Click banner to go to my host bio and listen to show at showtimes, Fridays at 11 AM EST, or to download archives anytime. This week is Pt. 2 Flashes of Hope.
Hello Eagle Friends,
As I type this the snow, as predicted, is falling fast and furiously. It was a an exceptional day in the valley. The weather was
partly cloudy when I arrived and the air temperature was 11 degrees, and about minus 2 degrees with wind chill.
I found Daedee right away this morning. Catching a shot of her was another story. She was hunting something on the river bend about a mile south of her nest. The trees were covered in hoar frost and I wanted that pictures of her flying through the white laced trees. Instead, I watched her swoop down twice and then I lost her in the tall riverbank trees that survived both floods last year.
As I sat down in the underbrush I looked for winter bugs around me. I'm getting ready to make a revised and expanded edition
of my Winter Bugs book. I'm going to spend the last twenty some days of winter 2008, adding insects, and water life to my
collection, but I'm undecided whether I'll add these to the new edition of my book.
While laying on the ground I was on a steep slope and I had a hard time digging my foot into the snow while trying not to slide down the hill. I had cardinals and chickadee's perching above me and I could hear a blue jay. I heard some wild turkey, too, but I was confident they would stay in the spruce grove. That's where they like to roost and they spend a lot of time there during the day.
I photographed various ice crystals, lichens, moss, and that's when I found a bark beetle, but he wasn't moving, so I don't know if he was dead or in a pupae state. I don't know very much about those insects. As I photographed him, a red-eyed fly walked into view and stood right on top of the bark beetle. I wish I could give you a scientific name, but I just don't have the want or heart to bottle these critters up to kill and dissect for positive identification. I'll just call him a red-eyed fly of some sort--and by doing so, he get to live.
As I was photographing those critters, one of my favorite green iridescent beetles walked over. They look like dahl sheep of the bug world, with their big knob on their head, and I wondered how it balanced that knob without falling forward from the weight of that big head.
When even after four years, I can't even balance my top-heavy, Dana wireless word processor on my lap as I type, without it falling off my lap and crashing into the ground. I was amazed at how well that critter balanced his load.
I finally came out of the underbrush, and a tree branch snapped back stabbing my right eye and causing an immediate reaction of tears flooding from the injury. I walked across the ice-coated snow, crunching into the snow every few steps and only lost my boot once to the ground. It's supposed to be cloudy the next four days with rain-showers. Rain--a sure sign of spring.
I hiked to the wolf snow sculpture and looked for Dancer, but he was no where around. No worries. Nesting fever is just beginning.
When I arrived at Judy and The Mayor's nest I was glad to see The Mayor sitting, and from what I observed, I'm quite sure now, he was incubating an egg. I stayed there for awhile and every so often he would let out his loon-like cry. That's how I knew it was him. That and his darker feathers around his eyes.
As I photographed him I watched him disappear into the nest for several minutes at a time. I convinced myself that either he
or Judy had been on the nest the past two days -- I was just not seeing them. We call that going to the basement. Daedee and Dancer have done that for years. They are there, then you don't see them. We are convinced they have a basement in those nests. (I'm joking)
I would be tempted to use a camera on a pole but that just isn't true documentary to me, that would be like lifting up rocks looking for bugs for my winter bug book. I would love to put a mirror up on pole like I've seen scientists do, but that would not hold my trueness to the project either. That would cross my line of what is seen naturally, from the sidelines, and what is contrived by man's invention.
I would rather capture a picture so still, so perfectly sharp that I could see the egg or eggs mirrored in the highlights of the eagles eyes. That would be true, that would be real. Meanwhile, I'll just watch the eagles and document how often they get up and down off their nest, how long they stay, when they switch incubation shifts, and so on.
I counted today in as Day 5, that means 25-31 more days before I hear the cry of an eaglet on nest 2.
I moved up to the trumpeter swans pond.
Sadly, the swans have left us. This time I think for good as they weren't back by the time I made my second pass.
I'm so thankful for their beauty and the shows they gave me unselfishly. I learned a lot about trumpeter swans during these past 50 days (they were here 58 days total). I learned they don't fly from their fears, or the beating wings of the geese and ducks around them. I learned the other ducks and geese used them as guides to their food. I learned they guarded all the ducks and geese who followed them. I think it's only fair to add that there were a few days that they guarded my heart too.
They were a "timed gift" from the Creator himself, and I was just the one recording their activities during their stay. I have to admit it was hard adding "Checked out Early--left key in room" to my daily journal.
The nest 6 female was up on the nest fitting it for size. Laying down, getting up, laying back down, getting up, walking around adding bedding, laying down, getting up. Another seemingly young pair of eagles, anxious to get their family going, if they ever get their house finished.
There was an eaglet calling out from the top of the bluff. I didn't see it, but there is no mistaking an eaglets cry. I figured maybe the male eagle was up with the eaglet. It wouldn't surprise me to see them still together another month. That has already been documented with Daedee and Dancer.
As I left that area I saw something up ahead and I was smiling at him like I had found an old friend. There he was, the black opossum, walking down a two foot snowbank right into the road. So I pulled up. "What are you doing? You're going to get hit running around a highway at noon." Now I know he doesn't understand human-speak, but he understands tones and pitches.
He looked up at me with those beady, brown eyes and froze. He turned around and went right back into his den of dens. You wouldn't believe the tunnel system this guy has. Surely, this can't be the work of one opossum. He had connecting rooms, tunnels, hides, and a scat area room. There was a favorite fruit source tree near the scat room, a huge pile of frozen grapes, at least a thousand of them, were laying in heaps all over in the snow creating a huge purple circle. A purple drawing "Harold" himself couldn't have colored with his purple crayon.
He had several paths to the river, and a couple more hides up the way. I have never seen opossum as frequently as I have this past month. So far, I'm the only one who has ever seen a black opossum down there.
As I drove on I found a pair of eagles circling in the air, but I'm not sure where this pair is coming from. I've seen them three times this week. They could only be nest 4 eagles, as all others were accounted for, unless, there is a 7th nest. This pair always leaves behind a bluff over a marsh, and I don't know where that area leads. Once the snow melts I'm going to follow it, and I'll bet I'll find a 7th nest.
Nest five had an eagle in the nest, but it was just fitting it to its preferred shape. As I filmed it got out and moved sticks around and went back in.
On my way to nest 3 and 4 I stopped at a water-filled ditch. I decided I was going to shoot those ditch fish today. Armed with my video camera and macro lens I headed over to the ditch.
However, those ditch fish are smarter than your average fish. They saw me coming because that darn sun had to come out just then, and cast my frumpy old figure into a long lean shadow (oh those were the days), and projected my shadow right into that ditch. Well, that started an instant ripple in the water as little "sunnies" darted back and forth to grasses; green on both sides.
I aimed my video camera right on them, but all the camera would do was focus on the shadows, the tree shadows and mine which grew fatter the closer I got to the water. I didn't get a single moment of video, nor one single photo. I swore I was the slowest, worst photographer in the world.
After four passes, I gave up on ditch fish. Instead, I thought I'd look for aquatic bugs. So I laid down in the ditch, best I could with out getting 100% soaked. You have to be within an inch to two inches of your subject when shooting at that magnification; which is about the equivalency of, I don't know, I guess it's like taking a bug the size of a pencil dot and making it come out the size of tea cup poodle.
I had the cable guy out last night to work on some network issues. As he was leaving he saw my snake photo and fell in love with it. "That's a great snake picture."
"Oh, yeah, that snake." I replied. "I called that one Satan." The guy looked at me and I continued, "Well, he kept following me all over a marsh seeking me out with his forked tongue and foggy blue eyes--he couldn't see very well because he was getting ready to shed."
The guy looked at me funny. Not sure whether I was joking or not.
"People either really like that shot or they hate it." I shrugged, "You must be a snake person."
He looked over and saw a 16x20 giclee' of my jumping spider. "That spider. . . that freaks me out. I don't like spiders." he added in his Ukrainian accent, but his eyes remained fixed on it. "How big was that spider in real life?"
"About the size of dime."
"How did you make him so big?"
I laughed, and pulled out my Winter Bugs book."He's not alone--you gotta look through this book."
He was fascinated by the book and the insects in it.
As I lifted my wet face out of the ditch water, complete with duck weed on it, I remembered my other words to the cable guy while I was explaining my aquatic bugs in the book, "I fell through the ice a lot doing those aquatic water bugs."
"You did?"
"Well, of course, I had to find thin ice to start with to photograph through it--I couldn't break the ice as that would be changing the documentary. Sometimes I laid where an animal stepped through."
It all came back: The putrid taste of scummy water mixed with pond slime was something I thought I'd never taste or experience again, but there I was doing it all again--all for the chance of capturing something worth noting. Something that said, "bug was here."
If it wasn't for my microscopic eyes I wouldn't have noticed the little snails inching along the silt-covered bottom. I wouldn't have laid down, and I wouldn't have noticed the heaps of gray snow fleas drowning in the water, floating by with six legs outstretched. Well, you know that I could not possibly save them all.
I guess it was inevitable, completely expectable, that as I laid there face down in the ditch that a vehicle would and could at some point pass me. I just hoped I would be finished and out of there before it happened. I'm sure he wondered what that crazy lady was doing laying face down on a camera in the ditch water.
Oh well, it'll give them something to talk about in town. I'm sure they are running out of stories by now. I couldn't leave now, I'd just discovered some flatworms. Several planaria moving about as the leaves they were on rippled sideways in the small current flowing past me, and overturned.
For a moment, there I was back in high school, we were half way through our advanced biology class. Me and my lab partner Dave taking turns looking through a microscope. He always called me Dave, and I always called him Lisa, except this time it was the real Lisa who was given the ardent task of slicing a planaria right between the eye receptors on its head. I thought it was cruel to the animal, experiment or not, and I didn't want to do it. However, I did it and I could almost feel that blade cutting into me at the same time. The experiment worked. Within a short time period our flatworm regenerated a second head. and Dave and me both got an A.
I really thought on first glance they were blood suckers or some kind of ditch leeches. Creatures who were ready and able to stretch up and slip into my mouth while I breathed sideways out of my lips into the water so I didn't fog up my camera eye piece. I'm telling you this is no task to take lightly. You're either in it for the haul, or you shouldn't be chasing ditch fish or what follows, to begin with. You never know what you'll find while looking for ditch fish, and today was no exception. It made me think of someone else too.
Those cousins of mine. Why if I would have had cell coverage I would have called them right from the ditch. "Hello, this is your cousin Lisa, the your favorite Yankee . . . . " I would have called my own north vs south war and paid them back for that snipe hunting experience I took in Oklahoma. I'm going to plan a date, get them up here, and take them ditch fishin' by the light of the full moon.
I was soaked through to my skin, and the current of water was running right through my pant legs. I took a couple more sots and that's when I looked at my camera counter. I was down to 82 shots, and I still had nest 3 and 4 to cover, and my entire path back. So I gave up the ditch, and stood up wiping the silt from my mouth and lips, and began squeezing the water out of the ends of my hair.
At Nest 3 one eagle was perched in the nest tree looking into the nest. Nest 4 was empty.
There was no belted kingfisher, no rabbit, no flock of robins, no red-tailed or red-shouldered hawks on my path today, but I heard a red squirrel chattering, and it made me think of that little one yesterday who stood so bravely under the hawks view chattering away to protest the hawks appearance, and probably save his neighbors.
When I reached the trumpeter swan pond again I found a pair of common mergansers had moved into the swans hollow, along with a half dozen black ducks. I looked everywhere again, just in case the swans were there and I was missing them.
I purposely saved about twenty minutes for a second stay at nest 2. I arrived and spent fifteen minutes with Judy and The Mayor. The Mayor was still on the nest and Judy was flying above the bluffs just beyond their nest and as she flew overhead The Mayor would tilt his head up and look at her, and she would look down.
As I left the valley there was a big eagle sitting roadside. I pulled over and shot a half dozen pictures of him and thanked him for the escort out.
I picked Em up and we went down to the bookstore and bought up a handful of kids books to enjoy, and a couple for me, too.
I'm looking forward to Day 52.
See you on the journey--
Lisa
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