Baby bobcat

Bobcats literally own their territory, unafraid and unfazed by man.  This baby bobcat was loping across Route 28 at dusk yesterday evening, as one vehicle was heading south, another to the north.  It gamboled across the road just in time to avoid a crunch -- and was gone up the hillside.

Evanescent purple

The pre-dawn sky in the east was spectacular this morning -- large, wide bands of very dark purples and reds, covering the horizon from north to south.  Lasted about 30 seconds and was gone.  The memory lives on, though.

Magnificent

We have lived in this wild place for almost 12 years, but until this morning, had never seen a buck.  Plenty of does and fawns, but no bucks.  Now, we have.  He was magnificent, with a huge, velvety rack.  Very skittish. Drawing away at the merest movement from the house.  Much less "domesticated" than the does, that like to creep up toward our home and chew on greenery, especially hostas and day lilies.  It makes my heart glad that I have been lucky enough to see such a creature close up.

Back home

The pace of life back home does not slow.  I've been involved in several projects that inhale time.  But there are reminders of the different pace that animates the wildlife around us.  The latest such reminder came in the form of a pileated woodpecker, the giant pecker of the forestlands around us, swooping as they ususally do in front of the new clunker truck that is my transportation around here. Is there a more vivid red than the red of pileated woodpecker?  Maybe the scarlet tanager's -- but few others.  Also glimpsed a broadwing flying fast across the landscape, heading south for an annual migration.

Then, recently coming home one night on Warwoman Road, there was that big, old and slow black bear -- moving much more slowly than normal. This fat bear could barely scramble up the roadbank -- must have been weighted down by a recent meal.   Guess even bears need to slow down sometimes, like people.

Of circadian rhythms

Sunset over the Pacific @ Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Republic of Mexico

Every once in a blue moon, it is good to get away from the everyday rush of America and kick back, which is what we did recently for an an entire two weeks!

No phones (cellfone coverage is spotty down south,) very little internet, no newspapers. The hurricane that came through a few weeks before had left no evident damage. Time to kick back and assume a simpler schedule. Hike the beach at dawn, followed by breakfast, nap, lunch, nap, watch the sun go down. I ended up reading every trashy pulp novel previous visitors had left for us to read. The night sky in Baja is stupendous, with so little light pollution that the Milky Way paints the firmament, something that is becoming increasingly rare at home. The Pacific is not very pacific, with wild rollers every day, while the Sea of Cortez is like a warm bath by comparison.

It was good to get away, just as now, it is good to be back.

Ode to the clunker

That old Chevy truck that served so well in these mountains got "clunkered" this past Friday, heading to the scrap metal boneyards of U.S. consumerism. It had accumulated 230,765 miles of tortuous wear-and-tear on curvy mountain roads, a good bit of backcountry 4-wheeling where no truck should be taken, and a wonderful, well-Rabunized look and feel.

I will miss it. Welborn, the salesman who sold it to me in 1998, told me what I needed in the mountains was a short-bed truck with 4WD and the biggest motor I could afford. He was right. That was a 5.7 liter Vortec V-8 with lots of horses and a true thirst for regular unleaded gas (12 MPG in the city!) It was fast and pretty much indestructible, if unsustainable. I ripped the back bumper half-way off one day trying to vault a big stump; but it got dinged back in two days later when a yahoo from South Carolina -- in an even bigger, "dually" truck -- smashed into my backside on Route 28. The only major repair turned out to be need for a new clutch, which in 11 years, ain't bad.

It also hardly ever failed to attract the birds, like owls and hawks, that regularly make their appearance in these parts.

Now, I wonder if the "new clunker," a very down-sized, 4-cylinder truck with the shortest bed and the smallest motor I could find (but up to 27 MPG on the highways) is going to be up to the task. At first glance, I think it will do. Coming up the driveway in that new vehicle, we spied a furry image loping up the driveway. A truly fat and fast black bear cub! Then, Saturday, miraculus mirabili, my hawk swooped over the new truck to check us out. I take that as a good omen.

More hawk tawk & bobcat ramblin'

Well, my hawk is still doing well, and I'm still trying to "speak" to it when it perches in front of the truck. But last Thursday, it seemed nervous and flighty as a bird. It swooped over me coming home and kept on going, then swooped over me again before the driveway, perching on a nearby tree branch. I stopped the truck and got out. But before I could "say" the first word, it was gone. Very nervous. My hair stood on end on the back of my neck. I took this as a warning to be aware.

The day before, a skinny bobcat loped diagonally across the Highlands-Walhalla Road in front of me. As usual, this predator owns the spaces it occupies, no matter how fast it moves.

Hawk Talk & Rattler Rattle

I've started trying to "talk" to "my hawk," the broadwing that so often swoops around these parts. It curved gracefully up in front of me as I was going back up the hill to the house from the garden one morning (about 10-12 days ago) and perched on a tulip poplar branch.

First, I tried a human version of the high-pitched screech that is this bird's signal. Click on the following to listen:

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/view_default.asp?sortBy=has+audio&viewType=list&curFamilyID=218

Then, I tried just old-fashioned English, and told it that our friend Honor had recently rescued one of its brethren, when it surfaced dazed and confused on the side of Warwoman Road. Click on the July 10 entry at the following site for rescue details:

http://silvermoonfrog.blogspot.com/

Well, I'm not sure if my hawk heard this talk, but at least it did not fly away right away. I feel that it heard something. Now, I am trying to hear what it has to say to me. This is an interesting exercise for one usually so "linear."

More recently, we find that a good-sized timber rattlesnake has taken up domain under one of our wooden decks, as a worker found out last week. Its high-pitched rattle is distinctive and pressing and puts you on definite alert when you hear it. This rattler is about as thick as a man's forearm. Big. Territorial. Likes to let you know that it is there and not to be too disturbed.

Wonder if he's the same one that, as a juvenile, used to hang out on our pile of two-by-sixes (see post for March 19, 2009.)

That is all for today.

Wondrous Sightings No. 8 -- Broadwing of the Badlands

It swooped so fast in such a graceful curve today that I barely had time to stop the truck before it kissed a nearby white pine branch and then quickly dipped farther into deeper forests. Gone in about two seconds. The curve of its flight, like the sine-cosine dips of a radio wave, is beyond beautiful -- an omen of good.

Wondrous Sightings No. 7

Dear Blog People: I continue to be blessed with sightings of birds of prey, most recently by the baby Broadwing Hawk that plummeted to the side of the road, right in front of the truck, to claw out a little vole, mole or chipmunk. Something small anyway. Where else -- but Warwoman Road. By the time it appeared, this hawk was upright with talons down. Pretty fierce, even for a baby.

Several weeks ago, up in Montana, a bald eagle rose up from the Flathead River and led us along a forest byway for several miles. That is one big, powerful bird!

My mate tells me there is likely to be message in all this -- like what am I going to pounce on next?

Righteous mountains

Fran and I were fortunate to recently get away for a week, to the highlands of Glacier National Park in far-off Montana. This was eye-opening country, vast, open, and very, very big. The top picture is looking north along Lake McDonald toward the "Garden Wall" glacier formation, as is the bottom photo. The picture in the middle is of the wild backcountry, also looking north, past Bowman Lake. This is humbling territory. Go see it before it all melts. National Park Service officials report there are only about 20 glaciers left in this park, compared to the 110-plus identified at the turn of the last century.

Carpet of white

For a brief few days last week, the woods seemed awash with a carpet of white -- a spectacular flowering of dogwoods in bloom.

It is hard to tell without scientific, year-to-year measurement, but the dogwoods appeared more numerous, more vibrant, more colorful and definitely more alive than in recent years. Since the mid 1970s, wild dogwood trees all across the mountains of Southern Appalachia have been dying from a fungal disease called Dogwood Anthracnose (discula destructiva).

But they seem to resist the blight somewhat if they get a lot of sunlight, and there was more sunlight than normally on the hillside below our house this year -- many of the scrub pine trees had fallen to another infestation, the Southern Pine Beetle. The dogwoods took advantage of this cycle of death and rebirth to make for a show of white blooms.

Then, we had five days in a row of heavy rain, the hardwood trees (mostly tulip poplar, oaks, sourwoods, persimmons and red maple) all leafed out at the same time, bringing shade back to our land.

But for a brief few days last week, the woods seemed awash with a carpet of white. It was beautiful.

Not so wondrous

From time to time, I see stuff out in the woods that jars, that does seem quite right.

-- On New Year's Day, Fran and I decided to take a walk down to the river (the Wild and Scenic Chattooga River.) At the Forest Service gate to this location, we found a large, fresh-killed black bear. Several of its claws had been clipped off. This carcass definitely seemed out of place. But the story did not end there: Some days later, someone severed its head off. Then, several days after that, someone burned the entire site. All that was left was part of the bear's rib cage, sticking up out of the charred earth.

-- In early spring, there were reports of avian flu affecting birds in this county. I'm not sure if it was the flu or not, but it was strange to run across a big turkey buzzard hobbling along a country road. It could not fly or get out of the way of the truck.

-- Then, just a few weeks ago, we came across the body of a dead broadwing hawk in an area of national forestland that had recently been crisped under what the agency terms a "prescribed burn." Someone had cut off this hawk's tail feathers, apparently as a souvenir trophy for the broad black-and-white bands that decorate this hawk's tail.

Of timber rattlers & snakes

For several years in a row, it was our good fortune to witness a daily display of snake power. A timber rattler was living in one of the piles of lumber next to the driveway. Every morning, he would slither up from the pile and sun himself on the metal roofing covering the wood. When it got too hot, he'd slide back into the shade of the 2 X 6 lumber. And when it rained, he'd uncoil and lift his head to the water, as if taking a satisfying shower. Then, one day, he did not reappear.

Up until the summer of 2008, snakes could be seen in some abundance in these parts: Rattlers, black snakes, copperheads and very occasionally, king snakes. Sometimes, they'd be too close to the house and we moved them into the woods. More recently, for reasons unknown, there seem to be fewer snakes to be found in the wilds.

Could it be that the Broadwing of the Badlands has eaten them all?

Wondrous Sightings No. 6 -- Broadwing of the Badlands

For several years now, it has been my pure luck to develop something of a relationship with a beautifully fierce broadwing hawk who, for reasons not yet known to me, chooses to display itself in this part of the mountains. The first time, it danced out of a tree along the graveled road we live on, gracefully dipping ahead of the truck for several hundred feet before lighting on another tree. This has since happened so many times that I usually stop the truck, roll down the window and observe this handsome bird for as long as it will let me.

Sometimes, it appears to dive bomb at the truck head-on, its talons dangling beneath its stocky rib cage. Other times, it makes a perfect sine wave, swooping ahead and away, displaying the characteristic black-and-white bands on its tail feathers. The Broadwing of the Badlands, named after this tortuous part of the north Georgia mountains, is a perfect predator, as I also learned one afternoon. For several years, we had a family of wild rabbits that comfortably chowed down on the native plants and hostas around the house. The paterfamilias of this rabbit gang acted like he owned the place, barely raising his head from a tasty meal when we singled him out in headlights at night. The rabbits did what rabbits do -- make more rabbits. That is, until the broadwing discovered what a tasty morsel junior rabbits could make. It dove straight down from heaven that afternoon, turned at the last moment to grab a baby rabbit and carry it off in front of me. I was witness to real power that day. We don't see as many rabbits anymore.

In more recent years, it has set up an observation post in the tall pines and oak trees that surround the vegetable garden, signaling its presence with a loud screech/whistle that is very hard to duplicate. So far, I am having a hard time mimicking broadwing talk, but it pleases me enormously that this impressive bird finds it to its liking to guard the garlic and beans and cukes and tomatoes from the rabbits, polecats, deer and wild hogs who also like to visit this open field. Birding literature describes these hawks as no more than the size of pigeons, surviving mainly on snakes, insects, rodents and frogs, but I can tell you that this hawk is much bigger -- a true guard bird.

How do I know this is the same hawk that returns here every year, one might ask. These hawks migrate thousands of miles southward every winter. Believe me, I know. This feel like a bird who knows his home. I welcome him to the neighborhood.

Wondrous Sightings No. 5 -- Mr. Bobcat & Ms. Doe

The sounds emanating from the backyard that spring-into-summer afternoon were so pitiful and haunting as to raise headstones in the many local cemeteries that dot the nearby mountains. They sure got my attention. It was a wailing ululation, full of hurt and very loud. What they heck? From the deck, I saw a doe deer, kneeling and keening as if its heart was being ripped out. It took me a couple of seconds to see the second actor in this play, a bobcat ready to pounce not six feet away from the deer, trembling in anticipation. The bobcat was in full attack mode. But the play had an unanticipated ending. The doe rose slowly, turned and then hobbled down the hill into the woods, the bobcat following. The deer stopped crying. It took a couple of days of consultation with local neighbors expert in the ways of backwoodsy lore to figure this out: The doe likely had been protecting a fawn, feigning to sacrifice herself so the offspring could survive, they said. Indeed, a couple of days later, the same doe was back in the backyard, with her fawn, a beautiful little Bambi. I feel lucky to have witnessed this.

Wondrous Sightings No. 4 -- The Bear

The first time we saw the bear was but several months after we moved into a new home in a remote, backcountry section of the north Georgia mountains. I was dozing on a couch and heard footsteps on the porch. Funny, I thought, I had not heard a vehicle approach. It was the bear, as surprised to see me as I was, and quick to decamp up the hill behind the house when he heard me yelling about his apparition. Bears, I think, are among the fastest big animals I've ever seen. The second time, several years later, the bear was more at home somehow. I spied him in the mirror while I was shaving one morning. He was pawing through some empty flower pots. I tried to shoo him away with loud calls, but he was in no hurry. He went up the hill to the shed and sniffed around the lawn mower. Then, he rose up, put his front legs on the hood of the truck and looked at himself in the windshield. Then, only then, did he amble ever-so-slowly down the hill and away. That last bear owned our home place for a few minutes. They are very powerful animals, I believe, and possessed of immense spirit.

Wondrous sightings No. 3 -- Bat dance

It is not uncommon at dusk to see solitary bats dancing in front of the truck on the way home, particularly when the pavement runs out and the road turns into a graveled lane cutting through dense forest. They have an unerring radar that helps them avoid crashing into the windshield before they quickly dip away from the lane and return to the woods. But the sighting one night was more special -- a bat duo dancing in front of the truck, maneuvering -- more like an intricate ballet -- in total unison. Up, down, zigging, zagging, charging sideways and doing loop-the-loops. Like warplanes in formation. Like man and woman dancing to the same tune. This vision did not last much longer than about five seconds. But it lives permanently in my memory.

Wondrous Sightings No. 2 --Holy moly. Holy heron!

Driving home at dusk yesterday, I come across a big blue/grey heron sunning/preening himself/herself in the middle of Warwoman Road, just past Goldmine Road. I slow down, thinking I am going to pass it on the right. Then, he/she jumps square into my headlights. I brake hard. The truck kisses the bird, which promptly rises like a Phoenix and leads up to the pond further up Warwoman. It was a sight! I am taking this both as a blessing and a warning. Appreciate the birds. Slow down.