Early Birding

From beneath warm blankets into a frosty morning,
sun just creeping above the treetops,
heavy mist lifting from the water of East Fork State Park,
we have come to see a bird.

Morning Mist
East Fork State Park

A Glaucous Gull, Larus hyperboreus, a rare visitor to southwestern Ohio, from this species’ high Arctic breeding grounds.

And he is here, feeding beside some others, Ring-billed and Bonaparte’s Gulls, on a narrow slip of land.

Glaucous Gull, Larus hyperboreus (right)
beside Ring-billed Gull, Larus delawarensis (left)

The group watches, and waits in the 14-degree morning,
stamping cold feet and puffing warm breath into cold fingers.
Some birds are “lifers.”
Others are once-in-a-lifetime.

There will be many other mornings to sleep in.

Glaucous Gull,
East Fork Lake,
November 2008

Sunrise,
East Fork Lake

all photos click to enlarge

In the midst (SWF)

East Fork Lake
November 2008

East Fork Lake looks different now.
No longer the slumbering giant, lurking beneath last fall’s fog, left one morning as a bitter night dropped its chill onto warmer water, and hurried off toward dawn.

We paddled back, as far as the creek would allow, onto a wide gravel bar, covered densely with water-willow, side to side. The blooms now gone, the leaves stained with mud from summer rains that flood this plain. And after searching for a path across it and finding none deep enough to ride upon, sat to rest in the shade of a sycamore—leaving Red Canoe caught on the rocky bottom, waiting within view.

Across the expanse of water-willow, clear, small pools—constantly refreshed by a layer of rushing water, inches deep, dotted the field of green.
Crayfish scurried ahead of my feet, disappearing backward beneath the flat rocks, until only the scarlet tips of their pincers could be seen.
Small fish snuggled in to my sandals.
And damselflies a brilliant red, darted and dashed, waiting and chasing.
And I with my camera, stood in their midst.

American Water-willow, Justicia americana

American Rubyspot damselfy, Hetaerina americana
male above, female below

Spotted Sandpiper (?)

Double-crested Cormorant

See more Skywatch here.

Quiet on the Mountain

“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself,
What if I had never seen this before?
What if I knew I would never see it again?"
~Rachel Carson

"Muddlety"

The blue and white school bus slows and comes to a stop at the top of a hill, the gravel road beyond winding down and disappearing into the cool, white cloud surrounding us on this very foggy morning. After a week’s travels on the back roads of West Virginia, to the north, south, east and west of Opossum Creek, peering through steamy windows, as the passengers, birders, load and unload themselves at every stop, I could not tell you on this day, exactly where we were—
somewhere, though, wonderful.
A mountaintop I’ll remember as “Muddlety.”


Several days’ rain has left these woods thick and rich —
new spring green, strong shades in leaves bursting from buds along every branch. Mosses, luxuriously dense and soft, run up and over every still surface. Ferns, stems bent, heads rolled as they slowly lift layers of leaves from the ground, stand in clusters across the forest floor.

Dwarf Ginseng, Panax trifolius

Cranesbill, Geranium sp.

From the edge, where I watch, knee-deep in brilliant yellow blossoms, vines hang in tremendous tangles, brown ropes stitching tree to tree.
Steep hillsides step away from the gravel road,
rocky ledges tumble toward it.

Misted spiderweb and Golden Ragwort

And through the fog, there is bird song.
This mountain drips with life.


Barely more than black silhouettes against the white sky, small birds dart between the treetops overhead--fine forms, intent upon seeing who has come to these woods, in song, calling to them on this foggy morning. Our guide, again, calls into the mist, and one flits close with an answer. Singing proudly, long and sweet, from a branch just a few feet away--a Cerulean Warbler, sky blue strokes upon white.
Out of this mist, comes beauty.
The song that fills this space has wings.

Foamflower, Tiarella sp.

West Virginia White, Pieris virginiensis

Wrapped up in the magic of that West Virginia mountain,
I could have stayed there all morning, happy to sink into its rich bed of life, pull the cover over my head and rest--
imagine all I’d heard about destruction and lost habitat within the Appalachians, to be somewhere else.

Red Eft,
juvenile stage of Eastern Red-spotted Newt, Notophthalmus viridescens

Somewhere not as wonderful as this.
Somewhere I would never see.

land snail

Looking back from the valley, beyond the gravel road, the logging creeps up the slopes of Muddlety.
Once bare, the blasting will begin.
Her future promised to coal—
her life upturned, and left—
mountaintop removed, valley filled,
with more than waste rock and coal dust.
Filled with the quiet of a silent spring.

(click to enlarge)

“We stand now where two roads diverge.
But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair.
The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy,
a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.
The other fork of the road, the one less traveled by,
offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth."
~Rachel Carson from Silent Spring

Read more information about Mountaintop Removal Mining here.
Get involved with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition here.

Capturing the Eft
photo by Julie Zickefoose

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See more Camera Critters here.

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