your own nature

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” *

- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

* Forgive the gender bias in the above quote but Beecher did live in the 1800s. My female friends who are artists work just as hard at finding their own nature through their artwork as do we males.

Looney Island, pt. 2

Sitting on the shoreline, watching the herons at the rookery across the river you realize their dilemmas. The first to arrive at the island and claim a nest are the males. Great blue heron pair bonds only last for the breeding season, so the males must find new mates and the ones that claim the best nesting sites this year have a greater chance of attracting a female. But a male may have to wait for days before a female arrives and chooses him. If he leaves the choice nest to get food, another male may claim it. So he stoically stands in the rain and cold protecting his real estate--day after day after day.

Looney Island

As the crow flies, or in this case, the heron, Looney Island is just over a mile from my home on Chapman Ridge. One of the largest heron rookeries in the valley is located on the island. Close to 100 nests fill the trees on the long strip of land in the middle of the Tennessee River. Great blue herons spend most of their lives as solitary hunters; steel gray isolationists, fishing up and down their adopted waterways. But at breeding time they come together as colonial nesters, filling the trees with large stick constructions. A single tall sycamore can have multiple homes, precariously placed on the topmost branches. The nests are so well built, they can be used year after year.

In February, great blues begin to arrive at the rookery to stake their claims. They don’t necessarily use the same nests as they did the year before and if they arrive early enough to claim a better-located one, they will. What determines a better site? Only a heron knows and they are remarkably tight-billed on the subject. Perhaps it's the view. If they arrive too late, they may have to build a nest from scratch. It’s first come, first served. This declaration-of-site marks the beginning of courtship. Yesterday’s showers didn’t discourage the herons. Several nests have already been claimed; solo males were standing tall in the rain waiting for the arrival of a mate. The wait may be a long one.

Illustration by Stephen Lyn Bales

Coot toes

American coots have remarkable feet. In fact, they’re famous for their toes. The one problem is that you really never get to see them. The charcoal gray birds keep them rather demurely tucked away under the water. Unlike other waterfowl, their feet are not webbed but somewhat scalloped. A coot’s individual toes have lobes, much like a leaf. This aids their swimming and gives them rather fancy flattened phalanges. Artist Vickie Henderson and I discovered a coot standing on a half submerged log. It was as if it were showing off its special feet. Wouldn’t you? Luckily, we both had our cameras.

A small flock of coots, called a cover, has spent the winter on Mead’s Quarry Lake at Ijams Nature Center. Although most of the time, they have kept their toes modestly well hidden.

Photo by Stephen Lyn Bales. Please visit: www.vickiehenderson.com

the natural way

“Don’t live a repressed life, otherwise you live not at all. Live a life of expression, creativity, joy. Live the way existence wanted you to live; the natural way.”

- Osho (1931-1990) contemporary mystic

Love potion flower

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“Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness."

Roses may be the traditional Valentine’s Day offering but the purple petals used by Puck to cast spoonie-eyed, moonie-pied love spells in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” came from a very different flower. "Love-in-idleness" is an Old World name for pansy.

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A leaf's journey

A leaf falls into a stream and gently floats to the sea. It offers no resistance, passes many wonderful sights and has a memorable trip. It is, in fact, an effortless journey; there was no need to hurry. If your life is on the right path, shouldn’t it be just as easy? Should there not be a natural flow? In other words, why do we make our journeys so difficult? Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu said, “Easy is right. Begin right and you are easy. Continue easy, and you are right. The right way to go easy is to forget the right way and forget that the going is easy.” Take a moment. Find a quiet stream, locate a discarded leaf and drop it into the water. Now watch it begin its journey. The rest will come easy. What you do after that should become perfectly clear.

A rose for Lent?

At the nature center, there’s a hillside on the original Ijams’ home site that is covered with an escapee. It’s an early-blooming perennial with long-lasting burgundy, pink or yellow flowers. Probably planted originally by Alice Ijams, who lived at the location from 1910 to 1964, the plant is known as Lenten rose because it blooms in winter between Christmas and Lent. On a gray winter’s day, it would have been a cheery sight to Alice. It still is today. Not native to North America, the shade-loving perennial with deeply lobed leaves is an invited guest from the Old Country. Although the flower resembles a wild rose, it’s actually a hellebore. The genus in the buttercup family is native to much of Europe from western Great Britain east into Romania and Ukraine. From the mountains of the Ukraine to the mountains of East Tennessee, that's a long way to travel for something that doesn't have any legs or feet. Perhaps it had help.

19th century illustration

Keep it light

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”

- from “Lady Windermere's Fan” by Oscar Wilde. Irish playwright, novelist, poet. (1854-1900)

Swallows return

One of the first signs of spring is the return of tree swallows to the Tennessee Valley. My friend Ted Bays loves watching their aerobatics. It’s lively. He and his wife Geniece have over 30 bluebird boxes in the fields around their home on the French Board River. Tree swallows are called such because they nest in hollow trees but they will readily use these boxes instead, in fact, Ted gets more nesting swallows than bluebirds. Historically, they didn’t nest in East Tennessee and have only been doing so since the late 1960s. There’s an ebb and flowing to nature and these metallic blue swallows are expanding their range, flowing into our valley. Their population here has been growing ever since. Ted reports that he saw three or four swallows flying around yesterday, February 8. This is their earliest return since he started keeping track of their comings and goings. Can spring be far behind?

One man’s owl

At this time of the year, while you and I are lying all comfy and cozy under our blankets and comforters and heirloom quilts, female great horned owls are incubating their eggs. In Tennessee, egg laying occurs in January. They are the first bird to nest in the calendar year and have been seen covered with snow sitting on their clutches. Burrrr! The eggs hatch in 26 to 35 days. So, pour yourself a cup of chamomile tea and find a copy of “One Man’s Owl” by Bernd Heinrich. I've read several of Heinrich's books and his insights into animal behavior are always a joy. And it’s a good way to pass the time waiting for the owlets' arrival.

“One Man’s Owl” by Bernd Heinrich. 1987, Princeton University Press.

A dawn in me

"Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me."

Thanks Kimberly - from "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau. American author, naturalist, transcendentalist. (1817-1862)

Resurrected

Yesterday, we hit a record high in Knoxville of 73 degrees, breaking the old mark of 71 set in 1986. The rains and mild weather revived the resurrection fern on Chapman Ridge. It grows on the top of a large gray rock as big as an sleeping elephant. The evergreen is an air plant or epiphyte that attaches itself to a tree or rock and gets its nutrients from the air, its moisture from rain. You have to admire such parsimony. The plant’s common name comes from its ability to survive long periods of drought by curling up its fronds and appearing dead and dried-out, making it look as bad as I feel mornings without coffee. The fronds seem brittle and will crumble in your hand. Yet, a little rain brings the fern back to life; the leaves unfurl and return to a vibrant green. Voilà! It has been reported that these plants can go 100 years without water and still revive after a single soaking. I may not live long enough to test this, but I'll try. Check back here February 6, 2108.

Sodden

The one-and-a-third inches of rain that fell yesterday has left the ground sodden and sloppy. A walk out Chapman Ridge to DeWayne’s Tree was a bit of a slog, dare I say "soppy." The advantage of living on a ridge is that they dry out first; the water slowing seeps to the lowlands below. Spring Creek is swollen, its banks slippery. You'd have to splosh through the meadow bordering Cherokee Bluff. Yesterday’s rain also allows a writer to unpack all of those wonderfully sensual “s” words that have been stored away because of the drought that has stymied the southeast. Oops, I left out squishy.

Hawk put down

The Cooper’s hawk reported on three days ago did not make it. She had to be euthanized, her leg too badly shattered to be repaired. Cooper’s hawks rarely survive such accidents. They live life at full throttle, pursuing their prey like cheetahs with agile quickness. Injuries are often fatal and even if they can be treated, they make poor patients. Cooper's hawks are high strung and generally do not settle down to heal in rehab, often refusing food and drink.

Drawing by Stephen Lyn Bales

John Clare

February is the neglected month. It’s short. It’s plain, its colors earthy and muted. Its grays and browns seem to be something we have to endure until we get to luscious spring. There’s little going on outside, right? Well not to John Clare (1793-1864). The Englishman is generally referred to as "the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet.” His “Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery,” published in 1820 and works that followed brought notoriety but little money to feed his family that included six children. He died, like many good artists, in an asylum. In addition to poems, Clare wrote prose. To underscore the beauty of the month of February he penned perhaps the longest sentence ever put on paper about the short month. Times were hard; punctuation was is short supply. It’s a sentence Faulknerian in length (over 290 words) that begins: “I always think that this month the prophet of spring brings many beautys to the landscape tho a carless observer woud laugh at me for saying so who believes that it brings nothing because he does not give himself the trouble to see them—I always admire the kindling freshness…”

Cooper's hawk down

Cooper’s hawks fly, quite literally, at breakneck speeds. Rounding a corner, in hot pursuit of a meal, they will sometimes fly into a tree or wall or building at full speed. Crash! Yesterday, I helped rescue a Cooper’s that had been found flopping around on the sidewalk in downtown Knoxville. She could fly, she couldn’t stand or perch. The downed raptor was astonishing beautiful, although very frightened. One leg was badly damaged. I took the hawk to the University of Tennessee Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Time will tell.

the wisdom of the day

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31 January 1853

"A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age."

- Henry David Thoreau

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H.P. and "The Migrant"

The second chapter of TOS, came into existence on January 13, 1924 in Knoxville. The organizers included Harry “H.P.” Ijams, Brockway Crouch, S.A. Ogden and Paul Adams. Ijams served as the chapter’s first president and the group met once a month at the “Island Home” of H.P. and Alice. After the couple’s passing, their 20-acre home site served as the nucleus for Ijams Nature Center located on the Tennessee River, three miles from downtown Knoxville. Today the nature center has grown to be more than 160-acres and recently celebrated its 42nd anniversary.

In June 1930, TOS began to publish “The Migrant: A Quarterly Journal Devoted to Tennessee Birds.” H.P. Ijams served as one of the original regional editors. Its early motto was “The simple truth about birds is interesting enough, it is not necessary to go beyond that,” and the editors dedicated the pages to reports, observations, scientific studies and bird count data collected around the state. For the past 77 years, as a published record of the birds in our state, the journal is unsurpassed.

For the first five years, illustrations of various Tennessee birds appeared on the cover but in March 1935 a new pen-and-ink illustration was introduced showing nine different species flying in formation. The editors felt that the more inclusive design would better hint at the contents inside the publication. The illustrator was H.P. Ijams. Although his avocation was birds, he earned his living as a commercial artist for the Knoxville newspaper. Ijams’ cover was popular; it stood the test of time. It appeared on the front of “The Migrant,” except for an occasional special anniversary issue, from March 1935 through 1991, a total of 57 years.

For the rest of the article about The Migrant look for the November/December 2007 of The Tennessee Conservationist.

 

bluebirds

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- West Side Story: Spring 2007


Eastern Bluebirds: Their colorful place in history

"Henry David Thoreau was this country’s first and, perhaps, foremost nature writer. He rigorously kept a journal, recording the happenings around his home in Concord, Massachusetts. On April 26, 1838 he scribed a poem that began, “In the midst of the poplar that stands by our door, We planted a bluebird box, And we hoped before summer was o’er, A transient pair to coax.”

Thoreau ended the long entry with the lines, “The bluebird had come from the distant South, To his box in the poplar tree, And he opened wide his slender mouth, On purpose to sing to me.”

It’s now been 169 years since the master of Walden waxed poetic about Eastern bluebirds, but his words seem just as appropriate today as they were then because people still love the birds that “carry the sky on their backs” and a song in their hearts.

Eastern bluebirds are mid-sized members of the Thrush family—a group noted for their singing. Their songs are raspy warbling chatters: “turr, turr-lee, turr-lee.” Yet, there’s a note of lament in their tunes, a melancholy counterpoint that serves as the yin to the yang of an otherwise cheerful spring day. This spot of sadness seems to suggest that even the joy of spring is fleeting.

Native American legend has it that the bluebird was once drab but obtained its brilliant azure from repeatedly bathing in the blue water of an isolated lake. It is reported that the colorful birds greeted the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, who called them “blue robins” because the songbirds reminded them of their beloved English robins. For them, it was a cheerful welcome in an otherwise strange and hostile land. In “Song of Hiawatha,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of the bluebird singing from the thickets and meadows. Hiawatha’s people called the songster, “Owaissa”

By the early 1800s, when Thoreau was exploring the countryside around his beloved New England on foot, this nascent country was beginning to stretch its limbs and expand. Settlers first trickled and then flooded inland from the coast and New England into the wilderness, cutting down forests and building homesteads, eager to start a new life, plant a garden, orchard or hayfield for livestock. This rapid expansion was a boon to bluebirds; their population undoubtedly soared because the sky blue songbirds don’t live in the woods. They prefer the edges that open up to grasslands, pastures and fields.

Bluebirds are secondary cavity nesters...

For the rest of my article about bluebirds look for the spring issue of the West Side Story.

Special thanks to editor/publisher Dan Barile

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