What the rain crow knows

•

A memorial visit to sacrosanct Chota.
 

What can you say about an Ijams Bird-About that begins with a rainbow and ends with an intense thunderstorm? Dramatic! 

Our group had ventured to the Chota Memorial on Tellico Lake to hopefully hear one of the local nightjars calling just after sunset. Either a whip-poor-will or chuck-will's-widow, or perhaps both if we were lucky.

To some degree, I was recreating a trip I made to Chota and wrote about in my first UT Press book, Natural Histories.

First we paid our respects to the Eastern Band of Cherokee at the site of their former Chota council house and then laid small stones on the tombstone of Oconastota, their great war chief. Chota was the legendary Cherokee peace town, you couldn't live there if there was anger in your heart. Why was a great war chief buried there? In the 1780s, Oconastota was elderly and at peace in his heart and wanted to die at peace in Chota. His wishes were granted.

Birding-wise we heard or saw yellow-billed cuckoo, common yellowthroat, blue-gray gnatcatcher, red-winged blackbird, yellow-breasted chat and an osprey. We heard the cuckoo as soon as we got out of the cars, and if you know your bird folklore, locals called it the "rain crow." If you heard one, it would soon rain! But the clouds seemed to be breaking up as we awaited sunset, the time the chucks or whips would start to call.
 
But then things got interesting. Quickly. Standing in the grass just outside the council circle on the narrow peninsula we suddenly took note of a dark gray wall of storm clouds rapidly approaching from the south. Scurrying back to the parking lot, we began to hear chuck-will's-widows calling from the woods around us.
 

"Chip-fell-from-white-oak. Chip-fell-from-white-oak." And Jan from Georgia got to hear what she traveled so far the hear: a memory from her childhood.
 

"Nature is awesome!" Shouted the one among us who was descended from the Eastern Band of Cherokee as the storm wall closed in on us.
 
We stood in the gathering darkness listening to chucks as long as we dared.
 
But alas, with thunder and lightning popping all around plus heavy rain beginning in torrents, the group hopped into our cars and slowly drove away.
 
A visit to Chota, a Memorial Weekend outing worth remembering.
 
Supplied photos from Jason Dykes, Lo Kressin and Wiki media.

The rain crow knew something we did not.

Site of council house at Chota

Peaceful sunset

Chuck's begin to call just after sunset.

Then the grand finale began

Jason's cell phone said, "The rain begins in one minute." And it did.

•