Yep… it’s still raining here. Skywatch with horses
Yep… it’s still raining here. Category Archives: Wanderings
Yep… it’s still raining here. 
Beauty is where you find it
I know, I know… it’s a horse’s a$$, but it’s freckled!
Yes, I’m giddy with having found sunshine and a field full of horses all in the same day.
😉
Another look
A toad’s facial expression doesn’t seem to change much from moment to moment.
😉
Easy for me to say, right? I’m not about to become its next meal.
This pic shows a bit more detail… the three or more warts on the largest dark spots that help to differentiate between the Fowler’s and a plain old American Toad.
There’s also some rubbish in books about the shape of cranial crests and their nearness to the parotoid glands that helps distinguish one toad from another. I know Fowler’s by their call, first. It’s a long, “Waaaaaaaaa” that sounds almost like a baby crying. Not as sweet a sound as the first Peepers of spring, but a welcome sound in the Barrens nonetheless.
Nature stark naked
Every new flower’s my favorite for a while… so bear with me here. Turkey Beard is a characteristic Pine Barrens plant and, according to all my books, quite common and easy to find.
Pfft.
The knowing where to look is key, apparently.
Mostly I just wander on my own when I go there; a precarious thing considering my poor sense of direction and how easily one might get lost among the intersecting sand roads. My always-turn-right strategy has served me well enough so far, but one of these days…
😉
It must be the strange, hard-won beauty of the place 
that captivates and distracts me so… the craggy pines and impenetrable scrub that holds the promise of something new at every visit. I don’t always find something new, of course, some days I just wander aimlessly and get eaten alive by skeeters and deer flies. Or practically freeze to death in the winter. Those things are pretty fun, too, when done in the spirit of exploration.
“There is something grand, charming and desirable in this vaguely despised country… the sand, the pines… it is Nature stark naked.” –Phillip Vickers Fithian, a Revolutionary War chaplain
Captured: A moment
“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” –Victor Borge Photo by Nina.
It had been six months or so, that first night at Smokey’s, since Susan and I had had a chance to catch up, face to face. There was lots to talk about and some to laugh about, too.
Some, who like to tease, might compare her to another, more easily recognized birder-blogger, but I know better. She and I are like opposite sides of the same coin.
I’ve said that before, I know.
We’d toasted to our gathering, had dinner with old and new friends, and then, like the bad kids in the bunch we aspire to be, slipped outside during the evening’s program to laugh together and goof around without any audience. We did that a lot during our couple days together in W. Va.
The tables turned
Consider the cunning necessary for a plant – about the slowest-moving life form on earth – to lure, capture and consume a fast-moving insect.
😉
Sundews set their insect traps well below where their flowers bloom and lure prey by means of a sticky substance secreted by hairs on each of the leaves… it glistens in the sunlight and serves as a beacon to passing insects (and wandering photographers).
I was surprised to find spatulate-leaved sundews, as well as thread-leaved sundews, outside of a bog in the mostly dry sandy soil near the Speedwell entrance to the Franklin Parker Preserve.
“Here is a bloodthirsty little miscreant that lives by reversing the natural order of higher forms of life preying upon lower ones, an anomoly in that the vegetable eats the animal.” –Neltje Blanchan
31
Some favorites from a day spent in the Pine Barrens…
A Fowler’s Toad who was nice enough to let me get right up in his face.
Hold onto your seats! This is a really, really rare plant… Curly Grass Fern… it’s only about an inch tall.
I had company in my wanderings today, and this sweet lady had the patience to puzzle through her wildflower guide with me… we were trying to sort out the difference between Staggerbush and Fetterbush.
Beautiful! Rick Radis found Turkey Beard for us… I’d been looking for this for a couple years… now I know a spot to find it!
A dung ball… sans the accompanying beetles… I scared them off trying to get a better pic of them… very cool, anyway.
31 in my 38 by 39.
Good things and W. Va.
things with feathers, susan and the laugh that breaks free and gets loose, barred owls that talk back, dessert with every meal, curvy busrides, porch swings and the secrets they gently coax out of the dark, breakfast with bats, kathie’s meticulous journaling, mountainsides that leak water and are drenched in wildflowers, the happy sound of laughter late at night, round hay bales and curious cows, a dry set of clothes before dinner, fitting in easily, small brindled dogs, ramps, nina’s quiet smile, the squishy sound of mud underfoot, buttercups in the side yard, the first sweetcorn of the season, ovenbirds that court under a blanket of stars, a bowl of pistachios shared over the day’s photos, ironed-dry jeans, biscuits with everything, cowbell on the fly, people who imitate the drumming of grouse, morrells with scrambled eggs…
Help me to remember more?
From under a rock she appears…
Hi!
I’ve no good excuse for going missing for nearly a week, other than an almost total lack of photographic evidence of what I’ve been up to.
😉
There’s this, though.
A six-spotted tiger beetle that amused me for a couple minutes along a sunny path at Allaire State Park the other day. I only ever see them there… not sure why, exactly. Very pretty, as beetles go.
I’d missed out on any trips to Allaire earlier this Spring because I was in W. Virginia with The Flock. Allaire is a great local spot for warblers in migration and has some nice breeders. Best find was a Prothonotary Warbler. Anyone know if they breed there? Patrick?
I was hoping for Pink Lady Slipper Orchids, but was either too late or too early or too distracted to find any. There were Canada Mayflowers blooming, but those are so tiny and hide out in the underbrush so my pics are especially awful.
I’ll be around to catch up with you all in the next couple days and may finally try to sort through all those pics from New River.
I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day…
Skywatch Friday: Devil’s Courthouse
Devil’s Courthouse from the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Elevation 5720.
Even the vocabulary is unfamiliar to me: ridge, gap, valley, pass, switchback, hollow, notch. There’s been very little in my upbringing to acquaint me with a love for the mountains or the many words used to characterize them. I grew up in another place, with other treasures.
I’ve played in the High Peaks of the Adirondacks as an adult, where instead of sweeping views, one gets mostly strained glances at the sky through bare branches. These mountains are not so jumbled and rough; instead they’re all curves and circles, bulges and dimples and woods that go on forever uninterrupted.
For all that it felt exotic and alien, my spirits were lifted by the visible rush of spring as it crept up the mountainsides and the sweet light of sunset polishing the days. The throaty croak of ravens flying in tandem in a valley below, dark woods shot through with gleaming white dogwood blossoms, tiny hemlock cones and banks of trillium; all spoke to that part of my heart that gasps at such sights.
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