Welcome Back, Spring! Eastern Redbud and Carpenter Bees

As the boys and I wait at La Dolce Vita for Jules to arrive for dinner, hundreds of humming insect wings draw our attention to this visual feast. 

A single eastern redbud tree, perched unassumingly in the shadow of the railroad crossing at Charlotte and Chatham, appears to have attracted every bumblebee in Lee County. 

Literally immersed in the redbud's sweet nectar, the bees pay us no heed. When the warm evening breeze momentarily stirs them from their feasting, they drift dizzily up into the draft before diving down for another syrupy draught.

  

Spring has sprung. The trees and the bees declare it!

The redbuds have burst into bloom, and the leaves are not far behind. 

The carpenter bees have awakened from their winter slumber and will soon spawn the next generation.

Welcome back, Spring. Welcome back.

Reflections at the Fort Macon Jetty...

The Jetty.  

Emblem of man's eternal struggle against the forces of nature. 

Impertinent sea! Incorrigible sand! 

Can't you see we've built a fortress here?! How dare you move it?! 

Come along now, waves, let's see what you do with ten thousand tons of granite!

Amorphous island shaped by the seas for countless centuries welcomes the unyielding granite boulders, rough edges already worn smooth in a few brief decades by the relentless caress of millions of tons of water and salt and sand, by the barnacles, and mussels and oysters and still more sand. 

Tides surge forward, then relent, hour after hour, day after day, as they've moved for millennia by the moon's sleight of hand. 

Wind and rain play no small part, as the ancient mountain stones imperceptibly multiply, pulverized in super slow motion, newly liberated particles collaborating with their predecessors to grind away at the mother stone.

Bird reflects, and bird knows.

Peering from the surface of the sand-lined tidal pool, nestled in the bosom of the boulder, the bird knows the sand, and the tides, and the waves, and the wind and the rain. The bird knows the barnacles, and the mussels, and the oysters, and the boulders, and all that sand. 

With feet, and legs and bill and eyes and eyelids and oil glands and feathers shaped by the sand, and the tides, and the winds, and the rain, and nourished by the barnacles, and the mussels, and the oysters and the other food hidden in the boulders and all that sand, the bird reflects, and the bird knows. 

Time is its teacher. Unhurried, unharried, eternal and unending. 

Man races in for the briefest of moments. He sees and smiles and snaps his photos and leaves. 

The bird preens, and reflects, unhurried and unharried. Time passes, and the bird knows.

Will man ever know?

 Time will tell...

On the Shore...

Here once dwelt a living creature, a bivalve mollusk of not a little complexity, filtering the ocean sands for plankton and other bits of food. Now its dwelling is adrift, an empty shell, cast upon the beach for us to ponder...

This living mollusk, the lettered olive, found itself high and dry as the tide receded. A gastropod, it may burrow beneath the sand and wait for the passage out with the next tide, or it may become a meal for a hungry forager scouring the shoreline for sustenance, or perhaps Hunter will gently restore it to safety in the nearby shallows.

A beachcombers delight, the sand dollar. Or more aptly, here on the mid-Atlantic coast, a keyhole urchin. Again, we see but the empty shell of a once vibrant life, lived in its entirety a few dozen feet from these shores, but in another universe entirely. Oh, to drift freely for a while in those near-shore depths, the much greater to appreciate the mystery of these remnants tossed so carelessly about in the foam!

Instead, we gaze from the margin, hesitating on the brink, relying on our imagination to fill in the blanks, gleaning the occasional "Howdy, neighbor!" from the detritus on the sand, and gazing out at the sun-dappled surface where the mystery abides...

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.

More Wild Moments - Croatan Cottonmouth

Meandering beneath the canopy of the majestic longleaf pines, we spied a glimmer of sunlight reflecting on  the surface of water.  A small pond awaited, surrounded on all sides by the pine forest, sporting a few dozen waterlilies, and surrounded by the remnants of last years reeds. We moved closer, careful of getting our feet wet, hoping for a glimpse of some spring wildflowers or perhaps a deer slipping down for a late afternoon sip. Moving a bit too quickly, with our eyes on the pond margins, we almost literally stumbled across this curled up critter chilling in the reeds!

Agkistrodon piscivorous, the cottonmouth, one of North Carolina's five venomous snakes from the family Viperidae.

Shaken by the suddenness of the encounter, for the merest moment, we thought we were in the presence of one of its cousins, but the absence of a rattle quickly put that notion to rest. Large girth, roughly triangular head, vertical pupil and its distinctive markings, including a dark band through the eye, all helped with the positive identification of this impressive animal as a venomous water moccasin, and not one of its non-venomous water snake lookalikes.

 We observed quietly from a safe distance until this laid back lounger became bored with us and decided to move on in the direction of the pond.

With darkness on its way, we took this as our cue to be moving on as well; just in case the warm afternoon sun had lured forth any other baskers that might still be moving about in the twilight. After all, there is such as thing as too much of a good thing, even with Hoot Owl Karma... 

Red-Cockaded Woodpecker...A Rare Encounter

Fresh from our exciting encounter with the red-headed woodpeckers, Hoot Owl Karma headed into the wild for a late afternoon hike in the Croatan National Forest. Croatan offers a glimpse into North Carolina's wilderness past with its relatively large stands of mature longleaf pines. This unique ecosystem is home to the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker which builds its nests exclusively in living longleaf pine trees.

 This stand of pines had recently experienced a wildfire, giving us a firsthand look at the role fire plays in maintaining the health of the longleaf pine ecosystem. Periodic fires keep the understory open and eliminate competition from less fire-resistant trees which might otherwise out-compete the young pines.

Within moments of entering the forest, we spy evidence of the rare woodpecker. A nest cavity, excavated from a large living longleaf, oozing copious amounts of sticky sap. 

The fresh flowing sap helps protect the nest from predators such as the black rat snake which might raid the nest for its eggs or nestlings.

We spot several other nest cavities, but see no sign of their makers until the sun has nearly dropped behind the tree-line. Suddenly Julie and Hunter call to us in hushed tones. They've spotted a bird pecking at the bark high up on the sunny side of a young longleaf. Could it be...?

Yes, without a doubt, our first encounter with the rare red-cockaded woodpecker! This one sports a blue band on its leg, evidence perhaps of monitoring efforts to help ensure the health of this population. And, it is not alone. 

We spot another, and then another,

then two individuals together on opposite sides of the same trunk, moving upwards in tandem. It appears that we are in the midst of a family group of some six or eight birds, foraging together in the waning daylight. 

For a brief, brief moment, time ceases. 

This place, and those that share it, the birds and the humans, transcend their temporal bonds and experience life like the birds and humans who shared this very forest for thousands of years before our arrival here. 

A precious moment...