where are you?

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Fork Ridge Trail: Great Smoky Mountains NP

"You can't know who you are until
you know where you are."

- Wendell Berry, writer, poet, essayist, Kentucky farmer

Even though I may be laid up for awhile,
that doesn't stop you.

Get out and explore the world around you.
Go to one of your favorite green places,
or seek a new one and make it your own.
Find a park or path, puddle or pond
and take up ownership; get to know your bioregion.
Breathe in deep; let the senses imbibe.

You do not have to go to the other side of the world
to find peace and harmony,
they reside somewhere near you.
After all, it's internal, a way of mind.

Recommended reading: 
The Nature Principle: Reconnecting to Life in the Virtual Age 
by Richard Louv.

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the poem of life

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My deepest heartfelt thank you

—and in this case I'm being quite literal—

to UT Cardiologist, Dr. Raj Baljepally, who, 
at this hour one week ago today,

had maneuvered a catheter into my chest to investigate 

the mysterious source of my discomfort.

He soon discovered I was having
a "widow-maker" heart attack:

the occlusion of the left anterior descending artery.
(Until then, I had no idea I had such a thing.)

Widow-makers are over 90 percent fatal, 

but Dr. Raj was in the right place at the right time 

to reopen the vessel just after it closed 
and stent it to remain freeflowing.

Thanks also to Dr. Katherine Hall, 

the nurses and CNAs on UT's cardio floor 

and ICU for their kind attention. 

And special thanks to Ijams coworkers 

Peg Beute and Kara Remington who promptly 

covered for me and delivered me to the ER 

when the whole adventure began.

This was my closest brush with the grim reaper, 

but perhaps I'm not ready to cross over just yet; 
I saw no bright lights.
There are too, too many things I would miss.

Now, that I have returned,

 Brisa reminded me of these lines from poet Wallace Stevens: 

"There were those that returned to hear him read 

from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, 

the tulips among them.
 
They were those that would have wept 

to step barefoot into reality,

That would have wept and been happy, 

have shivered in the frost
And cried out to feel it again, 

have run fingers over leaves"

 Indeed, I would cry out to feel frost with my toes.
Today? At home recovering,
slowly beginning to step barefoot back into reality.

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constantly being amazed

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"Our goal should be to live life 

in radical amazement, 

to look at the world in a way that takes 

nothing for granted. 

Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; 

to be spiritual is to be constantly amazed."

- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

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albino hawk?

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My friend and Ijams volunteer Cathy Nipper sent me this remarkable photo.

She writes, "I was visiting my family in Mt. Juliet, TN when my brother called to tell me that a hawk was in his neighbor's yard. They believe it had a run-in with the power line, and I took this photograph after it had flown into a nearby tree. I was not exactly sure what species of bird it might be, but it was suggested to me that it could be an albino red-tailed hawk. I wanted to send it to you to see what you might think."

Red-tails are more common, but something about the placement of spots on the chest and throat and hints of blush color suggest to me that in may be an albino red-shouldered. 

Go here: red-shouldered. 

Thanks, for sharing Cathy!

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devil's guts?

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Beaked dodder (Cuscuta rostrata)

And there it was, beaked dodder growing on both sides of Clingman’ s Dome Road in the Great Smokies.

Could there be a spookier plant? A more devilish succubus?

Also known as devil's guts, devil's hair, golden thread, hair weed, hellbine, strangleweed or witch's hair—now, there’s a collection of memorable names that H. P. Lovecraft would have loved—dodder is a parasitic plant. Its orange tendrils slowly reach out and attach themselves to healthy, green plants. At first, it's like a gentle caress.

But here’s what happens next. Are you sitting down?

After a dodder attaches itself to a plant, it wraps around it tighter and tighter. If the host contains food beneficial to the dodder, it produces haustoria (essentially roots) that insert themselves into the vascular system of the host. The original root of the dodder in the soil then dies. It’s no longer needed. The dodder can grow yards and yards long, latching itself onto even more plants. In this way, the dodder slowly spreads in all directions, feeding on the plants it has entwined.

This sounds like something out of a George Romero movie, night-of-the-living-dead kind of stuff. Although, perhaps it’s even creepier because it is real and we all know that zombies are not. Right?

Wait a minute! Did I just hear something gently scratching on my window?

Devil's guts spreading in all directions. Creepy!!

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post-coital consumption

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Spined Micrathena female

Before we leave the topic of Micrathena spiders altogether, I was somewhat surprised to learn that there are only three species in this Genus in the eastern United States. I would have thought there were oodles.

The black and white, spined micrathena, M. gracilis, is the one I most often see out and about.

If the wiki entry is correct, and I assume it was written by an expert in spiderlogy, then the female does the elaborate orb-weaving. 

The male? Well, "They tend to be only half the size of the females. Also, they have fewer spines, a flatter abdomen and a slightly lighter tone. Although males can produce silk, they mostly use it in the mating ritual, which frequently also proves fatal." 

In this case, she eats he. (I've had a few harsh dates in my life but none that ended this mean-spirited. Talk about a blow to one's confidence.)

To me, a female spined micrathena looks fierce, Wagnerian intense, so you have to give him kudos for even broaching the topic. Brave little guy. It would be a bit intimidating to mate with something named in honor of the Greek goddess of heroic endeavour. (See last post.)

In humans, post-coital tristesse (PCT) is a feeling of melancholy after mating. It's more common in males than in females. As far as I know, post-coital consumption (PCC) of your paramour is confined to the world of insects and spiders, and Wagnerian operas.

As far as I know.

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heroic weaver

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O, the work that goes into one of these! It's heroic. 

Micrathena, perhaps M. sagittata, the arrow-shaped micrathena, is a woodland orb-weaver; and by the tightness of the warp and weft, she's a specialist. 

My grandmother Pearl, who knew her way around a loom, would have been envious of her craftswomanship.

The name comes from the prefix Micro- meaning "small" and Athena, the Greek goddess of heroic endeavour who wore armor and was also a superb weaver.  Perfect moniker.

Micrathena sagittata

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one sip too many

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Filmy angelica is a robust wildflower that grows at the high elevations of the Great Smoky Mountains. (The photo was taken at Indian Gap.) Although angelicas are in the culinary herb parsley family, by contrast, they are dangerously poisonous. Despite the angelic name, they do not belong anywhere near your kitchen.

Bees and wasps apparently become intoxicated after feeding on the toxic flowers. It is reported in “Wildflowers of the Smokies” that they have been observed behaving crazily after a visit to angelica.

We didn’t hang around long enough to notice any odd insect behavior because could there be anything more agitating or agitated than a drunk bee? Or, in this case, a drunken wasp?

Don't worry about the little drunkards finding their way home. I've heard they can become so drunk, the inebriated insects spend the night clinging to the flower.

Could this be the origin of the term “getting a buzz on”?

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a rich jewel

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“Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!”

For some reason, when I first downloaded this photo, that famous passage uttered by Shakespeare’s Romeo as he watched Juliet on her balcony came to mind.

A buttonbush flower looks like a globular star cluster rotating slowing out in space, a rich jewel.

Buttonbush or Cephalanthus gets its botanical name from the ancient Greek: "cephalo" meaning head and "anthus" meaning flower. Head flower? Those Greeks must have had spiky looking heads.

The species found in our part of the world is Cephalanthus occidentalis. (Occidentalis means "of or from the west" as opposed to the east where the Ethiops live.)

It’s a deciduous shrub that likes to grow in wetland habitats including swamps, floodplains, mangroves, riverbanks and moist forest understory. The shrubs are now in bloom locally at places like Ijams Nature Center and Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge.

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sunshine part 2

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I cannot help myself: one additional look at the sun. Well, it's a quick look, we do not want to burn our retinas.

Last time, I reported the temperature on the surface of the Sun. 

Deep inside, in the Sun's core, the temperature goes up to 27,000,000º Fahrenheit—that's habañero hot. Here, the plasma is six times denser than gold. Under this tremendous heat and pressure, hydrogen atoms are fused together to produce helium atoms. As a byproduct, photons are released and it takes over 100,000 years for them to bounce through the densely packed matter like an arcade pinball and work their way to the surface, yet only eight minutes for these wayward photons to reach us in the form of sunshine.

Wow. And again, this happens a gazillion times, each and every day. If you need to look to the heavens for miracles, here's the first and most obvious.

Here's another bit of John Murphy music from the Danny Boyle movie: Sunshine.

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sunshine

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Filaments of solar plasma, which are not a solid, liquid or gas; they're a state-of-matter all their own. Kinda like a gas that can have structure. Wow!

It's summer. It's hot. Day after day after day. 

Of course our heat comes from the Sun just 93,000,000 miles away where today the surface temperatures will reach a balmy 5,400º Kelvin or roughly 9,980º Fahrenheit with not a cloud in the sky. No rain, no water, no condos on the beach; just a bunch of hydrogen atoms slamming into one another making helium. Day in and day out; 4.57 billion years of it. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Basic nuclear fusion, no big deal except for the heat and light it generates. You'd hardly notice.

Just so you know, because it passed quickly in the closing credits, the music played in the video in my last post is called Kaneda's Death (Part 2) Adagio in D Minor by John Murphy. The outstanding piece was used in the movie Sunshine by Danny Boyle (of Olympic Opening Ceremony fame).

Here's a link to hear it in its entirety:

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frog for breakfast?

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One advantage of working at a nature center is, well, the nature that greets you in the morning. Some times it's even a barred owl perched on a bridge railing watching the pond below. 

It may have been waxing poetic: enjoying the early morning mist as were all we, or, I suspect, it wanted to catch a last minute snack before its night of hunting ended. (I always like a glass of milk before I trundle off to bed. Amphibian flesh would be a bit exotic for my own personal taste, especially raw and still kicking. I suppose I might be open for frog fricassee, but the sauce would have to be right, nothing too heavy before bedtime.)

Barred owls are mostly nocturnal and crepuscular (active at twilight). Come to think of it, I'm a bit crepuscular myself.

They prefer woods near water and feed on a wide variety of prey, including mice, moles, voles, shrews, rats, squirrels, young rabbits, insects and aquatic creatures like small fish, turtles, frogs, snakes, lizards and crayfish.

The small pond the owl was watching is a great place to find frogs. And even though several of the nature center’s staff got photos of the early morning owl, it didn’t seem to mind posing. It's a lucky thing that we are not frogs.

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in plain sight

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Ruby-throated hummingbirds are marvels of bioengineering.

The very fact that these little dynamos even exist and build nests and lay eggs and migrate to Central America like other birds is miraculous, but miracles can be small and capricious, even fanciful.

Hummingbirds tend to hide in plain sight. A mote of dust that pass before our eyes at speeds to swift to comprehend. People often ask, "How do I find one of their nests?" I answer, "It's not easy." You need luck and keen eyesight. The nests are small and the trees they blend into vast.

As an example, I received this remarkable series of photos from Tina Heath. Finding the nest in the first photo is not easy but it's there in plain sight.

Tina e-mailed, "My son and his friend discovered that we have a hummingbird nest in the tree behind our house. There was a nest in the same tree a couple years ago, but I never found one last year. They are so tiny and flit around so fast that I was amazed to catch this picture of it in flight. They always seem to build their nest in this tree which hangs out over the water, but not very high up in the tree. These pictures are misleading because they are blown up. The nest is really about the size of a walnut!"

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Bach aria

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It's late. 

Long, long, lonnnnnnnnnnnnng day, so we'll close it out with a little Bach, aah there will always be Glenn Gould and Bach.

 





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mannerist thrashers

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I was on my way to a friend's house for my favorite: tofu and pesto, blue cheese and lettuce sandwiches—ooh là là—when a brown thrasher ran across the road in front of my car.

It didn't hop, or use its wings, it sprinted like a roadrunner. Quick and true. Straight and purposeful. I stopped to watch and realized how beautiful the brown and spotted birds are, long and lean to the point of being almost elongated like the paintings of the Mannerists—Raphael, Michelangelo—of the High Renaissance.

Thrashers generally stay hidden in the understory. Reclusive, though not taciturn. With the largest song repertoires of any North American bird, up to 2,000 phrases or "strophes," they do not get the credit they deserve; all the attention goes to their cousins the loud, boastful mockingbirds, the true mimic thrush braggadocios. (But don't tell them I said such.) 

- Recent thrasher photo by Wayne Mallinger. 

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spy poison

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Castor oil plant (Ricinus communis)

Recently I came across a list of the top ten poisonous plants and...YIKES!... number one on the list is a plant I sometimes see growing along our Tennessee roadsides. I found one a couple of weeks ago, stopped to photograph it and, quietly, quickly, respectfully, walked away. When it grows in a local meadow, farmers cut down the plant immediately to protect their livestock. (It's reported that four seeds will kill a rabbit, five a sheep, six an ox or horse, seven a pig, eleven a dog but it takes 80 to kill a duck. Hardy little cusses aren't they.)

Castor oil plant is native to the Mediterranean Basin, Eastern Africa and India, but somehow it found its way across the Atlantic. 

The laxative castor oil is made from the beans (seeds really, they only look like beans) but production of the old-time medicinal is not without risk because the large seeds are so toxic. 

The toxicity of raw castor beans is due to the presence of ricin, a naturally occurring protein. It's lethal if ingested, inhaled or injected. A dose as small as a few grains of salt can kill an adult, although cases of humans being poisoned are relatively rare unless you are a spy (click Georgi Markov).


For more information, go to: top ten poison plants

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octomom

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Riddle me this: What has 36 legs and faints at the sign of trouble?


I like spiders and stinkbugs and lumpy-bumpy toads, but I do not have an aversion to cuteness. Case in point: My friend Sue Wagoner from Aurora, Illinois sent me this email with two delightful photos attached.

Sue writes, "One early morning as I was getting out of bed, I looked out my second story window and saw a 'possom in my neighbor's yard. Knowing where her den is (entrance to which is in my yard), I grabbed my camera, raced outdoors in my bare feet and nightgown and just as she was passing behind some wonderfully handy shrubbery, I positioned myself for when she emerged. To my surprise she had eight passengers, which I had not noticed before."

"It took two shots to see all the little guys hanging on for dear life, but if you count the pairs of ears in the shot (where you don't see mama's face) there are indeed eight! (She never noticed me.)"
 

I am in the midst of suburbia so I am hoping for the best for her and her babes in this rather indifferent (or worse) environment," Sue concluded.

Every time I begin to believe that I have it rough, I'm reminded that somewhere else, someone or something has a more difficult row to hoe than I, like having to carry eight babies on your back. 

Female 'possums have a life expectancy of about three years. During that short time on earth, starting when they are only six months old, they can have three litters a year. Do the math. 

Oy vey. Oh, the pain!

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Ijams to host KTOS Hummer Fest

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They are small, active and everyone’s favorite bird to watch in late July.

Join members of the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society (KTOS: a local club that H.P. Ijams help establish in 1924) at the nature center for the second annual Hummingbird Festival, Sunday, July 29: 1 to 5 p.m.

There will be a hummingbird banding demonstration by bander Mark Armstrong, talks by hummingbird experts Bob and Martha Sargent about the tiny birds’ life history, and Chris Mahoney about favored backyard plants that hummers love.

Free admission to the vendor fair (arts, crafts, food, plants) and bargain barn (new or gently used bird and nature related items); $5 admission to the banding demonstration and indoor talks. 

Children under six free. All proceeds go to KTOS and the Ijams education department.

Sponsored by KTOS, Wild Birds Unlimited and Ijams Nature Center. 

To register call (865) 577-4717, ext. 119

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rollin' on the river

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Star of Knoxville: paddlewheel

Two weeks ago, I posted a story sent by Bob and Lynne Davis about barn swallows flying around a moving riverboat—the Star of Knoxville—as though they had nests somewhere on board, below deck, hitching a ride.


Recently, Bob managed to work his way underneath, near the paddlewheel and found two nests. So, the parent swallows made multiple trips up and down the river over a two month period, staying in touch with their clutches.


Sing with me now: "But I never saw the good side of the city, 'Til I hitched a ride on the Star-of-Knox-Ville. Big wheel keep on turnin'. Proud Mary keep on burnin'. Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river." 

Two swallow nests that moved hither and thither

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Pale Male

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My friend Wayne is something of a bird whisperer. Whenever he's outside, especially with a camera, birds present themselves. Recently, he got this great shot of a red-tailed hawk in flight.

Red-tails mate for life, but will find a new partner should an old one die or goes missing.

How long do they live?

Perhaps the most famous red-tail in America is Pale Male that claimed Central Park in New York City in 1991. His mating history has been watched closely by dozens of birders for two decades. Pale Male has out-lived six different female hawks: First Love, Chocolate, Blue, Lola, Ginger and Lima. (Two have died from eating poisoned rats, one hit by a car, one disappeared after 9-11, the fate of the other two is unknown.)

In all, Pale Male has fathered and fed over 20 young hawks (known as eyasses), two last year. Today, remarkably, he is over 22 years old and, to my knowledge, is still in and around the Big Apple.

Can my New York friends verify this? 


- Photo by Wayne Mallinger. 

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