Alone With the Loons

            We got up close and personal with a family of loons last weekend on a lake in the Adirondacks.

            We had heard them (possibly these loons, possibly others) but not in the night as we had some years ago, their voices engraving a lasting impression. There's a call, haunting, quivering, that sounds so distant it must be coming from another country, and yet at the same time gets so close to your soul you think you must be related to the creature that's making it -- and of course, taking the long view, you are.... And then, sometimes, though I think we heard this part only once or twice, the voice breaks into the impossibly loud cartoonish crazy-man laugh (an unreproducible rapid-paced heh-heh-heh-heh-heh in a far more varied and bizarre tonality than words can mimic), the call that gives this migrant water bird its common name.

            So, this is what we need to know about loons. They're worth hearing.

            They're worth going some distance to hear.

            Their call was not the main reason, of course, we drove up into the Adirondacks. The reason was my sister Gwen, who has a summer place up there with her family on Seventh Lake, in the town of Inlet, part of the Fulton Chain of Lakes.

            It's a magical place with a porch view on the lake like a front row seat at a Broadway show. The show in this case, however, is the natural world in a place where there is a lot of it out there and relatively little of us. The world is always a mixture of some part nature, some part us. As opposed to where almost all of us live our daily lives, the proportion in hard-to-tame places like the Adirondacks, and mountains generally, is strongly tilted toward the natural.

            Seventh Lake, strongly present in your view of life from my sister's summer house (or "camp" as these mountain lakeside retreats are locally termed), is often home to families of loons in the summer. I may have seen or heard a loon somewhere else but without realizing it or paying it much mind, but the camp on Seventh Lake is the only place I have knowingly observed them or heard the call that was magically transforming the landscape.

            We first heard them a few years back when Anne and I visited Gwen and Dave's new summer place. Dave made a bonfire after dark just a few feet from the lake. We sang some songs, fortunate to have a couple of guitar players among us, and one night at least made up stories by carrying a tale from person to person. Then, in a silence, we heard those distant but incredibly resonant notes, sounding as if the entire lake was pumping body and soul through the voice of the loon. And then that just-so-crazy laugh, as if the universe were letting you in on a secret too truly absurd, and absurdly true, to be believed. And in fact it must be heard to be believed.

            We didn't hear the loons either night last weekend, but I heard them, somewhat faintly, on the last morning. Maybe this daylight call was different, not so haunting, but it woke the desire to get a look at them.

            Some time in late morning Dave took us out in his boat and cruised the lake looking for the haunts where they dive for fish during the day. We motored slowly under a bridge onto Sixth Lake, where they'd last been seen, couldn't find them, then cruised the opposite shore until, suddenly, one of the parent birds appeared before us. We followed, found the other parent and the baby (well probably adolescent by now), and trained our glasses on them. Gwen passed me the binoculars she took from the house and shared another pair with Anne. Dave killed the motor, we drifted toward them. At our nearest we could see by the naked eye their spotted backs, the purplish black of the head, the contrast of the light and dark colors on bird's broad back. (The photo was taken by my brother-in-law Dave Eichorn.)

            One of the parents dove to fish and emerged farther away. Following, the current, Dave concluded, as we motored back beneath the bridge to Seventh Lake. We followed him (as we tended to call this adult) as he dove and disappeared and we scanned the full horizon to find his next appearance, watched as he rose out of the water to shake his wings. The family met up again, perhaps communicating, calling perhaps, too softly for me to hear, moving their heads all the while, scanning, ever alert.

            The birds are well accustomed to boats and people on their lake. Maybe we are part of the show for them as well.

            Eventually, we cruised back to shore. But it was almost as if we could watch them all day. Their lives appeared both hard and easy, purposeful and spontaneous, restless and restful. In a word, natural: the way of the loon. A glimpse into the heart of things. Is that why it could feel perfectly satisfying to do nothing but spy on another creature for so long?

               I also worked the voice of the loon into a poem I wrote about our attempt to see the shooting stars of the Perseids meteor shower .

            Waiting for the Perseids

No stars, but fire

And a guitar

knock-knock-knocking on the soft intrigue of clouds, visibility poor

A surge of smoke lunges like a ghost,

then twists back to the lake's black sink

The weather worker erects a tapered temple of wood,

an offering,

draws flame from his hand

An instrument is procured for the master

The strings wind upward, night-songs work free

Syllables hummed, some words part sung

rise to the chiaroscuro sky

From the dark below to the mottled cushion of the stars  

The loon calls in the morning light

           

Monarchs: End of the Line for Royal Visits?

            A few weeks back a friend sent me a fantastic shot of a tiger swallowtail butterfly resting on a flower. A couple weeks later I saw the same kind of butterfly in our yard and when, a day later, it settled onto a purple conical flower on a butterfly bush in our front garden, I walked slowly up to it so that even my basic camera could get close enough for a good close-up (top photo). I sent mental thanks to the friend who had sent me his shot: because of that picture I knew what kind of butterfly had come to embrace the scent and nectar of my garden.

            Then I saw a couple of other photos of butterflies in local newspapers, all of them of the tiger swallowtail. Folks I thought, when it comes to butterflies in this late summer season of migrant visitations, tiger swallowtail is what we've got.

            Monarch butterflies, which we had last year, we have not got. No one has seen any of them in the Greater Boston area this year, according to a Boston Globe story that ran Aug. 12. The story considers the causes and the implications. None of them are pretty. An interruption in the migratory path? A shortage of the milkweed plant, where the brave, long-distance fliers lay their eggs?

            The odd thing is that a year ago we saw more monarch butterflies than we literally knew what to do with.

            They mobbed our flowering butterfly bushes (at least by urban, temperate zone standards). The shortest of the shrubs, the one with the fattest blossoms, got the most action. We saw three or four at a time attached to these blossoms. One stayed glued to a particular blossom for literally hours at a time.

            At least one stayed too long at the fair and we found him in the clutches of a praying mantis, a great striking specimen, a source of interest in itself. I made sure to get his picture. In the interest of preserving the monarchs and not finding ourselves in the position of running an attractive nuisance for butterflies -- which drew them to their doom -- family members collected and conveyed our praying predator to a new home in more natural area a few blocks away. (The thing came back, weeks later; see below.)

            So, stealing from myself, this is what I wrote to accomplish a phalanx of photos both Sonya and I took of our royal visitation by the monarchs last year:

           

Monarchs pay royal visit

            Sonya took these photos of monarch butterflies (second photo) in August and early September. We have been noticing the continual presence of butterflies on a couple of butterfly bushes in front of our house in Quincy. Two, three, four, five at times. They mostly congregated on a rather scrawny bush in front of the house in partial shade. Some of the leaves are holed, but the purple blooms are big and lush while they last. We have two taller bushes with bicolored leaves, they have a better appearance, but their flowers are smaller. The butterflies found these too, but they drew smaller crowds.

            Conclusion: butterflies like big blooms.

            A spot of insect-on-insect drama broke out after we became aware that one of the butterflies would simply linger on the blossom no matter how close we came. Usually they sense your approach, fly up and circle around before landing on a bloom again, generally a different one. This orange-flecked, black-rimmed, white-dotted creature simply hung on the flower while we snapped photo after photo. Sonya figured this out and got up close and, and by lepidoptera reckoning, personal.

            But the next day when a similar creature perched on the same blossom, another insect appeared to be bothering it. Again we got very close and had to separate the image of twig-like creature from his camouflage: a praying mantis. A very large praying mantis. I am told they bite the heads off their prey.

            I admonished the mantis to turn his attention to mosquitoes, and removed the butterfly to a proper burial place in some out of the way place. But the praying mantis continued to lurk until my wife and daughter staged an intervention, removing it in some receptacle (I didn’t see this; possibly actually working) and releasing it in a wild area at the end of the block.

            Two evenings later a very large praying mantis – the same one? A mate? – planted his six legs on the outside of the picture window well after dark and looked in at the lights and the people inside. Was she delivering a message? You think it’s that easy to get rid of me? Go find your mate, I thought, and bite his head off.

            The creature's presence was almost chilling: an outsized mysterious visitor, nose pressed against the glass.

            The butterflies continued to find their way to these bushes. I have another in the backyard, a semi-shade area, and that one drew some traffic too.

            We’ve had these bushes for a number of years. They’ve drawn visitors in the past, but nothing like this level of attention. I have no idea if there’s any reason for the difference. I hope we’ve made it onto some kind of migrating monarch butterfly list of hotspots and roadside attractions.

            I look forward to seeing them, well their species-mates, against next. And I promise to keep a sharp eye for praying mantises.

           

            P.S. One thing surprised me in reading last year's account. I dated it Sept. 9. So perhaps the latter half of August, which we have just entered, is prime time for royal visitations by the monarchs.

            If anyone sees them, tell them the butterfly bushes are blossoming at our house.

Birds of the Marshfield Marsh

Last weekend, when the weather sung of a dry, high-pressure sunny turn of the season -- happy August, most serene of months -- we visited the birds at the Audubon Society's  Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield. Among the birds we saw -- i.e. the ones we think we can find names for -- was the red-tailed hawk who greeted us by sitting on top of the entryway shed monitoring the parking lot.

            Not a lot going on in the lot. But maybe that's the way Mr. Hawk likes it. We're only the second car. We walk inside one by one beneath the long-bodied hawk and he waits for the the third of us to approach the door before flying away.

            We're glad he wasn't hungry.

            Inside of the sanctuary's first blind we find ourselves looking up at a couple of nests filled to capacity with the gaping red mouths of baby birds. Parent birds whizzed around the blind, beneath the roof, out the window and back in, hoping to confuse us. Already sufficiently confused when it comes to brids, we later judge these winged creatures are barn swallows, based on the yellow markings on the adult birds that match the barn swallow photo in our bird guide. Plus barn swallows like to nest in the rafters of barn-like buildings such as this simple wood structure.

            Leaving the blind and walking the main path through the preserve, we luxuriated in the beautifully dry air. It was bottle-me air, and save me up for the next humid spell. The day was even better in the coastal marsh and flat field of the sanctuary because we walk under open sky in all directions: even more of that quality air. We're heading toward the seashore as well, though a distant line of trees blocks the view of the water. Not too many bugs for a summer day in a low area either, but lots of birds -- diving over the marsh grasses, skiming, ascending, diving again. Keeping the bug population down. We do see some dragonflies and later find a large, beautifully colored member of this family lying still and eternal on a footpath.

            We see what what I think are yellow warblers darting across over the marsh grass in search perhaps of lunch. Colonies of plastic white ball-shaped structures with small circles for portals hang high from posts. Signs tells us later these multi-unit developments are for martens. The birds we see around these appear all black; perhaps the showy purple martens are for players for another season.

            In the second blind, where we expect the view to be richer with water birds, we spy a very long bird perched on a post on the far side of the pond. When I finally focus our handy light binoculars on this curious form, yes! a great blue heron, His head is all corkscrewed down low, as if picking lice out of his underarm, but eventually the long, elastic neck stretches out.

            Meanwhile turtles, unimpressed by all this winging around, sun themselves on the rocks near us in what the society calls "a shallow wetland."

            Another bird curls on top of a rock about two-thirds the way across our shallow, but quite watery "wetland." From the neck and flat shape of beak I guess a smaller heron. When it suddenly departures and flies straight at the blind, while I'm glassing him, its feet appear a bright yellow. From this sign and the photo I find in our bird guide, I'm calling this a green head heron.

            But this is all is mere fun and guesswork. I'd like to invite all these birds to come back to our garden and hang around the neighborhood long enough for us to get to know them.

Plants That Sing In The Shade

            I worked on improving our shade garden this spring. I bought Pulmonaria Lungwort and a list of other shade happy campers whose names I have since loosed to the cosmos (assuming both the plants and I would get along well enough without them). Two of these plants, I now recall, were a variety of Japanese primrose, for which I have great hopes because I like they way they look in flower and if they bloom in our shade border I will do a little vernal dance.        

            The shade border was looking promising -- before two things happened. The first is we had the house re-shingled. The border is close to one of the sides of the house where men in boots spent a great deal of time moving heavy ladders latterly along the ground and at times erecting scaffolding. The job went on twice as long as expected -- rain happened; capacitors faltered; temperatures rose -- and the border looked like a battleground when they were at last done. Pachysandra, the hardiest of warriors, suffered gaps in its ranks.

            It was then, in recovery mode -- pachysandra replanted; old nails and little slices of shingle sieved out of the dirt -- that I decided to plant the new acquisitions mentioned above, happy in their anonymity since their pedigree derived from the wonderfully prosperous garden where I acquired them.

            But I had forgotten about the tree guys. I've been trying to have some trees trimmed since last November in order to let in some more sun in certain areas in the garden, the in raised vegetable garden where my annual food-givers starve for lack of sufficient light.

            The tree trimmers eventually arrived on a date made so long ago I had half forgotten about it until they showed up: July 15. A worse date to climb trees, drop heavy branches onto the ground and drag them through the shade-tolerant groundcovers and perennials could not have been imagined. The temperature soared into the mid-nineties.

            The guys with the chainsaw and the long-handled clippers did a bang-up job trimming the lower branches out of three trees I wanted thinned to keep them off the house and let in the sun I wanted. But the guys removing the fallen branches dragged them away through the shade border, the row of hostas, the vine roses and stands of berry bushes, leaving a battleground behind. The casualties included flowering shade tolerant plants I'd introduced into the border with high hopes two years before. The native plant nicknamed "fairy candles" had its lights put out for this year. I'm hoping it survives to try again next year.

            To make matters worse, the damaged shade area was suddenly exposed to a lot more sun at the hottest time of the year, the beginning of eight straight days of ninety-plus and high humidity. Hot, dry weather is the worst part of the growing season for damaged plants to try to recover in. They're still trying. Some never will.

            So, since it's time to go back to the drawing board, let's take a look at the Kennedy Gardens list of shade plants for summer: "We have Actea, Arisaema, Aruncus, and Astilbes, Hellebores, Hostas and Heucheras, Polemonium and Polygonatum, not to mention Gallium, Gaultheria, Euonymus, and Oxalis."

            Let's meet a few of these candidates and find out who they are.

            Actaea racemosa (see top photo to left) is a species of flowering plant of the family Ranunculaceae, known by the common names of black cohosh, black bugbane, black snakeroot, and -- the one I like so much -- fairy candle. (See the sad lament above.) It is native to eastern North America, one of my goals is to acquire more native plants, and it had flowered nicely with light, bushy, woodsy-looking flowers last year. This year after the attack one branch with a few sun-burned leaves remained. Condition: life support. Just yesterday I noticed signs of resurrection; a new branch, a few new leaves. I do like this plant.

            Arisaema triphyllum (second photo left) is a highly variable species as you can tell by its great variety of common names: jack-in-the-pulpit, bog onion, brown dragon, Indian turnip, American wake robin, or wild turnip. The "triple" part of its name derives from its groupings of three leaves growing together at the top of one long stem produced from the plant's corm. Recently I was treated to the show of an exorbitant jack-in-the-pulpit (the one name out of this evocative set of folkish appellations I recognize) growing in the "woodland glen" (my description) of the same garden from which I acquired the primroses and other shade-tolerant plants mentioned above. The plant was as tall as I was. The flower depicting "jack," whoever he was, surrounded by his three-leaved pulpit, appeared surreally rendered with a dash of Salvador Dali.... At present, I don't have any of these, but I am feeling a need.

            Investigating the plant Aruncus (third photo) online, a genus of "clump-forming herbaceous perennial plants," I discover that one of its species, Aruncus diocius, is also called Goatsbeard -- and bingo! We've got it. I planted this shrub some years ago in a "woodsy" spot by the back fence under a tall shade tree where the ground is covered by English ivy, vinca, lamium and a helping of pachysandra (around the roots naturally) because this plant was advertised as shade-tolerant and so far it has lived up to its reputation. Remind me to fertilize it and give it a good watering out of gratitude.

            With Astilbes (fourth photo), we are also on familiar ground. These are more popular and more widely grown by backyard gardeners than any of the others mentioned so far. Researching, I learn that 18 species in this genus are grown "for their large, handsome, often fern-like foliage, and dense, feathery plumes of flowers" (Wikipedia). We grow them in part-shade areas where they blossom with the bright red and yellow flowers gardeners like, so I can't vouch for their degree of full-shade tolerant. However in the Berkshire woods my in-laws have a handful of these that flower brightly under the trees, if only for a couple of weeks.

            Alas, we are only through the "A" plants, alphabetically speaking, of shade-flowering plants and I already have my work cut out for me. We'll come back to this topic when the need to know more overcomes my itch to get my hands dirty once more.