Life Bird!
June 23rd, 2010
"I'm going hiking!" I announced.
"You're nuts," said my mom.
"You need your head checked," said my dad.
"Cuckoo!" said my husband.
"100F," said the thermometer.
Pshaw, I say. It's not so bad. You move slow, you drink lots. The body adapts. I grew up with this weather (generally in July and August, mind you, not June). It remembers.
Today I went exploring Swift Creek Trail, a forest road near where my parents live. If I followed it far enough I'd get to Swift Creek, where my brother went fishing and camping as a teenager. (There was a big puddle that used to form on the dirt road behind our house; it drained via a narrow channel into the woods and eventually into Swift Creek. My brother and I used to dam up the channel so the puddle got huge and then we'd play in it. And then we'd get in trouble because some guy lived back there and actually had to drive on that road. Ah, memories.) But today was not the day for a two-mile hike.
So I just went a ways down the gravel road, seeing what I could see. It made my day, my week, and heck, my entire month when I found a singing Prairie Warbler, a striking yellow-breasted bird with black flank streaks and "mustache", and my 220-somethingth lifer! I found him exactly the way I love to find new birds: unannounced and unexpected. This is one of the southeastern warblers that almost never occurs in Ottawa.
The other point of interest was a Summer Tanager, the cherry red bird that's a close cousin to our Scarlet Tanager. (Speaking of Scarlet Tanagers, we saw one of those at Shenandoah, along with two other "mountain specialties", Common Ravens and Slate-Colored Juncos. Those three northern birds breed nowhere else in Virginia but the mountains.)
My body handled it fine. I didn't even get a dehydration headache like I got after the last hike, where I didn't drink quite enough. There is, however, a small problem with ticks. The underbrush is teeming with them this summer: the little bitty ones that, IIRC, are the ones that transmit Lyme Disease. I've picked (or had picked) three off me so far.
The rest of the week will be eventful. Dutch Gap tomorrow, Busch Gardens on Friday, then off to Cape Hatteras for a week on Saturday.
June 23rd, 2010
"I'm going hiking!" I announced.
"You're nuts," said my mom.
"You need your head checked," said my dad.
"Cuckoo!" said my husband.
"100F," said the thermometer.
Pshaw, I say. It's not so bad. You move slow, you drink lots. The body adapts. I grew up with this weather (generally in July and August, mind you, not June). It remembers.
Today I went exploring Swift Creek Trail, a forest road near where my parents live. If I followed it far enough I'd get to Swift Creek, where my brother went fishing and camping as a teenager. (There was a big puddle that used to form on the dirt road behind our house; it drained via a narrow channel into the woods and eventually into Swift Creek. My brother and I used to dam up the channel so the puddle got huge and then we'd play in it. And then we'd get in trouble because some guy lived back there and actually had to drive on that road. Ah, memories.) But today was not the day for a two-mile hike.
So I just went a ways down the gravel road, seeing what I could see. It made my day, my week, and heck, my entire month when I found a singing Prairie Warbler, a striking yellow-breasted bird with black flank streaks and "mustache", and my 220-somethingth lifer! I found him exactly the way I love to find new birds: unannounced and unexpected. This is one of the southeastern warblers that almost never occurs in Ottawa.
The other point of interest was a Summer Tanager, the cherry red bird that's a close cousin to our Scarlet Tanager. (Speaking of Scarlet Tanagers, we saw one of those at Shenandoah, along with two other "mountain specialties", Common Ravens and Slate-Colored Juncos. Those three northern birds breed nowhere else in Virginia but the mountains.)
My body handled it fine. I didn't even get a dehydration headache like I got after the last hike, where I didn't drink quite enough. There is, however, a small problem with ticks. The underbrush is teeming with them this summer: the little bitty ones that, IIRC, are the ones that transmit Lyme Disease. I've picked (or had picked) three off me so far.
The rest of the week will be eventful. Dutch Gap tomorrow, Busch Gardens on Friday, then off to Cape Hatteras for a week on Saturday.
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