Date: 2009-12-03 12:40 Subject: story of a real birder Security: Public

When I comes to birding, I am definitely in the casual birder category. Because the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is here in Ithaca, there are many world-class birders and other very serious birders, and regular, I-need-this-for-my-life-list birders. Life lists are the tallies that birders/bird-watchers keep of all the birds they see.

The appearance of an Ivory Gull in southernmost New Jersey recently stimulated a flurry of birder activity. Meena Haribal works at the Lab and keeps a blog of her experiences. She is also a dragonfly expert, so many of her posts are concerned with that. And she is also from India, so her language is sometimes just slightly outside standard U.S. English which, for me, makes her posts all the more interesting and enjoyable. I thought that you, dear readers, would enjoy this bit of insight into a serious birder's life: Meena's post about a trip that she took more-or-less on the spur of the moment over Thanksgiving weekend to see an Ivory Gull, a bird she had tried to see before without success. The post is here: <a href="http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/2009/12/ivory-gull-for-thanksgiving-week-end.html>http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/2009/12/ivory-gull-for-thanksgiving-week-end.html</a>

Date: 2009-11-26 10:21 Subject: giving thanks Security: Public

For hearing crickets cricking on November 24;
a cooler than usual October and warmer than usual November has smoothed out the long glide into winter very nicely, and the crickets are taking advantage.

For people to family and friends to walk with and talk with (and kindly listen during my caffeinated monologues).

Jane and Kate and I walked around Ithaca yesterday with special attention to the architecture of houses and tree identification.

First we dropped off the VW downtown for an oil change at Patterson's and walked to the newly renovated Gimme! on West State for coffees and espresso.

Then across the street to look at the newish two-story post and beam building that houses a Volvo shop; three Jay Hart terrain art works grace the lobby.

Through neighborhoods to Agway to look at possible terrarium plants. Since paying more attention to lichens, mosses, and liverworts, I want to start a native plants terrarium. Will look for a used aquarium at Salvation Army to house it.

To Wegmans to load the Kelty pack with food for Thanksgiving dinner including a Daikon radish that rode outboard on the pack like a character from Spirited Away. Plus a team attack on the self-check checkout (it's still enough of an innovation to be exciting).

Entonces back through the hoods with a stop at Significant Elements, Historic Ithaca's barn full of old house parts, to buy twelve old brass double-hooks coat hooks rescued from Beverly Martin Elementary School during the GIAC renovation to install in our basement for hanging winter hats and gloves.

Good way to live on a warmish, cloudy morning of Thanksgiving Eve.

Date: 2009-11-22 21:01 Subject: We Hope You Enjoy Your Stay Security: Public

Today I have a first--the first guest post on the yard blog:

Last Thursday morning, as Michael and I were both getting dressed for work, he called me to the attic window. “Come look at this,” he said, in an insistent tone. I walked over and looked down. In our neighbor Kathleen’s driveway, just below us, a crow was vigorously pecking into the flesh of a dead blue jay splayed on the asphalt. Other crows in the maple tree to the right were cawing and cackling—in support or possibly envious protest.

Michael had spotted groups of blue jays and crows a few minutes earlier from the back porch—blue jays to the east, crows to the west—after hearing their raucous calls. And he had wondered what was up.

A killing, that’s what was up. A gang war. (My friend Suzanne reported watching a sharp-shinned hawk devour a blue jay in a crabapple tree in her front yard the same week.) Crows/hawks: 2. Blue jays: 0.

A week ago, at lunchtime, Michael found thick splashes of bright-red blood spattered along the stone steps leading up to our kitchen garden. From the third deer hit by traffic in our neighborhood this season, probably. The deer have become so tame and acclimated to city eating and traffic patterns now that they stay in town for the rutting season. But, unlike the rest of the year, in late fall they lose all that recently learned “town” sense and get hit and killed with abandon. This is the first year a well-appointed buck has been hanging out in the neighborhood. My clients would arrive, saying, “You have blood on your sidewalk.” And I would tell them the story.

The same week as the blue jay killing, Michael received an invitation in the mail from BLACK CARDTM: “You have been PRE-QUALIFIED†,” it said, “to receive the exclusive Visa Black Card. Limited to only 1% of U.S. residents, Black Card members are ensured the highest caliber of personal service…. Made with carbon, the Visa Black Card is guaranteed to get you noticed.”

Carbon. Black. We joked about it. If one of us showed up to board an airline flight, the check-in person would say, “Oh, you have a Black Card. I see. We’ll just upgrade you to First Class.”*

Like Obi-Wan Kenobi mind-talking his way through a checkpoint: “You don’t need to verify our papers; you can just let us in.” And the guards’ mesmerized response: “We don’t’ need to verify your papers. We can just let you in.” Yes.

Within ten minutes of the blue jay’s death, its body was entirely eaten and disappeared. Nothing but a few feathers left. The driveway was empty again.

“Welcome to the natural world,” Michael said, in the voice of a reassuring airport public address system. “We hope you enjoy your stay, however brief it may be.”

____________________
*"The Black Card is not just another piece of plastic. Made with carbon, it is the ultimate buying tool."

Date: 2009-11-19 19:57 Subject: The taste of a poison paradise... Security: Public

Toxic
I dare you not to dance

Date: 2009-11-19 17:24 Subject: wolf farts and other things I learned at Mann Library Security: Public

This afternoon I walked east up the hill to the Ag Quad and Mann Library to the Local Foods Fair.
Once there I drank some tasty local cider and munched an Empire apple from Cornell Orchards.
I talked to a local grain grower about his varieties of wheat, corn, emmer, and spelt--how and where they are milled locally, and where to buy them.
I used a cool old-timey nutcracker to open some local shagbark hickory nuts to eat. Yummy!

Then I remembered the mushroom blog someone told me about yesterday at Mann Library.
This is where the wolf farts come in: "Puffballs Ate My Mulch." I kid you not.
Here's someone who loves fungi even more than I love mulch. And knows way more about them.
Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest (metaphorically, of course; some of these guys are definitely not to be eaten).

Date: 2009-11-17 21:07 Subject: crickets Security: Public

I think the crickets are gone.
I heard one three nights ago.
Crickets in mid-November.
See you next June. Or July.

Date: 2009-11-17 21:06 Subject: wrestling with plastic Security: Public

It's recycle/garbage night in the city.
First, the relatively easy job of hauling the green recycle box to the curb:
bottles, cans, maybe a little cardboard thrown in for variety and texture.
Then a brown paper bag of paper recycling, mainly unwanted catalogs.
Third, a gigante pile of cardboard boxes that I've broken down using the utility knife.
And last, oh last, a big plastic bag of almost weightless plastic packing materials.
Plastic peanuts--a little staticky, but not so bad cause they fill in the gaps.
Styrofoam packing blocks--very bad.
Talk about static cling--tiny pieces adhere to every surface.
Only removable with the sticky side of tape: sticky trumps staticky.
The ungainly styroshapes take up an inordinate amount of bagspace.
Breaking them up for a better fit yields innumerable pieces of gravity-defying white styro.
Good luck corralling those dudes into a plastic garbage bag.
Tie it up, slap a $3 garbage tag on it, and hope it don't fly away in the night.

Date: 2009-11-12 20:44 Subject: deer derring-do Security: Public

It's rutting season, and our neighborhood is ground zero. A six-point buck nearly destroyed our two Magnolia stellatas by rubbing them with his antlers. Over the last week, two does were killed State Street within fifty feet of our front door. A third deer spilled a lot of blood across our side yard, over the walking stones, and onto the driveway gravel. I never did see the body for that accident. On my way home, the buck crossed the street in front of me and left a ribbon of strong musky odor in his wake. Stand back. The deer are making Ithaca their own.

Date: 2009-11-05 20:00 Subject: three new books Security: Public

A New Literary History of America: 200+ essays on things made in the Americas--not only books--and major events as they influenced our culture, beginning with the fall of the Aztec's amazing city, Tenochtitlán, to the Spanish in 1521 and ending with Kara Walker's visual essay, "Barak Obama is elected 44th President of the United States." Henry Adams fixating on the massive dynamos at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. A moving essay on Maya Lin and the Vietnam Memorial. Harvard UP, 2009.

The Sibley Guide to Trees: Finally a more-than-worthy successor to the Peterson guide. Drawings/watercolors of the fruit/seeds/cones and the flowers of most trees in North America, of the many variations in leaf forms, of the tree outlines in winter. It was years before I figured out that all trees have flowers of some sort, but it is obvious in this version. Loaded with info without being overwhelming. Written from the perspective of someone who really sees the whole tree and all its aspects. Easily the equal of his bird guide. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

Footnote on flowering trees: for a real visual feast go here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/beautifulfloweringtreesoftheworld/pool/ and search "magnolia."

A Wildlife Guide to Chile: Including the botanical wild life, the marine plants and animalia, zillions of color drawings, sections on climate zones, floristic zones, where to see wildlife in Chile. The whole nine yards. From the webliography: http://www.chileflora.com/. Princeton UP, 2008.

Date: 2009-10-29 19:07 Subject: sound Security: Public

listen.
the unique sound of hard rain on newly fallen leaves.
everywhere the fruity smell of leaves fermenting.
feel the surprisingly hot mass of wet leaves cooking
deep in the center of the big plastic bag.

Date: 2009-10-29 18:57 Subject: the autumn descent Security: Public

Imagine that you're in an airplane approaching the airport, your destination.
About 30 minutes out, the engines stop roaring and you begin coasting,
Gliding downward slowly.
Out of the thin cold air above the clouds.
Into the clouds, the sun cutting in and out as you descend from cruising altitude.
The sunlight flashes on. And off.
Inside the clouds its cold, dark, and gray.
Near the ground it's overcast and rainy.

Now imagine its summertime, August, say.
And the descent is not a matter of minutes, but months.
In three months the light goes on and off.
Some days are gray, cloudy and chilly.
Some days are full of color and sun.
Over the course of September and October you slowly descend into the dark, wet grip
Of lake-effect rain.
Windy storms come and go across the days,
Alternating with brilliant sun and bright leaves.

And you land in November.
Dark, cold, wet, and overcast.
You've just landed in late fall.
Please keep your seat belts fastened until the plane reaches the gate.
You don't really have any other reasonable choice, do you?

Date: 2009-10-25 18:11 Subject: lichens Security: Public

I spent four hours today learning about lichens, mainly on a field trip to a high-elevation swamp on South Hill. We had a little indoor lecture time to pick up some of the crucial vocabulary for identification purposes: rhizines, soredia, isidia, apothecia, fruticose, foliose, crustose, tomentum, pycnidia. I got thoroughly lichenized. I'll put my lichen photos up somewhere--Facebook or Flickr. Not a group of organisms I've known much about or paid attention to in the past. One of the most interesting aspects of the tramp through the swamp was traversing a scarlet oak forest. It was about the perfect time to be in there--the leaves were a brillant red, illuminated by the low, late-October sun. Lichens, I'm watching out for you from now on.

Date: 2009-10-22 19:32 Subject: leaf fall Security: Public

We're just short of the Big Drop. That's when the maples let go of most of their leaves in a day or two. The walnuts have already had their turn. We had a freeze earlier this week--Monday, I believe--defined as temperatures at or below 28 degrees. The walnuts took the opportunity to drop almost all their leaves and nuts in an hour or so.

We have a really big black walnut adjoining and overhanging our yard. I was out early, hanging up a load of wash before work and practically freezing my fingers off. The leaves were falling hard and fast; I was a little scared. Oversize walnuts fell on the ground with a skwidge and onto the metal roof of the neighbor's metal-roofed, open-sided garage with a bang, creating an emphatic counterpoint to the background of the noisy leaf fall. The walnut crop, like all the other tree seed crops (acorns, hickories, etc.) is huge this year. Impressive.

Now things have subsided temporarily, awaiting the next cold spell to freeze the water in the joint where the leaf petioles connect to the tree's branches, then melt to water as the morning air warms and release them to fall, more or less en masse, to the ground.

I am poised to collect massive amounts of tree leaves for the yard.

Date: 2009-10-07 10:51 Subject: fugitive lows Security: Public

It's that time of year when intense low pressure systems roam the upper midwest at will. One is passing northwest of us this morning and the wind is whippin' through. Remember the Edmund Fitzgerald!

Date: 2009-10-04 22:30 Subject: the numinous slug Security: Public

Last Saturday morning was sunny.
We stopped by the bank on the way to the Farmer’s Market,
parking on a residential street shaded by giant sugar maples.
While Jane walked to the bank, I got out of the car and looked around.
Nearby, a big sugar maple trunk still wet with the nighttime rain caught my eye.
First I noticed an irregular patch of sun shining on the trunk, illuminating
a rich patina of millions of tiny bright green lichens, plumped by the rain,
covering the bark from the ground up into the top of the tree.
Curious, I moved closer.
I saw a tiny mushroom growing out of the ridged bark.
Then I noticed an even teenier, tinier mushroom growing out of the bark.
Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye: what was it?
A large, glistening, spotted and striped slug sliding up a valley in the bark
right at eye level.
Slowly, slowly it turns and oozes over a ridge while
the patch of sunlight moves to the left, illuminating it; it is very shiny
and the two feelers that emerge from the front of its head
twiddle here and twaddle there translucently, sinuously.
The slug is large, about four or five inches long and as big around as my index finger.
It is an amazing sight there against the wet bark: I wish, I wish I had my camera with me.
(Leaving the house I had a thought to bring the camera.
Then I thought of the Farmer’s Market.
And how I didn’t want to take pictures at the market.
I did not think of how amazing the light was that morning.
I did not bring the camera.)
Everything is moving and changing, but slowly, very slowly:
the sun, the slug, the water drip, drip, dripping from a point on the bark,
two golden ants, a sow bug.
I felt the pain of wanting to and being unable to capture those moments with photos and the pleasure of being privy to the same moments simultaneously; two entirely, intensely, overwhelmingly opposite feelings in me. It was hours before my conflicting feelings subsided.
“Three seconds to shoot and no gun!”

I imagined that I lost a unique moment in time and yet
I knew even then that I was immensely privileged to be alive in those moments and watching in those moments, and looking closer and closer and seeing more and more in those moments that will never come again:
that particularly low angle of the sun on that date, shining out of that clear sky, filtered through just those maple leaves to form just that pattern of light on that bark still very wet from that particular amount of rain that ended when it did with those plants and animals positioned just so and everything moving, moving, slowly moving, changing, changing, the earth rotating on its axis, all of it changing, changing as everything always does of course. But normally I’m not noticing it so clearly, not experiencing it so intensely. It isn’t as brilliant, is it; so obvious, so beautiful.
Or perhaps it is, and I just can’t quite see it. I’m not really paying full attention to the slow changing. I happened to be just there, just then, paying attention in a certain way--as if I had a camera--observing, and wanting to record.

Postscript:
The creature I saw was a leopard slug (Limax maximus).
[Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limax_maximus]

Date: 2009-09-27 10:15 Subject: first fall fire Security: Public

A chilly rain overnight
Winter squashes at the farmer's market
Butternut
Buttercup
Acorn
Kabocha
Delicata
Blue Hubbard
Ambercup
Baked winter squash with an egg in the seed cup
No, wait, spicy refried beans
Sesame tahini
Olive oil and black pepper

Build the first fireplace fire of the fall this morning
Breakfast in front of the fire: our last baba ghanoush made from a skinny eggplant

Begin the winter preparations
Pot the Bolivian peppers and Thai basil plants to bring inside
Maybe a regular basil plant, too
Plant the red sage that has summered on the back porch somewhere in the yard
Can we protect a rosemary enough to winter it over outside?

Haul seasoned firewood from under the back porch onto the front porch
Red oak
Walnut
Butternut
Black locust
Sugar maple
Norway maple

Meditation practice:
Restore the Norway spruce cone circle

Pull out the sweaters and turtlenecks

Date: 2009-09-17 13:15 Subject: movie review Security: Public

Bring It On: Fight to the Finish is a very enjoyable cheerleading movie that is really a dance movie and a spruce up your Spanish movie. A definite Friday-nighter though it went down very well on Wednesday, too.

Date: 2009-09-17 13:08 Subject: the Lake Champlain triathalon Security: Public

Walk the four-mile loop on the island roads.
See a soliary sandpiper walking on water, watched by twenty green frogs.
Swim as far as you can in the lake.
Lie on your back in the water and watch the clouds.
Kayak across the lake and around the island at the mouth of the LaMoille River.
Stop to watch hundreds of turtles sunning on logs in the river.
Observe muskrats scarfing cattail stems and roots.
Watch a male bald eagle scare off an osprey, display in flight, catch a fish, and return to eat the fish on a dead tree branch.
Return to base.

Date: 2009-09-03 21:17 Subject: water men Security: Public

today the water men turned off the water at 7:55 a.m.

Date: 2009-09-03 20:51 Subject: magic beans Security: Public

I planted six scarlet runner beans this spring in the part shade by the back porch. Partly I was curious to see how tall they would grow since, last year, they way outstripped the seven-foot poles I used. From the ground, they have sixteen feet nine inches of string to grow up until they reach the porch roof. I measured the two tallest plants after dinner tonight. One is fourteen feet ten inches tall; it's mostly stopped growing upward now and is busy putting out red-orange flowers in its upper reaches. The next is eleven feet ten inches and still growing right along. It must have been that worm compost I used to start them out. Or was it the cow I traded for the seeds?