Some Flies I Tied

I thought that maybe I'd share a few examples of my latest endeavors at tying flies, a particular few that I'm fond of for one reason or another.  I have to say that if I ever found that I couldn't fish I would miss having a reason to tie these things, and perhaps I'd go ahead and do it anyways once in a while.

This is a Green Damsel, an impressionistic imitation of a damselfly nymph.  This would be a good general searching fly for lakes and ponds.

This is a Stimulator, a big bushy imitation of a stonefly, though it would do for a grasshopper in a pinch.  A good fly for getting a big splash from a big trout.

The ever-popular Pheasant-tail Nymph, a good match for many small mayfly nymphs, particularly the ever-present blue-winged olives.

An Olive Scud, a sort of freshwater shrimp.  Good for weed beds in lakes and slow stream pools.

The giant killer, a Bead-head Squirrel-Tail Nymph.  This one caught my brown trout last weekend.

The Mosquito, a personal favorite.  I hope to catch a giant bluegill on this next Summer.

My first trout on a fly in 10 years

I went up to the Nissitissit River today to do a spot of fly fishing.  It was a perfect fall day, maybe a little late in the year for indian summer but very nice nonetheless, in the low fifties with a modest breeze and a cool, bright sun staggered with erratic racks of clouds.  After I entered the woods I couldn't quite decide whether to leave my sunglasses on or off, and so they went on, then off, then on, then off throughout the morning.  The water was clear and low for the most part, showing the muted colors of the stream bed: golden, quavering yellow beds of sand, flinty gray outcrops of rock, dark green trailing beds of aquatic plants and clear brown water stained of a million decaying leaves.  

I fished a stretch that winds through a Massachusetts  wildlife management area, and though it was far from any reasonable standard of wilderness, once I was on the water I saw nobody else, I heard no cars, I heard no planes.  Which was nice, especially as it had been awhile since I fly-fished a river for trout, and being a self-conscious sort of person I appreciated the seclusion to practice my art.  I was rusty, definitely, having trouble with my back-cast snagging in the omnipresent overhanging branches, losing track of my slack line pooling at my knees, throwing knots amidst my fly, weight and strike indicator, fumbling with knots, dragging my nymph unnaturally through the water, making unnecessary false casts over skittish fish; you get the picture.  But it was very pleasant and peaceful despite several moments of frustration.  

I even caught something.  I fully expected to get shut out, but after about an hour I fished up through a short stretch of pocket water and hooked a beautiful, 14 inch brown trout.  It took a size 14 beadhead squirrel-tail nymph, a nifty little fly.  It jumped several times, coming downstream, almost running through my legs as I frantically tried to strip in the excess line, but somehow the hook stuck firm and I recovered to quickly pull it into my hands.  I let it go after a second or two of appreciation for its beauty (this was a catch-and-release only stretch of river).  

There is a powerful spell in fishing. Being out on the water, amidst nature, near to something as unknowable and mysterious as this underwater world, an ecology apart, yet engaged with the activity of knowing something of this place, confronting it, interacting with it, is a deeply rewarding activity that prods at many parts of our psyches (for some of us, at least; I know plenty of people endlessly bored by fishing).  Our curiosity and wonder at the endlessly intricate and varied workings of the planet. Our culture, the traditions, stories, strategies and tools that we develop to survive.  

In these crazy modern days I think it gives us something like a correction, a reestablishing of basic connections with nature and survival that we evolved with, yet have grown to a place where they are largely hidden from daily life (though still essentially there). For most people, in this culture at least, it has grown into an art form, a recreation, a philosophy rather than any kind of essential activity of survival. In myself, I'm afraid that the post-modern state of fishing has led me to some ethical uncertainties.  When I was younger I pretty much bought into the whole 'catch and release' philosophy, which to be fair is an essential management tool for preserving a resource like trout from the ongoing pressure of an awful lot of recreational fishermen.  But though there are different opinions regarding a trout's perception of pain,  it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are putting these living creatures through an unpleasant ordeal just for our own fun, and putting them at some risk of life as well from injury or exhaustion.  I guess I think that fishing for food is really more acceptable, as long as the habitat can support it.  

It's kind of like my thinking regarding zoos. From a reserved, rational perspective, I disapprove of the capture and incarceration of these animals just for our own amusement, yet the impact they can have on children's hearts and minds is enormous, and for many city kids, the only way they have to easily experience something of the natural world that takes them away from the little they know and encounter in their daily lives.  

Fishing did something like that for me when I was young, and it still does something important for me now.  Exactly what, I'm not sure.  I just know that I'm not ready to give it up.   I'm not too greedy; I'm usually satisfied with just an hour or two of fishing, and if I catch my dinner in the first half-hour, well, there are other things I can do with my time after that.  After all, I've usually got my binoculars with me; I can always go birdwatching.  

Childhood Voting Woes

When I was seven years old, my class at school had a mock election. This was in 1976, and the candidates were Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Before we actually filled out our ballots we milled around talking about who we were going to vote for. I remember that most of my friends, most of the boys, period, were vocal supporters of Ford. I pretty much ran with the current, proclaiming my decision to vote Ford to anybody who asked.

When the time came to make our final decision, I checked the box for Jimmy Carter. I remember nothing of my reasoning, why I needed to vote contrary to prevailing opinion when I knew absolutely nothing of substance on the candidates or issues. But I checked Carter and slyly, I thought, folded over the piece of paper and waited to drop it into the basket that the teacher was passing around.

A girl who sat behind me, and I don't remember her name but she was big and had tightly-wound pigtails with brightly-colored berets, leaned forward and said "I saw you, you voted for Carter."

I turned and looked at her. "I did not," I said.

She looked around and said, louder, so others could hear, "He voted for Carter!" I just shut up then and turned back to the front and didn't say anything else, hoping that she wouldn't bring any more attention to my political sympathies, my deceit, or my cowardice.

And what is the moral of this story? Well, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson: "There's no moral to the story. It's just some stuff that happened."

A return to an old obsession

I have been overcome, for the moment, with an obsession from my past - fly-fishing and fly-tying.  When I was in high school and for some time into college, fly-fishing occupied a pretty big chunk of my brain, along with the Clash, H.P. Lovecraft's horrors from outer space and  whatever crazed psycho I was playing in the ongoing Dungeons and Dragons campaign.  Girls came later, mostly; I was a late bloomer in that department.  I spent many an hour during class letting my mind drift along, thinking of mayflies and trout, windswept meadow streams of Idaho, my nimble 4-weight fly-rod connected to a yellow humpy or hare's ear nymph.  I wrote wholly imagined stories about getting tangled up with big lunkers that got away and spent hours in the basement poring over books full of fly patterns and tying them up as best I could.  My specialty was the 'western' Adams, which took a standard Adams pattern and replaced the hackle tail with moose hair.  

We, my dad and I, fished mostly in the West during this time; apart from an unsuccessful trip into Pennsylvania and two trips to Michigan (the Pere Marquette, where we got bageled, and the AuSable, which was very nice) all of our fly-fishing for trout took us close to or west of the continental divide.  We fished the upper Green in Wyoming, the Henry's Fork in Idaho, Henry's Lake in Idaho, the Roaring Fork and the Frying Pan in Colorado, the Bow in Alberta, the Brooks in Alaska, the Deschutes in Oregon...I can't remember all the spots (we may have fished the Umpqua, also in Oregon, but mostly I remember the first truly gourmet meal I ever had there at the Steamboat Inn - and of that I mostly only remember that the main course was lamb).  

Once I got a bit older and went off to college and did some traveling of my own, I developed a taste for high-country fishing while camping and backpacking in the Uinta mountains of Utah and the Cascade Range in Oregon.  Though not the most difficult or technical fishing in the world, I just loved watching little brookies snapping at my fly in a high-altitude lake, and then eating them, dusted in flour and fried. 

Anyway, life and my crazy mind drifted along and leap-frogged to other things, birdwatching, songwriting, novel-writing, work, relationships, cooking, snorkling, fiddle-playing, what have you.  Over the years I only made fitful attempts to get back into fly-fishing - a trip to the outer banks of North Carolina to try some saltwater fishing (a miserable failure, at fishing that is - otherwise I enjoyed myself) and a couple of days on the Beaverkill in New York - great fun but very modest success (two or three 10 inch trout on a hare's ear).  And for the last 8 years or so I've gotten up to the Lake of the Woods in Western Ontario for a week or so's Summer vacation, to swim, read, visit with family and also to do some spin-casting and jigging for Smallmouth Bass, Northern Pike and Walleye.  

The last couple of summers we've gotten out my dad's seven-weight fly rod and done some casting, with pretty decent success with the bass and the pike.  I guess it's taken a while, but it's been sneaking up on me and now I find myself tying every week, brushing up with some of my trout books (reading the water, rigs and tactics for trout, essential trout flies, etc) and researching local waters.  Apparently, there are some nice ones.  Closest to home, about an hour away, is the Nissitissit, which I went out to see today.  I didn't fish, as I haven't gotten my license yet and wasn't sure conditions would be right this late in the season, but a local fly-shop proprietor (Charlie of the Evening Sun Fly Shop in Pepperell - an excellent shop and a knowledgeable host) told me that it can still be fished up until early or mid-December.  So I just might get out in the next few weeks.  If not, well, I'll continue daydreaming and tying flies until Spring.  Or perhaps I'll get sidetracked and start playing Dungeons and Dragons again instead.

Pictures are: Above:  The Nissitissit River.  Below:  The last of the fall colors, the mighty oak.  A muddler minnow I just tied.  A few woolly buggers I tied this week.

Pictures from Camel's Hump, Vermont

I think my favorite of the fall colors is the toasted yellow-brown of the beech leaves.

A view from the top of Camel's Hump with Lake Champlain in the distance.

The loneliness of the long-distance mountain hiker.  Actually, there was a bit of a mob scene at the summit, but as you can see, it was possible to get a bit of your own space to gaze and contemplate.

Our crew at the top, digging into the goodies.  Clockwise from top (sort of) are Kim, Mark, Chris, Anne, Katy and Karen.

Beginning the descent along a wide open face of rock and alpine grass.

A cool lichen shaped like a trumpet.

Camel's Hump.

Karen and Katy.

A lovely grove of beech.

In the center distance is Mount Mansfield, the tallest peak in Vermont.  It is also a stellar climb that I have done in other years.

Another view from the top.

Mount Chocorua

A big rock with a wonderful patchwork of lichen.

Some cool mushrooms. I have no idea what they are. I didn't eat them.

New England at its best, looking from the slopes of Mount Chocorua towards Mount Washington.

Fall colors and distant mountains.

Me, from the top of Mount Chocorua.

Lichen bullseyes and blueberry.

Looking up towards the top of Mount Chocorua, at 3,490 feet.

A view from the top.

Lisa, Emily and Rob, my hiking companions.

A lone raven, drifting south, Lake Winnepesaukee (I think...) in the distance.

I can't quite figure out (other than to do one at a time, in reverse order) how to sequence photographs in a preferred order. No big deal.

Yesterday I took my first big fall hike of this year into the New England Appalachians, to see the always astounding colors of the leaves spreading in unruly washes across the hills, to visit with some of the wilder elements of this planet, to replenish a part of my being, to exercise my limbs in a long(ish) climb into some of the higher parts, at least for around here, and to enjoy all of the above with a few friends.

The mountain was Mount Chocorua in east-central New Hampshire, one of the storied White Mountains, just a bit south of the famous Presidential Range and Mount Washington, reputed (believably) to have some of the fiercest weather and wind on Earth. You can see snow gracing the top of it in one of the photographs above.

Chocorua is not one of the 40 or so 4,000 footers, as it tops out at almost 3500 feet, but it will easily fool you into thinking it one as it has a long approach with a couple of steep climbs and a wide, spectacularly craggy treeless zone at the top that has stunning views in all directions, and, usually, a fierce, cold wind.

Anyway, these fall colors and aging granite mountains are one of the great treasures of this part of the country, and Autumn is just not complete without a trip amidst them, and so I went, and now share what I can with you. Enjoy!

Chile Rellenos and unidentified fungi

Well, my four heavy weeks of work have ended, for the most part, giving me some down time to pursue some personal activities and give my thoughts to future plans.  The work seemed a bit easier this year, due I think to the several years of experience I've put in up to this point and also to the knowledge that it would most likely be my last season driving a van full of instruments around New England.  I will grudgingly admit to a certain wistfulness visiting some of these schools I've become familiar with the last nine years, but it's time to move on and I am very excited for the coming changes to my life and career, though they are still months away.  I wish I could get started sooner, but I will do my best to enjoy the fall and winter and leave my job in good standing.  

Anyway, as I said before, this weekend has been a time of restorative activities that I haven't had time for over the last month, and they have done much to raise my spirits and energies.  I had an enjoyable night out with some friends on Saturday evening, including an excellent meal at Henrietta's Table in Cambridge; I especially enjoyed the duck leg confit.  Sunday morning I slept in and spent the day relaxing with music and books, capped off with a very messy attempt at making home-made chiles rellenos.  I love to cook, and I think I've developed some affinity for it, but I certainly haven't mastered the finicky arts of stuffing and deep-frying.  Every time I try I tell myself that there's no need to master every single tasty culinary technique, but eventually an impulsive desire to make a recipe that's caught my eye undoes my resolution.  I love stuffed chiles, even the standard suburban tex-mex variety, and so I found myself caught in the throes of chaos, fingers mired with goopy batter, a wok filled with hot oil and splattering, frothing chunks of cheese that had slipped out of the roasted chiles, which had likewise slipped from their coatings of flour and egg.  All I could do was scoop everything out of the wok, drain it of excess oil as best I could, drown it in red chile sauce and eat it.  

Today I went for a run, and during a quick cut through a local plot of woods I noticed that with the recent rain mushrooms of all kinds were popping up everywhere.  I noticed many russulas, some beautiful amanitas which may or may not have been death caps (they had that greenish tinge to their caps), a smelly stinkhorn and a bunch of others that I had no idea what they were.  I even grabbed a handful of some particularly meaty, fresh-looking specimens (picture above) that I thought might be blewits due to a faint purple color on the cap edges and the stalk.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to key them out successfully - their spore print was a medium brown color which should nix the blewit - and I couldn't follow the taxonomic key in Mushrooms Demystified to a convincing conclusion, so I guess I won't be eating them.  Too bad; they smell pretty good.  

I look forward in the coming weeks to getting out my fiddle and my guitar, finishing what will be the fourth draft of my novel, making plans for next year (travel and my apprenticeship), and whatever else might strike my fancy.  

Unexpected Pop Songs

You know, it’s a wonderful thing to know that life can still throw small surprises your way. By this time in my life (let’s generously call it approaching early middle-age), I sort of understand that big, unexpected things could happen to anybody, anywhere; health things, accidents, world events, what have you. I also understand that I understand very little, and everyday shows me new things in the world, which I sometimes appreciate and often overlook, but still my jaded eyes know the basic boundaries of my small, daily world, what I can expect and how I can appreciate or ignore the things that come my way.

Take pop music. I’ve always loved pop music, which I take to include all but the utmost fringes of rock, r&b, rap, folk and country music. But I’ve had a difficult relationship with it for a number of years now. I’ve always continued to appreciate the music that I learned to love and that was important to me as a youth and young adult. And I’ve always been interested in exploring new things, but the last few years it’s become something of a chore. I have a restless ear and I want to like new things, I read record reviews, I ask friends, I listen to things that people like or love or that catch my fancy in some definable or indefinable way. And I like a lot of it, but it kind of stays there…I like it, and then I don’t listen to it again. New stuff, old stuff I never heard, whatever (I will say that the percentages go way up when I catch overlooked stuff from bands or eras that I enjoyed when I was younger).

I usually write it all off to being a bit of a fogey, not appreciating the darn-fool stuff that kids today listen to, combined with my brain being full already of pop music. But today an utterly unexpected gem came my way, nothing world-changing or shattering, just a perfectly written and executed gem of a pop song from a source I’d never given a moment’s thought. The song is “Goodbye Lucille #1” from 80’s British band “Prefab Sprout”. Written by Paddy McAloon, it’s definitely pop, and polished, but…well, like I said, just perfect, moving in surprising yet entirely natural ways, moving and sentimental yet straightforward, earnest with a lash of humor and off-the-cuff spontaneity.  The album is "Two Wheels Good" or "Steve McQueen" (you can find it under either title), and it's all good, but for my money this track is the standout.

This is just a tease, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll figure out how to put a streaming copy of the song on my blog so you all can enjoy. Otherwise, I’m sure if you’re so motivated you can figure something out. And if not, just take solace in the knowledge that these little surprises lay in wait for you, too.  

But it helps if you do a little digging and keep your ears open.

Nothin' doing

Okay, so I'll try my best to get something up here every week for the next month or so; it's important that I keep my fans happy and hungry.  We'll see; as some of you know, I am pretty busy for the month of September, driving around New England, meeting young musicians and their parents and helping to get them started with a violin, viola or cello.  I am going to try and not complain as much as I usually do about all the overtime, the nights on the road, the loss of a full weekend; not only does that not really help anything but also I am anticipating working just as hard, if not harder, for several months next year with my upcoming farming apprenticeship. Serves me right, I suppose.  

Anyway, knowing that this will be my last season doing this has lightened my spirits and allowed me to enjoy it more than I have the last few years, even if I still look forward to the end of the month and the easing of my schedule.  

You can see I have next to nothing in mind for this posting today; my sincere apologies.

One interesting thing I'd like to note:  I have a counter for this blog where I can track how many people visit this site, where they come from and how they got here.  Lately I've picked up a lot more visitors, especially international visitors; I can only assume that Blogger has done some work in making their blogs more visible to the greater world of the internet.  In particular, I have a lot of visitors who take a peek from a google search that brings up one of my postings.

Which brings me to the interesting (or not) thing:  a large percentage of these visitors got to me through a search on google for the following string: "blue hubbard squash".  Apparently there are a lot of people out there looking for more information on this topic, and have visited a brief posting I made last fall extolling the merits of this wonderful food and describing how I prepare it.  

Anyway, I found that interesting.  Thank you for your patience.

Farmer Boy

Boys don’t generally read the ‘Little House’ books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I certainly didn’t, not when I was younger. Girls, I think, are much more open to books generally considered for boys than boys are to 'girl's' books. I guess we just always feel we have more on the line for being considered interested in that ‘girly’ stuff. I was a pretty voracious reader and even had a sort of secret curiosity about those stories (I’ve always loved tales of survival) but never considered reading them back then. I also avoided Nancy Drew, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess and Anne of Green Gables.

Most of those I still have yet to read, but a few years ago I started reading the Little House books, and I loved them. I picked them up because I was starting to write a children’s novel of my own and wanted to consume just about every classic I could think of, and also because my youngest sister Esme was reading them and enjoying them and my curiosity was again piqued. I discovered that not only are they enjoyable page-turners with interesting, diverse characters and suspenseful story-lines, they are truly treasures of American history, full to the brim of the clearest writing you’ll ever read of how the settlers and rural folk of this young country made their way on the ever-expanding American frontier.

Unsurprisingly, I was endlessly fascinated by all the details of how they ate; what they grew, what they shot and foraged, how they preserved it, how they cooked and ate it, how they enjoyed it. Boy, how they enjoyed it. The undeniable truth of living as a homesteader back then comes through in the general joy the characters get from almost every bite they take, whether it is their morning porridge or a once a year treat of maple syrup poured into the snow. Wilder’s writing really comes alive talking about food, sparking my appetite over and over. It’s clear that food really meant something to her and her family, and their connection to what they ate was primal and sophisticated at once.

Currently I’m reading Farmer Boy, which follows a year in the life of the young Almanzo Wilder, future husband of Laura Ingalls, on his family’s farm in New York state. The work, of course, is never ending and endlessly physical, and so is the young boy’s appetite. In particular, I am struck by how much pie he eats. It seems he closes every single meal, breakfast, dinner, supper, with two or three (or more) pieces of spicy apple pie, and frequently runs into to grab a slice or two during a quick break from pitching hay.

I never read Farmer Boy when I took in all the other Little House books a few years ago, mostly because I didn’t want to interrupt the narrative of the Wilder family as they moved from the big woods to the little house to the banks of plum creek, etc. Now, with a season working on a farm looming in my near future, it seemed the right time to head back and finish off the series with this book, and I’m glad I did. 

And, of course, this one’s not particularly girly, so I'm safe, right? 

Changes

Almost ten years ago I quit my job in Cincinnati to hike the Appalachian trail. By the time I stepped onto the trail in a cold rain, mid-March in the north Georgia hills, I had spent six months planning, daydreaming, and longing for the countless steps that would take me from Springer Mountain to Mount Katahdin in central Maine. I collected books of all kinds on the subject: humorous, practical, poetic, mystical, historical, personal. I examined my gear; I bought new gear (I threw out some of this and bought even more along the trail, finding much of the stuff I started with either superfluous or way to heavy). I examined my reasons and motivations for going; I tried explaining these to other people, as much to work it out for myself as for any other reason.

So what were my reasons? I’m not sure I really remember, though I do recall what I told people at the time: “I want to experience a different way of living,” I would say, “and for a long time so that it’s not a vacation, but just my life.” I wanted to stop staring at a computer, which I was doing way too much of. I was realizing that I had ignored a part of myself that loved the woods, the open air, birdsong and the sound of tumbling water for far too long and I wanted it back. I wanted change, and I wanted to feel like I had accomplished something.

I spent about a month on the trail, going somewhere around 250 miles through Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee to the northeast end of Smoky Mountain National Park, well short of the 2100 miles that was my goal. I remember telling myself that the experience and the process was what was important, more so than finishing; maybe that was why I didn’t. But I can see other reasons I stopped hiking, from the sharp pains in my knee (I can no longer remember which one it was without consulting a photograph) to the new songs that ran through my head, calling for a fuller realization, a guitar and some kind of recording device. But I also just don’t think I was quite ready for this kind of journey. I didn’t have the drive to finish at all costs, and I didn’t have the maturity or peace to accept the experience for what it was, whatever it was.

As much as I hate to admit it, I fell into a trap of boredom. I did enjoy my time, sometimes blissfully so. I particularly loved the late afternoons and evenings, hunting for a good spot to camp, pitching my tent and rummaging for a proper meal, firing my stove, chatting and relaxing with fellow hikers, drinking cocoa, zipping myself in as night closed in and the nocturnal creatures awoke. But too much of the hiking became drudgery, or trudgery, and I developed a tunnel vision that blotted out much of the trip. I think you have to be open to each step to really make it the distance on a trek like this, and most of mine were lost. It finally was too easy to get off during a dispiriting moment when my aching knees couldn’t keep up with a small group of friends I had been hiking with. Still, it was a valuable and enjoyable time, and many memories and faces loom large in my thoughts.

Now, I am soon embarking upon another change, another journey, physical, personal, spiritual, practical. Next year I will be spending a full growing season, some eight months worth, on a farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts as an apprentice. The folks up there run a successful, 500 share CSA up there, and I will be trading my labor, a considerable amount of it, for education and experience in all that they do, whether it be tractor work, seeding, harvesting and weeding or managing the distribution of more than 100 different crops to the local shareholders.

I hadn’t really connected my Appalachian Trail experience with my new plans until I noticed that I will be starting up my apprenticeship almost exactly ten years from the moment I stepped onto that trail in north Georgia, and that got me thinking. One obvious thought – we all change and grow as we pass through life, and sometimes we need to step into new shoes to do so and keep our feet healthy. On a personal level, I looked at my experience ten years ago, at what I learned, at how I failed and how I succeeded, if those are even appropriate terms; better to say at how I lived up to my expectations of myself and how I didn’t. I’ve looked at who I am today, wondering how this person is different than that person, and what would happen if we switched places.

I’d like to think that I’m more prepared now for something like that, a six-month journey through the long green tunnel; more prepared to simply accept what the experience gives me. Maybe. I still don’t think it’s right for me, not yet. I still have some growing yet to do in order to spend that much time inside my own head and skin without going a little stir crazy. This apprenticeship thing shares many things with my hike, but really, it’s a much more practical affair, and has been undertaken as much as a career stepping-stone and practical education as any kind of personal journey.

But if I can take any lesson from ten years ago, from thirty or so difficult, enlightening, beautiful, painful, monotonous days in the rugged green hills of the South, it’s to be as open as I can to what I see, hear, feel, taste and smell. To listen and learn, to learn by doing, to pay attention to what the soil feels like in my hands, and to watch little green plants grow up, day after day, reaching for the sun.

Pictures from Canada

A spiritual moment for Harper.

Your intrepid blog host.

A mouse-eye view of a mushroom.

An interesting flower amidst the blueberry field.

A very interesting mushroom.

Yet another mushroom.  There were lots of them.

A classic Canada sunset.

Esme and her cello.

In the blueberry jungle.

Uncle Jim and Esme, on her first round of waterskiing.

Brad catching some hang time on the wakeboard.

Dad at the dock with moon.

Waxwings Eat Bugs

The Cedar waxwing is one of our most debonair birds, having a slick suit of silky tan feathers decorated with a stylish black mask and vivid, glistening wing and tail tips of red and yellow. It is a very social bird, most conspicuous in Winter when rollicking flocks will dependably visit every tree or shrub of lingering fruit. A few of them hang out here in the summer as well. 

Yesterday I watched a pair raiding a white mulberry tree overhanging a pond in Ipswich, occasionally letting fly a short burst of their high-pitched, sibilant song. They also engaged in something I hadn’t seen before, flying out over the pond to hover and poke at the surface with their beaks in simple, delicate gestures before flying back to the mulberry. I had always thought of them as exclusive fruit eaters, but the only thing I could imagine they were up to was eating insects. As I was thinking of the sight this evening I pulled out Kenn Kaufmann’s Lives of North American Birds and found that yes, Waxwings eat insects, and are in fact known to hover and flutter as they snatch their meals from their hidey-holes. Another one to add to the short list of birds that I’ve observed doing a pretty effective job hovering in place: hummingbirds of course, golden-crowned kinglets, american kestrels and eastern phoebes. 

The phoebes were also busy at work over the pond, but stayed much closer to shore, and sometimes perched right on the quivering surface of a lily pad, if you could really call that a 'perch'.  

Another Summer Shower

Oh my what a big thundershower we just had! A classic of midsummer, heavy and deep, of a second’s drenching, with those frightening cracks of thunder that come right with the flash. I was out when it arrived, watching the darkening skies from inside the greengrocer’s with excitement and trepidation, wondering if I hoped to beat it to my car or to get caught. Caught I was, deliriously, running awkwardly in my sandals, splashing through the new puddles of rain, still hot from the overheated atmosphere.

I was lucky enough to make it home in time to catch the best of it from my front porch, challenging myself not to flinch at each newest, loudest burst of light and sound. Little rivers poured out of yards and onto the steaming asphalt of the street, and finally, after a few entrancing minutes, it broke up as it always does in a few rays of sunlight dodging the last, fitful squalls. Is it just me, or do these summer storms always end with a final crash of thunder after the rain has gone and the sun has returned, always the loudest, the closest, a last laugh from the sky?

Our Summer here in the northeast has been hotter and more humid than usual, making me remember previous seasons in the Midwest, particularly Cincinnati, where the late afternoon or evening flurry of atmospheric rumblings and maybe rain was an almost daily event, as predictable as sunset. But memories are so unreliable.  All of these musings, Cincinnati storms, the last gasps of thunder, the breaking rays of sun, are the products of my highly subjective mind and its accompanying bank of memories. Who knows what really happened, and where it all fits into the grand scheme?  

It is what it is, and perception is reality, except when it isn’t.

Nine Reasons to go Birdwatching

What is so special about birdwatching?  Why do I enjoy it?  What do I get out of it?

1 Birdwatching is done outdoors, usually in relatively natural habitats and areas of open space.  I am a big believer in the benefits of spending time outdoors, especially amidst the splendors of what we usually call 'nature'.  I believe it is a powerful restorative for our minds and bodies.  

2 Birdwatching is a stimulating mental activity, exercising one’s memory and observational skills to a high degree, as well as reasoning ability. It also engages one’s sight and hearing to a great extent. Few things are as important as keeping your mind sharp.  (For the record, I think that musical activity is the ultimate all-around exercise for your brain, as it engages your memory, your motor skills, your intellect, language skills, creativity, self-expression, and social skills.)

3 Birdwatching has great depth as an observational and educational pastime, allowing one to delve into the science and lore of birds as far as one could possibly hope to go.  This is true of almost any discipline, of course, but rarely is the science so accessible and useful to such a widely-practiced hobby.  Knowledge of bird behavior, ecology, etc. immeasurably helps when looking for birds, when identifying birds, and trying to understand birds.  (Fishing and hunting qualify here, I would think, as well.)

4 There is tremendous beauty and variety in the appearance, behavior and sounds of birds.  An opinion, to be sure, but one shared by lots and lots of people.  Certainly birds find their way into poems an awful lot.

5 Birds of many sorts can be found just about everywhere, at almost any time, making it a hobby anybody can do, anywhere, anytime.  You can birdwatch on your way to work, as you wake up in the morning...as I said: anywhere, anytime.  I know people who keep track of the birds that they identify on television shows (you wouldn't believe how often they use the hooting of a great-horned owl in the background; well, maybe you would believe it.  Wood thrush, too.)

6 The variety of birds is such that novices can easily learn to distinguish many common, distinctive species, and dedicated amateurs and scientists can find plenty of challenges in most environments.  Entry into the world of birdwatching is easy - most people have done it whether they realize it or not.  When I started birdwatching seriously I made a list of the birds I had already seen - crow, blue jay, bald eagle, robin, etc.  But even on a short jaunt around the corner I can be challenged with a group of various species of sparrows that have me examining the finer points of their behavior and habitat, the thickness of the streaking on their belly, and the pattern of their various songs in order to figure out what I am actually watching.  And of course there's the whole wide world to explore and learn about...

7 Birdwatching is an activity where amateurs can and do contribute meaningfully to the process of scientific discovery.  Now this is unusual in most other scientific disciplines, but events such as the christmas bird count that occurs every year across the country give us valuable sets of data by which scientists and amateurs have been able to track patterns in bird dispersion, population and variety against any number of other variables, which can be used in very concrete ways in planning conservation.

8 Birdwatching allows one to learn about their own powers of perception and recognition, giving great insight into the working of his or her brain.  This point is a little more mysterious, as it should be, but I am often interested and sometimes amazed at the way experience and knowledge in the field accumulates until identification and instinct work so quickly, naturally and effortlessly together, allowing even a relative dilettante like me to make many identifications from a long distance away, from just a split-second look at a bird in shadow.  Of course, this only comes with birds that I am very familiar with.  But what is particularly interesting is that the more you become this way with common birds, the more you can see something out of the corner of your eye for just a second and think 'wait a minute, something's off there, that's not a song sparrow, that's something else,' and end up chasing a very unusual sighting.

9 Regular birdwatching deeply connects one with the rhythms of life and the planet, allowing the many swells of the planet to affect us personally – tides, seasons, weather, daylight. This has its apotheosis in the spectacular phenomenon of bird migration, one of the great wonders of life on planet earth and the most exhilarating yearly reminder that the planet is still working.  This, for me, is the true heart of birding, and really, of just about any engaged study of nature in the field.

An agricultural idyll

I went up to Ipswich yesterday to visit Appleton Farms and have a talk with the farm manager there.  Appleton Farms is a pretty big chunk of land owned by the Trustees of Reservations, about a thousand acres encompassing woodlands, wetlands, pasture, field, and farm.  They run a highly successful CSA vegetable operation on 26 acres, which was my primary interest for the visit.  

Anyway, I thought I'd share a few photos.  Appleton Farms is a beautiful spot, and its gently undulating fields couldn't be lovelier, filled with swaying wild grains and the patter of sparrows, blackbirds and bobolinks.  Nestled amidst the pasture, field and woodland is the crop acreage, with row after row of healthy green salads, herbs, onions, hundred of vigorous and delicious plants.  Yesterday I found the small crew there weeding several rows of onions that were overgrown with waist-high lambs-quarter, a tasty green in its own right when picked much younger.  

I had my chat and then wandered around for a while with my binoculars and camera, and chanced upon a nice bird sighting - a cattle egret, my first seen in Massachusetts.  In full breeding plumage, as this one was, they are somewhat comical looking, with pale, startled-looking yellow eyes, yellow beak and dirty-blond patches on their otherwise white plumage. 

On my way home, I took a swim at Walden, which was lovely.