Today's Walk

It was too nice to stay near the house today so we took a little walk. We wound up going along the old coal mining shelf and followed it past where the flat (ish) part ends. There is an old trail cut that is way too steep for any motorized coal hauler so we're thinking this is old enough to be for mules and donkeys. We were surprised to find a mine that went under one of the rock cliffs. It is about 5 feet high and goes further back than I was willing to go without a head lamp.

Yes, that is a bat. "That's an eastern pipistrelle/tricolored bat (Perimyotis subflavus)" reports Dr. Brian Carver of Tennessee Tech. I had no idea such a beastie existed, but I'm proud to have his home in a protected area. This shot gives us a clues as to its name, "tricolored".

We found several new patches of bloodroot. It is now officially spring.

Dealing With Invasive Species

We've been working on trapping this sow for a month now. By getting her when we did we took another dozen pigs out of the loop. They are incredibly destructive and displace other native wildlife. This one went over 300 lbs and was well fed. The bad news is that the game camera shows several more. We are thinking of switching to corral traps so that we can catch several at a time.

Thomas and Martin did the hard work.

Sharp Shinned Hawk

One of the downsides to living in a house with lots of glass is that birds think they can fly through it. After cringing for a number of years as the little beauties crashed and mostly died, I studied on how to stop them. We have spectacular views here but that doesn't give me the right to kill things just so I can see the cliffs from my couch. What I settled on has worked extremely well.

 There are all sorts of commercial coverings for windows that purport to scare birds away from the glass. They are expensive to do a lot of windows. What I did was identify which windows were the worst and hang window screen on the outside of them. The views are only slightly diminished and we've had zero fatalities on the protected windows. Unfortunately the birds will sometimes, though rarely, fly into one of the remaining areas of exposed glass.

 We were sitting at the breakfast table when a very loud thunk startled us. "That's a dead one," I said. Running outside there was a pigeon sized bird lying upside down and motionless on the deck. I picked it up, it was limp and had one eye open and the other closed. Then we saw it was breathing very shallow breaths. We took it to the sunny side of the deck and laid it in a flowerpot as gently as we could so the dogs wouldn't get it. (We are catless here) We thought we were holding a Merlin (Now that I read more, the yellow eye is the giveaway this is a sharp shinned hawk) but that, while it probably wouldn't make it, we should give it every chance. After a half hour there was no change but we left it and went about our morning chores in the yard.

 At some point my son came out and said, "That hawk got up and flew off!" He went a few yards to a limb down below the deck and then flew around the house into a tree. I knew that this doesn't necessarily mean they will live but it gave us hope. Just now, a day later, it flew up to the house and landed in a hickory tree, eying the goldfinches on the feeder. Then it flew strongly away. I covered the offending glass with screen as the hawk lay in the flower pot. It is either a juvenile or a female, I'm not enough of a birder to know. I can't tell you how happy I felt when it landed in the hickory tree just now.

New Year's Eve Eve Morning

Season's Greeting from Conservation Fisheries

One of my favorite organizations has put together a collage of rivers and creeks they have worked in over the last year.

Big Tree

We walked up to this old Hemlock yesterday. There are larger trees out there but this one is pretty big. My woodsman guess-timation has it at just under 100 feet tall with a crown of 54 feet in width. I need to take a 100 foot tape and inclinometer out there to get something more accurate, but I'm pretty close. Been an engineer too long. This one will get the treatment when the adelgids hit it. If(When) we lose all the hemlocks in the gorge it will change everything.

New Pound Dog

No name yet.

Whites Creek Bird

New Wasp

So we keep badminton racquets posted around the decks to help with the over population of carpenter bees, which are actually eating our house. They haven't been that much of a problem lately, which is different. So I was out on the back porch and these blades of grass poking out of a bee hole in the white pine ceiling caught my eye.

Then this beastie wandered into view. Anybody have any idea what it is and if it is actually predating on the bee larvae?

A Long Range Project?

This has me thinking.

Photo from...

The Day Before Palooza

So I invite a few folks out to snorkel and we get kayaking levels. Maybe some folks will want to bring tubes and life jackets.

Here's the blue hole at 11 am Friday.

 Here's what the peace flag and 680 mailbox look like. Get ready to turn right.

30 feet past the mailbox go up there for a couple of hundred yards.

If you miss that turn here's the last one. Turn right and we're up there somewhere.

Fire

Mountain Camellias Are Going Off at Whites Creek

This one is a few hundred yards from our house. It seems to have some disease that is warping the leaves but the flowers are wonderful. This bloom is several centimeters wider than the 6-8cm called for in the yellow stamen variety and closer to the 12 cm called for in the purple stamen varient. See Stewartia ovata.

We found three in bloom and two smaller plants. We tagged them at the request of our botanist friends who want to try propagating them. We'll see. Here's the Tree Trail link.

Signs of the Season

The Dobson fly is the adult helgramite. The elongated jaws don't pack the punch of the larval jaws but they still aren't much fun as I found out. This male was almost 5 inches long. 

Both of these shots are from yesterday evening. 

Hummingbirds love these trumpet vines and fly right inside the flower to feed.

How To Deal With Invasive Animal Species

This wild boar should be ready sometime tonight.

Update: Damn, that was good!

Happy Endangered Species Day!

Friday I got to swim along with some associates who raised and released several bags full of rare and endangered Conasauga Log perch into the birthplace of their ancestors, their natural and only home, the Conasauga River near the Tennessee Georgia border. The Chattanooga Times Free Press has the story.

The orange stripe is a dye marker injected by the CFI staff so that each fish can be documented if it is ever seen again.

What's A Scud?

The small tributaries to Whites Creek are populated with all sorts of interesting creatures. While the large ones get all the hype, the small ones are sometimes more important to the food chain and are indicators of the health of the ecosystem. Most folks don't know that there is a tiny shrimp like beastie called a "scud" living in the mossy water's edge. I find them by turning over moss covered rocks in the small streams of Whites Creek Gorge.

Pictures and other stuff about Scuds

If you're nice, later, I'll tell you about the jelly fish that live here. Really! I didn't know either until we found them swimming around in the hot summer water.

Blue Branch

These shots are from last Wednesday. The area is about three miles upstream of Whites Creek global headquarters.
 

Yellow Trillium

Taken today.

Spring on Fleet Feet

The spring flowers are screaming by at an advanced rate this year. This round lobed Hepatica has already gone away and I just took the shot three days ago. Get out there and breathe deeply, and do it now!

Spring Wildflowers

A round leaf hepatica nods as it wakes up to the day. If the wind holds down I'll try to get a full "facial" of this beautiful spring jewel.

  Rue Anemone

Often used as a spring tonic back in the day when spring tonics were the rule, Yellow root has a beautiful flower that's hard to catch. A tea made from the roots is loaded with vitamin C and is as distasteful as it is healthy.

Preventing Environmental Destruction In Sate Parks Is "Discrimination"

I can't believe this article and the statements made by these folks. Get those emails to TWRA going folks.

TWRA seeks public comments on ATVs at Cummings Cove Wildlife Management Area

"Parts of the [Wildlife Management Area] resemble a moonscape, void of vegetation, wildlife and stream aquatic species, once plentiful there," ...

So Cummings Cove actually is closed to any vehicles, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency Lt. Joe Busch said.
"We haven't enforced that law since we took over [in 2006]," he said. "We're not looking to start enforcing it at this time. Will we enforce it in the future? I don't know."... 

Insanity!

Evening Flight to Wisconsin

Taken at 6 pm March 1, 2012 from the deck at Whites Creek Global Headquarters.

Looks Like Spring to Me

Hepatica blooming today.

Mt. Roosevelt Trestle

Fossil Fuel Extraction Endangered List

The list includes a beautiful fish that the team at Conservation Fisheries is working hard to save:

Kentucky Arrow Darter: Toxic waste from mountaintop coal mining is poisoning streams and killing the rare Kentucky arrow darter fish (and contaminating the drinking water of downstream communities). The arrow darter has been wiped out from more than half of its range.

The full list and story is here...

Today at Hiwassee Refuge

We did get a view of the Hooded Cane as it flew by but nothing to show a picture of. We had a Whooping crane for a few minutes until it turned into an albinistic Sandhill crane...a rare enough white colored sandhill but not a Whooper.
I was amazed at the number of folks from foreign states and even countries that were hanging around. Some folks had been there for ten hours when we arrived. The light was pretty marginal for photos, as you can see from the above.

Golden Christmas

Our Christmas Eve hike led us by this little winter jewel, a blooming goldenrod on the lip of Walden Ridge. It sits in a small patch of dirt between the sandstone outcroppings that layer the last pitch to the ridge top. It would have been easy to miss or step on. I have no idea what species it is. In such harsh micro habitat, a particular plant can get dwarfed and twisted in the fight to survive, and the normal identifying characteristics escape me and my book.

December Anole

Taken this afternoon with my Christmas present to myself...

She's Alive...For Now

In the Morning Mist

Fossil?

I noticed this rock that turned up when I was digging on the edge of a service road above the creek. We see fossils in sandstone a lot but nothing like this in a conglomerate. The rock itself is about 6 inches across. What can anyone tell us about this?

More pictures

Whites Creek Fossil

November Morning

Seems like it is staying beautiful longer this year.