owl whisperer

•

My friend Rex McDaniel likes to stroll, camera in hand.

Rex is also something of an owl whisperer. If there's an owl in the woods up in the canopy, he patiently looks for it until he finds it. He has this inner sense of knowing where owls like to be. Perhaps Rex is part owl; perhaps they're his totem. We are all more than we think we are. We just have to find our collective unconscious. 

Life is a long journey of pulling together our true selves. And what better thing to have within you than an owl?  

Lately, Rex has been watching a barred owl nest hole at the nature center and recently spotted a fledging owlet looking out at the world. It was fresh and new and wondered what life had in store for it. 

Wonderful photo, Rex. Thank you.  




•

yellow-headed life bird

•

Life Bird! Life Bird! Life Bird!

Whenever you find a species of bird that you have never seen before it becomes a "Life Bird," and you add it to your list. And since there are roughly 10,000 species on Earth, the list can grow rather long.

"Aren’t they just beautiful? I never even heard of one until a few days ago," emailed Betty Thompson. "I took this photo at Quivira Wildlife Refuge about 1 1/2 hours northwest of Wichita. I hope they put a smile on your face today." As indeed they did.

A yellow-headed blackbird would be a Life Bird for me. You do not always think of a blackbird as being beautiful, but these two certainly are.

• 

A visit with the Panthers...again

•

This has become one of my favorite traditions: an annual visit to Will Roberts' AP Environmental Science classes at Powell High School.

Each student had been assigned to read a portion of one of my three books: Natural Histories, Ghost Birds or Ephemeral by Nature and be ready to ask questions about what they had read. I like the format because it is free-wheeling. We go where the students want us to go.

I write about natural history—what is and has been and often touch on ephemerality, i.e. short-livedness. Species come and go. And the topic came up several times as when we visited Jim Tanner and the ivory-billed woodpecker, the so-called Ghost Bird. Are they extinct, or not? Plus we took an unusual turn toward botany with discussions about Osage orange, ginko and Franklinia. (My late UT botany professor: Dr. Aaron Sharp would have been pleased.) 

Named in honor American polymath Benjamin Franklin, Franklinia was a native flowering shrub discovered by William Bartram along the Altamaha River in Georgia. Bartram collected seeds to cultivate in the 1770s but the species has completely vanished from the wild ever since. It, in effect, is a Ghost Plant. 

Species do come and go. Most we never see and some we only get a fleeting glimpse before they perish. Another example: the last credited sighting of a Bachman's warbler came in South Carolina in 1962. Today it is gone or very well hidden, a second ghost bird.  

We also talked about one of my favorite animals: a non-releasable, non-flighted American Kestrel named Docs that turned up at UT Veterinary Medical Center this past January with a badly injured right wing. It will never fly again. Kestrels are an anomaly. They are feisty little birds of prey that eat a variety of prey. They are the most widespread falcon, yet they are on the decline. Even after the banning of DDT in the early 1970s, the kestrel population has continued to decrease, down 66 percent since 1966. Why? Is it habitat loss or some other factor?

It's a mystery, as so much of life truly is. 

Best of luck to all of you! Thanks, Will. See you on 2020.

Nestling Ghost Bird      Photo by James T. Tanner 1938

Osage Orange

Ginko

Franklinia

Click these links for a look back at past visits:

Fall 2017

Fall 2016

Spring 2016

Fall 2015

Spring 2015

Fall 2014

Spring 2014

Fall 2013

School year 2012-2013 

School year 2011-2012

School year 2010-2011

School year 2009-2010

•

cricket curiosity

•

"I’m never at a loss for things to study or topics to write about: everything in the natural world is fair game. If I’m not intrigued and excited every time I step outside, it just means I’m not paying attention." 

I have used this quote often. It is from the book "Feathers" by Thor Hanson, and it is so true. 

There is the newly created virtual world, then there's the good old real world that has been around three to four billion years. I find my solace in the latter because it is infinitely more fascinating. And Hanson is correct, you really do not have to go that far to find a curiosity. And if you can be entertained by a simple house cricket, then your entertainment comes cheap. Naturalists are cheap dates. The world is our Cineplex. 

I didn't even have to go outside to find today's novelty. As I stepped out of my morning shower, I noticed this oddity clinging to my bathroom curtain. A house cricket (Acheta domesticus) had just molted from its last shed exoskeleton and was in the process of eating it. This sort of thing goes on billions of times every day, but I had never witnessed it. Why eat your old skin? Because it is made of chitin and full of nutrients. So why waste it? 

Nature doesn't discard it's carbon. It recycles it. There's also a soupçon of grossness to this story which adds to its entertainment value. 

N'est-ce pas?

•

Trails & Trilliums

•

The Dubose, Monteagle, Tennessee

Special thanks to the Friends of South Cumberland State Park for inviting me to speak at their Trails & Trilliums Festival last weekend.

Located on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau just west of the Sequatchie Valley, South Cumberland is the largest state park in Tennessee. It offers wondrous views of waterfalls and the valley below. 

The center of festivities was held at the The Dubose Conference Center in Monteagle. The Dubose was built in 1924 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and it is splendid. The mission of The DuBose is to “offer hospitality, programming, and sacred space to groups of all faiths and backgrounds for education, creativity, and renewal.”

The Dubose is simply grand. And my stay was indeed...renewing.

Thank you Margaret, my new buddy Bruce and Stephanie @ The Dubose for your hospitality and kindness.

•

wood thrush return

•

Finally, this morning a wood thrush has returned to the woods behind my deck. For thirty-one years in a row I have had wood thrush to serenade me with their flutelike song. In late April, I cannot imagine life in a hammock without it. And I wonder, oh I wonder, if the thrush I provided aid and comfort for in September 2017 has come back to its summer home?

Wood thrush spend their winters in Central America and their summers in the eastern U.S. into southern Canada. But the news is not good. They have experienced a 50 percent population decline since 1966.

Yet, birds are site loyal. They return to their own chosen nesting grounds if they are able. Could it be?

Click: Aid and Comfort. 


•

Tremont Road Scholars

• 

Special thanks to Elizabeth for inviting me to speak to the spring Road Scholars class at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont in April. 

Driving to Tremont anytime of the year is always a breath of fresh air.

The Road Scholar program is five days of hikes that explore the finest locations in the national park with meals and entertainment, Appalachian music, nature stories in the evenings.

The next Road Scholars week is in September. Click here for details: Road Scholars.

  

•

Garden Club honors first "First Lady"

•

A floral thank you to the Martha Dandridge Garden Club for inviting me to speak recently about monarch butterflies, a chapter in my third book: Ephemeral by Nature. 

The club was organized in 1927 and honors Martha Dandridge Washington, our very first "First Lady." The garden club is probably the longest running civic group in Jefferson County and currently has 88 paid members. 

Settled in 1783 and named county seat in 1793, Dandridge is the second oldest town in Tennessee (founded in 1779, Jonesborough is the oldest) and the only town in the USA named for George Washington's wife. Her maiden name was Dandridge.  

The club is active with many civic projects including the restoration of the courthouse grounds and maintaining the old cemetery where early settlers and patriots of the Revolutionary War are buried.

And what about the monarch butterflies? They are now migrating back north after overwintering in the mountains of Mexico. As the Journey North map below shows, as of April 11, at least one has been seen as far north as Johnson City.  

For the Standard Banner Article, Click: April 4, 2019

Thank you, President Kathleen Holmes and 
Vice President Angela Curry.

Journey North migrating monarch map: April 11, 2019

•

a cloister of munks

Photos by Vickie Henderson

Squirrels can be divided into two basic groups: tree squirrels and ground squirrels. They are easy to tell apart by their behavior. When frightened, a tree squirrel climbs up a tree and a ground squirrel runs into a hole.

If you travel farther west than East Tennessee, ground squirrel identification gets a little more complicated. There are 25 species of chipmunk in the world and 24 of them live in North America but most live out west. Some occupy very limited ranges. The Charleston Mountain chipmunk is only found in the mountains of the same name in Nevada and the Sonoma chipmunk lives in northwestern California. Unless one gets on a bus to go visit the other, their paths never cross.

Our only local species is the Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus). Although they are good climbers, they prefer to stay on the ground and live in extensive burrows they dig under stumps, logs, rock piles or stone walls. Like most mammals that sleep in very hidden places, it has been estimated that chipmunks sleep up to 15 hours a day. Mammals that sleep in more exposed places or drive cars and work 9-to-5 jobs get much less sleep. Chipmunks primarily eat acorns, nuts, berries and seeds and are blessed with fairly large cheek pouches for carrying their provisions from place to place. 

Generally when you see a chipmunk it is scurrying about, quickly. You get a brief glimpse. That's why local artist Vickie Henderson was surprised to look through her window and see a cloister of munks, probably a Mom bringing her litter out to get a peek of the above ground world. 

I did not used the phrase, "soooooo cute," but if you want to you can.

Thanks, Vickie. 

•

modified bird hotel

We had great fun building the nest box at West View Elementary School last week. But once you put up a box, the fun doesn't end.

Betty Thompson noticed that the opening of her box was being modified by a red-bellied woodpecker and with a little patience, got the above photo.

"It took me three days to get this! Note the big hole that was not there when I bought it," emailed Betty. "He didn’t stay long, maybe a week. It was a bird hotel to say the least. They would check in and check out! Very entertaining!"

But the red-bellied wasn't the only species to show an interest.

Thanks, Betty.

•

Bluebird Day at West View

A big avian thank you to teacher Tim McGrath and his after-hours Environmental Club at West View Elementary School for inviting me to be a part of their Bluebird Day.

We learned all about Eastern bluebirds, colored a worksheet and built a bluebird nest box with each student getting to drive at least one nail. Many of the young builders had NEVER used a hammer. Time to learn and be empowered! And to remember which nail each hammerer hammered they wrote their name or initial beside it.

Then we found a place to hang the box out on the playground with the hope that a pair of bluebirds would find it.

TVA biologists that included Ben Jaco and Dick Fitz were the first to set up bluebird boxes in our area. In fact, they set out a pick-up truck full of boxes below Norris Dam in 1968 and again in ‘69. (That was 50 years ago this spring!) 


Thank you Tim, Amber and the students for helping get West View's bluebird trail started. 

•

where's the red-headed Waldo?

As Nick Stahlman described it, "It's a where's Waldo kind of photograph." He took it with his cellphone while relaxing on a hammock. But it is unmistakable. No other bird in our state has these field marks: solid red head, black body and white shield on its back caused by the folded secondary feathers. 

Historically red-headed woodpeckers were found in the middle of the state westward, mostly in the western portion. Thee bulk of the nesting sites were located in the Mississippi River basin and across into Arkansas. These woodpeckers were not found that often in the Tennessee Valley with few nest sites being reported. 

Today. More are being seen in our part of the state. It represents movement into the valley on their part. Either they are expanding their known range of decades or fleeing from degraded habitat to new territory.

"This was an unexpected life bird for me!" Nick's text read. "I always had the thought in the back of my mind that I needed to go to a Middle Tennessee forest to see one, but never did it." 

Not bad. A life bird while lying in a hammock. Be on the lookout around your house. Time will tell.

Thanks, Nick.

•