[bristol-birds] Ramblings 25FEB2002

     I just had to take advantage of the weather Monday.  I first went up Dry 
Creek Road in Washington Co., parking at the offroad vehicle recreation area 
at the top of the road.  I walked up the Cherokee Mtn. side on the old 
logging road, sharing it and the day with a few bicyclists who passed me as I 
started up.
     There were not many birds apparent, a few Dark-eyed Juncos, Northern 
Cardinals, Eastern Tufted Titmice, and American Robins. The short, yellow 
daisy-type flowers of Coltsfoot were blooming in big patches on the lower 
stretch of the road.  They were sparsely attended by a few fat housefly-type 
flies and some small hoverflies that look like sweatbees, possibly Syrphids.  
I searched long and hard, but found only one patch of Trailing Arbutus with a 
few open blossoms.  On the way back down I saw one fresh butterfly, a male 
Spring Azure, form violacea (no brown margin or patch on the under-hindwing). 
 Methinks he jumped the starting gun, got disqualified from the race for 
survival, and thrown out of the gene pool.
     Then I saw several Juncos fly up and, where they had been, a pile of 
feathers.  Closer inspection revealed Ruffed Grouse feathers on the shoulder 
of the road.  Below the bank in the woods was an even larger pile of Grouse 
feathers in a neat circle, with some splats of whitewash around the edge of 
the pile.  I saw no tracks around either pile.  The feathers had not been 
chewed, but plucked out by the base, with  scratches cut into the quills, 
often v-shaped.  I couldn't find any tail feathers, but primaries, 
secondaries, tertials, and body feathers were present.  Other than a little 
skin and blood, still red, where a clump of feathers had been pulled out 
together, there was nothing remaining of the body.  In my reading I 
discovered that these signs are consistent with predation by a large bird of 
prey, probably a Great Horned Owl.  The other most likely candidate would be 
Red-tailed Hawk, but their whitewash would be ejected in a stream extending 
some distance from the point of origin.  (I not only read this, I have 
observed this behavior in non-releasable captive Red-tailed Hawks.)  Since I 
didn't notice the feathers on the hike up the trail, and since the carcass 
had been carried off before the tail feathers could be plucked, and the blood 
seemed fresh and the feathers were warm to the touch (though it could have 
been due to sunshine), I'm guessing that the kill was made while I was above 
it on the road, between 3:45 and 4:15.  I don't know how unusual it would be 
for a Great Horned Owl to hunt at 4 pm on a sunny, warm February day.  Also, 
I have no idea what the Juncos were doing there.
     On the walk back to my car, I had the impression that many of the 
Coltsfoot blossoms were closing and leaning toward the sinking sun.  I drove 
farther down Dry Creek Rd.  At the high roadcuts where people park to go to 
the Dry Creek swimming hole, about a quarter mile before the Forest Service 
barn, I saw a Common Raven on the roadside.  I stopped to observe.  It flew 
up and landed in a roadside tree for a moment, flew up and circled once, and 
left.  As I approached the Nolichucky River, I noticed sundogs on both sides 
of the sun, small rainbow-like segments level with the sun and about as far 
from the sun as my outstretched handspan at arms length.  I put on my 
sunglasses and saw faintly a 22 degree halo around the sun intersecting the 
sundogs.  I parked and got out to look up.  There was a tangent arc above the 
sun, a rainbow-like segment curving away from the sun and centering on the 
zenith.  I could not make out a 22 degree halo continuing from the tangent 
arc around the zenith, as I saw on the day of the Glade Springs, VA Christmas 
Bird Count Jan. 5, 2002.  These optical phenomena are produced by refraction 
and/or reflection of light by ice crytals high in the upper atmosphere, 
conditions evidenced by cirrus clouds and presaging an approaching cold 
front.  It was warm when I saw them, but they meant it would be cold in a day 
or two.
     I continued to Greeneville in search of the Woodcock site that Don 
Miller recently reported.  Approaching Greeneville from the east on Hwy 11W, 
soon after passing Augustino's restaurant, turn right on Rufe Taylor Rd. at 
the Greene Co. Bank.  Behind the bank, turn left into the driveway of Italian 
Village.  The large, undulating field behind the restaurant is covered with 
broomsedge and the far end is bordered by woodland.  I walked out to the far 
end, sat down in the tall grass at the top of a hill, and waited.  Eastern 
Towhees sang late into the twilight.  A couple of Eastern Meadowlarks flew 
into the field to roost.  Just before it got as dark as it could get on a 
night with a three-quarters moon high in the east,  a stocky bird flew in low 
from the woods behind me toward a low open area in the field.  A moment 
later, at 6:50 pm, I heard the first 'peent' calls from that low area.  It 
sounded like two birds near each other.  As I approached slowly for a closer 
look, I heard the chirping wing-sounds of their display flight three or four 
times.  By the time I reached the staging area,  I could distinctly hear the 
peenting birds' locations, but couldn't find them with my flashlight through 
the tall grass even though it was sparser there.  By 7:05 pm, they had 
stopped calling altogether.  As I waited, I relaxed in the dry grass.  It was 
warm lying there in my coveralls.  I looked up through the tracery of 
purpletop and broomsedge against the high, moonlit overcast at jet contrails 
shining in the night, intersecting a halo around the moon that was two 
outstetched handspans wide.  I realized that the conditions for the earlier 
optical phenomena around the sun were still in operation.  That's when I 
noticed that, on either side of the halo, what I had thought were two very 
short segments of contrail were not moving with the prevailing wind like the 
other contrails, but had kept their geometric position with relation to the 
moon, namely horizontally level with and equidistant on either side of it, on 
the 22 degree halo.  Suddenly I realized I was seeing something I had read 
about, but never before experienced.  I was looking at Moondogs!  Unlike the 
sundogs, there was no color, just white light.  But that plain white light 
was enhanced beyond any spectral finery by the corresponding light in my 
awareness, by seeing something new under the sun, something ancient.
     On the way back to Carter Co., I stopped on a whim at the Bowmantown 
wetland.  I heard a Great Horned Owl.  I played with the fish and salamanders 
in the spring.  I discovered small, brown crawdads in the detritus where the 
water bubbles up in depressions of the pool bottom.  They were visible only 
by their shape, their color blending into the detritus perfectly.  I also 
discovered the weirdest snails I have ever seen, up to about an inch long, 
helically spiralled, rough textured, mottled brown and pink and white, no two 
marked exactly alike.  They too were in the detritus near the founts of water 
on the bottom.  When I left, driving on Kyker Rd., an Eastern Screech Owl 
flew across the road in front of my car and swooped up into a roadside bush.  
I stopped and put a flashlight and binoculars on it.  It was red phase.  It 
kept its ear tufts flat.  I tried to turn it into some other species but 
couldn't do it.
     When I reached home it was 11 pm.  I was beat, my house was a mess, my 
dog was hungry...what a great day!
     - Don Holt, Central, Carter Co., TN
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