Sometimes, I just have to wonder.  The butterfly and bird- frequented puddle at the ‘quarry’ down the road, which I mentioned in this post, is obviously a spring-fed puddle.  It’s there year round, rain or not.  There are springs and hidden streams very near – on a quiet day you can hear them bubbling under the rocks.  The cave opening in the quarry wall has enlarged itself many times over due to running water.  This puddle is not in anyone’s driveway, not where it can interfere with the comings and goings of Man.  It IS a puddle where I’ve spent literally hours, observing literally hundreds of butterflies and birds around it and in it,  drinking and bathing.

Well – the highway dept. came through a few weeks ago and patched the potholes in the road, even repaving a section that was particularly bad.  Very nice.  But did they have to put that last bit of leftover blacktop in this spring-fed puddle?  Really?

Tarred puddle

Of course, it may not matter in the long run that the puddle is now contaminated with tar.  Last spring, the power company came through and cleared and cut the vegetation under the power lines.  Understood – this is a necessary thing, and it keeps my power on during a storm.  But, they did this in May and June, at the height of the breeding season.  I can’t even imagine how many bird nests and young were destroyed.  They also trimmed the lines along the road just down from the spring, which were thick with milkweed, butterfly weed, and black-eyed Susans.  Not one plant survived to bloom last summer, and there weren’t many butterflies to be seen either.  One can only hope that the plants will recover and bloom this summer.

And this, mind you, takes place in a national forest.

I do think I will pay the ranger station a visit….

They’ve built a beautiful memorial in Liberty Park, called the Empty Sky Memorial.  It was dedicated on Sept. 11, 2011.  You can read more about this park here.  The two walls are as long as the Towers were wide and direct the visitor to a view of Ground Zero, just across the water and a little more than a mile away.  The names of NJ residents lost on 9-11 are inscribed on the walls.  The Freedom Tower is filling the empty space where the Towers once stood.

Under Construction - the Freedom Tower

Old train station

The old train station is still there, and I realized my father probably came right through here after Ellis Island.  We drove around to the other side of the park and then walked again, for a closer view of  Liberty  and Ellis Islands.  From this vantage point we were behind the Lady, but that didn’t matter.  I couldn’t help but think of my father, my grandmother, my aunt and uncles who came to America in the early 1920s, passing through this place – and tried to imagine what they were thinking and feeling.

Statue of Liberty

Ellis Island

I’m sort of ashamed that it’s taken me this long to get this close, especially having grown and spending most of my life in NJ. I suppose, living a little over 50 miles away, it was either too far, or we just never found the time.  Or,  quite possibly, we just took it all for granted.

But I think getting closer to it, seeing it in person – is something every American should  do.  You’ll understand why when you do it.

January Dandelion

This is so wrong – but so nice.  I dislike winter  and so there is no complaining coming from me about this unusual weather.  But I do wonder about the consequences.  For instance, will we have enough water this spring – without the snowmelt?  I don’t pretend to know all of the effects this non-winter may have on the environment,  but I’m certain there will some side effects.  I’m guessing we’re going to have a heavy bug season this spring and summer.

January Daffodils

My daffodils should be hibernating in the dirt under last fall’s leaf litter, instead of pushing up through, about ready to bloom.  It’s a little weird.  But nice.

This is Milo (the kitten in this post). What can I say?  He’s a little strange….but very adaptable.  And yes, he does have a nice, comfortable bed.

It also seems that I just wrote last year’s ditty about starting to blog again, and here I am , having those same thoughts.  I’m not going to talk about it – we’ll just see how it goes.

I hope you all have a peaceful, prosperous, healthy and safe 2012.

I don’t want a poor mutilated mouse in the bedroom.  So I get up and walk around the edge of the bed to see what’s so interesting and … SNAKE!  The freakin’ cats are toying with a live, slitherin’ snake!

Photo Courtesy LearnNC site; and The Beach Ranch Post, Texas

Good thing I’m the naturalist-type and not a screamer.  Closer inspection revealed it was a harmless ring-necked snake, but since my naturalist tendencies end at picking up snakes, I opted for the bathroom trash can and a wooden spatula.  Of course, while I was fetching the utensils of release, Claudia chased the thing under the bed, which then required moving furniture around at midnight to find it.  I was at last able to scoop the snake into the can and take it outside, where I released it into the cover of the rose bushes.  It seemed grateful.

No pictures of course – never even crossed my mind at that hour, but in searching for a photo with permission to use, I found this one on the Learn NC website, which actually looked like a pretty cool site and I’ll have to check it out another time.  The snake in the photo may not be the exact type of ring neck, but you get the idea.

Anyway, I officially dislike cats now – at least for a while.  Except for maybe kittens.

Anyway, this area has become one of my favorite spots. There’s always a puddle or two, which attracts birds and butterflies, and it is surrounded on all sides by woods.  Last summer literally hundreds of butterflies gathered in the quarry, supposedly gleaning minerals from the ground. Among the most common that I see there are these red spotted purple butterflies (which are actually orange-spotted and blue).

It’s also one of only a few places in this large county where the delicate wildflower known as glade cress blooms in March and April.  I learned this from the same state herpetologist that told me about the horsehair worms.

I’d never noticed the glade cress before – maybe because I wasn’t there in March or early April, spending most of my time banding..or maybe because I wasn’t paying attention.  I thought about the not paying attention part, and decided on a little experiment.  I chose my own woodsy backyard as the spot, sat on my back steps with coffee and hand, and took inventory of what plants were growing there.  Dogwoods, redbuds, the willow and beech trees, Virginia creeper, poison ivy….but what is that?  And that?  And that?

It took mere seconds for me to realize that I don’t know the identity of most of the wild plants growing in my own back yard, and so my personal challenge is to actively become familiar with my own surroundings, in addition to exploring other areas of this magnificent forest, of course.

We’ll see how I do…

Basically, “they” are seeding our atmosphere with aluminum and barium particles, among other things.  It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out that can not be a good thing.

Everyone knows that high-flying jets sometimes leave contrails – those billowy white cloud lines – but contrails disperse quickly and disappear.  Chemtrails are usually laid in a grid, and don’t disappear.  Instead they slowly spread and cover a blue sky with a cloudy haze.

Why would “they” do this?  Some theories say it’s to stop global warming.  Others say it’s to control weather patterns.  Others say “they” are trying to eventually kill us off and reduce the population.  I don’t know why, but I know I don’t like what I saw and what I’m hearing about this.  Don’t take my word for it, research it for yourself.  As with everything, there are some weird theories and sites on this, but here are a couple to get you started.  Of course if you just Google ‘chem trails’ that will work too.

Chemtrail Central

Aircrap.org

I’m still researching too, but I do think that something is definitely rotten in the sky.

A few years ago (2003, I think) when I first banded in KY, my state permit fee was $25.  Imagine my surprise last year when I applied for the permit again after being away for several years – and the permit fee was $250.00.  Now, technically, according to the KY regulations, the fee applied to banders who were receiving renumeration for banding, i.e. through a university or museum etc.  If the bander was banding for educational purposes, there was no fee for the state permit.  I didn’t fit into either category (like most banders, I am an independent, volunteer bander operating a small station).  After several emails and questions about regulations, the powers that be decided I had to go ahead and pay the $250 fee if I wanted to band birds in KY.

Since I had already ordered nets, bands, and obtained permission from the landowner of my site, and since I had some extra funds laying around, I paid the fee last year.

This year, KY has reduced its state permit fee to $100 – but it is still $75-100 more than most states.  This year, I don’t have a lot of extra cash laying around, and  I have to think about the long-term cost of this, year after year.  Just not feasible for me.  It becomes a matter of principle too – I don’t shop at stores that over-charge for products, so why should I have to do it here?  At some point you have to just say no more.

SO – no, there won’t be any more banding unless I win the lottery (in which case,  I probably would set this particular principle aside haha), or KY does away with  or reduces the state permit fee to $25.

It’s a shame really – this was a promising site and much good data could have come from this research, but oh well.  I will continue to observe and monitor and report.  It’s a little discouraging.  But my federal permit is good for years yet, and so I’ll just tuck the nets away, store my equipment, and wait and see.  The fee was reduced this year, so maybe it will change again in the future.

Odd.  I’d never seen any snake quite so small, so I of course started researching.  The closest I found were called thread snakes, but all the photos of them on the net were so much larger.  I emailed this photo to the  KY Dept. of Fish & Wildlife Info Center, which forwarded my inquiry to Herpetologist John M.

John kindly filled me in on these weird critters – not snakes at all but a parasite called a horsehair worm. These worms begin life in the bodies of crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, roaches and similar insects.  When they reach the adult stage of development they break out of the host body to live in damp soil or shallow water.  The adult worms reproduce, laying eggs that are in turn eaten by the cricket or beetle, thus repeating the cycle.  The amazing thing is that the worm is able to force the host insect to go to water before it dies, so that the adult worm has the suitable habitat to live and reproduce.

Apparently they got their name because the folks who first encountered them thought they were horse hairs that fell into the water and turned into snakes or worms.  Really?  Were our ancestors really that dense?

When I saw these worms in our yard I didn’t know about the host insect, but supposedly when you see one there’s probably a dead cricket or grasshopper in the water nearby.  I’ll be on the lookout for this strange little drama unfolding in my yard after the next warm rain…

Oh, and they are completely harmless to humans and animals – good thing, since we have both on our property.