CT

My First Killdeer

/ kathyhauswirth / 2 Comments

leave eggs aloneOn Saturday, I went to see an old friend: the natural world! I’d only been able to visit her for short stints in recent weeks. And the timing was great— it was Trails Day (well, Trails Weekend, really) in Connecticut, something I’ve missed in past years because of competing demands. (Actually, according to the CFPA, our state has the largest Trails Day nationwide!)

I had an additional motive for making some nature immersion plans: as an apprentice Master Naturalist, I have requirements for – in addition to classes – finding opportunities to participate in and also help out with ecologically related education.

By the time I got my act together that morning, I had just enough time to hastily groom and get myself to Killingworth, where several folks from Connecticut Water were leading a hike in the vicinity of the reservoir. Our group was a mix of younger families with children, singles old and young, a leashed dog, and our leaders. The woman in front of me confessed that this “outdoorsy” adventure was a new sort of endeavor for her. She worried that her slower pace might hold me back, but I welcomed it. I was feeling the humidity (a foreshadowing of the sudden storms that would erupt that afternoon), and appreciated the ability to really look at the foliage, the bark, the bugs, the light on the meadow, etc. My knees thanked me for the leisurely stride, too!

red eyed vireo from Flickr Kelly.jpg

Red-Eyed Vireo courtesy of Kelly Colgan Azar on Flickr

The water company folks were good guides. They talked about maintaining the watershed, and about the herons, ospreys, and other local bird life. Our leader Chuck pointed up and cocked his head, indicating the song of the Red-Eyed Vireo. More than one nature guide has told me that this muted olive-green and white bird is often heard but seen much less often (great camouflage, especially when the trees are fully leafed). I pointed out circular Downy or Hairy Woodpecker holes, knowing that holes from the Pileated are much bigger, and more rectangular, and Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker holes are in a neat row. We admired a very shaggy shag bark hickory, with a “Do Not Trespass” sign on it signaling the protected area closer to the reservoir.

When we got back from the hike, there was a group photo to commemorate our success, and free bags and water bottles from our hosts. I wondered how disheveled I would appear in the photo, as I hadn’t managed to shower before I ran out the door and was wearing the humidity on my face and neck.

(I hadn’t thought much about it before, but Connecticut Water is actively involved in conservation—protecting their water source! They have an education program for third graders—the Water Drop Watchers!)

Lavender store.JPG

Ooh la la! The Lavender Pond Farm store!

Bedraggled though I was, I knew that I couldn’t pass up my first visit to Lavender Pond Farm down the road. They have about 9000 lavender plants, of many varieties.  The plants were not yet in full bloom (that’s coming soon!) but the place smelled heavenly. I started my visit in the store, thinking of my sister Linda (a sucker for anything Provencal, and the whole store looked like one I might imagine in the South of France). I quenched my thirst with a cold lavender lemonade and bought mix for a lavender-lemon tea cake, as well as honey-lavender candy that Gavin would consume in record time on Sunday.

lavender fields.JPG

Lavender Pond Farm

But the biggest treat was yet to come. I stowed my purchases in the car and walked among the plants. Already, on the way in, I had admired several Brown-Headed Cowbirds  skirting the fields. Now, I walked out onto the grassy lawn surrounding the lavender patches, interspersed with gravel paths. Swifts (or were they swallows?) flew too fast for my amateur birder eyes to completely take in, but I knew they were hunting for insects. And then, an unexpected type of bird motion caught my eye.

Killdeer by vladeb on Flickr.jpg

Killdeer by vladeb on Flickr

I saw the quick, spindly steps of a shore bird (although I wasn’t on the shore). A pair of Killdeer (so named because of the sound they make although I do NOT hear this phrase when I hear their song) were running around among the lavender plants and gravel. When I looked these birds up later, the first sentence in the “All About Birds” entry for this species was, “A shorebird you can see without going to the beach.” Indeed: they are plovers, described by All About Birds as, “tawny birds” that “run across the ground in spurts, stopping with a jolt every so often to check their progress, or to see if they’ve startled up any insect prey.”

Killdeer eggs.jpg

I admired the handsome black rings around their necks and upper chests (technically called “breast bands”) and also how well they blended in with the ground. My delight only grew from there. I learned that the pair was guarding a cache of four eggs on what looked to me like a very randomly chosen ground “nest”—really just a scratched out spot amidst a large swath of gravel. Some kind soul had made a crude surround for the nest, and the sign that heads up this blog, signed, “Birdie.” I didn’t want to upset whoever was on “egg duty” (males and females take turns with that) but I did swoop in for a quick photo-op while the prospective parent hovered nearby and made a few anxious squawks.

What a Saturday—by one or so I’d walked for miles; seen a dozen creatures; made some new, nature-loving friends, and all before the sky opened up to dump buckets of rain! The Killdeer incubation period is a short one—less than a month. Maybe I’ll get to soon see some Killdeer chicks!

Anniversary of Noticing: A Walk to Chester

/ kathyhauswirth / Leave a comment
bridge st dawn

Bridge Street at dawn

In The Book of Noticing, I introduced my collection of walks by sketching out a particular one: a walk to Deep River’s neighboring town of Chester on the 4th of July. Every year, the town hosts the 4 on the 4th Road Race. I have little interest in the race itself, but Chester is a good destination and I like to see the preparations underway.

This morning I celebrated the anniversary of this start of the book with a walk to the same destination. Different time of day: this year the dog got me up at 4, and the sky was already lightening, so I went with it. Different dog: Molly’s memory will forever be held in the book, but now she is buried at the pet cemetery in Fountain Hill, and sometimes Buddy and I stop at her marker.

Our new beagle mix, Buddy, is only 4 and full of energy. He didn’t lag once during the whole, greater-than-2-hour, saunter. It was a circuitous route: various side streets to Maple Street to Chester, then a detour up to Laurel Hill Cemetery, then up through Chester and down Main Street, back via side streets to home.

buddy mullein.jpg

Buddy checking out the mullein

By the time I approached Union Street, about 10 minutes from home, the sun was showing its face above the horizon, and it washed my neighborhood in muted warm tones. I mused about the many mullein plants peppering my path, their tall shadows standing out in the early dawn light. It’s theorized that the name comes from the Latin word for “soft,” and the herb’s dried down was at one time used for candle wicks. I learned that the stalks used to serve as torches, back in Roman times, and that this often overlooked plant has served many medicinal purposes, from hemorrhoids to asthma. Despite its size, I have always thought it a humble and unassuming plant. I view it as an old friend that visits every summer.

I thought back to my recent weeks at Acadia (see here and here), and how I was literally surrounded by water practically everywhere I went. It’s abundant here, too, but just a bit more work to locate it. From Laurel Hill Cemetery I looked down on the Carini Preserve area, alongside the Chester Creek. I have a favorite spot in the cemetery where I can look over at the Osprey platform planted in the water. Empty! Had the chicks hatched and fledged already? I found myself worrying about their well being. Where were they?

I studied a couple of impressively proportioned rocks—or are they boulders? I had to look up the difference. One forum says that the differentiating factor for the boulder is that it isn’t going anywhere. I hope that’s true for this unusual grave marker at Laurel Hill, pictured below. I wondered about the person or family who decided on the hefty, naturally formed pink granite (I think?) rock bearing only a last name.

Hungerford rock Laurel Hill.JPGNot far from it was another eye-catching rock (I guess it could be moved, with power equipment, so thus it’s not a boulder?) in the creek itself. It’s become a haven for wayward plants.

Chester creek rock.jpg

Chester Creek rock-nursery

Today I felt an appreciation especially for the plants along my path. I mused about some of the flowers that might be considered “weeds,” since they don’t seem to have been planted intentionally. Actually, I like the term “volunteers” much better. I was amused by my Web research on volunteer plants when I got home, mostly with a gardening perspective, with titles like, “What’s Up with Volunteer Plants?”  and “Should You Keep Volunteer Tomatoes?”  (While to me the answer to tomatoes should always be yes, apparently this is a controversial issue in some circles).

Seeds have so many ways of arriving and blossoming: our compost, the creatures that come and go from our gardens, plants reseeding. Whether we want them there or not, there they are, proud in their innovation and persistence. The many routes that a seed can take are good reminders of the surprises in life, and also of the boundless opportunities to grow, even in unlikely scenarios.

purple weed

Volunteer in purple uniform

Which brings me back to The Book of Noticing and its origins. Long, long ago, I brought an acorn home from a walk in the woods. It was a particularly pleasing example–large and burnished brown, with a handsome cap. I though that having this in hand, and later, desk-side, might help me to get going on what was then a rather vague idea about a book on time in nature. Time passed, and still the acorn sat there, not seeming to blossom into much. But, eventually, more ideas accumulated and I had a book. What mattered was that I had faith in the seed; that I cared enough to bring it home and welcome it.

mustard seed.JPG

My mustard seed

I rooted around in my jewelry box to find the pendant pictured above, and remember Mom gifting me with it from her own childhood collection, when I was 9 or 10. She said, “If you have faith the size of a grain of mustard seed, you can move mountains,” a paraphrase from Matthew 17:20 and no doubt a remnant of her Baptist roots. Did she know how fertile a seed she was planting that day?

Honey Guides, Bentonite, and Ayer’s Rock

/ kathyhauswirth / 2 Comments

My wanderlust is usually rather micro. I am often quite content with the many things to see and hear and learn on my local walks, in the many routes I can take without even without leaving Deep River.

Portage coverBut this week has got me thinking about nature that’s farther flung. I’ve finished reading Portage, by Sue Leaf, an account of the writer’s canoe trips north and west of here, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, parts of Canada, Wisconsin, etc. (The only canoeing book I liked more was Yukon Wild!). The author devotes nearly two pages to bentonite clay, a substance that arises from ancient volcanic ash along rivers like the Little Missouri.

Cathedral Gorge is located in a long, narrow valley where erosion has carved dramatic and unique patterns in the soft bentonite clay. IPhoto/caption from Nevada State Parks site.

Cathedral Gorge is located in a long, narrow valley where erosion has carved dramatic and unique patterns in the soft bentonite clay. Photo/caption from Nevada State Parks site.

Of course, having to slog through the wet version of the stuff doesn’t sound like any fun; there are tales of clay stranding hikers for days or holding horses in place, but it’s cool to think about parts of the country that have great swaths of stuff I haven’t ever seen. This same nuisance-y stuff is treasured by herbalists, used in facial masks, toothpaste, etc.

Reading about bentonite also unleashed a dormant memory of a grade-school class trip to Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve, a treasure of Long Island’s North Shore. I’m not sure if I’ve created an exaggerated memory, but I seem to remember standing on a large “boulder” (for lack of a better term) of an unfamiliar substance, and our tour guide, perhaps a park ranger, telling me that it was sea clay. I was quite taken with its texture and the fact that it had appeared along the shore—I had spent so much time on South Shore beaches but had never seen this stuff.

Gavin’s been scooping up clay for years from the seasonal “stream” (basically a tract for runoff from the higher-grade forest spring thaw) that runs along the boundary of our property. This Stay Curious blog (great name for a blog, don’t you think!) has an account of the author’s discovery of little clay lumps (lots of them!)  along Bald Head Island beach in North Carolina. It got me wondering if my potter neighbor would be able to mold a work of art with them.

Greater Honeyguide photo reprinted with permission from Safari blog

Greater Honeyguide photo reprinted with permission from Safari blog

From my clay exploration route I hightailed it (virtually) to East Africa. Hadza: The Last of the First  is worth watching. It’s a well-executed documentary about the region’s last remaining true hunter-gatherers, whose way of life is threatened by encroaching civilization and government interests. There’s more than a blog’s worth to write about in terms of the tribe (see the movie!!), but from a naturalist perspective I was quite fascinated by the Honeyguide bird, which actually works with humans to lead them to hive sites. The humans extract the honey and give some of the honeycomb to the bird. This blog  does a great job describing how the interspecies communication and collaboration works.

My third jaunt in this salvo of armchair trips was courtesy of Bill Bryson. Gavin and I are both reading In a Sunburned Country for the second time (wow that guy can really write!). With the knowledge that Bryson is so very well-traveled, I took it quite seriously when he encouraged me to somehow find my way to remote Australia so I can see Ayer’s Rock in person. I could see that even Bryson struggled a bit to encapsulate exactly why this 1,150-foot high, mile-and-a-half long, five-and-a-half mile around “rock” left him astounded, declaring it was worth a 600-mile round trip.

Photo from Parks Australia on Pinterest

Photo from Parks Australia on Pinterest

The rock is technically a bornhardt, per the author “a hunk of weather-resistant rock left standing when all else around it has worn away.” After nearly 3 pages of noting that pictures don’t nearly do it justice, and that being there left him nearly inarticulate but somehow feeling that the rock was primordially, or even supernaturally, vastly meaningful, connecting with it in a nearly indescribable way, he was forced to wrap it up by saying, in uncharacteristically monosyllabic fashion for such a wordy guy: “Go there, man.”

From my chair, out West and on to East Africa and Australia. All of this almost topped the local adventures to follow here at home: cormorants through my binoculars, hungry birds encircling the feeder, long walks in the surprisingly mild late November air. Thankful for adventures outdoors, both far and near,  vicarious and in the flesh.

Once Around

/ kathyhauswirth / Leave a comment

Both this weekend and last, I suffered from painful cases of the Shoulds. My long scroll of a TO DO list seems to be ever lengthening, and at the top are household chores by the dozen.

So I compromised last Sunday. I would walk Molly for 1 hour only. It takes an hour to foot the mile to town and back with this beagle who follows her nose, who strains with vigor and passion at the leash whenever a new smell beckons.

We set out at sunrise, treated to a Hallelujah Chorus from (mostly unseen) birds in the thick pines that line our yard. I admired a garter snake on the asphalt and right after that the prolific leavings from a neighbor’s cottonwood tree (it looked like snow was lining her driveway!). I later learned that “nuisance” cottonwoods have a lot going for them, and a proud history. I also read up on why birds sing at dawn, or at least the latest attempt to explain this mystery. (Science fully respected, but I think I’ll always experience the chorus as the ultimate hymn of joy and praise).

bobwhiteMy compromise morphed into a substantial ramble when I learned that Tom and Gavin were also up early. They met Molly and me at town dock, where we had breakfast and gazed out at the water. We watched a heron and tailed a pair of Northern Bobwhites ambling along Kirtland Street. We climbed the gradual hill to Mount Saint John, a stately fixture of Deep River since 1904. Tom photographed a bluebird peeking from its house on the grounds.

BluebirdHouse

MollyonWall

There were still Shoulds to return home to. In the hours following this happy indulgence, I caught up with the laundry and restored some sanity to our household environs. But I am so glad I took that 1-hour walk that turned into a 2-plus hour walk. And that later, we all took the drive to Middletown so we could learn about caterpillars and gather some phenology (the study of what happens, and when, in nature) data, courtesy of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association. Phenology matters, much more than housekeeping and crossouts on the daily To DO list, and here’s a brief article that gives examples of why.

Deep River: It’s in the Stars

/ kathyhauswirth / Leave a comment

Orion, of course, is a constellation.

From Wiikipedia

From Wikipedia

 

But it’s also a very rich read: a nature/environmental magazine, voted America’s Best Environmental Magazine by The Boston Globe. I am thrilled to see my writeup of Deep River, CT, featured on their Place Where You Live page!