2017: favorite nature moments #8

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This memorable moment happened in May on live TV. We really had no idea how the captive-bred corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus) would react for her closeup during her interview with reporter Emily Stroud, a reporter for WBIR's Live@5@4.

The topic was my upcoming Snake-ology class at Ijams and the beautifully gentle snake did her part. She actually showed a great curiosity for the lens of Brian's camera.

Click: snake closeup.

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2017: favorite nature moments #9

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Jen Roder examines some of the specimens from 2004

This came as a complete surprise: periodical 17-year cicadas where none should be. 

In 2004, we had a big population of these cicadas emerge at Ijams in May. They were part of Brood X and I wrote about it in my first book Natural Histories, but, if you do the math, they are not due back until 2021. But last May some confused ones emerged early. It was first noticed by my supervisor Jen Roder and Ben Nanny. He knew instantly what the golden winged hemipterans were, he was at Ijams in 2004.

We had great fun with it for several days, then the partial emergence fizzled out. 

Click: cicadas appear when none should be

and Ijams cicada news got bigger.

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2017: favorite nature moments #10

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It started with a Serenity Saturday in early November at Ijams hosted by naturalist Christie Collins and me.  After a Mindfulness Walk we did a salute to British artist Andy Goldsworthy. We all created our own piece of impermanence.

We were lucky, the leaves were at their peak color and were falling to the ground all around us, calling to be arraigned. Goldsworthy is a master of ephemeral art. He creates it. Takes a photo, then walks away. Of course, it doesn't last. But that is the point. Call it an analogy.

Ephemerality was on my mind then since my third book Ephemeral by Nature had just been released. After our Goldsworthy playtime for adults, I found myself arraigning the minutia of autumn everywhere I went, like a 6-year-old. But somehow, like being six years old, it didn't last, but it was fun while it did.

Click: Ijams Serenity Saturday

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2017: favorite nature moments #11

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Working with kids at the nature center probably should occupy all my top fifteen spots. It is always memorable. In late August we kicking off our second year of Ijams Homeschool Academy. 

It was hot, so we headed to Toll Creek in search of aquatic life: fishes, larvae and crawdads...maybe even a turtle or snake.

Click: creek fun. 

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2017: favorite nature moments #12

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British biologist J.B.S Haldane is reported to have said that "the creator had an inordinate fondness for beetles because he had made so many different species."
 
Myself? I have an inordinate fondness for the arthropoda in the class Diplopoda known as millipedes. The slow-moving detritivores that eat dead leaves aiding in the decomposition of that plant material. And since I have been raking leaves off and on for weeks, I can certainly use their services. 

In September, I took a yellow flat-backed millipede (Cherokia georgiana) on live TV, namely WBIR's Live@5@4 (a first for the perennial program) to talk to Russell Biven about the curious, and very necessary, little multi-legged invertebrates, plus the Big Bug Safari we were having at the nature center.

Click: Live@5@4.

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welcome Emily #2

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We will welcome WBIR Live@5@4's Emily Stroud and new reporter Emily DeVoe to Ijams on today's program. Yes, now we have two Emily's!

At the nature center, new Emily began to learn what to be afraid of and what not to be afraid of in the natural world around us...in this case, a harmless corn snake. (Can you guess, it was the first time Emily#2 had ever held a snake not made out of rubber.) 

East Tennesseans—especially curious kids—have been enjoying the wonders and sanctity of nature at Ijams since the summer of 1923.

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2017: favorite nature moments #13

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It has been very cold of late, what you would expect for December which makes it a bit difficult to recall the heat of summer.

In early July, I was the nature guide for a quiet, no-talking, no cell phones walk through the fields of sunflowers planted at Forks of the River WMA near Ijams. Because of the heat, we met early and mindfully, silently, slowly strolled at sunrise.

Click: sunflowers

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2017: favorite nature moments #14

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Adding a new species of bird to your Life List is a big deal if you are a birder. Locally, there's roughly 175 species you can find at different times of the year.

That's why it's a big deal when an odd one, lost one—a species that really should not be here—makes an appearance. Finding it, even with directions from other birders is an Indiana Jones kind of moment. Yet, the brant goose in early December was almost a bit too easy. There the lostling was walking around the parking lot at Pellissippi State Community College in the company of larger Canada geese. You really didn't have to leave the car but Rachael Eliot and I at least walked to find it...it really wasn't hard.

Click: brant goose

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2017: favorite nature moments #15

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It is perhaps a little hard to imagine that a fungi would make my top 15 favorite nature moments. And in truth, I have had dozens and dozens of favorite nature moments in 2017, but I had to start and stop somewhere.

In September, Ijams volunteer naturalist Nick Stahlman got us all excited about 'shrooms when he led a nature walk focused on the topic for our TN Naturalist@Ijams. 

It was only a few days later that Ijams staffer Lauren noticed the odd mushrooms by the greenhouse. They turned out to be inky caps, an extremely appropriate name since within 24 hours each cap turned to a liquid black nothingness. Yes, talk about ephemeral!

Click: inky caps.

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top nature book read in 2017

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As you might suspect, I read a lot of nature/natural history books. It is just who I am. Occasionally, I will drift to another genre, as when my friend Charlie convinced me to read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in the spring, and she was right—spooky, weird, dark humor.  But as a rule, I’m a nature boy. As Annie Dillard advised, "you read the genre you write because that is what your brain thinks about" and I have written three books on nature and natural history so Annie knows best.

I would probably make a lot more money if I read and wrote spy novels, but hidden in the woods as I am, I'm a long way from espionage.
 

My favorite nature book that I read in the past year was a bit of a surprise: Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Who would want to read or even write a book about starlings? Don't we all hate them? Yet, it was the Mozart hook that got me. And yes, indeed, the famed composer once kept a pet starling he named "Star."

Haupt weaves a curious tale. She brings to the table a love of birds, knowledge of classic music especially the stringed instruments and an obvious admiration of quirky, off color, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (If you have seen the play or movie Amadeus, you know what I am talking about.) But Haupt also goes as far as taking in a pet European starling herself and it is perfectly legal since it is an introduced troublesome species that has no Federal protection. Introduced from Europe, the common starling (Sturnus vulgaris) even has the the word vulgar in their scientific nomenclature. Her starling "Carmen" provides the humor in the book. The author even manages to travel to Vienna in search of all that is left of the prolific, yet died in poverty, composer himself.

But where Mozart’s Starling transcends other books about birds comes in the closing pages where Haupt goes from the beauty of starling murmurations into the realm of philosophy and why we all have a cosmic role to play, a creative force, a uniqueness, part of the collective yet singular too. I read the closing pages three times marveling at its message and beauty. 

And as you might suspect, gained an entire new appreciation of starlings.

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winter begins with wren

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Call Better Homes & Gardens. 

On second thought, don't waste your dime as if a phone call still cost only ten cents. Or maybe they cost less. I was told the phone calls were free, I was only paying for the data. "But if the calls are free, why do I need the data"? One could query as did I. "You may want to do some streaming." Yes, I go streaming a lot in the summer but the streams are free too. Are we falling into "circulus in probando," or circular logic with this? Let's move on.    

The above photo is the bench on my front porch. As has been the custom in my Smoky Mountain ancestry, I have been gathering dead branches for the past two months to use as kindling in the fireplace. And on a cold night in December, which just happens to be an accurate description of this very moment, I'll start digging out my bench.  

OK. The wood pile may not look respectible, but the neighbors do not mind. They have been doing it too.

A fireplace is the best location—well hearth and home simply go together— to pass the time on long cold, cold nights. But a good brush or wood pile has a secondary raison d'être. They are irresistible to winter wrens (Troglodytes hiemalis) and I had one of the winter-only petite passerines hoping around my front porch just a few mornings ago.

Winter is coming. Winter is coming. It seemed to posit.

I think the sticks on top of more sticks passed its inspection and I would have invited it in to share the warmth if I only knew where it chose to roost. Somewhere deep in a brush pile no doubt.

Don't you just love those chunky little puffballs.

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brant on a local sabbatical

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Birds fly. Well, duh! 

Because of this special talent they really can go almost anywhere and sometimes they end up in places a long way from their traditional range. And when this happens, the bird-watching community scrambles to see the out-of-place wanderer to add it to their life lists, a coveted accounting of all the different species a birder sees in their lifetime. And a brant (Branta bernicla), a smallish northern goose, is rarely seen this far south and inland. 

Brants nest in northern Canada and they migrate in winter to the Atlantic seaboard and saltwater estuaries from New England south to the Outer Banks. They are only rarely seen inland on freshwater, even more rarely seen in the Tennessee Valley, even odder still, on the campus of Pellissippi State Community College in Hardin Valley. Why so public a place? No one knows.

The wanderer was first noticed by Terry Crowe, Deputy Chief of the campus police on November 14. Crowe is originally from Maryland and knew exactly what the odd small dark goose was. The nomad seemed quite comfortable with the college's resident Canada goose and muscovy population. (The smallish brant is hanging out with much larger Canada geese.)

Rachael Eliot and I saw the brant last Saturday as did Ijams volunteer Nick Stahlman and Jason and Charlotte Dykes.

This is reminiscent of last July when Starbuck got bird #149. Click: roseate spoonbill. 
 

- Thanks for the brant photos Jason and for the information Terry.  

Size comparison: Cell phone photo of brant in foreground 
with larger Canada geese.

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buy local

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ephemeral: adj. lasting a very brief time; short-lived; transitory; fleeting; as in "the ephemeral joys of childhood."

Truth be told, and I revel in the truth since nonfiction is the palette I paint with, I have written about ephemerality in all three of my UT Press books. The ebb and flow nature of all life. 

My new book Ephemeral by Nature looks at 12 species of plants and animals that are in some way—ephemeral.

Where to buy it locally this holiday season?

1) Ijams Nature Center 2915 Island Home Ave.

2) Wild Birds Unlimited 7240 Kingston Pike, Gallery Shopping Center.

3) Or on SALE for the holiday from the University of Tennessee Press: Online



Book review in the Knoxville News Sentinel click: Book Review



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circles

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New books get a lot of early promotion but it is really the word-of-mouth, in ever expanding circles, that is the life or death of a book. One person tells two, two tell four, etc. Readers talk, they cannot help themselves. 

And even though my new book Ephemeral by Nature is about several very sobbingly serious topics: the fragileness of all species, recovery of a vanishing species, hard-to-find species, extinction and the very transitory nature of the concept of "species" itself. Are they immutable or only a mere point in time? 

For what is life? A wisp. Nothing more than "a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." (James 4:14)

Yet, there is a boyish curiosity to the wonder, the minutia of all life in the pages of Ephemeral.   

Perhaps this is why two young ladies whom I have know since they were kindergarteners in summer camp at Ijams, thought I needed some playful PR photos to promote the book, even if it meant a photo bomb at my Sunday talk.

Thank you Lucy and Josie! You make me smile.

And Mom Sara, I see your hand in this too.   

PHOTO BOMB! Spotted you young ladies.

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A revisit to Panther Country

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Last Monday, I made my yearly sojourn to Panther Nation, paying a visit to Will Roberts' AP Environmental Science class at Powell High School. It has become an annual tradition.

Each student had been assigned to read a portion of one of my first two books: Natural Histories or Ghost Birds and ask questions about what they had read. Plus we chatted a bit about my new book Ephemeral by Nature now available in the Ijams gift shop. 

Topics we visited were some of my favorite parts of my first two books including Osage oranges, river cane, pawpaws, male lesser prairie chickens dancing in a lek, plus the arduous process of writing a book in the first place. And—a preview of coming attractions—the red pandas and the return of lake sturgeon to the Tennessee River in Ephemeral.

We also talked about beauty in nature and my favorite animal I work with at the nature center. And how could I not have named the partial blind barred owl we care for? He flies beautifully, just doesn't see very well. 

Best of luck to all of you! Thanks, Will.

Lincoln. A red panda at the Knoxville Zoo. 

Click these links for a look back at past visits:

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

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Ijams book talk

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Drop by Ijams on Sunday, November 19 at 2 p.m. for a book talk, a look at some of the stories that went into the making of my third book Ephemeral by Nature published by the University of Tennessee Press. 

Books will be available in the Ijams Gift Shop.

Thank you Sarah Brobst for arraigning the talk. 

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News Sentinel

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When you reach the pinnacle, somehow you know it and become apprehension about what awaits on the other side. That IS the nature of ephemerality.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017: Book review reprinted in the Knoxville News Sentinel click: Book Review



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Wild Birds-ephemeral

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What was Newton's Third Law of physics? "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Just get ready for it. Perhaps Sir Isaac was thinking of authoring. It is an odd avocation, filled with an unusual and opposing dichotomy, a push pull.

While writing a book, the long months that turn into years, you are squirreled away, quietly working, researching, putting words to paper, locked in your own head. Yes, it's scary. Nonfiction books live or die by the research, a detective job that can go in many directions, through many sources. It's fascinating. Sometimes you know, or think you know bits of the story but its details are ferreted out by the detective work. Often it is full of surprises.   

Ultimately, if you are lucky, the book is published and your baby is out into the world, and you spend months and years standing in front of groups talking about what you have written, reliving the stories. That is intensely extroverted. You jump from meek mouse to roaring lion.  

Many, many thanks to my friends at Wild Birds Unlimited Knoxville—owners Liz and Tony, assistant manager Tiffiny—for hosting the first book talk about my newest, Ephemeral by Nature. And thank you the University of Tennessee Press for publishing it. 

What a strange ride it all has been. 

And thank you Tiffiny for the photos.  

With Liz Cutrone, co-owner with husband Tony of Wild Birds Unlimited Knoxville

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Ephemeral review

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Of all things fragile and beautiful, we feel for thee. By the late 1940s, there were roughly only 24 whooping cranes left alive in the world. Today they are far more but they still are very much endangered. 

We are not actors on Broadway, so we don't go to Sardi's to wait for the reviews to come in. When a book is published, it is cast upon the wind like milkweed seeds. Authors wonder, "Will they land on futile ground?"

No, I wasn't at a glamourous restaurant on Times Square. I was on the sofa nursing a cold and reading Sy Montgomery's book on octopuses. The only thing worse than a bad review is no review. The only thing better than strawberry yogurt on a stick is a good review.  

With deep appreciation, this author thanks, Maria Browning for her review in Chapter 16: A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby  

Browning writes, "These are difficult days for nature lovers. Pollution, habitat destruction, the decline of countless species, climate change—anyone who takes an interest in the condition of planet Earth had better be prepared for bad news. This state of affairs should make someone like Stephen Lyn Bales, senior naturalist at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, more than a bit gloomy. But his collection of essays, Ephemeral by Nature, shows him to be, if not exactly optimistic, at least deeply philosophical about the fate of life as we know it. He makes a convincing case for joy and curiosity despite—or perhaps because of—the transience of all living things..."

For the rest of Browning's review click: 

Ephemeral by Nature review

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See you in Oak Ridge

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