Legal Migrants

Spring migration is finally in full swing. The forest canopy is greening up and the insects are hatching just in time for the migrants moving through. Our birds fall into three (very) general groups: the skeleton crew that is here all year long like cardinals, chickadees, and the like; the species that everyone thinks migrates but just shift their range up and down the continent, like robins; and the real deal, what ecologists call "neotropical migrants" like most of the warblers, tanagers, and orioles. These birds are really Central and South American; they just come up here when the sunlight goes over twelve hours per day. To them, it's an endless summer here, full of tasty bugs with lots of time to pursue them.

That explains the why. The how is pretty much anybody's guess. These are not big birds like Canada geese or whooping cranes who learn migration from their elders. Warblers are birds that can fit in a film canister. They fly thousands of miles, mostly at night (days are for feeding and resting), without maps, GPS, or asking for directions. There is good evidence that at least some species have a sky chart imprinted in their brains; others probably use the Earth's magnetic fields; most probably use a combination of both. Most of them come back to the same patch of forest or tundra where they were hatched.

Some nest here, others, like solitary sandpipers, are just passing through on their trip from Argentina and Uruguay to the Boreal forest or tiaga which encircles the globe at the higher latitudes.


Neotropical migrants are borrowed birds; escaping their tropical habitats which are jam-packed with other species in order to get some elbow room to produce young up here. Most of them look like they belong in the rain forest; indigo buntings are flying chunks of sky that put bluebirds to shame.

Prothonotary warblers, up from the Yucatan and northern South America nest in this area. They are one of the few warbler species that nest in cavities, usually in swamps. The chicks can swim. This bird gets its name from the color of the vestments of the Vatican College of Prothonotaries, part of the Curia. I have always thought it one of the more poetic common names for any animal. Sure beats the hell out of yellow-rumped warbler (known to birders as "butter butts").

Spring is in full cry. Our (really their) migrants are coming up, already here and moving on, or already here and nesting. The blue-gray gnatcatcher (another cool name; workman-like but falling trippingly off the tongue) from the Caribbean and Central America is already brooding eggs. I found this pair, the hen on the nest, and the male feeding her tent caterpillars. The nest is made from lichens and caterpillar silk; the silk gives it flexibility, allowing for expansion as the chicks grow.

The chicks will be up and out of the nest by mid-June, just in time for mom and dad to start a second brood. No empty nesters for this species - just crank 'em out and kick 'em out. Don't worry about tuition either.

Pucker Up

One of the few pleasures from having kids who are smarter than you is the ability to pull their chains; rattle their bars; and just plain out-and-out lie. Ariel has a catch-all term for when I do this: she calls it "White Chocolate". This stems from years ago when I tried to explain about white chocolate (white chocolate contains the chocolate butter but not the cocoa). Turns out I was right, but whenever she gets skeptical about something of dubious veracity, she retorts: "White Chocolate".



She played the "White Chocolate" gambit last Sunday when the family journeyed to the University of Virgina at Charlottesville to attend a dance recital. Alec's girl friend, Allison, is a member of the college dance troupe and gave us tickets. We got there in plenty of time, had a late and leisurely lunch at one of the cafes on "the Corner", and Ariel and I roamed the campus to look at Mr. Jefferson's buildings. We passed the Rotunda, walked down the colonnade where the fourth-years (never call them seniors) live, and saw the serpentine wall. Along the way, we passed a young man whistling a tune. Ariel remarked "I hate whistling", to which I replied that the reason she disliked whistling was that she was completely inept at it. I also added that the UVa music department was one of the few schools in the country who offered a major in whistling. Don't you know that, in addition to his many talents and interests as a child of the Enlightenment, that Thomas Jefferson was a concert whistler as well as violinist and in great demand as a performer? "No way" replied my daughter, "White Chocolate". We carried on thus until we came across Alec and Pat on benches in a leafy alcove, presided over by a statue of Mr. Jefferson himself. Alec chimed in that, in addition to writing several pieces for the glass harmonica (an instrument long since out of fashion), Mozart himself composed four concertos for whistlers. Ariel was somewhat nonplussed at that; either it was true, or Alec was riffing on the original bald-faced lie that Dad had started. I think my downfall was in pointing out that, if you examined the Jefferson statue closely, you could see his lips were pursed. They aren't. Had her going for a bit, though.

The recital, by the way, was delightful.

In Praise of Vultures

I was helping a friend move an old cast iron claw-footed bathtub/koi pond to his house in southern Maryland. We slid the monster out of the bed of my truck and manhandled it to a prominent spot in the front yard. As we rested from our labors, I heard a deep flapping sound overhead, very much like the rotor noise of a very slow helicopter. A black vulture labored overhead to come to a precarious stop in a leafless walnut tree. "Oh, him", said my friend, "they always come to the birdbath for a drink." I get chickadees and sparrows at my birdbath; he gets vultures...cool. This one, judging from its grey legs and bald black head was a (wait for it) black vulture as opposed to the more common red-headed turkey vulture. Either way, they are both amazing animals.




Vultures are very low energy animals. In the mornings they can be seen with their backs to the sun, wings spread, absorbing solar radiation to heat them up. When they fly, they rarely flap, preferring to glide from updraft to updraft. Sailplane pilots call it "riding the thermals" and often look for vultures to share an updraft of air. This is a risky business; if the updraft runs out, the vulture can and will flap. Sailplanes can't.


Black vultures are among the very few animals which mate for life and are, as far as we know, completely monogamous. I guess when you are a vulture, a little something on the side is pretty much out of the question anyway. Black vultures are a bit smaller than turkey vultures and can be told at distance by their white wing patches and the flat cast of their wings while soaring. Turkey vultures ("TVs") to the initiated, hold their wings in a shallow V. Both species constantly trim and adjust wings and long primary flight feathers to catch every morsel of breeze.


Both species have bald, featherless heads, the better to feed on yucky carcasses without fouling their feathers. Black vultures have the curious habit of defecating on their legs. This keeps them cool and serves as a barrier to any parasites that might be still around the dearly departed lunch. Both black and TVs nest in hollow logs on the forest floor and raise two or three young a year. Stories of vultures carrying off small children and pets don't hold water since their claws are too weak to hold much more than a pound or two. Vultures do, however, possess a potent defence; they projectile vomit. A friend who had it happen to her said she would have rather been clawed or bitten; duh...a half pint of semi-digested rotten meat would be enough to put any predator off thoughts of making a meal of a vulture...forever.


Turkey vultures have the most percentage of their brains devoted to smell of any known animal. T. rex comes a distant second. They are exquisitely sensitive to the odor of mercaptans, a common component of rotting meat, and the same odor the gas company adds to odorless natural gas. The human nose can detect mercaptans in vanishingly small amounts but vultures have us beat all hollow. Gas company trouble-shooters look for vultures circling above underground gas mains to find leaks. Black vultures are not quite as adept in the olfactory department as are TVs. They ride the updrafts and keep their cousins in sight. When the TVs drop down to a carcass, the more aggressive black vultures will drive them away and claim the food for themselves.


Until recently it was thought that New World vultures, including condors, were related to birds of prey as are Old World vultures. DNA testing has shown that our vultures are more closely related to storks than to hawks. Seems a tad poetic; one stork brings you in to the world, another may see you out.

Lightning in a Bottle

A petite lady, Jeanette Miller laughs as tells the story in the soft accents of rural Virginia. "We had a couple of young men here last month, Chuck gave them the tour and at the end, they told me they were ATF agents, showed me badges, and wanted to know if we had a license for the still. I said 'Sure, it's framed on the wall over your heads. They looked a little embarrassed, thanked me for my time and left." What the agents, presumably rookies put up to the "inspection" as a prank by their seniors, were touring was the Belmont Farm Distillery in Culpepper (http://www.virginiamoonshine.com/). You'd think the website, television programs on the History and National Geographic channels, and the all "Cultural Attraction" signs along U.S. Route. 29 might have tipped them off that there was nothing underhanded going on, but hey, your tax dollars at work.

Chuck and Jeanette Miller run the smallest whiskey distillery in the United States. Using a copper pot still, (Jaeger and Franzmann Coppersmiths, Yonkers, New York, serial number 3), they make Virginia Lightning corn whiskey, aged all of 30 days, clear as rainwater and 100 proof. They also make sippin' whiskey, Copper Fox, which is seasoned with charred white oak and apple wood chips in big cheesecloth bags, then aged the traditional way in white oak barrels.

Corn whiskey goes back to the roots of the Republic. One of George Washington's first tests as Commander in Chief was putting down the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Farmers had traditionally turned their cash crop of corn into whiskey, making it easier to transport than the bulky grain itself and bringing a better price to boot. They also did not want to pay Federal taxes on what they saw as just another farm commodity. Fielding an army the size of his Continental forces of the Revolution, Washington marched into western Pennsylvania, arresting a score of people, two of which were sentenced to be executed; Washington pardoned both. Skip forward a few dozen decades to the 1950's and 60's when good ole boys drove the stuff from the stills to distribution centers in high-powered Fords and Chevys. NASCAR was born when they realized that they could make more money driving around a flat oval track instead of along twisting back roads at night, one eye in the rearview mirror, and a flammable, potentially explosive cargo in the trunk. Some of the early legends of stock car racing including Buddy Baker and Lee (father of Richard) Petty got their starts runnin' moon.

Chuck's tour lasts all of 15 minutes. His entire operation is housed in a converted barn. Chuck learned his craft from his grandfather, who learned it from his father. Back then, this stuff was genuine moonshine and as illegal as heroin. You walk into the distillery through the gift shop (yet another clue the ATF gentlemen missed) and enter into an alchemist's den of shadows, heady brewery scents, and thumping machinery. "I need to change a bearing on the brewer but I can't while it's fermenting." says Chuck. Past the pot still itself, past vats and cylinders,glowing at the top like a live volcanoes, past the vintage mini-bottling plant, held together with bungee cords and to the 5-step water purifier.

Chuck explains: "The water has lots of limestone in it. That's great for brewing and for distilling, but I double-distill my whiskey to 150 proof, so I need to dilute down to 100 proof for sale. Limestone water makes it cloudy so I need to add purified water. It's all about the product." The product comes in lethal looking pints and fifths and tastes like pure history. Just make sure you're sitting down when you have some.

Mr. Jefferson's Ladies

Family traditions are funny things. They are often started in accidental, almost comical ways. The youngest kid putting the first ornament on the Christmas tree or getting the drumstick from the Thanksgiving turkey may go on until the youngest is twenty or older; then it gets passed down to the next generation, then the next after that.

My family's tradition with the Japanese cherry trees along the Tidal Basin began innocently enough: I was working under contract with the National Park Service to come up with ways to protect them from tent caterpillars, Japanese beetles, and a particularly insidious form of scale insect. The scale was in reproductive stage when the trees were in bloom, so in order to avoid the crowds and find someplace to park, I took to hitting the Tidal Basin before dawn. The sight of sunrise through the Jefferson Memorial soon banished any thought of serious work, however.

That night, I told Pat: "You have got to come down and see this." She half-heartedly agreed and next dawn found us bundled up and yawning while waiting sunup. It was definitely a "Wow" moment, and we have been trekking down every year since, with a couple of breaks for babies. We brought Ariel and Alec along as soon as we were reasonably sure they wouldn't wander off the sidewalk and fall into the water. We leave get there before 6 a.m. and when we leave by 7:30, the place is already packed with people. Ariel has been known to grouse "If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?" but everyone seems polite enough, pausing while you set up a photo and murmuring pleasantries.

The trees survived my ministrations, or lack thereof, and have weathered hurricanes, floods, beavers, and various other natural disasters. A few, mostly in places not frequented by walkers (who tend to compress the soil about the roots - a bad thing), date from the original 1912 plantings. First Lady Mrs. William Howard Taft and the wife of the Japanese ambassador turned the first shovels full of soil. Several trees were removed when the Jefferson Memorial was constructed in the 1930's, causing vehement demonstrations with people chaining themselves to the doomed trunks and sitting in the holes after the roots had been dug up. The Park Service, in a effort to bring about a win-win situation, planted an additional thousand trees, including new varieties to extend the blooming period, when construction was completed. Several trees were cut down by misguided jingoists in the days following Pearl Harbor as retaliation (I'm sure Emperor Hirihito was most upset). The trees remain, along with attendant ceremonies and parades, telling us when Spring has officially started in Washington.

Skate Away

They say the Inuit have 50 (0r 100 or 700; pick a number) words for snow. The human race must have tens of thousands of words for water, including all those Inuit words for snow. Water is what shapes us and makes this planet habitable. It is the blue in the pale blue dot as seen from deep space by the Voyager space craft. Carl Sagan once said: "we are made of star stuff". True enough. Mostly though, we're water.

Water is tricky. At the molecular level, it wants to stick to other water molecules. This attraction to itself is what allows water to form snow flakes, rain drops, clouds, and all other the myriad forms it can take. When in contact with air, water still wants to stick to itself; hence surface tension; if you do it with care, you can float a needle on a glass of water. Water covers a good three quarters or so of the planet, which makes for an awful lot area cover by surface tension. For those who can handle it, the surface tension universe can be an amazingly productive environment. Water striders, or pond skaters, are the undisputed masters of the water's surface. Distributed across the globe, they can walk on water, a feat of biblical proportions. Lacking Divine inspiration, water striders do it the hard way: they have fine water-repellent hairs on the tips of their toes. Moving across the surface like an ice skater moves across a frozen pond, they dig their toes in for thrust, then glide on the momentum. Water striders are the only insects to colonize the open seas, living on the oceans' surface, often miles from land.

The water's surface can offer a good living if you can pull it off. Water striders are predators, feeding on insects that fall in and become trapped by the surface tension. Sitting motionless, four long walking legs splayed out and front legs just touching the surface, water striders are exquisitely sensitive to the tiny ripples made by struggling prey. Homing in, they grasp their prey in their forelegs, piercing it and sucking it dry through a stout beak. They can judge the size, direction, and distance of what fell in by the ripples, the same way we can with sound, which when you think about it, is ripples in the air. Water striders "hear" through their feet.

Tennis- More Than Just a Game

Spring is pushing faster than you can watch it. Today I noticed that the Carolina chickadees and tufted titmice (mouses?) are already gathering nesting materials. Seems like this should take place later in the month, but who am I to argue? Chickadees and their close cousins the titmice like to line their nests with soft material. They will pick up dandelion or milkweed floss if they can find it, but they really prefer fur. I have seen a titmouse pick fur from roadkill. Today I watched a chickadee denude the tennis ball that my dog left out in the yard. She (the hens do the nest building) stood on top of the ball, yanking off bits of fluff until she had a beakfull. She flew off to her nesting hole, an old woodpecker drill site in a dead branch. A few minutes later she was back. I gotta brush the cats.