At Earth Sun Moon we've built a fun little business by combining a love for nature with our love for laughter, but often the best part of enjoying nature is seeing it through someone else's eyes.
So, we invite you to write an essay or short story about your experience in, or love of, nature. There's no minimum length, but try not to get too far over 3,000 words. Poetry is welcome.
This is a contest of sorts - we'll be posting all the best entries we get. Make sure that anything you submit is entirely your own work, and we'll respect your ownership of all rights to the material. (This assumes, of course, that you are giving us the right to publish it once on this blog.)
Submit your writing by viewing my full profile and sending it to the e-mail contact provided. Rich-text or MS Word attachments are fine; otherwise please put your writing into the body of the e-mail.
Don't feel like writing today? Scroll down to read what's already posted.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Is There Help?
Skye Mangrum
http://naked-superstar-sapphire-ninja.blogspot.com
For those of us wondering
pondering
where an alternative
path could lead
pleaseget in touch
we all at one point in time
or another
need each other
like a lonely purple flower
hanging from a late fall bower
that i travel underneath
and the moon is barely peering
down through branches bent to ceiling
as in nature so are we
almost not in our control.
http://naked-superstar-sapphire-ninja.blogspot.com
For those of us wondering
pondering
where an alternative
path could lead
pleaseget in touch
we all at one point in time
or another
need each other
like a lonely purple flower
hanging from a late fall bower
that i travel underneath
and the moon is barely peering
down through branches bent to ceiling
as in nature so are we
almost not in our control.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Ultimate Park
By Chris Highland
author of Meditations of John Muir: Nature's Temple
www.naturetemple.net
"None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild; and much, we can say comfortingly, must always be in great part wild, particularly the sea and the sky, the floods of light from the stars, and the warm, unspoilable heart of the earth, infinitely beautiful, though only dimly visible to the eye of imagination."
Some ten years ago, my bestfriend-like-a-brother Todd and I hefted our backpacks and headed down the magnificent Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne in Yosemite National Park. We are such beauty addicts that our first day didn't get us very far. Every bend in the trail offered a jaw-dropping view of a fall, a pool, a marmot, a chipmunk, a hawk, a cloud sculpture or a majestic tree. Time and again we stopped to simply wonder in the beauty we were entering more deeply with every grateful step. With only so much the senses can handle, the overwhelming day gave us one last gift. We found a shaded, sandy spot alongside the ice-clear river and rolled out our sleeping bags to glory in the canyon cathedral (if I sound a little like Muir you'll have to forgive me, I've been teaching a class on this hero of the wilderness).
The evening descended quicker than we had stumbled down the trail. Soon we had our pack stoves flaming under a hideous freeze-dried box of something unsavory. We told stories, quietly listened to the stream, shared a dram of scotch, and nestled into the nests of our downy bags. We thought our beauty-guide had also retired for the evening, but we were about to experience a few more high mountain surprises.
As we drifted off to cloudy mansions of dreams a bright light called us from our weariness. Peeking out from our cocoons we strained our blurry eyes at something shining over the boulders. This was too strange to stay tight-bundled in the warmth so we slipped on boots, got up and stepped to the edge of the tumbling river. There we gazed up the canyon to a startling sight. A series of fairy-white cascades fell from above illumined perfectly by a stunning bright and full moon catching every glistening drop of the falls. A better front row seat could not have been found for this show. We instantly became wide-eyed lunatics in love with the main character dancing on the wild stage above us. I don't remember if we raised another dram in bacchanalian celebration but I know we were brim-full of joy to be as close as humanly possible to the divinity of earth, and sky.
The falls, the moon, and the bear we had to chase through the forest later that night (another story), gave my brother and I a deeper sense we were completely immersed in the classroom and sanctuary where the mountain man, John Muir, had spent many a moonlit night. Throughout his own wandering, sauntering life in Beauty, Muir found endless joy in the goodness and greatness of the free gifts of the temple of earth. He was too busy enjoying it all and leading people into the wild places to write, but he wrote nonetheless. His writing has become for us a sermon and sacred text for the natural spirituality of Nature. Muir's writings were instrumental in calling us to the open, free and "glorious" wilderness.
The prophetic Scottish-American Muir put his shoulder up against many a cold and intransigent glacier of ignorance that would destroy his, and our, precious sanctuaries. Yet even in the 19th Century Muir recognized the warming of the earth and the melting of glaciers. He saw the inevitable grinding and etching of the truth in the public sphere that would, up against his own strong shoulders, form a wider, wilder appreciation for the essential goodness of Nature's "brave, beauty-working." He squarely faced the icy walls of politicians and robber barons who saw only profit in the wilderness, standing, with his pen and his person, to defend that which has no voice but falls and earthquakes, eagles and wolves, storms and wind soughing in the trees. Muir stood as a bright mountain--a torchbearer of the range of light--before those who sought to move the mountains, alter the streams and kill the wildlife. What stands before us now is, on many levels, a higher calling to evoke and invoke the spirit of Muir's commitment to speak and act in defense of the wildest places on earth, and above the earth. If ever we needed John of the Mountains, we need him now; we require his forest of natural faith, right now, right here, to do right for all in our integral orbit of relation to the universe in which we are not merely observers but participants.
NASA, Apollo 8
Last year (2008) NASA launched the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) that "will map the lunar surface in extraordinary detail and help future human missions to the moon locate safe landing sites and vital resources on the moon" (NASA website). Does this sound at all familiar? Over the centuries humans have explored our planet out of great curiosity. We might only think of the Corps of Discovery sent out by Jefferson, to recall a parallel charting and mapping of the West, which was, in conception, perhaps initially a trek into the unknown to add to our knowledge, yet paved and prepared the way for the eventual elimination of the first inhabitants as well as seizing once wild lands for the national interests of America. This is of course not only an American pattern of conquest (though we are the only ones to ever place a flag, our flag, on the moon). The adventures of explorers have regularly been funded by rich and powerful governments and business interests, so it was indeed only "a small step for a man" before the wonder and curiosity was overshadowed, even co-opted, yes and bought out, by a greed-and-grab for land--land to conquer and settle--to expand empires and exploit the rich resources of those "new worlds." With the moon, the farthest "wilderness" we have put our foot on, powerful interests may well have similar goals to:
from first Chinese probe, November 2007
Exactly 100 years ago, in 1908, on his birthday, John Muir wrote to someone he had camped with in Yosemite five years earlier: President Teddy Roosevelt. Muir was very anxious to express his fear that the great and beautiful valley of Hetch Hetchy--down stream from Yosemite--would be dammed as a reservoir for San Francisco. Muir wrote the president to save the valley "from all sorts of commercialism and marks of man" for "there is not another so grand and wonderful and useful a block of Nature's mountain handiwork."
I hasten to add that, for Muir, the "usefulness" of Nature consisted primarily in its "wonders and blessings" for all people. He well recognized the need for human use of natural materials from water to wood to food sources. However, for Muir, his activism was on behalf of the preservation of wild places and wildlife who inhabit the unspoiled areas of the world. Indeed, the great naturalist saw open spaces as holy places--sanctuaries and temples--where people could learn, pray as well as play.
In his 1908 letter to Roosevelt, Muir quotes capitalist James D. Phelan as an example of "proud confidence" and "good, sound. . .ignorance." Phelan says, "There are a thousand places in the Sierra equally as beautiful as Hetch-Hetchy: it is inaccessible nine months of the year, and is an unlivable place the other three months because of mosquitoes." I won't belabor the point. It is surely one small step for a person or nation to take, just one hundred years after Muir's failed attempt to save that one precious valley, to "dam the valleys of the moon"--that is, to seize what may be a great resource of energy and industry (or strategic position) and drown us all in the flood of "progress." After all, the argument could well be made that the moon is no more beautiful that other objects in the night sky; that it is pretty inaccessible and unlivable. It may not have mosquitoes, but it's not a very inviting place (like the "Badlands," the deserts, Antarctica or the bottom of the ocean).
What kind of letter might old John Muir write today, faced with the potential exploitation of the vast wilderness of our nearest neighbor in the heavens? Would he call us to act to preserve and protect this treasure, before the pre-emptive strike of one or more nations to grab it and control it for questionable (that is, obvious) purposes? If even the moon is a "useful resource" that can be controlled by one segment of the planet's inhabitants, what could be the ramifications of not acting before the tides, migrations, gravitational balance and even the beauty of the night sky are threatened--as they become commodities for incorporated colonies ?
We are faced with something inconceivable to Muir, to Thoreau, Emerson, Burroughs, Leopold or Carson. But they did not shrink from a good challenge; not when the wilds were at risk! We face either the creation of the ultimate national park or the desecration of a worldwide treasure, a planetary temple. This should make any true lover of Nature tremble, with fear, anger and courage.
I think Muir would write, and he would act. And in his spirit, we must, as a worldwide community, act to Save the Moon! As crazy and silly as that sounds: Save the Moon! Therefore, I call on all rational and forward-thinking persons around the world to call, write, email and meet with their leaders to Preserve the Moon as an International (Planetary) Park. The Lunar Wilderness deserves to be protected NOW, before this or any other nation intrudes on the moonscape again. For now, Nature Temple will be pleased to host replies to this call, inviting comments, support, suggestions and actions as we feel the exhilaration of John Muir in the moonlight of his beloved mountains:
"I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides. . .Down through the junipers; down through the firs; now in jet shadows, now in white light. . . past the glorious fall of Nevada, the groves of Illilouette; through the pines of the valley; beneath the bright crystal sky blazing with stars. All of this mountain wealth in one day!--one of the rich ripe days that enlarge one's life; so much of the sun upon one side of it, so much of the moon and stars on the other"
author of Meditations of John Muir: Nature's Temple
www.naturetemple.net
"None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild; and much, we can say comfortingly, must always be in great part wild, particularly the sea and the sky, the floods of light from the stars, and the warm, unspoilable heart of the earth, infinitely beautiful, though only dimly visible to the eye of imagination."
~John Muir, Our National Parks (1901)
Some ten years ago, my bestfriend-like-a-brother Todd and I hefted our backpacks and headed down the magnificent Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne in Yosemite National Park. We are such beauty addicts that our first day didn't get us very far. Every bend in the trail offered a jaw-dropping view of a fall, a pool, a marmot, a chipmunk, a hawk, a cloud sculpture or a majestic tree. Time and again we stopped to simply wonder in the beauty we were entering more deeply with every grateful step. With only so much the senses can handle, the overwhelming day gave us one last gift. We found a shaded, sandy spot alongside the ice-clear river and rolled out our sleeping bags to glory in the canyon cathedral (if I sound a little like Muir you'll have to forgive me, I've been teaching a class on this hero of the wilderness).
The evening descended quicker than we had stumbled down the trail. Soon we had our pack stoves flaming under a hideous freeze-dried box of something unsavory. We told stories, quietly listened to the stream, shared a dram of scotch, and nestled into the nests of our downy bags. We thought our beauty-guide had also retired for the evening, but we were about to experience a few more high mountain surprises.
As we drifted off to cloudy mansions of dreams a bright light called us from our weariness. Peeking out from our cocoons we strained our blurry eyes at something shining over the boulders. This was too strange to stay tight-bundled in the warmth so we slipped on boots, got up and stepped to the edge of the tumbling river. There we gazed up the canyon to a startling sight. A series of fairy-white cascades fell from above illumined perfectly by a stunning bright and full moon catching every glistening drop of the falls. A better front row seat could not have been found for this show. We instantly became wide-eyed lunatics in love with the main character dancing on the wild stage above us. I don't remember if we raised another dram in bacchanalian celebration but I know we were brim-full of joy to be as close as humanly possible to the divinity of earth, and sky.
The falls, the moon, and the bear we had to chase through the forest later that night (another story), gave my brother and I a deeper sense we were completely immersed in the classroom and sanctuary where the mountain man, John Muir, had spent many a moonlit night. Throughout his own wandering, sauntering life in Beauty, Muir found endless joy in the goodness and greatness of the free gifts of the temple of earth. He was too busy enjoying it all and leading people into the wild places to write, but he wrote nonetheless. His writing has become for us a sermon and sacred text for the natural spirituality of Nature. Muir's writings were instrumental in calling us to the open, free and "glorious" wilderness.
The prophetic Scottish-American Muir put his shoulder up against many a cold and intransigent glacier of ignorance that would destroy his, and our, precious sanctuaries. Yet even in the 19th Century Muir recognized the warming of the earth and the melting of glaciers. He saw the inevitable grinding and etching of the truth in the public sphere that would, up against his own strong shoulders, form a wider, wilder appreciation for the essential goodness of Nature's "brave, beauty-working." He squarely faced the icy walls of politicians and robber barons who saw only profit in the wilderness, standing, with his pen and his person, to defend that which has no voice but falls and earthquakes, eagles and wolves, storms and wind soughing in the trees. Muir stood as a bright mountain--a torchbearer of the range of light--before those who sought to move the mountains, alter the streams and kill the wildlife. What stands before us now is, on many levels, a higher calling to evoke and invoke the spirit of Muir's commitment to speak and act in defense of the wildest places on earth, and above the earth. If ever we needed John of the Mountains, we need him now; we require his forest of natural faith, right now, right here, to do right for all in our integral orbit of relation to the universe in which we are not merely observers but participants.
NASA, Apollo 8Last year (2008) NASA launched the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) that "will map the lunar surface in extraordinary detail and help future human missions to the moon locate safe landing sites and vital resources on the moon" (NASA website). Does this sound at all familiar? Over the centuries humans have explored our planet out of great curiosity. We might only think of the Corps of Discovery sent out by Jefferson, to recall a parallel charting and mapping of the West, which was, in conception, perhaps initially a trek into the unknown to add to our knowledge, yet paved and prepared the way for the eventual elimination of the first inhabitants as well as seizing once wild lands for the national interests of America. This is of course not only an American pattern of conquest (though we are the only ones to ever place a flag, our flag, on the moon). The adventures of explorers have regularly been funded by rich and powerful governments and business interests, so it was indeed only "a small step for a man" before the wonder and curiosity was overshadowed, even co-opted, yes and bought out, by a greed-and-grab for land--land to conquer and settle--to expand empires and exploit the rich resources of those "new worlds." With the moon, the farthest "wilderness" we have put our foot on, powerful interests may well have similar goals to:
- "Conquer" the New World
- Claim and settle the land for expansion
- Utilize the resources
- Establish a military base and presence (to protect the land, the resources and the new settlers, pioneers, "owners")
from first Chinese probe, November 2007Exactly 100 years ago, in 1908, on his birthday, John Muir wrote to someone he had camped with in Yosemite five years earlier: President Teddy Roosevelt. Muir was very anxious to express his fear that the great and beautiful valley of Hetch Hetchy--down stream from Yosemite--would be dammed as a reservoir for San Francisco. Muir wrote the president to save the valley "from all sorts of commercialism and marks of man" for "there is not another so grand and wonderful and useful a block of Nature's mountain handiwork."
I hasten to add that, for Muir, the "usefulness" of Nature consisted primarily in its "wonders and blessings" for all people. He well recognized the need for human use of natural materials from water to wood to food sources. However, for Muir, his activism was on behalf of the preservation of wild places and wildlife who inhabit the unspoiled areas of the world. Indeed, the great naturalist saw open spaces as holy places--sanctuaries and temples--where people could learn, pray as well as play.
In his 1908 letter to Roosevelt, Muir quotes capitalist James D. Phelan as an example of "proud confidence" and "good, sound. . .ignorance." Phelan says, "There are a thousand places in the Sierra equally as beautiful as Hetch-Hetchy: it is inaccessible nine months of the year, and is an unlivable place the other three months because of mosquitoes." I won't belabor the point. It is surely one small step for a person or nation to take, just one hundred years after Muir's failed attempt to save that one precious valley, to "dam the valleys of the moon"--that is, to seize what may be a great resource of energy and industry (or strategic position) and drown us all in the flood of "progress." After all, the argument could well be made that the moon is no more beautiful that other objects in the night sky; that it is pretty inaccessible and unlivable. It may not have mosquitoes, but it's not a very inviting place (like the "Badlands," the deserts, Antarctica or the bottom of the ocean).
What kind of letter might old John Muir write today, faced with the potential exploitation of the vast wilderness of our nearest neighbor in the heavens? Would he call us to act to preserve and protect this treasure, before the pre-emptive strike of one or more nations to grab it and control it for questionable (that is, obvious) purposes? If even the moon is a "useful resource" that can be controlled by one segment of the planet's inhabitants, what could be the ramifications of not acting before the tides, migrations, gravitational balance and even the beauty of the night sky are threatened--as they become commodities for incorporated colonies ?
We are faced with something inconceivable to Muir, to Thoreau, Emerson, Burroughs, Leopold or Carson. But they did not shrink from a good challenge; not when the wilds were at risk! We face either the creation of the ultimate national park or the desecration of a worldwide treasure, a planetary temple. This should make any true lover of Nature tremble, with fear, anger and courage.
I think Muir would write, and he would act. And in his spirit, we must, as a worldwide community, act to Save the Moon! As crazy and silly as that sounds: Save the Moon! Therefore, I call on all rational and forward-thinking persons around the world to call, write, email and meet with their leaders to Preserve the Moon as an International (Planetary) Park. The Lunar Wilderness deserves to be protected NOW, before this or any other nation intrudes on the moonscape again. For now, Nature Temple will be pleased to host replies to this call, inviting comments, support, suggestions and actions as we feel the exhilaration of John Muir in the moonlight of his beloved mountains:
"I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides. . .Down through the junipers; down through the firs; now in jet shadows, now in white light. . . past the glorious fall of Nevada, the groves of Illilouette; through the pines of the valley; beneath the bright crystal sky blazing with stars. All of this mountain wealth in one day!--one of the rich ripe days that enlarge one's life; so much of the sun upon one side of it, so much of the moon and stars on the other"
(Steep Trails, 1918).
Monday, April 13, 2009
Green's Turn
Part One
by Chris Highland
We speak of "turning."
Seasons turn
The weather turns.
The verdant fields
turn
to a white-light fur
coating the rolling earth.
But maybe it's simply
one color's turn
to fill the canvas in Nature's studio.
I don't know.
Where does the green go?
It lies latent as sky's blue mask.
It packs up and migrates in the night
to distant continents;
Some stays back, nesting in spring-splashed glens
and shaded groves.
Some green never leaves some leaves.
Some leaves, to journey back
chlorophylling the fields of view
re-turning not to turn
but to assume an expected position
in this disorderly order of easels we turn to:
Nature.
by Chris Highland
We speak of "turning."
Seasons turn
The weather turns.
The verdant fields
turn
to a white-light fur
coating the rolling earth.
But maybe it's simply
one color's turn
to fill the canvas in Nature's studio.
I don't know.
Where does the green go?
It lies latent as sky's blue mask.
It packs up and migrates in the night
to distant continents;
Some stays back, nesting in spring-splashed glens
and shaded groves.
Some green never leaves some leaves.
Some leaves, to journey back
chlorophylling the fields of view
re-turning not to turn
but to assume an expected position
in this disorderly order of easels we turn to:
Nature.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
A Precious Gift
Kim Tittel writes from the solitude of a beach-house's screened-in porch.
I have come to know this refuge as my personal escape. It is here that I dwell in my thoughts while listening to the birds as they surround me in melody, all with their own personal song. The crickets have their own symphony. First, a select few, and slowly the rest join in for an astounding crescendo. A lone cardinal gives a solo performance just for me. A gentle breeze and suddenly the leaves are whispering amongst themselves. I wonder what they have to say?
The daytime candle has been lit from above. As the morning unfolds into a new day, there is life starting all around me. I hear the cry of a child, the movement of a car, and in the distance, the bark of a dog. Constantly changing, never stopping. What awaits us this new day? Will it be the joy of a hug or a kiss from a child? Are we to be disappointed from a loved one? Will tears of sadness or pride flow without shame? The answers will be revealed to us through out this new day. We can only wait. We cannot dwell on what is to be; for fear that we will miss it. We shall embrace the day. Explore what has been given to us so freely in this beautiful place. Let life surround us with all that it has to offer. Let us not be foolish and sit idle, but instead, take hold and let it envelop us. We do not know if this chance will be given to us again. Each day is a precious gift. It cannot be returned or exchanged. It is ours to do with as we please. It must be used wisely. We will never have another one, for each day will different from the previous one.
As the day draws to a close I am back in my refuge once again to reflect on the events that have taken place. The birds are singing their goodnights. The night light lights have been turned on above to guide us through the evening events. The world around us is beginning to slow down for a short rest. It is now that I ask of myself, did I use the day wisely? Did I see and hear all that there was? Did I put a smile on a face or a tear in their eye? Was I kind and considerate or a foolish boar? I can only partially answers these questions, for I know not what other people perceived of me. What I do know, is that I was not a disappointment to myself. I did not intentionally cause harm or despair. I did what I could and I should not expect more from myself than that. Therefore I am content and I am at peace. I cannot ask for more than that in the course of a day. Thank you for the gift of today, I can only hope to be as blessed tomorrow.
I have come to know this refuge as my personal escape. It is here that I dwell in my thoughts while listening to the birds as they surround me in melody, all with their own personal song. The crickets have their own symphony. First, a select few, and slowly the rest join in for an astounding crescendo. A lone cardinal gives a solo performance just for me. A gentle breeze and suddenly the leaves are whispering amongst themselves. I wonder what they have to say?
The daytime candle has been lit from above. As the morning unfolds into a new day, there is life starting all around me. I hear the cry of a child, the movement of a car, and in the distance, the bark of a dog. Constantly changing, never stopping. What awaits us this new day? Will it be the joy of a hug or a kiss from a child? Are we to be disappointed from a loved one? Will tears of sadness or pride flow without shame? The answers will be revealed to us through out this new day. We can only wait. We cannot dwell on what is to be; for fear that we will miss it. We shall embrace the day. Explore what has been given to us so freely in this beautiful place. Let life surround us with all that it has to offer. Let us not be foolish and sit idle, but instead, take hold and let it envelop us. We do not know if this chance will be given to us again. Each day is a precious gift. It cannot be returned or exchanged. It is ours to do with as we please. It must be used wisely. We will never have another one, for each day will different from the previous one.
As the day draws to a close I am back in my refuge once again to reflect on the events that have taken place. The birds are singing their goodnights. The night light lights have been turned on above to guide us through the evening events. The world around us is beginning to slow down for a short rest. It is now that I ask of myself, did I use the day wisely? Did I see and hear all that there was? Did I put a smile on a face or a tear in their eye? Was I kind and considerate or a foolish boar? I can only partially answers these questions, for I know not what other people perceived of me. What I do know, is that I was not a disappointment to myself. I did not intentionally cause harm or despair. I did what I could and I should not expect more from myself than that. Therefore I am content and I am at peace. I cannot ask for more than that in the course of a day. Thank you for the gift of today, I can only hope to be as blessed tomorrow.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Another Idea-Starter
Here is a mini photo-journal of a recent trip to the Bok National Sanctuary south of Orlando, FL.
======================================================================
My wife, the photographer, by the gate.
View across the garden lawn
Bromeliades in bloom
Red Admiral Butterfly
Bok's Singing Carillon Tower
A collection of 60 bells scatters music through the leaves every hour on the hour
Great Blue Heron fishing
Apparently, a diet of palm nuts promotes luxurious whiskers
The sanctuary overlooks acres of orange-tree fields
======================================================================
My wife, the photographer, by the gate.
View across the garden lawn
Bromeliades in bloom
Red Admiral Butterfly
Bok's Singing Carillon Tower
A collection of 60 bells scatters music through the leaves every hour on the hour
Great Blue Heron fishing
Apparently, a diet of palm nuts promotes luxurious whiskers
The sanctuary overlooks acres of orange-tree fields
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Bird Banding
by J. Witmer
Here's something from my old files to get things rolling.
============================================================
“You’ve been helping a bird band? You mean like the Eagles?” I raise an eyebrow sarcastically and Dad glares at me.
“He’s a licensed bird-bander. He traps birds and then fits them with a little ID band around one leg. I’m going again tomorrow morning. You can follow me out if you want to see what it’s like,” he says.
“Sure.” I shrug. Why not? I don’t have anything else to do on a Saturday morning.
I find a good reason why not when he nudges me awake the next morning. “It’s 5:40!”
“Yep, we catch lots of birds between dawn and when the sun clears the horizon. Coming?”
Moan.
“Good!” He thumps down the stairs and I drag my sleep-sodden body off the bed.
I manage to eat a bowl of cereal—it’s too early for anything more. Button a heavy flannel shirt over my sweatshirt. Slip on borrowed rubber boots that smell like old pond water. A knit hat, blaze orange and also one of Dad’s extras. It faintly wafts an odor of…old pond water.
A fifteen-minute drive takes us onto dirt, limited-access roads. Old trees lean out over the embankments, dripping dew that plunks in heavy splotches onto the windshield. Further on, large trees thin and disappear, replaced by denser scrub. We follow a right-hand fork in the road and park near the embankment, near an old pickup truck with its tailgate down and cap door open.
A path winds around young trees and through tall grass. The grass winds in tangles up over my boots and icy dew soaks through my jeans almost immediately. I shiver.
“Good morning!” The Bird Bander greets us in full khakis and early-morning cheer. A pair of binoculars swing from his neck, along with a couple of hat-sized mesh sacks with canvas bottoms and long drawstrings. His boots reach his knees, so his legs are dry.
“Mr. Hauber. How are you?” My father shakes his hand.
“Good! All the nets are set, and I got a Chestnut-sided in the second net while I was setting up the fifth.” He smiles at me. “Hi there.”
They head back towards the truck, so I tag behind. A fallen tree branch ambushes me and I trip. I scramble up quickly and they don’t notice.
Strung across the back of the truck is a length of heavy wire clothesline. On the left, a mesh bag dangles from a clothespin like a dirty sock. On the right hang three spring scales: small, smaller, and smallest. Mr. Hauber opens a clear plastic tool box with rows and rows of compartments. Except for the pliars, which look specialized, everything is tiny, delicate-looking and as foreign to me as the implements in a Klingon operating room.
Mr. Hauber selects a tiny metal band and uses the pliers to pry it into an open “u” shape. He snugs it into the pliers’ metal fingers and sets them on an open notebook. Then he unclips the mesh bag from the clothes line. He holds the top of the bag tight around his arm as he slips his hand inside.
A bird flutters around inside the bag, and Mr. Hauber’s face muscles stretch in empathy with his searching fingers. Then he slips his hand out of the bag. His fingers are split like he’s about to throw a fast ball, and a small feathered head with a rust-colored crown, white “eyebrow” and black eye stripe pokes up between them. One shiny, brown-black eye blinks. The rest of the bird is hidden by Mr. Hauber’s palm.
“This is a Chestnut-sided warbler,” he tells me, turning his hand and lifting his thumb so that I can see an olive-green wing,—the width of a quarter at the broadest point—downy white belly, and an irregular, rusty-colored stripe down its side.
The warbler twists its head from side to side and fans the air with its free wing. Mr. Hauber gently strokes his thumb downward from the bird’s shoulder, holding its wing still. It gives up and blinks slowly, twice. He measures the wing length with a small metal ruler, examines the long flight feathers (called “primaries,” he tells me) for signs of wear, and flips the bird over. With a straw, he blows upwards on the warbler’s belly, against the feathers. They separate, revealing a patch of flushed, bare skin almost as wide as its chest.
“That bare spot is called a brood patch,” He says as he flips the bird back over to examine its tail feathers. “They develop them when they’re nesting, to help keep their eggs warm.” He writes in the open notebook with his free hand—numbers and abbreviations go in blocks on faded green graph paper.
“Is this a female then?” I guess.
“Well, it’s hard to be sure, because both sexes of Chestnut-sided’s look the same, and most kinds of warblers develop brood patches on the male too. But, I think this is a female—the brood patch is a little bigger than a male’s might be and,” he tilts his head, “I think that’s probably her mate singing over there.”
Mr. Hauber scoops up the pliers he’d prepared earlier and clamps the identification band around the warbler’s left leg. The ends meet tightly, with almost enough room left inside the circlet for her other leg. But the band isn’t big enough to slip down over her “ankle”, so it won’t chafe the joint.
Now he tucks the docile bird into a cut-down mesh bag that once held oranges and clips her to the most delicate spring scale. Mr. Hauber records her scant nine grams in his notebook.
“Would you like to hold her?” He asks as he unclips the bag.
Hold a Chestnut-sided warbler? Of course I would.
Mr. Hauber coaches me as I slide my fingers down over his. He slips his fingers out, and I am gingerly holding the warbler’s neck between the bases of my index and middle fingers. It’s mostly feathers. He slides the rest of his hand out from under mine so that I’m cradling the bird’s body in my fingers with my palm covering her back. The skin on my palm is too thick to feel the texture of her wing feathers, but she is warm and her breathing is fluttery.
Her downy sides are the softest things I’ve ever touched. I can feel her rib cage moving under my fingers. She’s twisting her head around again, and her feet scurry in mid air. I slide my ring finger to gently touch her legs, and her delicate feet close reflexively round it like a baby’s hand. She calms down.
After a few long minutes, I open my hand. The warbler sits still, perched on my ring finger, unaware that she is free to go. Mr. Hauber has gone to check the nets again.
“They do that a lot. Bounce your hand gently, and she’ll get the idea.” Dad advises.
I do, and she skitters into the air, banks crazily through a hole in the brush, and spirals out of site.
I’m a convert.
“Did we catch any more?” I start for the trail.
“I don’t know. Let’s wait for Mr. Hauber, unless he calls for help. We don’t want to scare other birds away from the nets.” Dad grins at my sudden enthusiasm.
Mr. Hauber returns empty-handed. Six or seven minutes later, Dad walks the nets. He comes back without a bird. After almost an hour of waiting, I ask my father, “How long has it been since we caught the Chestnut-sided?”
He looks at his watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
Just then, a high keening swells from the further nets. Dad hustles towards the sound and I follow—after snatching a bag to hang around my neck, just in case. As I rush down the line of nets, something grabs my sleeve and won't let go. I’m caught in the net. Shaking my hand only makes things worse. The nets—called mist nets—are black nylon and so fine that you can look through them and not see them, even if you know where they are. As I untangle the button on my flannel cuff, I see that the threads are actually very tightly twisted strands of hair-thin filaments—both stronger and less likely to cut the birds than fishing line would be.
By the time I’m free, the bird is shrieking as if my father is pulling its tail feathers out one by one. When I get there, I see a mottled-brown bird about the size of my fist, with a long, pointy beak. It’s not very tangled—only its head went through the mesh when it hit the net, and it should have been resting in a pocket of slack caused by its own weight. But it had grabbed two fistfuls of mesh, making it impossible for Dad to pull its head back through.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Immature hairy woodpecker.” Dad mumbles around a pencil clamped in his teeth. “Here, you!” He growls at the bird.
In between shrieks, the little woody snaps at him, the slender halves of its beak clicking together like playing cards. It’s tongue is yellow.
Dad uses the dull pencil point to coax one foot open—it grabs the pencil instead of the net, as if it were perching. Then he slips his fingers up over the bird’s shoulders and slides the net back over its head.
“Now, if you’d just let go, you’d be fine,” he wheedles. He takes his pencil back from the bird and tries to open its other foot.
Still screaming frantically, little woody snaps at his hand with its skinny beak. Dad chuckles. “It almost tickles.”
I shake my head and look over to see Mr. Hauber working on a bird in the third net. Abruptly, the woodpecker goes silent.
“Ow!” Dad yells.
“What?” Mr. Hauber and I both spin to look.
“He pecked me.” Dad sounds sheepish. “He did let go, though.”
Back at the truck, Mr. Hauber processes his bird (another Chestnut-sided) before he deals with the woodpecker. It starts to cry again when he pulls it out of the bag, but calms down when he lets it sink its claws into his shirt sleeve. The band he clamps around its leg is a size larger than the warbler’s, and he doesn’t even try to pull it out of the mesh orange bag. He just turns the bag over slowly so that the bird can wiggle right-side up, and shakes it out. The woody catches itself in midair and bobs into the trees across the road.
Not much later, a horde of little birds scramble through the clearing and into our nets. I find a bright yellow one in the furthest net, near the bottom.
“Can I take this one out?” I ask.
“Go ahead, but be careful with its wings. They’re awfully delicate.” Dad calls back.
I bend over to scrutinize my patient. It’s built like the other warblers, but is yellow except for some rusty streaks down its breast like misplaced racing stripes. Its head and one wingtip are poked through the mesh, but otherwise its just sitting in a pocket built into the bottom of the net. Taking the bird’s neck between the fingers of my right hand, I carefully tug its wing back toward its body. The primaries flex a little and—boink—it’s free. The loosed wing begins fanning wildly and I panic for a second. What if I drop the bird? Will it get hurt, or will it get away?
I stroke my thumb downwards from its shoulder like I’d seen Mr. Hauber do, and the wing tucks neatly against the bird’s side.
“Now…just hold still a second…” I beg, working its head back through the mesh. The thread stands all its head-feathers on end and the bird scrunches up its face as much as a bird can.
“There you go.” I grin at my captive and smooth its ruffled crown with a finger. “A quick check up, complementary bracelet, and you’re all done.”
I pop it into the bag around my neck and walk back to where Dad and Mr. Hauber have four other birds cornered.
“What do you have?” I ask.
“Chickadees.” Dad grunts.
“Chickadees?”
Peeking over Dad’s shoulder reveals a very tangled, very active and very ticked-off bird that might look like a Chickadee if it didn’t look so vicious. Every feather on its black-capped head is standing up like the hackles on a dog and it twists its head around like an owl, pecking and snapping at Dad’s fingers. Its feet clench great wads of netting.
As I watch, Dad manages to get one foot loose, and almost unsnarls a wing. The Chickadee abruptly goes berserk, flailing wildly with every limb. By the time he gets it back under control its tangles like bubble gum in a pony tail.
I take my warbler back to the truck and clip its bag to the clothesline. Then I amuse myself by poking around in Mr. Hauber’s notebook. In addition to the graph paper he has a stack of forms, regulations, and notices from Cornell Ornithological Institute. Most of them seem to be memos about banded birds recaptured in unexpected places or new guidelines for estimating the sex and age of certain birds.
When Mr. Hauber returns to the truck, I ask, “How many birds do you re-catch?”
“Well, I get around a hundred repeats every year—that’s birds caught twice or more within 90 days. And every year I catch from thirty to fifty birds that I have banded in previous years. We call them returns.”
He sees my bag, bouncing on the clothesline. “What do you have there?”
“It looks like a yellow warbler.” I shrug.
“Well, then it probably is.” He grins sideways at me before explaining, “They’re actually named that. Like Red-winged Blackbirds or Blue Jays.”
“So the birds come back every year to the same place they hatched?” I ask.
“Actually, no. They don’t ever seem to return to where they hatch—or fledge, for that matter. Aww…” The yellow warbler looses a fat white dropping onto the notebook. Mr. Hauber holds it at arms length while he dabs at the graph paper with a tissue.
“I did have one male Mourning Warbler—my focus species, by the way—who came back four years.” Mr. Hauber talks around the straw as he checks for a brood patch.
“I banded him in 1989, and re-caught him in 1990, 91, 93, and 94.” He continues.
“What’s a focus species?” I ask.
“To get licensed as a bird bander, you have to go through a recognized institution, like Cornell University, and you need to have a specific study focus,” he explains.
“You mean they don’t want people out just catching birds for fun. So you’re studying Mourning Warblers.” I nod.
“Technically, yes. I submit information about all the birds we band, and it goes toward helping other people with their studies, just like I get information about Mourning warblers that are banded elsewhere.” He gives the Yellow warbler a gentle toss into the air and leaves the Chickadees in their bags while he digs into a plastic milk crate filled with books and notebooks.
Mourning warblers nest in specific types of habitat, normally shrubby forest openings or in regenerating areas like clear-cuts. In Pennsylvania, they’ve nested mostly in the northwest and north-east, but recently they’ve been expanding their range.
“Since they’re moving towards north central PA, I originally hoped to document their arrival here in Potter County,” he tells me.
He hands me a mangled Peterson’s Bird Guide. It falls open to a wrinkled and spattered page depicting the Mourning warbler. The female is a drab olive-green all over, but the male has lots of bright yellow and a slate-gray color over the top of its head and down its neck.
“They named it ‘Mourning Warbler’ because they thought the gray markings on the male looked like an old-fashioned hood for mourning the dead,” he says.
I look at if for a minute. “How has your study gone then? Did you document them moving in?”
“Well,” he sighs, “In the ten years from 1989 I’ve caught 325 of them. But it’s very irregular. Some years I have as few as twelve, others as many as 53.”
Dad returns with another Chestnut-sided, and the Yellow warbler we just released. After verifying by the band number that it’s the same bird, Mr. Hauber tosses it in a different direction.
“And don’t come back.” Dad calls.
I ask to hold a chickadee once it’s banded, but hanging upside-down from the scale hasn’t improved his (Mr. Hauber says it’s a male) mood. He pecks me and gets away.
“You think we’ll see him again?” I ask.
“Well, we won’t, unless you’re planning on coming back again.” Dad grins.
“I sure am.” I grin back.
Here's something from my old files to get things rolling.
============================================================
“You’ve been helping a bird band? You mean like the Eagles?” I raise an eyebrow sarcastically and Dad glares at me.
“He’s a licensed bird-bander. He traps birds and then fits them with a little ID band around one leg. I’m going again tomorrow morning. You can follow me out if you want to see what it’s like,” he says.
“Sure.” I shrug. Why not? I don’t have anything else to do on a Saturday morning.
I find a good reason why not when he nudges me awake the next morning. “It’s 5:40!”
“Yep, we catch lots of birds between dawn and when the sun clears the horizon. Coming?”
Moan.
“Good!” He thumps down the stairs and I drag my sleep-sodden body off the bed.
I manage to eat a bowl of cereal—it’s too early for anything more. Button a heavy flannel shirt over my sweatshirt. Slip on borrowed rubber boots that smell like old pond water. A knit hat, blaze orange and also one of Dad’s extras. It faintly wafts an odor of…old pond water.
A fifteen-minute drive takes us onto dirt, limited-access roads. Old trees lean out over the embankments, dripping dew that plunks in heavy splotches onto the windshield. Further on, large trees thin and disappear, replaced by denser scrub. We follow a right-hand fork in the road and park near the embankment, near an old pickup truck with its tailgate down and cap door open.
A path winds around young trees and through tall grass. The grass winds in tangles up over my boots and icy dew soaks through my jeans almost immediately. I shiver.
“Good morning!” The Bird Bander greets us in full khakis and early-morning cheer. A pair of binoculars swing from his neck, along with a couple of hat-sized mesh sacks with canvas bottoms and long drawstrings. His boots reach his knees, so his legs are dry.
“Mr. Hauber. How are you?” My father shakes his hand.
“Good! All the nets are set, and I got a Chestnut-sided in the second net while I was setting up the fifth.” He smiles at me. “Hi there.”
They head back towards the truck, so I tag behind. A fallen tree branch ambushes me and I trip. I scramble up quickly and they don’t notice.
Strung across the back of the truck is a length of heavy wire clothesline. On the left, a mesh bag dangles from a clothespin like a dirty sock. On the right hang three spring scales: small, smaller, and smallest. Mr. Hauber opens a clear plastic tool box with rows and rows of compartments. Except for the pliars, which look specialized, everything is tiny, delicate-looking and as foreign to me as the implements in a Klingon operating room.
Mr. Hauber selects a tiny metal band and uses the pliers to pry it into an open “u” shape. He snugs it into the pliers’ metal fingers and sets them on an open notebook. Then he unclips the mesh bag from the clothes line. He holds the top of the bag tight around his arm as he slips his hand inside.
A bird flutters around inside the bag, and Mr. Hauber’s face muscles stretch in empathy with his searching fingers. Then he slips his hand out of the bag. His fingers are split like he’s about to throw a fast ball, and a small feathered head with a rust-colored crown, white “eyebrow” and black eye stripe pokes up between them. One shiny, brown-black eye blinks. The rest of the bird is hidden by Mr. Hauber’s palm.
“This is a Chestnut-sided warbler,” he tells me, turning his hand and lifting his thumb so that I can see an olive-green wing,—the width of a quarter at the broadest point—downy white belly, and an irregular, rusty-colored stripe down its side.
The warbler twists its head from side to side and fans the air with its free wing. Mr. Hauber gently strokes his thumb downward from the bird’s shoulder, holding its wing still. It gives up and blinks slowly, twice. He measures the wing length with a small metal ruler, examines the long flight feathers (called “primaries,” he tells me) for signs of wear, and flips the bird over. With a straw, he blows upwards on the warbler’s belly, against the feathers. They separate, revealing a patch of flushed, bare skin almost as wide as its chest.
“That bare spot is called a brood patch,” He says as he flips the bird back over to examine its tail feathers. “They develop them when they’re nesting, to help keep their eggs warm.” He writes in the open notebook with his free hand—numbers and abbreviations go in blocks on faded green graph paper.
“Is this a female then?” I guess.
“Well, it’s hard to be sure, because both sexes of Chestnut-sided’s look the same, and most kinds of warblers develop brood patches on the male too. But, I think this is a female—the brood patch is a little bigger than a male’s might be and,” he tilts his head, “I think that’s probably her mate singing over there.”
Mr. Hauber scoops up the pliers he’d prepared earlier and clamps the identification band around the warbler’s left leg. The ends meet tightly, with almost enough room left inside the circlet for her other leg. But the band isn’t big enough to slip down over her “ankle”, so it won’t chafe the joint.
Now he tucks the docile bird into a cut-down mesh bag that once held oranges and clips her to the most delicate spring scale. Mr. Hauber records her scant nine grams in his notebook.
“Would you like to hold her?” He asks as he unclips the bag.
Hold a Chestnut-sided warbler? Of course I would.
Mr. Hauber coaches me as I slide my fingers down over his. He slips his fingers out, and I am gingerly holding the warbler’s neck between the bases of my index and middle fingers. It’s mostly feathers. He slides the rest of his hand out from under mine so that I’m cradling the bird’s body in my fingers with my palm covering her back. The skin on my palm is too thick to feel the texture of her wing feathers, but she is warm and her breathing is fluttery.
Her downy sides are the softest things I’ve ever touched. I can feel her rib cage moving under my fingers. She’s twisting her head around again, and her feet scurry in mid air. I slide my ring finger to gently touch her legs, and her delicate feet close reflexively round it like a baby’s hand. She calms down.
After a few long minutes, I open my hand. The warbler sits still, perched on my ring finger, unaware that she is free to go. Mr. Hauber has gone to check the nets again.
“They do that a lot. Bounce your hand gently, and she’ll get the idea.” Dad advises.
I do, and she skitters into the air, banks crazily through a hole in the brush, and spirals out of site.
I’m a convert.
“Did we catch any more?” I start for the trail.
“I don’t know. Let’s wait for Mr. Hauber, unless he calls for help. We don’t want to scare other birds away from the nets.” Dad grins at my sudden enthusiasm.
Mr. Hauber returns empty-handed. Six or seven minutes later, Dad walks the nets. He comes back without a bird. After almost an hour of waiting, I ask my father, “How long has it been since we caught the Chestnut-sided?”
He looks at his watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
Just then, a high keening swells from the further nets. Dad hustles towards the sound and I follow—after snatching a bag to hang around my neck, just in case. As I rush down the line of nets, something grabs my sleeve and won't let go. I’m caught in the net. Shaking my hand only makes things worse. The nets—called mist nets—are black nylon and so fine that you can look through them and not see them, even if you know where they are. As I untangle the button on my flannel cuff, I see that the threads are actually very tightly twisted strands of hair-thin filaments—both stronger and less likely to cut the birds than fishing line would be.
By the time I’m free, the bird is shrieking as if my father is pulling its tail feathers out one by one. When I get there, I see a mottled-brown bird about the size of my fist, with a long, pointy beak. It’s not very tangled—only its head went through the mesh when it hit the net, and it should have been resting in a pocket of slack caused by its own weight. But it had grabbed two fistfuls of mesh, making it impossible for Dad to pull its head back through.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Immature hairy woodpecker.” Dad mumbles around a pencil clamped in his teeth. “Here, you!” He growls at the bird.
In between shrieks, the little woody snaps at him, the slender halves of its beak clicking together like playing cards. It’s tongue is yellow.
Dad uses the dull pencil point to coax one foot open—it grabs the pencil instead of the net, as if it were perching. Then he slips his fingers up over the bird’s shoulders and slides the net back over its head.
“Now, if you’d just let go, you’d be fine,” he wheedles. He takes his pencil back from the bird and tries to open its other foot.
Still screaming frantically, little woody snaps at his hand with its skinny beak. Dad chuckles. “It almost tickles.”
I shake my head and look over to see Mr. Hauber working on a bird in the third net. Abruptly, the woodpecker goes silent.
“Ow!” Dad yells.
“What?” Mr. Hauber and I both spin to look.
“He pecked me.” Dad sounds sheepish. “He did let go, though.”
Back at the truck, Mr. Hauber processes his bird (another Chestnut-sided) before he deals with the woodpecker. It starts to cry again when he pulls it out of the bag, but calms down when he lets it sink its claws into his shirt sleeve. The band he clamps around its leg is a size larger than the warbler’s, and he doesn’t even try to pull it out of the mesh orange bag. He just turns the bag over slowly so that the bird can wiggle right-side up, and shakes it out. The woody catches itself in midair and bobs into the trees across the road.
Not much later, a horde of little birds scramble through the clearing and into our nets. I find a bright yellow one in the furthest net, near the bottom.
“Can I take this one out?” I ask.
“Go ahead, but be careful with its wings. They’re awfully delicate.” Dad calls back.
I bend over to scrutinize my patient. It’s built like the other warblers, but is yellow except for some rusty streaks down its breast like misplaced racing stripes. Its head and one wingtip are poked through the mesh, but otherwise its just sitting in a pocket built into the bottom of the net. Taking the bird’s neck between the fingers of my right hand, I carefully tug its wing back toward its body. The primaries flex a little and—boink—it’s free. The loosed wing begins fanning wildly and I panic for a second. What if I drop the bird? Will it get hurt, or will it get away?
I stroke my thumb downwards from its shoulder like I’d seen Mr. Hauber do, and the wing tucks neatly against the bird’s side.
“Now…just hold still a second…” I beg, working its head back through the mesh. The thread stands all its head-feathers on end and the bird scrunches up its face as much as a bird can.
“There you go.” I grin at my captive and smooth its ruffled crown with a finger. “A quick check up, complementary bracelet, and you’re all done.”
I pop it into the bag around my neck and walk back to where Dad and Mr. Hauber have four other birds cornered.
“What do you have?” I ask.
“Chickadees.” Dad grunts.
“Chickadees?”
Peeking over Dad’s shoulder reveals a very tangled, very active and very ticked-off bird that might look like a Chickadee if it didn’t look so vicious. Every feather on its black-capped head is standing up like the hackles on a dog and it twists its head around like an owl, pecking and snapping at Dad’s fingers. Its feet clench great wads of netting.
As I watch, Dad manages to get one foot loose, and almost unsnarls a wing. The Chickadee abruptly goes berserk, flailing wildly with every limb. By the time he gets it back under control its tangles like bubble gum in a pony tail.
I take my warbler back to the truck and clip its bag to the clothesline. Then I amuse myself by poking around in Mr. Hauber’s notebook. In addition to the graph paper he has a stack of forms, regulations, and notices from Cornell Ornithological Institute. Most of them seem to be memos about banded birds recaptured in unexpected places or new guidelines for estimating the sex and age of certain birds.
When Mr. Hauber returns to the truck, I ask, “How many birds do you re-catch?”
“Well, I get around a hundred repeats every year—that’s birds caught twice or more within 90 days. And every year I catch from thirty to fifty birds that I have banded in previous years. We call them returns.”
He sees my bag, bouncing on the clothesline. “What do you have there?”
“It looks like a yellow warbler.” I shrug.
“Well, then it probably is.” He grins sideways at me before explaining, “They’re actually named that. Like Red-winged Blackbirds or Blue Jays.”
“So the birds come back every year to the same place they hatched?” I ask.
“Actually, no. They don’t ever seem to return to where they hatch—or fledge, for that matter. Aww…” The yellow warbler looses a fat white dropping onto the notebook. Mr. Hauber holds it at arms length while he dabs at the graph paper with a tissue.
“I did have one male Mourning Warbler—my focus species, by the way—who came back four years.” Mr. Hauber talks around the straw as he checks for a brood patch.
“I banded him in 1989, and re-caught him in 1990, 91, 93, and 94.” He continues.
“What’s a focus species?” I ask.
“To get licensed as a bird bander, you have to go through a recognized institution, like Cornell University, and you need to have a specific study focus,” he explains.
“You mean they don’t want people out just catching birds for fun. So you’re studying Mourning Warblers.” I nod.
“Technically, yes. I submit information about all the birds we band, and it goes toward helping other people with their studies, just like I get information about Mourning warblers that are banded elsewhere.” He gives the Yellow warbler a gentle toss into the air and leaves the Chickadees in their bags while he digs into a plastic milk crate filled with books and notebooks.
Mourning warblers nest in specific types of habitat, normally shrubby forest openings or in regenerating areas like clear-cuts. In Pennsylvania, they’ve nested mostly in the northwest and north-east, but recently they’ve been expanding their range.
“Since they’re moving towards north central PA, I originally hoped to document their arrival here in Potter County,” he tells me.
He hands me a mangled Peterson’s Bird Guide. It falls open to a wrinkled and spattered page depicting the Mourning warbler. The female is a drab olive-green all over, but the male has lots of bright yellow and a slate-gray color over the top of its head and down its neck.
“They named it ‘Mourning Warbler’ because they thought the gray markings on the male looked like an old-fashioned hood for mourning the dead,” he says.
I look at if for a minute. “How has your study gone then? Did you document them moving in?”
“Well,” he sighs, “In the ten years from 1989 I’ve caught 325 of them. But it’s very irregular. Some years I have as few as twelve, others as many as 53.”
Dad returns with another Chestnut-sided, and the Yellow warbler we just released. After verifying by the band number that it’s the same bird, Mr. Hauber tosses it in a different direction.
“And don’t come back.” Dad calls.
I ask to hold a chickadee once it’s banded, but hanging upside-down from the scale hasn’t improved his (Mr. Hauber says it’s a male) mood. He pecks me and gets away.
“You think we’ll see him again?” I ask.
“Well, we won’t, unless you’re planning on coming back again.” Dad grins.
“I sure am.” I grin back.
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