dog daze.....

carolina wren

"Relationships of ownership

They whisper in the wings

To those condemned to act accordingly

And wait for succeeding kings

And i try to harmonize with songs

The lonesome sparrow sings

There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden."

-- bob dylan

yes friends, the mighty/jaunty carolina wren takes center stage again.......so soon, y'know, since its last appearance only a few posts ago.............btw, i'm almost positive that the attached photo came from beth erwin, curator up at kalorama nature preserve up on the macon ridge north of monroe...........more on the wren, and on the "songs the lonesome sparrow sings" later......................................................................

     i'm not sure exactly when the "dog days of summer" kicks in..........late august maybe?.........story goes that they were so-named by the romans or greeks because one of the Canis (major? minor?) constellations dominates the sky during that period..............................being a southern man, i more get an image of dogs lazing on a front porch, immobilized for hours due to the intense heat.......................................anyway, i'm saying the dog daze are definitely here in south louisiana..............i was in new orleans two days ago, when this most recent heat wave kicked in.........standing still outdoors at noon was actually comfortable, as the wind was out of the dry west-northwest.............but as soon as you started walking, dude, the sweat poured.................................................ah, summer in new orleans........there, not only to the dogs go immobile, so do the humans...........the locals, anyway.............the tourists just cheerfully plow thru it, sunglasses, hangovers, whacky shirts & skirts.....................

     here at home in north lafayette parish i awoke late............like 8:30 late.............stepped out on the back porch as was immediately confronted with a brand-new wren song that went, no joke, "Span-i-ard Span-i-ard Span-i-ard!"................carolina wrens, you understand, possess a formidable repetoire; not up there with the mockingbird or starling or anything, but let's just go with notably impressive.

     the typical/default carolina wren chant goes like, "Tea-KettleTea-KettleTea-Kettle," and, slightly less frequently, its isotope, or mirror image, "Kettle-TeaKettle-TeaKettle-Tea!" which has a cool, rolling quality..........and then there are 2-3 additional chants that carolina wrens utter on a less frequent basis...............and lastly, there is my favorite, a plaintive, almost-somber, and somehow nostalgic -- aw.......let's just go with lonesome --  "pee-Doo pee-Doo pee-Doo" most often uttered in response to the first cool breezes in late summer..........fact i heard one doing it this morning in response to the "false cool" west-northwest breezes rolling around the top of a stout tropical high pressure dome centered to our immediate southwest..........................................................................

     and then there are the mid-to-late-summer "silly" songs that come out of the mouths of young wrens, and other birds as well............i think that's where this morning's  "Span-i-ard" thing came from.........these "silly"  songs probably represent 1) young birds hopping along the song learning curve, or 2) young birds simply having fun -- being young birds.................or both................or neither.....................................................

     that's the thing about humans trying to know stuff..........the more we know about anything, the more we realize we don't know........to the point, over time, where our knowledge seems "silly"........you know? 

     i've read a number of books about bird song........over the past several years friends have passed along a couple of really good ones.........there's one by donald kroodsma, an ornithologist who's dedicated his entire career to bird song....................his book, 'the singing life of birds,'  is very educational and pretty entertaining........his piece on the song of the winter wren, owner of a song so formidable that the ojibway named the bird, Ka-wa-miti-go-shi-que-na-go-mooch, is really good.

     then there's 'why birds sing,' by philosophy professor and pretty good jazz musician, david rothenberg, who got strung-out on bird song during "jamming" visits he and another musician repeatedly made to an aviary at a pennsylvania zoo...........right, they brought along their instruments and jammed away with the birds.....

   over time rothenberg traveled widely, chasing the most legendary avian songsters on the planet......his book is quite funny and (duh) pretty philosophical.......and musical too.....................

     kroodsma pushes forth numerous science-based theories that are indeed fascinating to consider, whereas rothenberg does as well, but more often from an edgier, "but-what-do-we-really-know?" perspective, bordering on sardonically funny...one of my favorite parts is where he considers the sheer musical inspiration of bird songs, goes into the science of the bird larnyx and how it differs from that of humans, and concludes that human attempts at mimicking even simpler bird songs generally moves along quite rapidly from folly to ridiculous to absurd............

     most of you i'm sure have seen the annual winners of a national bird-call competition on late night television shows.......even though they nail the songs (often it takes two people to render proper expression to a single bird song), they look - yes - absurd doing it. that's where the comedy comes in, you understand................and, thus dylan's, "i try to harmonize with songs the lonesome sparrow sings".......

      rothenberg ultimately answers the question, 'why birds sing?' with a meta-philosophical, 'because they can'...............which i really like..................in a way.........i guess in a philosphical or even spiritual sort of way...............................................yet there's that nagging nagging nagging 'why?' that follows me around like a plague..............it won't desist. i'm stuck in it.........so i try my best to harmonize the songs the lonesome sparrow sings................................hey, once again, dylan addresses these blues the best, with devastatingly accurate perspective (from 'tombstone blues'):

          "Where Ma Raney and Beethoven once unwrapped their bed roll

Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole

And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul

To the old folks home and the college.

I wish I could write you a melody so plain

That could hold you dear lady from going insane

That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain

Of your useless and pointless knowledge."

hmmmmmm......................yeah.......................................

     by now (11:50a.m.) the wren has fallen silent outside..........the heat of the day is beginning to bear down.......taking the wren's place is a young white-eyed vireo, practicing his complex-but-mechanical, literally churned-out, "CHIPfelloffthewhiteoak" song; a song which, as an adult, he'll whip out incessantly -- approaching ad nauseum, really -- through the hottest heat of the day..................in this way, white-eyed vireos become just as mesmerizing as an early-morning/late-evening  cicada chorus.............................................

     both kroodsma and rothenberg note that in some kinds of birds, the song must be learned by the youngster by listening to adult birds, whereas with others, the song is so hard-wired into their chromosomes that they are born knowing it.......................................................

unh...............................................................................WHY? 

    

    

. . . for the climes, they are a-changin' . . .

          yeah, blog post titles are getting cheesier by the day........what can i say?........hope it's at least a little more exotic than, say, cheddar or american or swiss.............ultimately, however, i think this one's fitting....we'd better start swimming or we'll sink like a stone......................................................

     you know what prompted this post? the local weather guys; and in particular the two younger guys (one on each of lafayette's 2 big stations)...........as this summer wears on, they conclude on just about every weather airing: "well, that's just south louisiana summer weather for you.....heat and humidity....."

     having spent most of 50+ years living here, my conclusion re: present-day summer weather is different from theirs...........what we're seeing/feeling here in summer 2010 is not at all "typical," for our region; nor have any of the past 12 summers been "typical".

     here in south-central louisiana, our typical summer climatic picture most often began (like beginning in late may/early june) with a dominating, temperate high-pressure dome centered somewhere around colorado or wyoming, and another way east, centered around bermuda...............winds move clockwise around high pressure domes, thus south louisiana was a battle-ground between drier northerly breezes coming off the continental dome, and wetter southerly breezes coming off the bermuda high...........most often, this pattern would result in an isolated to scattered thunderstorm pattern each afternoon, where hotter/wetter air came up north out of the gulf (the "seabreeze effect"), condensing into enormous clouds as it piled on top of the gentler, drier breezes coming down from the north..............................

     these days, we are not dominated by a temperate high to our northwest and a temperate/sub-tropical high to our east......................................we are instead dominated by a massive, squishy, tropical high to our south.........all summer long, this tropical high pressure dome expands and contracts, sometimes (as it is now) bulldozing its northern edge all the way up into the midwestern u.s.; sometimes only as far north as the mid-south; sometimes only as far north as our gulf coast.............the tropical air that it brings is far warmer and wetter than anything we ever got from the "old" bermuda high, often carrying this tropical air far north of louisiana (as it presently is), wreaking havoc at the border where the northbound tropical air meets with the stationery temperate air..................

      often, the north-central gulf coast sits directly under this big tropical high-pressure dome for days or weeks at a time.....................so it's like we're sitting in a pressure-cooker.......the tropical high pressure directly above us stymies vertical cloud formation; so we get clouds, but most of them cannot build up high enough into the cool upper reaches of the atmosphere (say 20,000+ feet) to condense into thunderstorms......more often than not, we just sit here, cooking, whilst storm tracks form well to our north and to our south.........................................

     when we do get rains, more often than not they are tropical rains, gushing down at rates of 1-2" per hour.....and more often than not, these rains are the result of tropical/nearly tropical waves rolling in from the south, "denting" the soft, squishy tropical high-pressure dome above us for a few days at a time, and bringing scattered torrential rains in the process..............and this general pattern is not confined to the summer months only...............last january 12, for example, we went to a john prine concert in new orleans......a low-pressure wave rolled in from the southeast, dropping 5" of rain onto canal street in about 3 hours.......

     in short, this dominating tropical high-pressure dome oscillates north and south on a year round basis; but seems to spend more and more time centered over the gulf of mexico (instead of well to the south of the gulf, back in the day)...........................................

     for us, the result of this northward shift in tropical high-pressure dominance is a corresponding northward shift in general weather pattern, or climate...............i believe that we can actually trace its beginnings to the end of the spring of 1998, when we (the  u.s. gulf coast) fell under a killer-drought...........from may 1998 through october 2000 it didn't rain much here; and average rainfall totals per rainfall episode dropped dramatically as well...............from 1998 through present, we've been getting way more 0.25-0.50" rains; and whenever we get a more substantial  rain, it's usually at or over the 1.5" mark..............bottom line: it don't come like it used to; and when it does come, it comes in buckets.................

     back around 2000 i remember writing that our lafayette weather was more and more resembling that of corpus christi.......hotter, more humid air with longer periods of very little or no rain, punctuated by the occasional frog-strangler..............................................................presently, i stand by that conclusion, as for the past 10 years (with the exception of 2004) this same generalized climatic pattern has endured.................................................the climate has changed, ya'll.................................

          to all who disagree with my assessment, no hard feelings, ok? nevertheless -- and please don't take this personally -- only the malinformed would believe that the billions of tons of carbon-dioxide and other waste gases that we've ADDED to the pre-industrialized global atmosphere -- particularly over the past 60 years (think: in any given moment, how many jet aircraft are taking off, how many coal-fired electrical plants are burning, how many automobiles are running [tens of millions in the u.s. alone are sitting parked at drive-thrus as we speak], lawnmowers?, how much slashing and burning in the tropics, etc etc etc) has not resulted in any appreciable change in our global atmosphere.............................................our (humanity's) waste gas output has climbed through the roof........................with no apparent effect in our global atmosphere?

     besides my relatively haphazard conclusions based on local rainfall amounts and intensities alone (admittedly shaky ground to be making such statements; but hey, i'm pretty sure i'm a weather savant....), some of us have also noticed a northerly shift in the distribution ranges of a number of tropical/sub-tropical animals.......... over the past 10-20 years around lafayette we've watched white-winged dove, inca dove, brown widow spider, and rio grande chirping frog all establishing permanent homes here...........in new orleans, add greenhouse frog and cuban anole to the list.....................

     are we in some pathologic state of denial or what?

     the climes are indeed changing...................................................and allow me to end with some real dylan:

     "Praise be to Nero's Neptune

The Titanic sails at dawn

and everybody's shouting

'Which Side Are You On?' "

  (--from 'Desolation Row')

summer lumbers

top: kentucky warbler, bottom: blue-gray gnatcatcher; both pics courtesy dave patton

     "....but ask the beasts, and they will teach you;

the birds of the air, and they will tell you;

or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;

and the fish of the sea will declare to you."

-- Job 12:7

     not surprisingly, the "heat of the summer" arrives each year with simultaneous signs thereof from the local plants and animals. wildlife scientists refer to such signs as "phenomena," a term which illicits a chuckle....i mean, these "signs" amount to nothing more than living creatures doing what they do, you know? again, dylan's sardonic, 'ballad of a thin man" plays in my head:

"....you've been with the professors, and they all like your looks.

among great lawyers, you've discussed lepers and crooks.

you've been through all of f. scott fitzgerald's books:

you're very well-read, it's well known.

and you know something's happening

but you don't know what it is

do you, mr. jones....."

     but i digress......................................so........... summer really begins to bear down on us at about the same time as local birds exhibit the "phenomenon" known as "post-breeding dispersal" whereby they move off of their hallowed, oh-so-carefully-chosen nesting territories, and out into the Big World.....the world of adventure.........of reward and punishment..........of new sights, sounds, tastes........

     at our place in the woods of northeastern lafayette parish, the phenomenon usually announces itself with the  sudden presence of individual birds that don't nest at our place.....chief among this group is the blue-gray gnatchatcher, a tiny puff of a bird.....probably doesn't weigh as much as a dime.....looks like a micro version of a mockingbird; sounds like a micro version of a blue jay ("nyay! nyay!").......................during the late morning of this past monday (19 july) -- just when everything was slipping into its summer survival-induced mid-day slumber -- the first blue-gray gnatcatcher of the summer lit in the double-blush altheae tree just off of our back porch.............lydia and were sitting there in the protective shade of the north side of the house. "nyay! nyay!," it hollered, busy in its perpetual hunt for gnats & such................occasionally it jumped up into the air, snagging invisible flying insects with loud SNAPs of its needle-like bill..............................

     a couple of days later i noticed that our own nesting kentucky warblers had departed........slipped away, really, as they don't exactly announce their departure to the world at large.....but i could tell they were gone, more by the sudden absence of the male's rolling, "churrychurrychurry" song, which he pretty much constantly utters from the thicket just across the coulee from our backyard..........ditto for the local prothonotary warblers a few days later...............................zip...............................out of nowhere, they're suddenly gone.................................................................the strange thing about the prothonotaries is that they actually come back for a brief visit (usually around mid-august) before departing for good to their winter homes way down south.

     with wading birds (herons, egrets, ibises, etc.), post-breeding dispersal occurs on a much larger scale, with individuals wandering far to the north of their breeding grounds.......each year, we hear enthusiastic reports of a white ibis being seen up in northern ohio or even new york.......ah yes......the thrill of knowing birds.....................................no matter how many years we watche them, ultimately we know just enough about them to keep us suspended in a constant state of  amazement.......which ain't a bad place to be, ya'll.

a view from lakeview

this has nothing to do with the topic, but i thought ya'll might enjoy it....

(i took the photo either in central illinois or possibly somewhere in kansas)

.......no, not lakview park near eunice (maybe i can do a report from there in the future), but the lakeview neighborhood in new orleans......................................my sister and her family, including our mom, just moved BACK there (i try not to judge...just look on it as an interesting socio-cultural phenomenon), and made re-entry only 3 weeks ago.....then they immediately headed out to germany for their son's marching band exchange student thing.........so i volunteered/was coerced to hang out with mamma at their lakeview house, right off of canal blvd., about 6 blocks south of the ponchartrain lakefront.

as i  am -- and most all of my neurotically-obsessive birding friends are -- wont to do, as soon as i arrived (28 june)  i immediately began keeping a bird species observation list. 

     basically my only vantage point was from a little east/southeast-facing, covered side-stoop on the east side of the house, giving me not much more than a 90-degree view, with only a tiny patch of horizon involved -- probably 25-degrees or so -- looking southeast toward gentilly.

.....as with any bird-malaised person, the limited view caused me no nevermind........i immediately began hearing 'em.....ah-huh.....starling.....blue jay.....house sparrow......yes, there were birds here, and by golly they would be counted and duly recorded.

     for those of you not in the know, the lakeview community in new orleans was built on swamp/marsh land, just south of the southern shore of lake ponchartrain. due to the ever-drying/compacting muck below, people have to constantly add sand around the foundations of their homes, further exacerbating the sinking below......as one might imagine, most of the side streets have become, uh, heavily affected in the process. go anywhere you want in the world: there ain't no streets like lakeview streets, ya'll. 

 in the fall of 2005, huricanne katrina reminded lakeview of how far below sea-level it was, as lake ponchartrain busted through the levees and found its level about 8-10' up the sides of the residents' homes.  

     lakeview is presently about 60% re-occupied, and looks pretty nice....they're keeping up the neutral grounds there on harrison ave., canal blvd, and robert e. lee.....there are numerous empty lots on each block, all being mowed..........so the result is more widely-spaced houses....separated by big swaths of green. but there are few relatively-mature trees.....and a pretty decent smattering of small trees and large shrubs.........................wishful thinking: should the empty lots somehow remain empty -- and shade trees would be planted on them, lakeview would be transformed into an extra-fine community, with a very nice albeit partial urban canopy. . . just day-dreamin'........

     thanks to my little view of the skies, the bird list came along pretty quickly.....a single dawn and a single dusk watch yielded six species of herons and egrets, including the one with the pre-historic voice -- the yellow-crowned night heron (aka, "grosbek" pron. grow-BECK)....uttering a single "QUAWRK!!" as it finds or departs from its roost during each dawn and dusk.

     for the first 10 days, the weather was downright squally....and tropically-so......accompained by a steady southeastery wind, rains of various durations and intensities trained over us, punctuated by (mercifully) short bursts of unmitigated sunshine.......ouch!.....go 'way sun!...............................sun that could turn my t-shirt sopping wet in a matter of minutes......................but the squalls brought in cool birds, like a couple of brown pelicans, numerous laughing gulls, gull-billed terns, a pair of mississippi kites, and my "best bird of the watch," a (calling) pair of lesser yellowlegs (pretty uncommon in la. in late june), headed north toward the lake.

lesser yellowlegs (photo perhaps by dave patton)

     between bouts of grocery shopping, grass mowing, and seeing about mom (we had some great conversations about her as a little girl growing up in the '20s & 30s in a pure sicilian community just behind the mississippi river levee in st. bernard parish) i faithfully took my post on the side-stoop....and the bird list mounted......doves and chimney swifts, downy woodpecker, house finch, purple martins in the evenings.......my two other "special" sightings included an adult male cooper's hawk, stealthily perched atop a street light, at 11:30am no less, on nearby canal blvd, two blocks away; and a pair of great-crested flycatchers, nesting in a broken down pecan tree 150' catty-corner to the stoop. 

     but the local "trash" birds provided much entertainment as well........like the young starling that uttered imitations of green-tree frog calls from up on the utility line each post-dawn....often there was an adult present as well, registering vocal disdain to the youngster's selection..........for his part, the local mocker slept in, refusing to mount the electrical grid until about 7:30am each day.......the master singer needs his rest........

     eschewing mimicry until the last, he'd typically launch into a long session of varied and lovely originals, but then ending each session with the flat, nasally, whining, "Nyaaah Nyaah" call of the infamous eurasian collared dove.....................one of the mocker's foraging routines was equally interesting in that it was so heavily urban-adapted: creeping lizard-like around the foundations of houses, occasionally hopping up to window-sills or the 5'-elevated air-conditioner stands so popular in lakeview these days........................................   

black cherry blues

black cherry fruits (Prunus serotina)

     yeah, most of ya'll have probably stumbled upon this title ('black cherry blues') somewhere else....oh yeah! that early j.l. burke book...........anyway, this post, as you will read, is very literally about the

 black cherry blues.

     judge rick michot -- let's call him, 'the judicial naturalist' -- called me a couple of weeks ago to report a total absence of black cherry fruits on the five trees at his place................each year, he explained, he looked forward to tasting the fruits as he roamed around his property.............................this year, though -- for the first time ever in his memory -- no fruits..........................he asked me if i had any trees around my place; and did i notice whether or not they had made fruit this year.

     black cherry is a common native tree in these parts, particularly mixed in with pecans and oaks along the old mississippi river escarpment forests (the "coteau ridge" and "terrace") as well as along the riparian zone of the present day teche and vermilion bayous........in urban settings, you often see it relugated with other "trash trees" to fence rows and abandoned lots...........black cherry begins blooming early each spring.....like late february/early march.............fruiting begins around april, and fruit maturation is staggered out from april - june or even july.........that way, it's not an "all or nothing" situation for the many MANY birds and mammals that heavily rely on black cherry fruits as a main source for spring/early summer carbs............note that very few other native plants (mayhaw and red mulberry are the only other two species that come to mind) produce fruits at that time of year...................

     between 1994-98 a couple of dozen of us kept track of wild bird/fruit interactions across the state...eventually i compiled all of this observational data into a paper that was published in the journal of louisiana ornithology............referring to that paper, under "black cherry," we listed 14 species of birds observed consuming black cherry fruits in louisiana between '94-'98..........i don't remember them species-for-species right now, but i do remember that EVERY native woodpecker species in louisiana was observed to use black cherry fruits.........and then others such as summer tanager, cardinal, baltimore oriole, etc.

     one of the most prominent of the many "bird memories" burned into my brain involved a family of pileated woodpeckers (you know -- the "woody-woodpecker" looking one, a big ol' crow-sized woodpecker with a red topknot) descended into a fairly large black cherry tree located in the campground area of acadiana park in lafayette......2 adults and 2 very young fledglings -- probably no more than a month old -- the adults (the parents no doubt...) were teaching the young about black cherries..............as i watched them learn to feed, a group of crows barged in, raising 7 kinds of hell with the woodpecker family: swooping on them and screaming loudly..............the woodpecker parents didn't flinch.....indeed, didn't even pay the crows any mind whatsoever......and so the two youngsters didn't either.........they just went about their business feasting on black cherries......................like kids with ice-cream cones, you know?

     many of us boomer locals remember picking black cherries and helping to make 'cherry bounce' a sort of after-supper cordial that was manufactured throughout south louisiana back in the day.......it was a long process.........first, you had to pick cherries; and tiny as they are, it takes a whole lotta pickin' in order to get enough for the bounce........................at our house, we'd pick about 3-4 gallons of cherries, wash them real well, drain them, and put them in a big crock.......mom would add just the right amount of water and rock candy (chunky hunks of sugar........remember? looked like hailstones or something)..........then we'd place a big dinner plate over the whole mess and weight it down.........finally, we'd cover the crock with several layers of cheese cloth and let it set there in the corner of the kitchen for several months (like, june-oct).....

     in the fall, mom would simply strain the mix through the cheese cloth, and add a quart of bourbon. that's it. i guess it made about 4 quarts of cherry bounce, in all.............the parish priest would always get one of them (he probably had a whole closet-full, because a lot of people made it....), and then probably an uncle and aunt, and then we kept one for our family.............it was a thanksgiving-christmas sort of drink...........

     anyway, after talking with rick, i finally did check the cherry trees around our place this past month.........nada..............wow................this is the FIRST year ever that i've noted no fruit on the local black cherry trees..................bummer for all of us human fans; devastating for the birds and mammals that depend on them.........................................

     if you think that life has handed you more than your share of......'challenges,' let's say.......try living the life of a bird or a possum; particularly in this day and age, when no natural area is sacred.....all are subject to the next emotionally-wounded whim of the next human 'master' of the place....................

     as days go by, my admiration and respect for all wildlings grows...........................how 'bout yours?