PHEASANT ALERT

When you live in the country you're liable to see just about any wild critter on your property. We've had deer, possums, rabbits, field mice, hawks and a grebe. That's in addition to somewhere between twenty and thirty species of birds.

But one thing you seldom see in the Ohio countryside anymore is a pheasant. Northern Ohio used to have great pheasant hunting with a large wild population of birds. That all changed when the farmers tore out hedgerows and plowed up every acre of land they could possibly plant. When Earl Butz told them to plant fencerow to fencerow, that's just what they did.

That pretty much signed the death warrant for a wild pheasant population. You still see the occasional bird, but most of them are pen-raised birds the state has put out for hunters or escapees from a pheasant farm.

Today my son yelled out he saw a pheasant in the weeds between our property and the next one to the west. I looked and looked and saw nothing. Then I spotted a cock bird scooting out of the weed patch into the bamboo, where he disappeared.

We never saw him again, so I'm guessing he moved on, but you never know. There are plenty of good places for him to hide between the bamboo and the ditch. Big pine trees and a lot of weed that I stopped mowing last year. Be kinda cool if he came into the bird feeders. Probably never happen, but you never know.

Hope he was a wild bird and not an escapee. In either case, it was good to see a pheasant somewhere other than in the bead of my shotgun.

TECHBOY? NOT SO MUCH, REALLY

I admit to being a bit of a gadget geek. I like technology and I like the latest and greatest gear. Hell, I had a computer in 1982. What a piece of crap that thing was: Timex Sinclair 1000 with a whopping 4K of memory. Of course I had the optional memory expander that took it to a screaming 16K.

No monitor, of course, you hooked it up to a TV and it output a B&W picture. No hard drive, either. You'd write these little Basic programs and accidentally jiggle the power cord and lose all your work. You could save your programs onto a cassette tape using your portable cassette player. Then you had to load them into the computer whenever you wanted to use them. It had a chiclet keyboard that was a nightmare to use. All in all it was a lame excuse for a computer.

I think my second computer was an Amiga 500, which for its time was an amazing little piece of technology. It was the first personal computer capable of pre-emptive multi-tasking. In the beginning it also lacked a hard drive, but it did have a great display. It was a pioneering computer in terms of graphics. It had a set of graphics chips that handled all the display stuff and left the CPU to do the number crunching it was designed to do.

I've had all the gizmos and gadgets over the years. But there were some things I skipped or ignored. I never had one of those early cell phones that were the size and weight of a brick. First cell I had was a little Motorola, I think. I've had so many since about 1995 it's hard to remember.

It's funny, though, how I can't seem to get used to using some aspects of technology. Every day when I get dressed, two things are part of my ensemble: a shoulder holster holding my Glock 31 and my iPhone. That iPhone is always in my pocket from the beginning of the day until the end. But I can't tell you how many times I have not thought to pull it out of my pocket and use the camera to capture something cool I've seen.

Granted, the camera on the iPhone sucks. It doesn't have the resolution of a lot of cell cameras and it won't zoom (until tonight when I bought Camera Genius from the AppStore). Doesn't have a flash, either, but that's sort of incidental. Hi-res and zoom are much more important.

Last week on two occasions I saw a barred owl that was close enough to capture on video. Did I whip out my phone and snap it? Nope, sure didn't. Frankly, I didn't even think about trying.

So what does that say about my tech prowess? I'm not sure. Having the technology but not using it could be a sign of a crypto-Luddite outlook. Well, maybe not. Could just mean my brain hasn't been trained to think that way yet. The kids take pictures of everything--including themselves with little or nothing on--and send them to everybody. I just don't think of my phone as a camera. Mostly I just use it as a phone, even though I have about 30 apps on it, most of which I've never used.

Maybe I'm just a tech-savvy Luddite.

NATURE AND CHANGE

Great column in today's Wall Street Journal by a retired biology prof about how the entire global warming construct is fundamentally flawed because it assumes nature is in a steady state, almost static, when in fact it is constantly changing in ways we cannot foresee.


He tells the story of canoeing around Isle Royale one evening and watching a bull moose display what could only be called puzzling, bizarre behavior. It took him years to realize the moose was an apt metaphor for the true character of nature:

Most of the major forecasting tools used in global-warming research, including the global climate models (known as general circulation models of the atmosphere) and those used to forecast possible ecological effects of global warming, paint a picture of nature more like a Hudson River School still-life than like the moose that kicked at the shore. These forecasting methods assume that nature undisturbed by people is in a steady state, that there is a balance of nature, and that warnings the climate is at a tipping point mean that the system is about to lose its balance.

In fact, however, nature has never been constant. It is always changing, and life on Earth has evolved and adapted to those changes. Indeed many species, if not most, require change to persist. So there is something fundamentally wrong in most approaches to forecasting what might happen if the climate warms. The paradigm is wrong and has to change. But such fundamental change in human ideas never comes easily, and it is often resisted by those whose careers have been based on the old way of thinking. In addition, the general circulation models are such complex computer programs, and have been developed over so many years, that a fundamental change in the entire way of thinking about climate dynamics and its ecological implications is all the more difficult.


Anyone who has spent much time in the woods and fields would know he's right. The only thing constant about nature is change. Yes, there are patterns you can discern, but just when you think you have it all figured out, nature throws you a curve you never saw coming.

Here's one I saw myself and actually managed to capture:

Yes, that is in fact a groundhog in a tree. Groundhogs aren't supposed to climb trees, but don't tell them that. This one climbed a tree because my dog chased it and it couldn't make it back to one of its holes. It probably wasn't in any danger from my Lab--she's more into eating baby rabbits and mice than tackling something this large--but the groundhog didn't know that. So even though he's supposed to be a completely terrestrial creature, this groundhog got airborne because he had to.

I've never read about tree-climbing groundhogs before, but people who hunt or otherwise spend a lot of time in the woods will tell you it's not a freak accident. Animals--like nature in general--adapt to changing circumstances. Isn't that what evolution is all about? Adaptation?

But you don't really need groundhogs in trees to know there's much about nature that's beyond our ken. Just study the tiny hummingbird if you want to be humbled.

MORE BACKYARD BIRD NEWS

The Juncos are back. Saw a couple of them hopping around in the Rose of Sharon bushes this afternoon. Also saw a Tufted Titmouse. Eats just like the nuthatches and Chickadees: grabs a sunflower seed and whacks it against a tree branch to help open it.



There was also a flock of Starlings here this morning, but not the huge hoard you usually get. They were hanging off the suet feeders and hogging the food, as they always do. I let 'em go for a while, then pounded on the glass to scare 'em away. I don't begrudge anyone a meal, but there are limits when it comes to Starlings.


The Cooper's Hawk was hanging around late in the afternoon yesterday. He was in the maple tree where I have my trail cam hanging. Ran to get the camera hoping I could haul him in with the 300mm tele, but when I raised the camera he took off like a shot. I'm surprised, because he seems to have become somewhat tame--as tame as any wild hawk can be. I've caught him sitting on the deck railing any number of times.


It would be very cool to have a color video cam trained on the feeders to capture all the comings and goings during the day. There may be all sorts of interesting bird I never get to see because they come when I'm not here or not looking. Something like a security camera attached to a hard drive or an old VCR. Would be a pricey proposition, though.


It's supposed to warm up tomorrow, so I may get out the hedge trimmers and lop off about three feet of the Rose of Sharon bushes. Even without leaves they hinder my view of the feeders. Should have done it in October when it was still warm, but the bushes held their leaves well into November and even re-flowered. Weird. Must be the work of the Goracle.


Here are some trail cam pix from the end of October I forgot to post. Finally captured something other than a fat black Lab hunting rabbits and mice.

WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCHES

Last few days there have been some White-breasted Nuthatches on the feeders. They seem to come and go--sometimes I won't see them for days or weeks.

I like having them around because they're fun to watch. Nuthatches seldom sit still, flitting from one place to another they're a perpetual motion machine. They're on the feeder one second, grabbing a seed--often upside down. Then they flit to the maple tree to eat the seed they've just liberated. But they don't often go right back to the feeder. Usually they'll run around on the tree first, often upside down there, too.

Chickadees are still my favorites, both for their antics and for their tameness. When I fill feeders they won't fly away like other birds. They'll perch on a branch four or five feet above my head and chatter at me to hurry up and put the new food in so they can get busy on it. I'm sure I could train them to eat out of my hand, but I don't much feel like standing stock-still in the cold waiting for them to get used to me.

It would be kinda cool to train them, though. It freaks people out when they see Chickadees eating from someone's hand. Feels really weird, too, when they hop around on your palm and dig in with their tiny claws. If you didn't feel that you'd never know they were there because they're so light you cannot feel any weight in your hand. They literally are just a tiny bundle of fluff.

EDWIN WAY TEALE

If I mentioned the name Henry David Thoreau, you'd probably know who he was, or at least you'd think of Walden almost immediately. If I said John Muir, you'd probably come up with Yosemite and the Sierra Club. You might even know Aldo Leopold and A Sand County Almanac. But I'd almost be willing to bet the ranch you've never heard of Edwin Way Teale. And that's a shame.


Teale was a naturalist, photographer and writer--Pulitzer prize winner--who published more than thirty books, starting in 1930 and ending with his death in 1980. The topics of his books were very catholic, although they were all about the natural world in one way or another.

His most famous books were a quartet on the seasons of North America: North with the Spring (1951), Journey Into Summer (1960), Autumn Across America (1956), and Wandering Through Winter (1965), which won the Pulitzer for general non-fiction in 1966.

I bought all four earlier this year--used, to be sure, because none is still in print, more's the pity. I've read the Spring volume and I'm now working on Summer. They're not quick reads because the writing is dense and often a bit turgid, although marvelously descriptive.

Teale and his wife hopped in their car and followed the seasons across the continent, zigging and zagging, logging tens of thousand of miles--and God knows how many notebooks--in the process. It's fortunate Teale started when he did--1947--because there were no interstate highways and very little development outside the major urban centers. Mostly he stuck to those roads Bill Least Heat Moon calls Blue Highways, roads off the beaten path that sometimes lead to nowhere in particular, which is why some of us like to take them.

These are books filled with the wonders of the natural world and the wonder of a human being who is thrilled to be seeing it all. No environmentalist polemics here, just a naturalist's appreciation of the teeming life around him and the occasional gentle poke at the folks who don't appreciate the wonder of it all.

If you have any interest in the natural world I'd commend them to you. Buy all four and watch all four seasons of the year unfold across the country and the page. If you're a wacko greenie you'll probably find them entirely too sublime. But if you're a conservationist, as I am, you'll find them to be just about perfect.

(Try alibris.com. You'll find them there for well under $10 each.)

NO MORE COFFEE SNOBBERY

If I had told you ten years ago that Americans would one day pay $4-5 for a cup of coffee you would have called me crazy. A shot of single-malt Scotch, maybe, but not a cup of coffee.

Well, the guy who started Starbucks obviously thought there was a market for snob coffee and he made millions serving it. Everybody just had to have their mocha choca soy non-fat lattes with sprinkles.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I've been grinding beans for my coffee for maybe 20 years. I've tried all the fancy coffees from all over the world, but frankly, I keep coming back to Columbian beans--decaf for the last 15 years or so.

And yes, I do have an Italian automatic espresso maker. It can do latte or cappuccino, but mostly the wand just collects dust. I use it to make regular coffee every morning. I guess technically it's espresso, but I make big cups of it, not those tiny little things you drink in Italian restaurants.

Us coffee snobs would never think to drink something like Maxwell House. And instant? Forget it. Only old people and rural rubes would drink instant.

But you know something, I'm drinking it from time to time these days. I bought an electric kettle--as the Brits call them--that can heat water in about two minutes and I pour it over a couple big spoons of freeze-dried instant. And you know what? It tastes okay.

I think the dirty little secret is, coffee is pretty much coffee. Yeah, you can taste the difference between Columbian and Sumatra Mandheling, but it's still coffee and it still tastes pretty much the same if you dump a bunch of liquid coffee creamer in it.

This holds true of many things in life. A Timex generally keeps time just as well as a Rolex. But the former has no cache to it while the latter screams "I have more money than I know what to do with."

Of course it doesn't hold true of all consumer goods. No one can make the case that a Chevy Aveo drives as well as a BMW. And even a novice can tell the difference between a cheap blended Scotch and an aged single-malt.

But mostly it's all about snobbery, trying to make yourself feel superior to your friends and neighbors. Not keeping up with the Joneses, but leaving the Joneses in your dust. And it's just downright silly.

The message seems to be sinking in with a lot of people--even before this nasty recession started. Starbucks is closing stores, not opening new ones, and their financials ain't good.

So do yourself a favor and just say no to coffee snobbery. It'll make you a better person and put more money in your pocket.

STALACTITES AND COFFEE CLUBS

The sun is out and it's 24º, but it somehow feels colder than yesterday. Wind seems to have more bite.

You know it's cold when the dog has stalactites of frozen slobber hanging from her mouth. Doesn't bother her in the least, but it's a good indicator of windchill.

Lousy day today in the woods. Too windy, too noisy. Had a couple of good squirrel chases, but that was about it for fauna today.

One thing did happen while we were gone. The trash guys dropped off an olive drab cart that we're supposed to use now for recyclables. Yes, Virginia, Camden Township is entering the modern age: we now have curbside recycling.

It'll be convenient, but in some ways it really sucks, because it's going to mean the end of our twice-monthly sessions at the township recycling center.

It's not exactly a recycling center per se. It used to be part of the old township school that was rehabbed into an all-purpose building mostly used for 4-H events, birthday parties and wedding showers. But they also used a recycling grant to buy an old straight truck that they back up to a freight door they installed. Inside the truck are big plastic bins where you drop off your glass, cans and plastic (#1 & #2 only, mind you). When the bins get full, Jim, the township road man, drives over to the landfill/recycling center and they empty everything out so we can fill it up again. It's a real low-rent, low-tech operation that suits us just fine.

Every second and fourth Saturday we go there to drop off our recyclables, and some of us old guys sit around telling lies, drinking coffee and, yes, I'll admit it, occasionally ripping off a good fart when there aren't any women around. It's the only place we have to gather around here.

We used to meet every day at Kipton city hall, but the new mayor and his council acolytes decided they didn't like that, so they kicked us out. Excuse was something about cost of heat and lights, but everybody knows that was a lie, because we didn't turn the heat up and we only turned on a couple of fluorescents and sometimes we sat in the semi-dark. No, they kicked us out because they didn't like the idea of us sitting in their village hall making fun of them. We definitely were guilty of that crime, but mostly we solved all the world's problems every day. We even paid for our own coffee. But they gave us the boot after Al, who was the town clerk, gave up his office.

Al started the coffee club, you see. He'd get there before 9 every morning and put on a pot of coffee and when it was ready, he'd tape a sign in the window that read "Coffee's On." The village hall used to be a little bank and it still has a drive-up window on one side and that's where he'd tape his sign.

They say all good things must end and to our chagrin, that good thing ended in '07. So since then the only opportunity we've had for socializing was the twice-monthly recycling Saturdays. Now even that is giving way to progress. I missed the recycling day after Thanksgiving because we were out of town, so I don't know when the new regime starts. I'm guessing it will be in January. Tomorrow is supposed to be a recycle Saturday so I suppose I'll get the poop then.

The only guy who will be happy with the new arrangement will be Jim. He really hates driving that old piece of shit truck, even though it's only like nine miles each way. Now I guess he won't be bothered with that chore anymore.

IT'S NOT THAT I HATE COLD WEATHER...

...I just don't like it very much.

Actually, as long as it doesn't snow and make the roads a mess I don't mind winter too much. I like it when the leaves are off the trees and you can really see things in the woods. Birds are tough to spot in the summer because when they're in trees they're almost always hidden much of the time.

Sounds seem to carry better in winter, too. If the wind is calm you can hear animals a long way off. The other day I heard a Pileated woodpecker from at least and eighth of a mile, maybe more. Thwack, thwack, thwack as he slowly wacked away at a tree trunk. Today I saw two Pileateds flying and moving around in the trees. No leave, no problem.

When it gets too cold, though, you have to cover up all your exposed skin and then you feel like a mummy. Today was one of those days: 15º with a windchill of -2º. I took a facemask hat along, but decided not to use it because the woods would shield us from the wind, at least partially. So I pulled on a knit hat over my ball cap to cover my ears.

But I don't feel comfortable with my ears covered because it really impedes hearing and you often pick up animals with your ears rather than your eyes. And if you pull the hat down far enough it cuts your vision as well. How often have you picked up movement in your peripheral vision? Lots of times, I'd guess. I know I have.

So for whatever reason we didn't see too much wildlife today. Not a squirrel, nor a deer. Lots of woodpeckers moving around again, though. In addition to the Pileated woodpeckers we saw Downy woodpeckers and a Red-bellied. Chickadees and Nuthatches, too.

Dogs seem to pick up more scents in the winter. Maybe because there's no background smell from flowers and plants. Don't know why or how, just seems to be.

DOES FATHER KNOW BEST?

I recently bought the first season of Father Knows Best. I remember that show like it was yesterday. Funny thing is, the show started its run in 1954, when I was one year old. I'm pretty sure we didn't have a TV in 1954, and if we did, I'm pretty sure I wasn't watching it. Even if by some miracle I was watching it, what are the odds I'd remember 55 years later something I'd seen when I was one?

Now, the show ran through the '59-60 season, so I must be remembering the later episodes. By then Betty was pretty grown up and kinda hot--at least to a seven year old--and Bud was even dopier than he was in 1954. Must be the shows I saw when I was five or six or seven that I'm remembering.

It's funny to watch those first season episodes because Robert Young looks way too old to be the dad of that family. He looks nearly as old as Marcus Welby, MD, who was old. Jane Wyatt doesn't look like a spring chicken, either.

These '50s TV shows are a great retro microscope on American culture back then. Dad wore his suit at the dinner table, mom wore a cocktail dress under her apron and the kids wiped their mouths with cloth napkins before asking to be excused from the table. Mom and dad slept in separate twin beds that were covered with those nubby bedspreads. Mom stayed home and cleaned the house and cooked while dad went off to an office we never got to see. Oh, and mom wore FMPs when she did the vacuuming.

We do know what Jim Anderson did for a living, though: he sold insurance. I like that little touch. I'm still wondering what Ward Cleaver did. We got to see him at the office a few times, but it was never clear exactly what he did. Sales, maybe. But what he might have sold remains a mystery. I guess if it didn't matter to Wally and the Beve it shouldn't matter to us, either. It's just one of those little things that have always bothered me.

BTW, Leave it to Beaver ran from 1957 through the 1963 TV season. TV seasons used to start in October and run through June. Shows used to have 39 episodes each season. Talk about change....

WILDLIFE AND A WILD DOG

I haven't taken the dog to the Vermilion River Metropark since it was hot out. We used to go most days during the summer so she could swim in the river. Labs love water and this one is crazy about it. Black Labs don't much care for summer sunshine--they heat up real quickly.

But I got bored with taking her to the bike trail in Kipton, so yesterday and today we went to the park and walked the Bacon Woods Trail, which winds through the woods for about a mile.

Yesterday we saw a Barred Owl, tons of fox squirrels, two deer and a mess of small woodpeckers. I think it's the first time I've seen a Barred Owl. Wow, it's a big bird. I thought they were just little things, but it's nearly as big as a Great Horned.

It's kinda spooky when they sit there looking at you with that owl face. When I first saw him he was only about 20 feet away in a small tree. He stayed there maybe 30 seconds before flying deeper into the woods and perching higher up in a big tree. Very cool.

There are some very hefty fox squirrels in the park. One of those suckers would almost feed a small family. I don't think I've ever seen fox squirrels that big and fat. The dog sure loves to chase them, but she hasn't quite figured out where they go, although today she did tree one and jump up against the tree and watch it run up the trunk. Then she started yelping a high-pitched yelp I've never heard before. It was pretty funny.

She never did see the two deer yesterday. When I saw them they were already on the move and I didn't see much more than white flags bouncing through the woods. I told her to go, and she did, but she never saw them. She ran around a bit smelling something, but they were long gone.

No owls or deer today, but we did see two Pileated Woodpeckers. They are impressive birds, especially when they attack a tree. You can find them pretty easily when you hear that loud, slow thwack, thwack. The sound carries quite a distance on a clam day. They're also large birds that are easy to spot. The big crest on the back of their heads makes you think of a pterodactyl.

On the way home a Great Blue Heron flew over the truck just as we got to the north end of Kipton.

All in all a pretty good two days. Colder than a bitch, but nice days for walking in the winter woods. I had a good time spotting wildlife and the dog had a good time chasing it.

RESTORING A LITTLE DISCIPLINE

Sherwood Anderson once said the hardest part of writing is putting the seat of the pants in the seat of the chair. Boy, did he get that right.

Once upon a time I wrote a lot of copy every day. Sure, it was only TV news copy, but at least I was writing. Even after I left TV news I still wrote freelance magazine and newspaper pieces for a time.

But for at least the last ten years I have been a complete slug. I have written next to nothing of any length or worth. Hell, I haven't even written anything for this stupid blog since May.

It's time to shake off the sloth and get busy again. I'm going to force myself to blog something daily--or as close to that as seems worthwhile.

It's time to stop being a fat, lazy slob. Writing won't make me lose weight, but it can help me to be less lazy.