The obligatory green anole post

Of course we took pictures of anoles. We were in Louisiana, they were there, and that's just what we do.

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English sparrows

The last time we went to Cafe du Monde in Metairie, we found ourselves surrounded by green anoles. Our most recent visit, though, was on an overcast, slightly chilly day, and the little lizards were scarcely in evidence. (Not to fret; a collection of anole pictures is forthcoming.) Instead, Jessica took the opportunity to get some shots of a ubiquitous and consequently often-overlooked, sometimes reviled, species: English sparrows. They look perfectly lovely here, I think.

[Several members of the flock were dust-bathing, but they quit when Jess tried to get closer.]

As previously noted, wildlife is where you find it...

Up a tree without a paddle

Ellie and me in one of the big live oaks (well over two hundred years old) at Audubon Park in New Orleans.

Palmettos

Louisiana (from whence we are recently returned) has two common species of palmetto. These photos, from northeastern Louisiana, are of saw palmetto, Serenoa repens.

Here, in the background (bald cypress in foreground), is dwarf palmetto, Sabal minor.

The easiest way to tell the palmettos apart at a glance (I'm a poor botanist myself, but I can just manage to remember this) is that the leaflets on dwarf palmetto are conjoined for over half their length, forming a more "solid" leaf than the saw palmetto, the leaflets of which are conjoined only at the base. Up close, the namesake spines of the saw palmetto make it both memorable and unmistakable.

Both species can be good habitat for small herps, such as green tree frogs and green anoles.

One-tank trip

This past Saturday, Jess and I took a much-needed road trip. This was to be a low-budget excursion, as we were essentially bereft of funds until our next paycheck, so we packed a cooler with the makings for peanut-butter-&-jelly and tuna sandwiches (that's two separate kinds of sandwich, not one abomination!), and hit the road fully aware we had only four dollars to our name if we needed to refuel. But hey, no pressure...

Our first destination was the Grand Island area, where we took in the sights and sounds of the sandhill crane migration throughout the morning.

[Windmill and the Doniphan water tower in the background.]

 

[Three separate flocks appear to collide; actually criss-crossing at different altitudes.]

[These ones are all on the same flight plan.]

As always, there were plenty of geese as well, mostly snows and Canadas, with a few specks (white-fronted geese) mixed in. (And presumably some Ross's geese, too, but I've never been able to definitively single one out.)

The raptor-watching was good also, highlighted by this pair of bald eagles and a merlin with what I believe to be a sora. (The merlin photo is mine, the rest are by Jessa.)

Raptors, more specifically trained hawks, were the main focus for the afternoon, as we drove past Kearney to meet up with Chris Remmenga at Elm Creek. Stekoa was up first, and took two rabbits in a small patch of woods in the corner of a pivot-irrigation field.

[Poles make me exceedingly nervous, but the lighting in this photo by Jess almost makes up for it.]

Once Stekoa was through, we drove a couple of miles to a section of prairie where Chris flew his ferruginous hawk, Dega. She was extremely attentive, and obviously a pleasant hawk to handle (I hate to think what a nasty-tempered ferrug would be like!), but unfortunately we only flushed one rabbit for her; it got up very close, dodged Dega's attack, and then disappeared into the tall grass and could not be re-flushed. Chris decribed Dega's acceleration thusly: "Off the fist, she starts like a redtail; if the flight goes long enough, she finishes like a goshawk."

Typical of a ferrug, Dega likes to perch on the ground from time to time, and this is when she looks her most aquiline. Note the small feet; Chris reports that Dega doesn't grip the glove, and that consequently carrying her is "like trying to balance an upright 4x4 post".

The drive home was uneventful and leisurely; we eschewed the interstate and maintained a deliberately moderate pace on two-lane highways in order to save petrol, and were still on vapours by the time we arrived. (Even after spending the four dollars at a truck stop in Elm Creek.) As we drove, we mused an interesting duality: On the one hand, we were flat broke, absolutely without resources if we happened to break down; on the other hand, we'd just spent the afternoon hawking—in a world-class destination, no less—and were therefore among the world's most fortunate human beings. A PB&J sandwich can taste pretty good when it's the sandwich of kings...

A sweetheart

Jess and I recently trapped a musket Cooper's hawk that had taken up temporary residence in a warehouse. A bit skinny, but a couple of days' supplemental feeding by Raptor Recovery Nebraska took care of that. He was feather-perfect and sorely tempting; if I had more time, I'd have loved to keep him and train him.

Maybe in the fall...


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Habitat begins at home

As a bunny hawker, I've always been especially proud to host nesting rabbits in the garden. Now, Jess provides proof that even our front porch is rabbit habitat.

Outside the fold

The following reflection appears in the 2016 Lenten devotional booklet for First-Plymouth Congregational Church here in Lincoln:

And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.
—Luke 5:16

 

When, at the age of 15 or so, I took my leave of the Catholic Church and Christianity generally, my grandmother called me a heathen. At first, I was hurt that she had misunderstood me; I was not renouncing spiritual life altogether, just claiming a path more authentic to my own experience. But over time, I've come to embrace the term: heathen, one who lives on a heath.

So what is a heath? A heath is an expanse of shrubland habitat, usually with acidic or otherwise relatively infertile soil. Like the closely related landscapes known as moors, heaths have traditionally been considered waste areas. I've been privileged to spend time on both heaths and moors, and I tend toward a quite different view. In my experience they are abundant in both wildlife and edible fruits, including blueberries, cranberries, huckleberries, raspberries, strawberries, and wild plums. They may be "wastelands" to the farmer or the industrialist, but to the hunter of game or the gatherer of wild foods, heaths are places of plenty.

If heaths can feed the body of one who knows them well enough, they are perhaps even better suited to feeding the soul of one who approaches them with the right spirit. Being sparsely settled or uninhabited altogether, they tend to be quiet, peaceful places deeply conducive to reflection. Can it be a coincidence that both John the Baptist and Jesus sought solace and solitude in the wilderness? What better place to seek God?

My grandmother was neither a naturalist nor a philosopher, and while I love her and owe her much, it must be said that my grandfather was ultimately more influential. It was he who taught me to fish; he (and my mother) who gave me an appreciation for birds; he who set me on the path to wandering about on heaths and moors. And while he was as devout a Catholic as his wife was, I do not recall his expressing any concern about my departure from the Roman Church. He knew, I suspect, that I was baptised to what a friend of mine calls the Church of Field and Stream; that like Jesus and his elder cousin, I found God everywhere and not just in the temple. His acceptance, and that of my parents, gave me confidence in my own sense of spirituality, and helped make me who I am today.

So yes, a heathen. A happy eater of locusts and honey. A God-fearing heathen, at peace in the quieter spots in the world.

Ice fishing

I

I remember a little boy at an air show
Gazing in fascination at the helium balloon
Tied by a string to his finger,
Utterly oblivious to the Blue Angels roaring over our heads.
I think sometimes of the pilots,
Knights of the air
Steeped in complexity,
With hundreds of hours of textbook mastery
And thousands of hours logged in the cockpit,
Surrounded by buttons and switches and dials,
And of the little boy with his simple noble-gas miracle,
And think of them as colleagues—
Partners in flight.

II

An old man is out on the ice;
A friendly fellow, he waved as we drove by.
The colors stand out on the snowy expanse:
He sits on an orange bucket that once held drywall compound,
A yellow chainsaw, a green thermos, and a coffee can beside him.
Red can. I won't lay a bet, but it just might be Hills Brothers.
Behind him, pageantry plays out,
The sport of kings:
The hounds zigzagging through the woods,
The hawk following above,
The silver song of Lahore bells carrying through the still winter air.
And though a couple of rabbits run out of the woods
And then dash back in closely pursued,
The old man never turns to take notice.
With earflap hat pulled down against the cold,
And perhaps a lifetime in a machine shop behind him,
It's possible he's unaware of our presence.
But maybe, I think, he's simply rapt,
Engrossed in his own version of sport,
Waiting for the pressure on the line
That connects him to another life,
To another world where they breathe water
And everything happens out of sight.

III

Eventually, the hawk pins a rabbit to the ice of the creek.
The hawk eats on my fist as we walk back to the car,
The dogs eagerly anticipating their share.
As I wash my bloody hands in the snow,
The falling sun painting the cottonwoods in flaxen tones,
The old man's Carhartts glow in a patch of sunlight,
Wheat-coloured canvas transformed into burnished gold,
And I find myself thinking of that yellow balloon.

"Cool" hits the big time, 37 years later

Madison Avenue knows how to sell cars, and by this point, using a decades-old song in an advertisement isn't exactly ground-breaking. You can probably identify some cars just by the songs: "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin. "Eminence Front" by The Who. AC/DC, "Back in Black". Bob Seger's "Like a Rock"—I don't know if that one still airs, but I guarantee you're thinking of Chevy trucks right now. Were I back at WLUR-FM, I'm sure I could fill at least an hour of airtime with co-opted classic rock hits.

But I was not prepared for this: I'm sitting in front of the TV in the break room at work. The Weather Channel (I think) goes to commercial break. A new ad for Lexus; I'm a Subaru guy, and not remotely in the market for a car, so I start to tune out...holy hell, is that Pylon?!?!

Yes, yes it is. A major automobile company is using a song from 1979 by a semi-obscure band from Athens, Georgia to tout their latest luxury sedan. "Cool", a.k.a. track 2 on the perhaps ironically-titled Hits. (Well, maybe it's not ironic, but it does need to be kept in perspective...)



Pylon may be best known to "outsiders" for their influence on another band, neighbours and contemporaries: R.E.M. did a cover of "Crazy"; R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck noted, "I remember hearing their version on the radio the day that Chronic Town came out and being suddenly depressed by how much better it was than our record." I missed out on a few aspects of the Athens music scene (I only arrived there in 1991), but I did get to see Pylon at the 40 Watt, and I can assure you that they were the real deal.

Thanks, Lexus, for the flashback. And for the benefit of those who were not there, here's the full song, complete with Vanessa Briscoe Hay's jarring vocals (and, incidentally, Pylon's trademark schematic/spec-sheet graphics):



Enjoy...

Farewell, Colonel Brandon

I received word this morning that the actor Alan Rickman has passed away at the age of 69. This is salient partly because my darling Jessa is one of several women in my life to have expressed a crush on him; I have been heard to mutter on more than one occasion, "Alan Rickman...how I loathe him." In truth, though, I admire his work, and more importantly, he does seem to have been an admirable man. For evidence, I cite his 50-year involvement with his wife, a London councillor—need I point out that long, stable relationships seem to be even more rare among actors and politicians than in the general population? Additionally, he seems to have been generous with his time to fans and generally beloved by his co-workers.

He was probably best known for portraying Severus Snape, but my favourite Rickman role was Col. Brandon in Ang Lee's version of Sense and Sensibility. I had hoped to embed a clip from the film, but can't seem to get it to work, so I'll simply suggest watching it in its entirety...as we will doubtless do this evening.

Jess was teary this morning, and apologised for the fact—needlessly, as I assured her. One of the oddities of celebrity is that one can be missed even by those one has never met. In this case, I suspect, the sense of loss is warranted not by the characters the man played, but by the character of the man.

"Centralia, PA"

Another one from Rogue Valley. (Jess got me the album for Yule). Ellie and I had this track on repeat on the way to and from hawking yesterday. Brilliant song, and a true story—in fact, the lyrics understate it in some ways.