Wildflowerin' gone bad

He who limps is still walking. ~Stanislaw J. Lec

I love wandering in the woods to find the first sleeping plants that awaken from the forest floor. It’s something of a rite of spring for me, despite the fact that I no longer have to suffer through a cold northern winter. Many of these spring ephemerals, as well as being beautiful, are important food sources for the first foraging butterflies and bees that emerge. Many are even downward-facing to better serve the insects that cruise the forest floor.

A couple weeks back we took an impromptu Friday evening walk to the nature trail at Stone Mountain Park; a friend had mentioned that it's one of the best local places to see a few of my favorites. It's an easy 3/4 mile trail that meanders beside a stream. It was lovely; the azaleas were blooming and as a bonus we saw our first Louisiana waterthrush of the season!

There were many blooming mayapples - so hard to photograph nicely - and some pink lady slippers that I want to go back to check on. I found foamflower, I think, though it's much taller than what I'm used to seeing in NJ. The common name comes from the delicate white flowers that look like foam. I love the extra long pistils on the flowers that rise above the white petals like little golden crowns. Books say that these flowers were often presented by Greeks as tokens of their love.

We also found green-and-gold which is another favorite. It blooms in shady woodland places. So pretty! I believe it's in the aster family, so you know pollinators love it. We finished off our easy evening hike by deciding to head off the nature trail and into the forest proper.
 


We didn't get very far before we had to cross a wet area where the stream ran across a bunch of flat rocks. Despite being extra-super careful when crossing those slippery, moss-covered rocks, I managed to fall and twist up my leg. Bummer! Two weeks later and I finally worked up the courage to see a doctor today... the pain wasn't going away and walking/sleeping/sitting haven't gotten any easier. I have to go back for an MRI, but the chance is that I've torn a meniscus.

:-(

 
I'm studying up on knee anatomy (in between wildflower guides!) and hoping that rest and time and the brace the doctor gave me will fix it up. I welcome any suggestions for how to include/disguise this hideous-looking brace in my professional attire. I hope next time I'll be more careful; wildflowers are a risky habit to have!

How to: have hope

Least Tern scrape

American Oystercatcher caginess

Waiting to be found

Just as the sun steps over the horizon, head east. Drive with the sun in your eyes until you hit water. Do not think about yesterday's losses. Do not linger too long over what might've been. Do not wonder what you should have done differently.

Climb over the seawall and greet the Oystercatchers on their way to the river. Tip-toe through the wrack and nod towards the grumpy fishermen. Get down on your hands and knees to see what gifts the tide has left you. Do not mind the tears; the sand and the wind in your eyes are a good excuse.

See the Least Terns overhead: the brazen, bustling air-defense system of this beach. Let your eyes map their petite features: the quick wings, the black cap, the downward-pointing yellow bill. Count them by the dozens. Admire the simplicity of their nest: in a pebbly depression of dry sand, eggs 1 to 4, from pale greenish to dull drab, spotted with clear brown and some lavender.

Reading the morning papers

Every day I make "rounds" to the 7 or so sites that I'm responsible for; ideally I get to the beach first thing in the morning while the news is still current. Oftentimes, like any busy person, I just scan the newspaper's sections for stories I want to read further...

TRAVEL SECTION

This story was about a person and a dog breaking the rules. Dogs, even leashed and well-behaved ones, aren't allowed on most ocean beaches during nesting season. I read this story just about every day on every beach I visit.

CRIME BLOTTER

The same old suspects here... crows, of course (I think!)

I've been watching a pair of Fish Crows at one site collecting nesting material for the past couple days... I was happy to connect the tracks I was seeing in the Rugosa Roses in the protected habitat to the Fish Crows flying past with sticks. The nearby nesting American Oystercatchers are not happy with this news, tho and chase them out of the neighborhood at every opportunity!

CLASSIFIEDS - SINGLES ADS

Headline news in Spring is all about who's available and where, right? I'm hoping to see this scrape filled up with Piping Plover eggs before very long.

Click to enlarge and see plover tracks!

SOCIAL SCENE - WEDDINGS AND CELEBRATIONS

Weddings (and their associated baby announcements!) are the highlight of the daily social calendar published locally. All we beach-nesting bird people can talk about is who's expecting and when.

: )

This killdeer couple will be happy parents in 22 - 28 days.

OBITUARIES

Death notices are published daily and should attempt to give significance and honor to the life lived. Many things that wash up dead each day are surrounded by mystery: a dead loon on the beach isn't necessarily strange, but how it ended up more than 300 ft. from the ocean wasn't mentioned in this headline.

FASHION AND STYLE

Celebrity Piping Plover "Dexter" is sporting the latest in endangered beach-nesting bird bling... color-coordinated bands!

:-)

(I think I made my boss' day with this story plucked from the headline news!)

Stayed tuned...

*ALL PHOTOS IN THIS POST WERE TAKEN DURING THE OFFICIAL CONDUCT OF MY JOB TO MONITOR AND PROTECT BEACH-NESTING BIRDS, or, like a local fisherman has taken to calling it "as the official birdwatcher here".

It's a tough job, but...

My "office" for the day!

: )

It's been a busy first couple of days here in NJ, but I'm loving it! I started off on Tuesday with a boss-led tour of the sites I'll be responsible for and had some fun looking for American Oystercatcher nests.

My shoes, scalp and ears were full of sand at the end of the day!

I was rained out on Wednesday, but Thursday found me helping out (carrying and holding stuff) on a beach-nesting bird habitat survey and fixing fencing damaged in Wednesday's stormy weather.

Today I was on my own for a couple of site visits and had the chance to spend a few hours at Sandy Hook counting Piping Plovers for a migration survey. It was a beautiful afternoon and I learned my first important lesson for field work - always have an extra pencil!

I was carrying so much stuff on the death march out the Fisherman's Trail to the survey site and don't yet have my scope sherpas (student interns) to help me. I lost track of my pencil three-quarters of the way through the census and had to use moon shells in various pockets to keep a tally of the birds I was seeing!

:-)

The camera's virtue

"The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking." 

-Brooks Atkinson

Elf's Orpine, a granite outcrop specialist

Rock moss and lichen

Fern unfurling into Spring

Rock moss and lichen, in a battle for dominance

Trailing Arbutus, a new find this year

Was has your camera helped you find lately?

: )

More signs of Spring!

Out with the cold, in with the woo. 

~E. Marshall, "Spring Thought"

A hike this afternoon at Arabia Mountain (my favorite local place!) led to a couple good finds. A very brave Jay scooped up this gelatinous mass of salamander eggs(?) from a vernal pool for me to poke and squirm at. There were lots of these (that I'm guessing might be Spotted Salamanders) and a couple of others that maybe are Blue Spotted Salamander eggs.

Very cool, kinda gross and entirely too squishy for my taste.

: )

The opposite end of the same vernal pool held lots of teeny-weeny frog tadpoles... could these be chorus frogs in my reflection? 

I'm hoping Spring is making progress towards wherever you are...

Mid-week bunny fix

Bunnies make good pillows!

Skyview Atlanta

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. 

- G.K. Chesterton

Art Seen (Erased)

"Each person can take it the way they want to, because it is for everyone ...and at the end, if it gets painted over, know that the gray paint will not hide the fears of no one, but if anything, it will make those fears more visible" - Hyuro

Photo from Creative Loafing

"Paint on this wall made for a beautiful mural, people talking about it made for a beautiful conversation. A public space was created and all of a sudden this dead intersection became more human. The mural belonged to all of us, to the ones that liked it and to the ones that didn't, it was our dialogue, it was our challenge, but now it's gone. Now we are back to ignoring that space again, now we are back at thinking that erasing the evidence will make us think this never happened..." - Monica Campana, Founder and Executive Director of Living Walls

I never had the chance to see Hyuro's mural before it was buffed over. The neighborhood didn't understand its message or was threatened by the nudity it depicted. In its 37 "frames", a woman grew fur and shed her coat; she then morphed into a wolf and walked off. I'm not sure that I understand its message either, but I can see clearly the value of such art, if only in its assault on the blight that is most of Atlanta.  I'm not sure of what anyone could find so terribly offensive in the almost cartoon-like images of this mural, especially considering what we're all exposed to on tv and in print media, every day.

I'm not sure, either, that you have to like a particular piece of art in order for it to improve your quality of life. What say you?

Mid-week bunny fix

“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
― The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams

- - - - - - - - - - -

At something over 7 years old, Peeper is slowly becoming Real. Much of the hair around one eye has been loved off (thanks to chronic lop-eared wetness there) and she's looking a little shabby all over. She has a ways to go, still, of course. She can run and dance like a youngster when given the chance.

The way to do it

As the bus slowed down at the crowded bus stop, the Pakistani bus conductor leaned from the platform and called out, "Six only!" The bus stopped. He counted on six passengers, rang the bell, and then, as the bus moved off, called to those left behind: "So sorry, plenty of room in my heart - but the bus is full." He left behind a row of smiling faces. It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it.

~The Friendship Book of Francis Gay, 1977

Blood Mountain

A sweet photo from today at the peak of Blood Mountain...

I was cajoled into a "little hike" that turned into an all day adventure. The 2 mile section along the Appalachian Trail was nearly straight up (Ugh!) to the peak. We took the long way down, 4 miles on a very rocky trail, but at least it wasn't so steep! It felt so good to finally take my shoes off!

There wasn't much color yet, just some in the Dogwoods and, of course, the Black Gums, but we did find Asters and Gentians blooming along the trail.

Market finds

One bag of arugula for a certain spoiled bunny. 

One bottle of blueberry honey that will be hidden from a certain teenaged honey-fiend.

I love that there's a year-round weekly farmer's market by the bank up the street, but it's hard to beat the 140,000 sq. ft. Dekalb Farmer's Market for anything you could want.

Note to bunny people: I can buy a huge bunch of parsley, for example, for just 39 cents!

Going there is an experience; it's the sort of place I always want to take visitors to Atlanta to visit. They call themselves a "world market" because they have produce, spices and other products from the world over. They also employ a huge number of Atlanta's immigrant and refugee population; many of my students work there overnight in the bakery or at the checkout line.

The market up the street, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to deal directly with the farmer or the person who otherwise made the product they're selling. There's value in that. If you're lucky, they might also let you sample something... this afternoon it was kimchi which, thank heavens, tastes better than it sounds!

Swapping the sun

October used to mean the last sunny Saturdays on the beach, the last warm days to throw open the windows, the last long rays of light. Life moved indoors to soup, flannel sheets and listening to the wind howl outside for a couple months.

It's not that way here; summer is the time to hide indoors with the windows shut against the blasting heat. I look forward to being able to enjoy time outdoors again without being drenched in sweat!

The earth still goes through her beautiful old cycle of change this month, however. Gone will be the sexy green heat and the cabaret act of summer. The sun's glaring footlights are swapped for a mellow gold moon. October's perfume is fallen leaves and wood smoke with a hint of apples. There will be chili again (and split-pea soup... hurrah!) and baseball for the hometown team (go Braves!)

What are you most looking forward to?

A loggerhead boil

"Take a walk with a turtle. And behold the world in pause." 

 - Bruce Feiler 

I'd imagine that most of us (birders, naturalists, outdoorsy-types) have read a lot about the value of a real-life, hands-on nature experience to convert the rest of the world to our ranks. Be it hand-feeding chickadees or swimming with dolphins at Disney, I'd almost come to think of myself as superior to this type of experience, somehow beyond the magic of another "wildlife encounter".  I've watched over endangered birds in the blazing hot sun, boxed up and delivered hawks and gulls to wildlife rehabilitators, rescued baby birds and bunnies from all sorts of self-imposed mischief, etc.

But I was not prepared to fall in love with baby sea turtles!

Years, now, of visits to the GA coast and FL panhandle had at least made me aware of their plight, but I'd never thought I'd be lucky enough to chance upon a real-life encounter with any. What are the chances of that, right?

A part of our beach-arrival ritual is to dip our toes in the sea, no matter the weather or time of day; it feels like coming home to me! On our first night of an experimental summer camping vacation, we walked the beach on Jekyll at low tide. It was empty and quiet, but for the almost full moon and a couple people out with red lights checking the sea turtle nests. We happened to talk to a couple of them, volunteer turtle nest monitors, and they directed us to nest #62 which looked as if it might hatch that night, in the next hour or so.

Really?!?

Squee!!!

So what if it was nearly midnight... we were on vacation and had nowhere else to be!

So we sat.

And we waited...

(for all of about 5 minutes)

before Jay thought he saw some movement and...

Sure enough, those baby loggerheads were boiling out of their nest! Coolest thing ever! It was pitch dark, but those little turtles knew their way to the ocean and we watched, and counted them, and cheered them on.

What luck!

So a couple days later we signed ourselves up for a "nest excavation" walk with the GA Sea Turtle Center. Their researchers dig up every nest on Jekyll a couple days after it's hatched to record data about it. They count every hatched eggshell (51 in the nest we saw excavated) and they open each and every unhatched egg (49 in this case).

The unhatched eggshells were pretty gruesome and smelly. They estimate the stage of development each was in before it perished (the majority in this nest died very early in development.)

I've read that, historically, some people especially enjoyed the richness of cakes made with turtle eggs. Can you imagine?

Dead hatchlings are also counted - in this nest there were 2 - these are baby turtles that hatched, but died before making their way out of the nest and to the ocean.

Sometimes, live hatchlings are also found! There were 2 in this nest! I don't know enough about Loggerheads to guess why they might stay behind in their sandy birthplace, refusing the call of the sea. Anybody know?

Two little Loggerheads were rescued from their sandy womb (tomb?) and pointed in the direction of the sea, with our cheers to urge them on. They didn't seem to be in much of a hurry, but with turtles, it's hard to know.

; )

Sweet Sadie... ever patient and well-behaved, watched all of it pass her by at the tip of her nose.

(Tho there was one baby turtle she was determined to investigate as it made its way past her nose to the water that first night. I'm glad for any occasion to see her acting like a dog... but know enough to hold her very close!)

I was pretty surprised (pleasantly!) with how much this all touched me. There are devoted turtle-watchers who never get to see what we happened upon by chance and luck. 

I feel blessed.

A visit to Jekyll Island always manages, somehow, to be magical.

How to vacation at the beach

Befriend the ghost crabs...

An easy way to do this is to have a picnic lunch on the sand. Bring heirloom tomatoes, basil and fresh mozarella from home. Pack a beer or two in the cooler. Sit in the shade while the locals gather shrimp in their seine nets. Try not to act too alarmed at the small sharks they bring ashore. Once you've forgotten about them, the ghost crabs will come out of their burrows.

 

Let the surf rock you to sleep at low tide... 

The beach has stretched out as far as it can go (and on Jekyll Island, that's pretty far!) I think low tide is the best tide... it's open, gentle and inviting. Sea life enlivens the shallow water and it's a fun time to explore what's been left behind with the outgoing tide. There's always some treasure... we caught glimpses of small sharky fins and a ray or two. Sadie seemed to love the gentle rocking of the sea. It's also a good time to start a drip castle... dig a little hole and pile up the sand... let it dribble between your fingers and before you know it, there's a world of towers, silly and crooked.

Daydream beneath a canopy of live oaks draped with spanish moss... 

Shade is important on a beach vacation; too much sun on all of those bug bites will be very painful when you're trying to sleep later tonight... I'm not sure how I lived without the occasional sight of live oaks before moving to GA... they are the most wonderful of trees, I think! 

Breathe deeply of sky and salt marsh... 

The salt marsh is another wonderful place for exploring, especially if there's a paved path to do it by bike! Fiddler crabs abound, as do the birds who hunt them.

Watch the sun go down behind the marina... 

There can never be too many sunsets over the water on a beach vacation, right? It's all sort of strange and magical. We'd gone from place to place each day trying to avoid the bugs, but they found us, especially, here. The beautiful view was almost worth the bites, though.

(The shrimp and grits were especially worth the bites!)

: )

Count the pink birds when they show up... 

Let's see... 8 roseate spoonbills, 6 wood storks, 3 tri-coloreds... who else?

Find a little town that harbors shrimp boats... 

Shrimp boats always dot the horizon here; it was fun finding them, finally, at rest.

Be on the lookout for sea turtle hatchlings!

We walked on the beach just about every night (another ploy to escape the bugs at the campground!) and all of those nights were leading up to/during/just after the fool moon. It's a wonderful walk when the tide is out... the sand glows and the water twinkles under the huge moon. So beautiful! Who could be inside at a time like that? Who could sleep? We had a magical experience with some loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings on our first night on Jekyll... more to come!

Outisde the touch of time

To the outside world, we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. 
~Clara Ortega

This is one of those magical photos that I took almost by accident, but that manages to capture some of the truest parts of my brother Brian. We'd just come back from visiting a local auction, one of his favorite places, and he was pouring over the treasures that he brought home with him. In this case it was a box of old records. The look on his face, his posture and the lighting all contribute to a scene I think I've been witnessing my whole life as his kid sister... his total enchantment with anything related to music and with old, discarded things.

Our carnival life on the water

“Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement... We never have the sense of home so much as when we feel that we are going there. It's only when we get there that our homelessness begins.” ― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again 

Hurricane Sandy wrecked communities rich and poor in NJ, from the Staten Island-meets-Miami style multi-million dollar homes of Bayhead to the blue collar bayfront bungalows near where I grew up. Its images were unimaginable and unbearable to me: of trashed boardwalks pushed into the sea, of an iconic roller coaster dumped into the ocean, of a road leading into the tide where homes used to be. From a thousand miles away and desperate for news of what was happening at home, it looked as if my childhood had been washed away and that the entire Jersey Shore that I knew and loved was gone.

Eight months later, towards the beginning of last month, I went home to NJ for a couple days expecting to find a ruined way of life there, but also hoping, still, to catch a faint whiff of the competing aromas that signal "home"at the Jersey Shore: the fried dough of zeppoles just before the powdered sugar goes on, the sweet muck of a local salt marsh at low tide, the extra garlic on pizza slices and the salt spray coming off the ocean. All of these live deep in the soul of NJ for me. I found all of it, at once, and witnessed small moments in the sad seaside ritual of rebuilding the storm-damaged communities that I hold dear.

I can't pretend to be untouched by grief at the total destruction of the shore towns that are a backdrop to a thousand stories in my life. But the Jersey Shore is more than a place; it's more than its wood-plank promenades and town squares on stilts. It's more than its carnival lights. It's more than a staging ground for summer. For many, it's an identity and an attitude. I love the shore best on foggy days when you can't even see the boardwalk or the ocean, but can only smell it. I love the dampness and the feeling that you can almost lick the salt out of the air. I love the dampness in the sheets at night when you go to bed. You'd never put up with that anywhere else, but at the shore, it just feels right! When you walk around at night, you smell the boardwalk everywhere. There's always a far-off murmur of traffic. It feels safe. It feels comfortable. It feels like home. All of these things, thankfully, remain.

*Photo of where a house used to be in Union Beach, one of the hardest hit communities in NJ.

*Post title from "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" by Bruce Springsteen

Cat pasttimes

Birdwatching with Belle. 

: )

Crafty kitsch

My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.
 - Mitch Hedberg

I found these adorable knitted cacti recently at a shop on the Atlanta Beltline. Any friends want to volunteer to knit me a couple? I promise not to kill them.

: )