Bouncing Foxes

My friend Carolyn sent this from Minnesota.

Then You Shake It To The Left

Just follow the easy steps

Listen to the music playing in your head...

And do the Kinglet Boogie!

Sunrise

When we laid out the foundation of our house we used a compass to get the correct orientation for passive solar gain. Oddly, the compass simply wouldn't work on the west end of the house. We figured it was because of the nearby heavy metal machinery and used the direction for south that the compass showed on the east wall. It was wrong by 13 degrees. It turns out that this ridge has large iron deposits and was surface mined heavily at one point in time. When we laid out the driveway we cut into one of the iron seams. One happy consequence of this is that the winter solstice sunrise comes directly and exactly through this window.

I should mention that this window was a work by the talented artist, Glenna Alderson, working in stained glass for this piece. It is a treasured gift.

Today's Walk

After 20 years here I see new things every day. This is a "clamber" up the steep side of Walden Ridge staying on our property. I followed deer trails and decided that whitetail deer must be closely related to mountain goats. The trails went up some fairly impressive pitches and are well used this time of year. The round leaf catchfly in bloom was a surprise, although the leaves on this one are not even close to round. The humidity is rather high even with the low temperature so the smoky mountains don't show up in the shot looking over Jackie's farm.

Scariest Canoeing Video Ever

Today's Walk at Whites Creek

Every winter we get ice and it is different every year. I never tire of staring into some of the formations.

Brown Creeper...Got Him!

Finally got a rough shot through the window of a brown creeper at the suet feeder. These hyperactive little birds fascinate me but they sure don't sit still long enough to get much of a picture. 

Swinging

Pine siskins and goldfinches swinging on the thistle feeder.

This pleases me.

Firefox cam, live 24/7 at the Knoxville zoo.

Now if we can only get the Darter Cam adopted at Conservation Fisheries.
(Warning! Graphic fish sex may occur)

At the Feeders

The Magic Log is bringing in the usual suspects and a couple of favorites that didn't come by last year. Once again the red breasted nuthatches are hanging around. I'll work on getting a better shot but these guys are odd in that they will take off if they see movement within the house but will land a few feet away if you are replenishing the empty feeder. 

We have a very shy brown creeper and the odd mystery warbler I'll try to get pictures of as well. Over at the sunflower seeds the doves work very hard to get through the spikes that are intended to keep them out so that the smaller birds can feed. I keep thinking about the dove and rice dishes we used to have as a child.

Purple finch

Titmouse flashing his crest.

And I need some help with this little guy. Who is up on their winter warblers? Is it a Kinglet?

Piggies

The adults were solid black except for one silver tipped old lady. I expect full blooded European boars to be black, even as babies. These may have some domestic hog in their lineage which is likely, or  I could be mistaken, which is somewhat less likely but known to happen on rare occasions.

We saw these beasties yesterday on a neighboring farm. They are definitely not completely wild.

(Great?) Gramma Hog

Tale of Two Thanksgiving Birds

OK, Three if you count the parrot.

We had five eagles playing above the house most of the day. They were loving the wind direction and apparently have a carcass close by to feast on. They aren't having to spend any time hunting at the moment, so they can play fight and talk to each other starting very early in the morning. 

Where I've Been For the Last Few Days

Just another southern blackwater river flowing through a swamp with owls, turkeys, otters, and near as we can figure it, a bear. 

This is the Black River near Kingstree, SC. We were stopped at one of the bridges over it and looking at our maps to figure out where we should put in, when a guy in a pickup stopped on the road and rolled down his window. That is either a good sign or a bad sign on trips like this. Mr. Kirby wanted to know if we would like him to open the gate so we could get closer to the river. "I just close it 'cause some people trash it out so bad," he told us. I know exactly what you mean. Mr. Kirby.

The beavers were apparently mad at us for camping in their dining hall the first night. It sounded like they were throwing refrigerators into the water for most of the first half of the night. I've never encountered that kind of sustained tail slapping. Usually it's one big "pow-ka-thunk" and they are gone.

We misread the guide book, which turns out to be somewhat suspect anyway, and set our shuttle vehicle 8 miles closer than we intended but we still covered about 30 miles in three days and two nights, a pretty laid back trip for us.

More pictures later.

The canoe I used is called a Sojourn. It's a solo touring boat that is the perfect choice for this kind of paddling  with a load of gear. I've had it for ten years and finally got it out on a trip worthy of its style.

Yeah, well...You put up tarp lines your way and we'll put up tarp lines our way. We did scare the rain off and an 80% chance of thunder storms turned into a ten minute shower under the lunch tarp. We don't usually take ultralight trips. All of us have done that and now prefer to camp in style with fine dining and appropriate spirits. This trip was sponsored by LaPhroig Scotch, a 23 year old rum, and some other delicacies. I think we should write the culinary guide to canoeing in the South.

Should There Be a Hunting Season for Sandhill Cranes in Tennessee?

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I couldn't do it unless I was starving and had  run out of nuts, berries, twigs, and insects.

From Today's Walk

As leaves drop into the water in the fall, we see it turn a golden color from the leaf tannin. 

And then we wait for the rain to come.

Caught these mosquito-like midges(?) working over the last few fall flowers. I have never noticed these insects before. Anybody know what they are?

Larry's Rod (Golden)

One of the cool things about living in a rare place on this planet is learning about the rare things that live here. We have several plants that are rare, threatened, or even endangered that call Whites Creek home. We also have a goldenrod that acts as a ground cover and then sends its bloom stalk up on a rhizome instead of coming out of the center of the basal rosette like most of them do. Goldenrods are blooming and going to seed right now and nobody is sneezing because of them. They don't cause allergies, in spite of all you were told growing up.  I had the pleasure today of going out to collect  specimens of our local goldenrod so that it can be sent around to other botanists for evaluation. It appears that ours is undescribed to science. That will change soon. 

Dr. Larry Pounds is my go-to guy for plants. He has led several field trips in the gorge and is a patient teacher. He is also the person who identified the unusual nature of this goldenrod and has located several other rare plants that live here. It was fun to dig in the dirt and follow the underground connection from plant to plant as we realized that a given patch of goldenrod is more than likely just one plant and its offshoots.

Dr. Pounds examines a specimen he is about to put in the press for preservation. A previous specimen sent to U. T. was lost. We now have several new ones for evaluation by other botanists.

This is one patch we sampled in its ground cover phase. It is a beautiful plant even without the blooms. I'll keep you posted on the process and whether it is determined that this is a new species or a variant of one already described.  

It's Starting

10-7-10

Joe and Betty's oldest boy is now 61 years old as of today at 10:45 a.m. which is the time listed on my birth certificate. It also list my father Joe's profession as "Butcher". Mother Betty was 19 at that moment and is listed as a housewife. That was about 61% of a century ago and gravity is working much more fiercely on my body. I am now locked in mortal combat with gravity.

So in the epic battle for truth, justice, and the American waistline I have started riding a road bicycle. I like it.

For my 61st I decided to do something hard (for me) and ride from the Tennessee Valley to the top of Mt. Roosevelt on the Cumberland Plateau. That sounds more epic than it is since our yard goes from the Tennessee Valley up to the Cumberland Plateau  but it is still an 9 mile ride if you go by pavement with 1200 feet of vertical, half of which is in the last mile or so. The pavement at the end of our driveway is at 800 feet. The Roosevelt Mountain Fire Tower is at 2000 feet. Here's the Google Maps Route. For some reason the Google wouldn't let me embed it. Point A is the end of our driveway in case any of you decide to come by. Point B is the Fire Tower. If you note the embayment and main lake on the right that is the Tennessee River backed up into Watts Bar Lake. You can see the embayment and the Tennessee river main channel in the distance in this picture. The picnic platforms look to be old CCC projects made of cut sandstone. In case you've ever heard of Crab Orchard Stone, it comes from a little way past the the back side of this mountain.

So that picture is taken from Mt Roosevelt looking across the Tennessee Valley to the Smoky Mountains in the distance. On a clear day, of which there aren't that many any more, you feel like you can reach out and touch North Carolina. My bike is resting while I take pictures. It's tired.

Here's the old fire tower which they have fenced off with razor wire. I think it would be an awesome project for Tennessee to restore this old relic. I've been up it and the view is 360 degree fantastic. People would pay.

This is the view looking northeast toward the Cumberland Mountains. Sorry about that old guy getting in the way. Somebody's undying love for somebody else has been marked through on the rail behind him but you can't see that. Apparently "will love...forever" doesn't mean forever.

 Just so you know...it is much easier on the thigh muscles to ride a bike down 1200 feet than going the other way. The only thing that hurt going down was my hands from the death grip on the brake levers.

First Winter Grosbeak

And Now for Somewhere Different

After a pleasant paddle beside the spectacular cliffs of the French Broad River here's our camp on the riverside near Hot Springs, NC with good friends. We walked to the mineral hot springs and then to a rowdy supper at the Iron Horse restaurant the old rail station. 

On the way home Sunday we took the easy walk up to Max Patch bald and caught the hawk migration as the broad wing hawks head to South America and the Monarchs, which were also gliding by, head toward Guatemala. The hazy day made for poor scenery shots but we did notice some oddities closer at hand.

I hope someone out there can identify this beastie for us.

See! We do leave Whites Creek Gorge from time to time. More pictures later on.