MEET CHARLIE

I've been away from blogging over the summer. Many of you can understand why.  There is summer mowing, weeding, traveling and . . . .well . . . you know all the excuses.  Let me just add that I was also making some new friends. I wish I could let you meet them all but I ask you to be satisfied with just this one.

Meet Charlie.

                              Charlie is a little bit shy

but not too much

Like me, Charlie likes to spend time in my garden.  For her it is a jungle of greenery that provides great cover. Like me, she understands how within the garden she may find protection from the outside world.

Like me she likes it best right with a thick blanket of mulch tucked in around the plants.

Mulch is so easy to tunnel into.

Beneath the ground stays moist.  It makes a great place to snuggle on a sunny day.

But there is also work to be done.  Charlie spends much of her life gathering food. Once I have started feeding the birds I am also feeding Charlie.

            She particularly likes black oil sunflower seeds.

She spends several mornings scurrying up and down the feeder pole

or filling her jaws as she forages through the grass

Soon, her chipmunk cheeks will be swollen to capacity and it will be time to take all those seeds back to her home for storage.

Without her tail as a balancing rudder I am afraid she would topple forward.

Time in the open is dangerous. Charlie studies the distance then darts off  at full speed.

She slips under the garden fence and returns to the jungle

 to transfer her harvest from her cheeks.

 Then its back to the feeder to forage.

After some exploring Charlene found some seeds I had spilled around the can in which they are stored. 

This time she ate what she found.  With her stomach full her activity slowed.  You know the feeling, don’t you?  I know I do. So full. So tired. Arms heavy.  Hard to move  . . . eye lids getting very heavy . . . so-o-o-o . . . grhghgghrrr.

Every nap must end and there is nothing better to get Charlie awake than a nice bath.

Have to get all those hard-to-reach places

Even elbows

and between each finger

Once she feels totally clean it is back across the yard, under the fence and back into my (her) garden.

Courage at the Pool

Each of us sits on our chosen rock

deep in the shade 

beside the spring

that drips consistently into a pool;

calming us both with its sound.

We watch in stillness.

I admire the chipmunk's courage

as well as its beauty.

I think, "Just what does it see in me?"

                                                        nellie Howard, august 20, 2012

Wildlife

       I My most recent walk was Saturday  morning.  A heavy fog left everything wet again. I put on my old tennis shoes, knowing they would be drenched and headed to the woods.  Today's post is all about fauna.  I'll later take you to see the flora from this morning's walk. It started with this somewhat wild chipmunk who stood very still as I approached it,  holding out until the very last second hope that I couldn't see it if it didn't move a muscle. It blinked as my camera led me forward until the chipmunk could longer take it . . .

. . . it quivered a bit.  I gave it the relief it sought by turning my head slightly so that it felt safe enough to dart through the front door of its burrow.

Smiling I walked on, pushing the stray blackberry brier away with  my walking stick.  This is an area next to the New Woods where the land is gradually becoming reclaimed after being roughly timbered then mostly cleared and replanted.  As is typical Common mullein is one of the early plants (other mullein post HERE) In this part of West Virginia we typically see Great or Common mullein (Verascum thapsus) growing along the road in spots where nothing els will grow or where the cover has been mowed or weed-eated down to bare ground. (Yes, the much more efficient "weed-eated" seems to be the most accepted past and past perfect form around here, not "weed-eaten" or "weed-ate.")

But this post is about fauna, not flora so here is what we saw:

An tiny caterpillar starting its day confidently walking the downy edge of a Mullein leaf, still damp with a heavy morning dew. What the caterpillar was will become is as unknown to me as knowing what I will become. Perhaps it will be one of these, below.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could google ourselves and see the stages of our life, including what we will become.  It would have to include the correct steps we would have to take to reach each stage because, unlike a moth or butterfly, we don't usually act according to plan.  Our freedom to choose sometimes keeps us from flying.

This next bit of life confused me.  I hope some of you know the answer to flora or fauna.  

At first I thought it was a bit of seed floating by, then a small spider.

It seemed to float freely on the faintest breeze. If you are a photographer then you know how much fun it was trying to catch a floating object about the size of grain of rice. 

I even tried to catch one and hold it in my hand but it blew off quickly and with my zoom lens on the camera, I was too close. On closer inspection It looked like it may have been a piece of lichen, that life form somewhere between flora and fauna or perhaps some other fungus that blew off out of the tree tops.  I had been seeing them along my path for about a half hour of exploring. It was a curled up thing.  Each one caught looked almost the same as the previous one which makes me think that it is some tiny animal that travels on the late summer breeze.  

My eyes failed me in their ability to see the tiny being clearly but one left me with a message of love - according to the eye of my imagination.

Don't close this window yet, though.  There were some larger animals for us to see.

I found these bowls dug out of the dirt.

 What do you think made them?

There is a clue at the edge of one of the bowls . . .

 and a bigger clue by another.

 Looks like a turkey feather to me.

Even a bigger clue was this fellow.

Watching me as I solved the mystery was a plump red squirrel.

Then for all you readers that don't get to see many groundhogs, I had to add this young one living along the edge of the hay field.

Like that chipmunk at the top of this post, the groundhog stood its ground until I looked away, allowing it to crouch down

Then dive into its hole

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Out of the Fog

The dry autumn weather has been broken by a light rain lasting all night and even now continues as a drizzle surrounded by fog. The fog and oncoming cold do not entice me to stay out long. The mourning doves are still hunkered down in the spruce tree waiting for hunger to draw them out.  I stepped outside just long enough to catch one before it ventured out.  I also couldn't resist a photo of the trees behind the barn, almost hidden within the fog.  The rest of the day will be spent inside catching up on work that needs to be done and checking out the bird feeders.

It has been a good fall for watching the feeders.  Evidently the forest mast is low this year, meaning that there are not enough nuts, seeds and fruits for the wildlife.  In Wood County we have noticed how much the squirrels are traveling.  Many have ended up as road kill while searching farther afield for storage food.  At our home the squirrels are somewhat segretated.  The red or fox squirrels live in the woods in front of the house and the gray ones live behind the house.  This year I have seen both running across the large grassy expanse in search of food.  Our two feeders contain sunflower seeds. One feeder is somewhat squirrel proof while the other is more like a squirrel fast-food restaurant.  The red and gray squirrels eat together, side by side, returning to their own territory each time I venture out to "shoo" them away. While they are enjoyable to watch, it is too expensive to feed them.  At one point I have had five at once accompanied by four chipmunks.  The squirrels empty the feeder in about an hour - the same feeder that will feed the birds for several days. 

At night there are even more visitors to the feeder.  The neighborhood skunk arives about dark blatently ignoring our lights and noise. By bedtime the possom has come and gone, followed later by a local raccoon. Late in the night the deer stand on hind feet and add the seeds to their diet. The raccoon and skunk are a bit of a rabies concern.  I once read that you should assume that all skunks have rabies.  I don't know how true that is, but it probably isn't a good idea to encourage them to hang out so close to the house.  I do like that skunk though.  Early last summer we saw her heading across the field in the early evenings accompanied by several babies. I admire her brazen confidence. And she is beautiful.  Really she is and without a bit of stink so far.  I have to remind myself to be cautious and not mistake confidence for tameness.

In the daylight chipmonks are, by far, the cutest visitors.  They are wound so tightly that that bursting seems to be a means of transportation.  One pair comes from near our compost pile behind the house.  I've watched it run under the back spruce trees across the back yard, under the porch then out the front of the porch to the feeder. Their vacuume cleaning action serves to fill their cheek pockets until I am sure they will explode.  Just before exploding, the chipmonk bursts back under the porch then out the back and to wherever the sunflower seed storage facility is.

The most exciting visitor this year has been a dangerous one. One Sunday morning Jeff and I observed a perigrine falcon in the maple tree watching while a house finch huddled very still under the eave of the feeder. After about 15 minutes, the finch tried to escape, drawing the falcon and becoming its breakfast. The falcon has returned a few times causing the yard to become very quiet and still.