"Buck Moon" July Opens With a Bang

Welcome to July's "Buck Moon"

Illustration from "Twelve Moons of the Year"

"BUCK MOON
A baffler, but perhaps because
buck deer were fat and their meat
could be quickly dried in the
hot July sun."--from Hal Borland's "Twelve Moons of the Year"

Reading John Switzer every Sunday in the Columbus Dispatch got me to borrow a copy of Hal Borland's "Twelve Moons of the Year" from the library and eventually to buy it.  Switzer refers each month to the name for that month's moon, given by Native Americans or early settlers.

The "Twelve Moons of the Year" is a compilation of Borland's nature editorials in The New York Times newspaper.  What I like about the book is that he breaks it down by days of the month, so you can keep it alongside another book you're reading and just read--and re-read--a page or two a day--and re-read it all over again the next year, and the next...

I've been keeping that book and Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac" and the Farmer's Almanac in a stack on our coffee table.  To be honest, I tend only to read Borland's book lately because I can take it in smaller segments than Leopold's book and I don't fully trust the Almanac, especially after this past winter!

I do like the Almanac's astronomy section, though.  It tells you about a year in advance about celestial events that are on schedule, while TV news tells you abou a week in advance.  The main one I look for is the Perseid meteor shower in August, although the almanac says the shower on August 11 will be ruined by moon's light since it comes closest to earth this year on August 10.  Last August I saw a shooting star every two minutes or so.

Tonight is a wild Nature night, showing that Nature is more powerful and entertaining than any July 4th fireworks show.  While I was watching fireflies tonight, the sky kept lighting up like fireworks, but everywhere--due to heat lightning.  We had a very hot and humid day.  And as I type this thunder is making threatening sounds and vibrations, more thrilling than the sound of fireworks--and a lot scarier!

And the seeming failure of the Perseid meteor shower this August, the most reliable of the shooting stars show, proves to me once again that fireflies beat meteor showers as well as fireworks!

 

Illustration from "Twelve Moons of the Year".

Anticipating Spring

It would be hard to recognize this vernal pool, especially in winter,without knowing it's by this bench which has an apt quotation from my favorite Nature writer, Aldo Leopold:  "Rest cries the sawyer, and we pause for breath."  (Photo by Don Comis)

My first two black vultures of the season, resting by a deer carcass (not in photo).  (Photo by Don Comis)

I just had to write this early today since I am so exhilarated from an outing this morning at Kenyon College.  It's March 7 and I finally started toward my goal of visiting a vernal pool daily in March at the Brown Family Environmental Center.

Boy did it pay off--although it's too early yet to see spotted salamanders and other amphibians marching to the pool.  Even as I drove on Rt. 308 toward Gambier, I saw a huge flock of large birds I thought were wild turkeys grazing in corn stubble, near New Gambier Road.  This is probably the same field where someone saw a snowy owl on February 1.

I should have stopped but didn't.  When I got to the parking area by the Miller Observatory, I was confronted by a territorial mockingbird.

On the way to the pool, I have the privilege of passing a corridor of bluebird and tree swallow birdhouses.  I saw five bluebirds, with one couple checking out a home.  A mockingbird, possibly the one who warned me or just another bossy mockingbird, chased a bluebird.

I heard and saw many birds and tracks, including possible coyote tracks.

On my way home, I even saw my first song sparrow singing from the top of a crabapple tree on a lawn in my neighborhood.

Two Really Big Shows in March in Ohio

Illustration of woodcock's "Sky Dance" from Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac".

Soon, I hope to visit this vernal pool often, hoping to see migrations of spotted salamanders and other amphibians to the pool from their hibernation areas underground.  They like to lay their eggs in these temporary pools because there aren't fish in them.  This pool is a depression near the Kokosing River that collects snowmelt runoff, helping to prevent flooding of the Kokosing.  (Photographed April 6, 2013, after the migration

After about 45 years, I still remember certain passages from Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac".  One of them is his description of the "Sky Dance" of male woodcocks during mating season, which is April in his native Wisconsin and March in Ohio.

So I was excited to find out last spring that there are woodcocks at the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College.  I had never seen a woodcock and still haven't, because I forgot they dance in March.  This year I'm remembering.

March also brings the spring migration of spotted salamanders and frogs and other amphibians from their underground hibernation spots to the nearest vernal pool.  I heard this occurs when the first rains of spring falls on a warm morning.   I knew the vernal pond it occurred at on the U.S. Department of Agriculture farm in Maryland where I used to work, and I know a vernal pool at the Brown Center,  but I've never seen that event either, in either state.

I remembered last spring in Ohio but I didn't know that  "warm" can mean about 40 degrees, I thought it meant about 50 degrees.  And I didn't know it might happen in the evening rather than at daybreak.

So I dream of walking through the Brown Center every evening or morning in March.   I know I'll at least make it once a week, starting with March 1 when the Center has its monthly Family Adventure Day, which I always attend anyway!