Fellow Watchers, Fellow Mortals

Early last week, on a bluff above the Deep River, I spied a bumblebee. It was busily nectaring at the painted buckeyes growing thick in the understory. All around and above, the riparian forest rose to the sky, centuries old tulip poplars, ash and sweet gums sheltering the shrubs below. 

Completely absorbed in my task of comparing the large-hairy-all-over-with-a-broad-yellow-band-on-its-abdomen bumblebee with the large-shiny-hairless-black-abdomen-and-white-dotted-head of the carpenter bee, my eyes absently wandered up the trunk of the massive tulip tree on which I leaned and met the eyes of another...

What wonders have you seen, wise old watcher in the woods? 

Fellow watcher, what yarns could you spin?

Timeless tales; tales of bees and flowers, tales of rivers and trees, tales of mice and men? 

The immortal Scottish poet once pondered the plight of a mouse and a man...

"I'm truly sorry Man's dominion

Has broken Nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion,

Which makes thee startle,

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

An fellow-mortal!"

-Robert Burns, "To A Mouse" 1875

As  I anticipate your imminent departure, fellow watcher, the poet's lament is mine.

Survive and Advance - A Bird's Got To Eat...

A brisk ocean breeze kept the beachcombers bundled, but the shorebirds seemed oblivious. They were busy finding food. Every day in the wild, survival depends on eating enough and avoiding being eaten, and these birds are survivors, albeit via diverse means.

At first glance, this willet seemed to be escaping reality by burying its head in the proverbial sand.

In reality, it was plucking an unlucky sand-dweller from its home; no longer a survivor is he.

Burrow. Pluck. Eat. Repeat...

Same game, same result, different tactics. This large gull is having great success locating and retrieving bay scallops, but wisely resists swallowing them whole in the manner of a willet downing a mole crab.

The hard-baked asphalt makes a very effective ally in the shell-cracking game. Judging from all the empty shells littering the road, this gull's destined for survival as well.

Not so, the scallop and its unfortunate tunicate hitchhiker, the soon to be dehydrated sea squirt.

Survival's no laughing matter for this laughing gull. One moment lurking quietly nearby, the next laughing hysterically, this hunter methodically stalks the surf fisherman, waiting patiently for numb fingers to fumble the bait.

When the inevitable happens... carpe diem!!!

Roughly translated, "seize the bait."

Another Walk on the Wild Side - Island Creek Trail

Thirty miles or so northwest of the red-cockaded woodpeckers' pine barrens in Carteret County, Croatan National Forest takes on a decidedly different air. The dark, tannin-stained waters of Island Creek wind through cypress trees  bedecked with spanish moss and huge loblolly pines backed up against massive yellow poplars and hickories. Underlying the forest is a shallow layer of coquina limestone, imprinted with the shells of mollusks long dead, ghosts of a thriving seabed some millions of years gone...now exposed in the creek bend by the erosive action of Island Creek over these past thousands of years.

On a mid-winter day, the trees and the water would rule this domain, but today, in early spring, the eye and the soul of the wanderer is captivated by the diminutive flora of the forest floor. Bold white bloodroot blossoms dominate, springing right out of the fossil-filled limestone in places.

Following close the meandering stream, the timelessness of the pine barrens permeates this scene as well, blurring the lines between past and present, overwhelming the senses with the tenacity of nature, of the wilderness...Here and Now, the forest is alive, as it has been for ages. And, before that, the ocean lived here, teeming with lifeforms familiar yet unknown.

The insect and the flower; pollen, nourishing the bee, replicating the flower, the forest lives.

The hunter, stealthily stalking the bee from the shadows of brown, the forest alive.

Another hunter, inching up out of the brown of the forest floor, green as the living leaves above.

The diversity of life is awesome; a writhing mass of leaves; not ferns - lousewort.

Lousewort, too, is a flowering plant, only different...

The forest is alive with color, violet, in this instance.

Swiftly seeking shelter in the shade of the mayapple leaf, this woodland snail oozes along its trail of slime mere inches above the remains of millions of its ocean-dwelling molluscan ancestors.

Nearby, new life emerges, drawing vital nutrients from the decomposed remains of forests (and oceans) past, while the pine tree seeds, with their vast potential, lie dormant for the moment, biding their time until they, too, take their place in the long line of forest giants. 

More bloodroot, two individuals in a colony occupying the entire forest floor.

Virginia pennywort, yet another flowering plant, gloriously inconspicuous.

Round-lobed hepatica, liverwort, stakes its claim to the life of the forest as well, joining with the bloodroot to give our coastal plain wood a decidedly piedmont flavor.

More bloodroot, but twelve petals, not eight; different is beautiful.

The pennywort sidles right up alongside the ubiquitous bloodroot and its oddly-lobed leaf, the forest floor comes alive in springtime, and springtime comes alive in the forest floor.

More hepatica amidst the ancient ferns and their fresh young fiddleheads...

The eyes resist, not easily lured from the visual feast below, but the persistent warbling from the branches conspires with the other senses to draw them upward for a glance at the forest's avian inhabitants.

But only for a moment, now back to the blossoms at the base of the tree, the forest alive.

Nature's Palliative Palette - Scarlet

The northern cardinal is without doubt one of the most familiar North American songbirds. A Google search for cardinal bird yields more than 150,000,000 hits, an indicator of this bird's near-universal appeal and the wealth of readily available information related to it.

Common and familiar though it may be, whenever I encounter images of nature's brilliantly clad birds from around the world, thoughts of the northern cardinal bring me right back home. 

For, though the panoply of fantastic blues and greens and yellows adorning the inhabitants of some exotic locale can be absolutely breath-taking, the scarlet clad crooner perched by the feeder out back  can hold its own with them all in my eyes. 

Poets and philosophers have long attested to nature's palliative powers; soothing the cares of the day, easing life's burdens in some small way. For all their skill with words and eloquent elocutions, the wordsmiths might do well to pause in silent contemplation when confronted by nature colored thus...

Peace, my friend.

Seer of the Swamp and Forest

Seer; sage; surveyor of the deep, dark wood.

Keeper of the ancient forest;

Sharp, keen eyes of the swamp.

The dark of the moon is broad daylight

For the midnight watcher's perfect sight.

What's become of the forest;

What of the deep, dark wood?

Scant clues to the mystery

In the seer's deep, dark eyes.

Barred Owl. San-Lee Park.

Bald Eagle, American Eagle, Carolina Eagle

In 1967, the year of my birth, the fate of the bald eagle, America's national symbol, was still very much in doubt. An endangered species with a surviving population somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 nesting pairs, extinction was a possibility for a bird which had once numbered in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. By 1984, the number of breeding pairs in my native North Carolina had fallen to zero. 

Last Sunday, my son took this picture from the shoulder of the highway near our home in central North Carolina. A "Carolina" eagle, adult, complete with brilliant white head and all!

Intrigued, we returned to the area later for a closer look. Wow, what a thrill. A mature adult and three dark immature birds sharing a perch along the river.

In a chilly but thrilling hour before dusk, we sighted six or seven individuals, two of them mature adults. Before we left, Jay snapped a parting shot of this adult in flight. What a joy for a dad to experience a moment in nature with my sons which was an impossibility for my dad when I was a their age.

May the future hold many more such moments for them and their children...

The View from the Quince - Butcherbird

What better perch for the butcherbird, then a roadside copse of flowering quince? 

An abundance of spiny branches, open space aplenty, and bushes high on the bank, the better to spy careless rodents or smaller birds on a late winter morn.

Death visits swiftly when the sharply hooked bill of this vigilant voyeur finds the spine of its hapless prey.  

The thorny branches of the quince secure the prey, while the talon-less, but otherwise raptor-like, shrike tears the flesh with its bill. 

The crimson geyser of early quince blossoms hints at the grisly truth behind this handsome hunter's striking pose. Success in filling winter's larder portends success in filling springtime's nest; another day in nature's struggle for survival...the view from the quince. 

Today's photos courtesy of Jay Randolph.

Two and Twenty Blackbirds Framed by the Sky

"Last night I heard the wild goose cry, winging northward in the lonely sky..."

These days the birds are on the move. All manner of birds, and they are everywhere. These silhouettes raised quite a ruckus from their perch atop an old sweet gum just before sunset today. Common grackles and red winged blackbirds, judging by their cacophony of calls...

There are just three gnarly old sweet gums left, towering above the willows and cattails in a pool of stagnant water, surrounded on three sides by parking lots and an old field on the other.

Perfect place to pause for the night among kindred spirits; there's a bare branch just there with your name on it, brother.

Huddle close. We're in for a bit of weather by morning...

Bird Watcher - Who's Watching Whom?

Hunter treads softly, camera at the ready. Some small living creature is near; he has heard it. Rustle, scratch...silence. Scurry, swish...silence.  Now, not a peep.

There!         Where?        Just there, beyond the cattails...  I could have sworn that's where it was...

What did it look like? I'm not really sure.      This bird watching's for the birds!

The Moment

From time to time, just for a moment,

life and space and light coincide so vividly as to defy comprehension.

Too brilliant.                 Too real.                 Too true.         Too alive.

The mind struggles for an analog, an anchor, a prior moment of comparable clarity... validation...

Too late...

the moment is gone.