tree-lined gash in the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, stretching for some 15 miles from the Cane Creek Cascades to Cane Creek's mouth along the Caney Fork River.

The park's namesake is the 256-foot Fall Creek Falls.

- Photo of Cane Creek at Fall Creek Falls State Park.

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hummingbird home?

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Such a curious thing. Oh my.

John Randle, a reader of this blog, wondered if these hummingbird platforms actually worked. I have never seen one, but it certainly looks hummingbird friendly.

Has anyone ever tried one? If so, please let me know the results, or it will remain a mystery to me. Although the hummers have by and large left for the season, they'll be back next April looking for a handy place to build a nest and this artificial branch certainly looks handy.


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relationships

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“Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life.”



- Charles Darwin (1809-1882) English naturalist, father of modern biology





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on a mission

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A box turtle trundled by the Visitor Center at Ijams the other day. It seemed somewhat purposeful, as to its mission, I know not what. It kept its cards close to its chest, although in this case, I think they are called the pectoral scutes.

The temperatures are dropping, it certainly feels like autumn. The nights are colder.

Eastern box turtles are the only land-based turtle in our valley. By winter, they will find places under a log or a pile of leaves to spend the cold weather months.

Winter will pass for them as though they were in a dream.

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invasion

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I lurked in the bushes and snapped this photo behind enemy lines. It's a blatant attempt of invasive kudzu trying to bring down our lines of communication.

This is getting serious.

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prairie bug

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This one fascinates me. I really did not know that prairies had trees or even crickets on them having never seen one but the world is rich and textured.

I miss identified this photo sent by Sue Wagoner a few weeks ago.

As she later learned, it's a prairie tree cricket and as the name suggests, they are found in prairies, old fields and in crops. Most curious, I must go find one.

Thanks, Sue.


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bone breaker

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How’s your head bone?

The genus “Eupatorium” contains between 36 to 60 species depending on who does the classifying. Native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, the flowering plants are commonly called bonesets, thoroughworts or snakeroots.

Boneset is the painful one because the plants were once used to treat “bonebreaker” fever. Also known as Dengue fever, the illness is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes and causes a fever and headache that feels like the skull is going to break apart.

Ouch!!

- Photo taken in South Knoxville

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