Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Great White - 8 of them no kidding
vGreat Egret Earl Plato
Three or four at the mouth of the creek in other years. Not so this May 1st, 2009. Eight Great White egrets at the mouth of Frenchman’s Creek just north of he town of Fort Erie. I see it as one of the most magnificent of our heron species. Audubon says that like its cousin the Great Blue heron “… it feeds alone.” We saw eight of them stalking fish, frogs and probably crayfish. Explanation anyone?
Three or four at the mouth of the creek in other years. Not so this May 1st, 2009. Eight Great White egrets at the mouth of Frenchman’s Creek just north of he town of Fort Erie. I see it as one of the most magnificent of our heron species. Audubon says that like its cousin the Great Blue heron “… it feeds alone.” We saw eight of them stalking fish, frogs and probably crayfish. Explanation anyone?
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
May in Trail Wood
Trail Wood #96 Earl Plato
Years past I inherited Teale’s great effort - A Walk Through the Year. Over the years in my circa 20 year weekly nature writeups I often referred to Teale’s works. April has ended and May is here.
On May 1st Edwin Teale wrote as follows:
“ April is a promise/ May is fulfillment.
May is the time when everything seems happening, when life rises to a peak.”
Writer’s note: We in Ridgeway (Fort Erie) Ontario are on the same latitude as Trail Wood, Connecticut. Four seasons here - four seasons there.
“ May is the birdsong month. May is the time when we rebel most of all against routine, when we want the largest margins to our lives, when we desire to wander through the woods and over the fields completely free - as John Muir and Henry Thoreau were free - of all entangling engagements. Perhaps the walks of this month should be headed: Sauntering Through May. May in Spring and October in Fall - these for the average person are the two best loved among the twelve chapters that make up The Book of the Year.”
Years past I inherited Teale’s great effort - A Walk Through the Year. Over the years in my circa 20 year weekly nature writeups I often referred to Teale’s works. April has ended and May is here.
On May 1st Edwin Teale wrote as follows:
“ April is a promise/ May is fulfillment.
May is the time when everything seems happening, when life rises to a peak.”
Writer’s note: We in Ridgeway (Fort Erie) Ontario are on the same latitude as Trail Wood, Connecticut. Four seasons here - four seasons there.
“ May is the birdsong month. May is the time when we rebel most of all against routine, when we want the largest margins to our lives, when we desire to wander through the woods and over the fields completely free - as John Muir and Henry Thoreau were free - of all entangling engagements. Perhaps the walks of this month should be headed: Sauntering Through May. May in Spring and October in Fall - these for the average person are the two best loved among the twelve chapters that make up The Book of the Year.”
Monday, April 27, 2009
Trail Wood
Trail Wood #95 Earl Plato
The Connecticut Audubon Society maintains Trail Wood Sanctuary. It is a beautiful 168 acre setting. This is where Edwin Way Teale and his wife Nellie lived so many years. It is the subject of many of this Pulitzer Prize winning author’s writings on nature. Teale named various natural settings as you can see on the accompanying map. The woodlands, fields, wetlands and pond habitats abound with wildlife/ There are well developed trails that we have walked.
93 Kenyon Road, Hampton, CT 06247
The Connecticut Audubon Society maintains Trail Wood Sanctuary. It is a beautiful 168 acre setting. This is where Edwin Way Teale and his wife Nellie lived so many years. It is the subject of many of this Pulitzer Prize winning author’s writings on nature. Teale named various natural settings as you can see on the accompanying map. The woodlands, fields, wetlands and pond habitats abound with wildlife/ There are well developed trails that we have walked.
93 Kenyon Road, Hampton, CT 06247
An explanation - male agressiveness
Trail Wood #94 Earl Plato
Edwin Teale shared his observations.
“ In recent days we have caught a low-pitched, reverberating sound, accelerating in tempo, rising to a muffled drumfire at the end-the sound of a cock ruffed grouse on some log in the woods drumming with its wings to attract a mate. It is a sound that can be heard a half a mile away. For the ruffed grouse … it sends forth the invitation … in this mating season of spring.
At this time of the year the male grouse is especially belligerent. … It is this combativeness in this season of the year that appears to provide the most probable explanation for the puzzling confrontation we have observed.”
Grouse versus crow.
Edwin Teale shared his observations.
“ In recent days we have caught a low-pitched, reverberating sound, accelerating in tempo, rising to a muffled drumfire at the end-the sound of a cock ruffed grouse on some log in the woods drumming with its wings to attract a mate. It is a sound that can be heard a half a mile away. For the ruffed grouse … it sends forth the invitation … in this mating season of spring.
At this time of the year the male grouse is especially belligerent. … It is this combativeness in this season of the year that appears to provide the most probable explanation for the puzzling confrontation we have observed.”
Grouse versus crow.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Strange Confontration
Trail Wood #93 Earl Plato
Grouse versus Crow at Trail Wood.
“This continues minute after minute. At last we see the grouse gradually begin drifting back out of the field toward the woods. Its ruff lowers and it slips quietly among the trees. The crow wait’s a few minutes longer then flaps heavily into the air. We change our position and discuss what we have seen. How had the crow and the grouse come face to face? What produced heir unusual confrontation? “
Stay tuned, eh. Teale answers the questions next.
Grouse versus Crow at Trail Wood.
“This continues minute after minute. At last we see the grouse gradually begin drifting back out of the field toward the woods. Its ruff lowers and it slips quietly among the trees. The crow wait’s a few minutes longer then flaps heavily into the air. We change our position and discuss what we have seen. How had the crow and the grouse come face to face? What produced heir unusual confrontation? “
Stay tuned, eh. Teale answers the questions next.
Ruffed Grouse a meeting
Trail Wood #92 Earl Plato
It’s April 24th in Edwin Teale’s daily log at Trail Wood. I can picture the setting. Teale wrote:
“ As though in the balcony of a theater, we look down the slope of Firefly Meadow this morning, watching a small drama being enacted at its foot. It is a mystery play and we are mystified by what we see.
Spectators unobserved, we remain motionless largely hidden leaning on the stone wall under the hickory trees. Below where the slope of the meadow emerges with the lowland woods, a male ruffed grouse has emerged among the trees. With its ruff raised its body lifted to its full height. It stands facing an alighted crow. The crow changes position. It walks about. It turns away. It swings back toward the grouse again. That woodland bird remains rigid, tense, vigilant.”
Next: What happened that April 24th day?
It’s April 24th in Edwin Teale’s daily log at Trail Wood. I can picture the setting. Teale wrote:
“ As though in the balcony of a theater, we look down the slope of Firefly Meadow this morning, watching a small drama being enacted at its foot. It is a mystery play and we are mystified by what we see.
Spectators unobserved, we remain motionless largely hidden leaning on the stone wall under the hickory trees. Below where the slope of the meadow emerges with the lowland woods, a male ruffed grouse has emerged among the trees. With its ruff raised its body lifted to its full height. It stands facing an alighted crow. The crow changes position. It walks about. It turns away. It swings back toward the grouse again. That woodland bird remains rigid, tense, vigilant.”
Next: What happened that April 24th day?
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Walking at night Trail Wood
Trail Wood #91 Earl Plato
Edwin Teale and wife, Nellie, were naturalists for all seasons and for all day - even night time. I haven’t meandered around a camp site at night for years. Apparently the Teales did their nocturnal walks on a regular basis. hey are still at the pond when we read:
“ Across the pond when we switch off beams, we see starlight reflected in the black mirror of the water. A fish leaps sending a circle of ripple rings hurrying over the surface, setting the images of stars and constellations tumbling and gyrating where they pass. Once we hear a low splash and then make out a long V expanding in the wake of a swimming muskrat.”
Edwin Teale and wife, Nellie, were naturalists for all seasons and for all day - even night time. I haven’t meandered around a camp site at night for years. Apparently the Teales did their nocturnal walks on a regular basis. hey are still at the pond when we read:
“ Across the pond when we switch off beams, we see starlight reflected in the black mirror of the water. A fish leaps sending a circle of ripple rings hurrying over the surface, setting the images of stars and constellations tumbling and gyrating where they pass. Once we hear a low splash and then make out a long V expanding in the wake of a swimming muskrat.”
Friday, April 24, 2009
Close up
Trail Wood #91 Earl Plato
Ed Teale and wife Nellie, flashlights in hand walk the northern edge of their pond. The calls of the gray tree frog greets them in this April 23rd log.
“I run three beam of my light up the mottled trunk. It reveals-like two thicker fragments of bark a foot apart-the almost perfectly camouflaged bodies of two singers clinging with padded feet to the tree. A plane drones overhead in the night. All the spring peepers and all the gray tree frogs redouble their efforts. Even in midday we notice how the sound of a plane moving across the sky above them sets these frogs to calling.
Watching in the light of our double beams we are fascinated as always by the throat sac of the gray tree frog. It-as does the throat sac of the peeper-expands like a shining balloon. Then when the call is reached it collapses and disappears suddenly as though the tree frog has swallowed it. “Bubble-gum frogs” is the name a friend of ours once applied to these batrachians. Again and again we observe how the creature’s sides draw in as the sac swells distending farther and farther vibrating with the intensity of the fluttering call, then disappearing in its sudden contraction.”
Ed Teale and wife Nellie, flashlights in hand walk the northern edge of their pond. The calls of the gray tree frog greets them in this April 23rd log.
“I run three beam of my light up the mottled trunk. It reveals-like two thicker fragments of bark a foot apart-the almost perfectly camouflaged bodies of two singers clinging with padded feet to the tree. A plane drones overhead in the night. All the spring peepers and all the gray tree frogs redouble their efforts. Even in midday we notice how the sound of a plane moving across the sky above them sets these frogs to calling.
Watching in the light of our double beams we are fascinated as always by the throat sac of the gray tree frog. It-as does the throat sac of the peeper-expands like a shining balloon. Then when the call is reached it collapses and disappears suddenly as though the tree frog has swallowed it. “Bubble-gum frogs” is the name a friend of ours once applied to these batrachians. Again and again we observe how the creature’s sides draw in as the sac swells distending farther and farther vibrating with the intensity of the fluttering call, then disappearing in its sudden contraction.”
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Gray tree frog at Trail Wood pond
Trail Wood #90 Earl Plato
We did not walk all the trails of Trail Wood that July day. I wish we had taken the time. E were headed for Mystic Seaport. Ed Teale cites some of the following places he walked so many times.
“ Along Azalea Shore, down Stepping Stone Brook, at the edge of Whippoorwill Cove, spring peepers- the “peep frogs” of country folks - lift their clear little voices in a chimming chant. Endlessly, tirelessly, on and on into the night, their chorus repeats the same refrain: “Spring! Spring!” At intervals, lifting above this batrachian chorus comes another sound of the season. It is the musical, fluttering call of the peeper’s larger relative, the gray tree frog, Hyla versicolor. The calling grows louder as we near the leaning wild apple tree that is rooted close to the water’s edge on he northern side of the pond.”
We did not walk all the trails of Trail Wood that July day. I wish we had taken the time. E were headed for Mystic Seaport. Ed Teale cites some of the following places he walked so many times.
“ Along Azalea Shore, down Stepping Stone Brook, at the edge of Whippoorwill Cove, spring peepers- the “peep frogs” of country folks - lift their clear little voices in a chimming chant. Endlessly, tirelessly, on and on into the night, their chorus repeats the same refrain: “Spring! Spring!” At intervals, lifting above this batrachian chorus comes another sound of the season. It is the musical, fluttering call of the peeper’s larger relative, the gray tree frog, Hyla versicolor. The calling grows louder as we near the leaning wild apple tree that is rooted close to the water’s edge on he northern side of the pond.”
Indian Cucumber Planr Lake of Bays
Lake of Bays Earl Plato
On the way to the giant Beaver Dams naturalist Ernie Giles paused at a new plant to me. Ernie could live off the land. He knew his plants both edible and inedible, The root of the Indian cucumber has an edible root. I had my sketch book with me and made a simple drawing. The beaver dams stretched across an entire inlet. Longest I have ever seen. Yes, two beavers were cutting down trees across the way.
On the way to the giant Beaver Dams naturalist Ernie Giles paused at a new plant to me. Ernie could live off the land. He knew his plants both edible and inedible, The root of the Indian cucumber has an edible root. I had my sketch book with me and made a simple drawing. The beaver dams stretched across an entire inlet. Longest I have ever seen. Yes, two beavers were cutting down trees across the way.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
2 sketches
Lake of Bays Earl Plato
I was recovering from an operation and stayed for a week at a friend’s beautiful home on the Lake of Bays in central Ontario. I like to sketch and was helped by ny bird and animal friends posing for me. Two sketches.
1. Red-breasted nuthatch
2. Red squirrel
I was recovering from an operation and stayed for a week at a friend’s beautiful home on the Lake of Bays in central Ontario. I like to sketch and was helped by ny bird and animal friends posing for me. Two sketches.
1. Red-breasted nuthatch
2. Red squirrel
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
A Dawn at Trail Wood
Trail Wood #88 Earl Plato
We parked our car in the ample parking lot below the white cottage of the Teales.
It was mid-morning on Canada Day, July 1st, 3007. We walked the path to he house to meet our guide, Vern Pursley.
The setting for this in Teale’s log is April 20th one early morning at Trail Wood.
“ In the light drawn across the landscape the rays of the rising sun grow stronger. They cross the valley of Little River, probe among he bare treetops above Hampton Brook, run along the ridgepole of our white cottage under the sheltering hickory trees and speed on to highlight the flank of he steep ridge to the west. I suppose like other dawns coming to other clear April skies but to me it has a special quality of its own, a special beginning-of-the-world freshness and beauty.”
Enjoy spring mornings this year of 2009. Get up really early some day and watch dawn unfold..
We parked our car in the ample parking lot below the white cottage of the Teales.
It was mid-morning on Canada Day, July 1st, 3007. We walked the path to he house to meet our guide, Vern Pursley.
The setting for this in Teale’s log is April 20th one early morning at Trail Wood.
“ In the light drawn across the landscape the rays of the rising sun grow stronger. They cross the valley of Little River, probe among he bare treetops above Hampton Brook, run along the ridgepole of our white cottage under the sheltering hickory trees and speed on to highlight the flank of he steep ridge to the west. I suppose like other dawns coming to other clear April skies but to me it has a special quality of its own, a special beginning-of-the-world freshness and beauty.”
Enjoy spring mornings this year of 2009. Get up really early some day and watch dawn unfold..
Monday, April 20, 2009
Spring at Trail Wood
Trail Wood #87 Earl Plato
What does spring mean to you? I have
Sensed what Edwin Way Teale thinks about spring at Trail Wood, Here is what he wrote on that April 19th many years ago.
“ On this day as when observing the flight of the water strider I have had the good fortune to be at a meeting point in time and space that has enabled me to be the spectator at this dramatic expression of the exuberance of spring - that sense of wellbeing that has come to the fingerlings of the brook, the squirrels in the woods, the salamanders beneath their rocks, and to the man who walks beside this New England stream feeling a part of all that occurs around him.”
Enjoy nature!
What does spring mean to you? I have
Sensed what Edwin Way Teale thinks about spring at Trail Wood, Here is what he wrote on that April 19th many years ago.
“ On this day as when observing the flight of the water strider I have had the good fortune to be at a meeting point in time and space that has enabled me to be the spectator at this dramatic expression of the exuberance of spring - that sense of wellbeing that has come to the fingerlings of the brook, the squirrels in the woods, the salamanders beneath their rocks, and to the man who walks beside this New England stream feeling a part of all that occurs around him.”
Enjoy nature!
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Dace? At Trail Wood
Trail Wood #86 Earl Plato
Edwin Teale wrote April 20th the following: “The smaller fish appear to be dace…” It was on a hillside creek at Short Hills Provincial Park in Niagara that we saw black- lined dace, those little fish (2-3 in.), trying to climb up the fast flowing spring stream.
Teale told us about larger fish as we quote him, “Again and again … these minnow-sized fingerlings hurl themselves upward against the plunge of the falls. Each time after rising a foot or so, they are dashed back amid the shining bubbles that whirl away in the seethe below the waterfall. Once a larger fish, five and a half or six inches long, shoots upwards, cutting its way through the descending water. The trajectory of its leap carries it more than half way to the top. Then it arcs downward again. It is. I think a young brook trout that has worked its way up the tributary stream from Little River. The smaller fish appear to be dace. …”
Edwin Teale wrote April 20th the following: “The smaller fish appear to be dace…” It was on a hillside creek at Short Hills Provincial Park in Niagara that we saw black- lined dace, those little fish (2-3 in.), trying to climb up the fast flowing spring stream.
Teale told us about larger fish as we quote him, “Again and again … these minnow-sized fingerlings hurl themselves upward against the plunge of the falls. Each time after rising a foot or so, they are dashed back amid the shining bubbles that whirl away in the seethe below the waterfall. Once a larger fish, five and a half or six inches long, shoots upwards, cutting its way through the descending water. The trajectory of its leap carries it more than half way to the top. Then it arcs downward again. It is. I think a young brook trout that has worked its way up the tributary stream from Little River. The smaller fish appear to be dace. …”
Red-headed anyone?
Trail Wood #85 Earl Plato
Birders of all kinds love to see the flash of red of the Red-headed woodpecker.
Swooping low across Halloway Bay Road on the outskirts of Marcy Woods is a sight I never tire of seeing. Downy and Red-bellied woodpeckers were at Trail Wood but no Red-headed that July day. Strikingly colored is this jay-sized bird. The photo shows the entire head is bright red, wings and tail bluish-black, white breast - large white wing patch on each wing and a distinctive white rump. My best sighting was at Iroquois National Refuge in western New York. Ernie Giles, noted naturalist, and I saw one pose for us several minutes. Very memorable.I have included a photo I took at Crawford Lake in Ontario. I called it the Woodpecker tree. Red-headed woodpeckers like dead trees. They nest in the holes and store nuts and acorns in holes and crevices.
One beautiful bird, eh.
Note; In all the times I have seen this bird I never heard its call. Have you?
Birders of all kinds love to see the flash of red of the Red-headed woodpecker.
Swooping low across Halloway Bay Road on the outskirts of Marcy Woods is a sight I never tire of seeing. Downy and Red-bellied woodpeckers were at Trail Wood but no Red-headed that July day. Strikingly colored is this jay-sized bird. The photo shows the entire head is bright red, wings and tail bluish-black, white breast - large white wing patch on each wing and a distinctive white rump. My best sighting was at Iroquois National Refuge in western New York. Ernie Giles, noted naturalist, and I saw one pose for us several minutes. Very memorable.I have included a photo I took at Crawford Lake in Ontario. I called it the Woodpecker tree. Red-headed woodpeckers like dead trees. They nest in the holes and store nuts and acorns in holes and crevices.
One beautiful bird, eh.
Note; In all the times I have seen this bird I never heard its call. Have you?
Teale Time - It's Spring
Trail Wood #84 Earl Plato
Edwin Way Teale enjoyed life in its natural setting at Trail Wood in the state of Connecticut. Here in a mid-April report we sense his feelings.
“ Once more I am beside the brook adding rocks to he dam. I have been working for some time when I notice a gray squirrel. I see it stop its search for food among the fallen leaves. In sheer exuberance and well-being it leaps, whirls, races - apparently just for fun, just for the joy of activity. It is bright and sleek. It is in the springtime of its life and the springtime of the year. Oh, to feel like a young squirrel on an April day! I stand envying the little animal…”
Edwin Way Teale enjoyed life in its natural setting at Trail Wood in the state of Connecticut. Here in a mid-April report we sense his feelings.
“ Once more I am beside the brook adding rocks to he dam. I have been working for some time when I notice a gray squirrel. I see it stop its search for food among the fallen leaves. In sheer exuberance and well-being it leaps, whirls, races - apparently just for fun, just for the joy of activity. It is bright and sleek. It is in the springtime of its life and the springtime of the year. Oh, to feel like a young squirrel on an April day! I stand envying the little animal…”
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Looking for salamanders at Hampon Creek
A dozen times I lift some flat stones Trail Wood #83 Earl Plato
We will go soon to Shagbark Hickory Park. As we did last year three of my grandchildren and daughter Allison will be turning over rocks and stones. Last year we found seven dusty salamanders. Of course we replaced the flat stones in their former locations. That’s important for all nature lovers. In his April 18th log Edwin Teale shared a nature lesson with us.
“ Half a dozen times when I lift some flat stone from the wet ground beside the brook. Light flickers in little glints along the moist, gleaming body of a salamander, As each wriggles away, the protective coating of mucous secretion that covers it reflects what it has rarely if ever reflected before - the full glare of the sunshine. Each time I replace the rock carefully, remembering the admonition to amateur naturalists once printed in a conservation leaflet: “If you turn up any stones in your quest, put them back AS YOU FOUND THEM. To some creatures this is home.”
We will go soon to Shagbark Hickory Park. As we did last year three of my grandchildren and daughter Allison will be turning over rocks and stones. Last year we found seven dusty salamanders. Of course we replaced the flat stones in their former locations. That’s important for all nature lovers. In his April 18th log Edwin Teale shared a nature lesson with us.
“ Half a dozen times when I lift some flat stone from the wet ground beside the brook. Light flickers in little glints along the moist, gleaming body of a salamander, As each wriggles away, the protective coating of mucous secretion that covers it reflects what it has rarely if ever reflected before - the full glare of the sunshine. Each time I replace the rock carefully, remembering the admonition to amateur naturalists once printed in a conservation leaflet: “If you turn up any stones in your quest, put them back AS YOU FOUND THEM. To some creatures this is home.”
Friday, April 17, 2009
The Slab
Trail Wood #82 Earl Plato
Back in 2007 as we drove along the lane at Trail Wood I noticed as we drove over Hampton Creek something unusual. Neil had slowed down as we drove over a “single, immense slab of rock” that supported the traffic of the lane. On Teale’s log of April 18th we read:
“ Just upstream from the bridge where a single, immense slab of rock has supported the traffic of our lane for more than a century and a half, I spend the morning adding stone after stone to the rough dam over which water cascades below a growing pool.”
Writer‘s note: No water flow that dry July day of 2007. I saw the dam made up of many small boulders. Labor intensified! Teale worked hard on his Trail Wood property as we shall see in the months ahead.
Back in 2007 as we drove along the lane at Trail Wood I noticed as we drove over Hampton Creek something unusual. Neil had slowed down as we drove over a “single, immense slab of rock” that supported the traffic of the lane. On Teale’s log of April 18th we read:
“ Just upstream from the bridge where a single, immense slab of rock has supported the traffic of our lane for more than a century and a half, I spend the morning adding stone after stone to the rough dam over which water cascades below a growing pool.”
Writer‘s note: No water flow that dry July day of 2007. I saw the dam made up of many small boulders. Labor intensified! Teale worked hard on his Trail Wood property as we shall see in the months ahead.
I remembered this one.
Trail Wood #79 Earl Plato
Ed Teale headed quickly to where the crow mobbing was taking place on that April 16th. “ I hurry through the woods toward Old Cabin Hill and the center of the clamor. As I draw nearer I slow down to a silent, stealthy approach, hoping to observe the activity of the attackers or perhaps even catch a glimpse of the harassed owl. But other eyesight is keener than mine. Suddenly a change occurs in the cawing. A new note enters in. I have been sighted among the trees - a man, a greater menace than an owl. The din of the birds moves away. It dissipates as it goes, subsiding into a ragged cawing of single crows.”
Writer’s note: I have walked a few of the paths of Trail Wood in 2007. That was a lasting thrill. By sharing some of Edwin Way Teale’s daily walks I hope you appreciate the man and his astute observations in Nature at his Trail Wood sanctuary
Ed Teale headed quickly to where the crow mobbing was taking place on that April 16th. “ I hurry through the woods toward Old Cabin Hill and the center of the clamor. As I draw nearer I slow down to a silent, stealthy approach, hoping to observe the activity of the attackers or perhaps even catch a glimpse of the harassed owl. But other eyesight is keener than mine. Suddenly a change occurs in the cawing. A new note enters in. I have been sighted among the trees - a man, a greater menace than an owl. The din of the birds moves away. It dissipates as it goes, subsiding into a ragged cawing of single crows.”
Writer’s note: I have walked a few of the paths of Trail Wood in 2007. That was a lasting thrill. By sharing some of Edwin Way Teale’s daily walks I hope you appreciate the man and his astute observations in Nature at his Trail Wood sanctuary
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Memory Time
Trail Wood #81 Earl Plato
I was a child but with a growing curiosity of nature. I saw a nest nestled in a forsythia bush. A small yellow bird had built a nest there. My father told me that it was a Yellow warbler. The nest was higher than I could look into but big brother Bill lifted me up and I saw three small egg resting in the bottom. Then something happened I haven’t forgotten. Enter a cowbird. These birds lay eggs in the nests of birds like the diminutive warblers. Now there were four eggs in the warbler’s nest. Three small and one large. Brother Bill lifted me up again to confirm the count. The late Bert Miller, Fort Erie naturalist, told my father Perc to remove the cowbird egg. If not the cowbird hatches and grows and grows dominating the warbler nest and the smaller hatchlings. The little warblers are often the losers. The cowbirds are parasitic. Free loaders and absent parents they let other smaller species do their work for them. Some one my father or brother Bill deposed of the cowbird egg. The result? Three lively yellow warblers. Right or wrong to interfere with nature?
I was a child but with a growing curiosity of nature. I saw a nest nestled in a forsythia bush. A small yellow bird had built a nest there. My father told me that it was a Yellow warbler. The nest was higher than I could look into but big brother Bill lifted me up and I saw three small egg resting in the bottom. Then something happened I haven’t forgotten. Enter a cowbird. These birds lay eggs in the nests of birds like the diminutive warblers. Now there were four eggs in the warbler’s nest. Three small and one large. Brother Bill lifted me up again to confirm the count. The late Bert Miller, Fort Erie naturalist, told my father Perc to remove the cowbird egg. If not the cowbird hatches and grows and grows dominating the warbler nest and the smaller hatchlings. The little warblers are often the losers. The cowbirds are parasitic. Free loaders and absent parents they let other smaller species do their work for them. Some one my father or brother Bill deposed of the cowbird egg. The result? Three lively yellow warblers. Right or wrong to interfere with nature?
It's Truly Spring. I hear it.
Trail Wood #80 Earl Plato
Edwin Way Teale heading home, is greeted by a familiar spring visitor.
“ Pausing in the sunset halfway across the pasture on my way home from the woods, I listen to one of the first robin songs of the season. (It’s April 17th) It descends ,from the upmost branch of the highest hickory beyond the house. It is from the identical limb, then bare bow stippled with the green of unfolding leaves where a goshawk from the north once rode zero winds of January.
Characteristically the voices of most thrushes flow and sweep like the music of violins or woodwind instruments. But not that of the robin. Instead it suggests to me the music of the piano, loud and clear, the notes are pounded out They come a separate sounds. Nor is there in the voice of the robin any of the musing, reflective quality of its relative, the hermit thrush of the dark north woods. Nor is there any of that soaring spiritual intensity inherent in the organ tones of the evening wood thrush.
But now filled with good cheer and well-being is the voice of the robin. It is the sound of health and energy, of courage and confidence. It is a voice particularly in accord with the season, this time of optimism, of returning life, when all seems well. It is the cheerful song of the spring.”
Edwin Way Teale heading home, is greeted by a familiar spring visitor.
“ Pausing in the sunset halfway across the pasture on my way home from the woods, I listen to one of the first robin songs of the season. (It’s April 17th) It descends ,from the upmost branch of the highest hickory beyond the house. It is from the identical limb, then bare bow stippled with the green of unfolding leaves where a goshawk from the north once rode zero winds of January.
Characteristically the voices of most thrushes flow and sweep like the music of violins or woodwind instruments. But not that of the robin. Instead it suggests to me the music of the piano, loud and clear, the notes are pounded out They come a separate sounds. Nor is there in the voice of the robin any of the musing, reflective quality of its relative, the hermit thrush of the dark north woods. Nor is there any of that soaring spiritual intensity inherent in the organ tones of the evening wood thrush.
But now filled with good cheer and well-being is the voice of the robin. It is the sound of health and energy, of courage and confidence. It is a voice particularly in accord with the season, this time of optimism, of returning life, when all seems well. It is the cheerful song of the spring.”
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
