- Nature Watch: Rattled by the sounds animals make at night | lehighvalley live.com 083015
Arlene Koch: “One day last week my husband David and I drove to Lansdale to visit a bakery we’d heard about. Normally, buying baked goods in a mall store in the middle of a town would have nothing to do with nature. But as I stood by the store’s front windows, a ruby-throated hummingbird suddenly appeared and hovered for about a minute in front of a flashing red “Bakery” sign. This wasn’t a place where you’d expect to see any birds except for house sparrows or starlings, but when hummingbirds are migrating they can show up anywhere. That little bird could have been making its way as far south as Mexico.”
- FINGER LAKES BIRDLIFE: Sandhill cranes a surprising success story – Finger Lakes Times: Lifestyle 083015
Charlie Rouse: “One migrant bird to look for during August is the (quite uncommon) common nighthawk. As a young boy I used to watch their spring aerial courtship displays over downtown Geneva and around the hospital, where they nested on flat, gravel-covered rooftops, but those days are long gone. With the change in commercial roofing design from hot tar and gravel to rubber membrane, so went the nighthawks. These once sprawling gravel rooftops were quite inviting for nighthawks as nesting sites, where they would lay their grayish speckled eggs amongst the stones. | Charlie Rouse, of Geneva, is a past president and secretary of the Eaton Birding Society and his column appears monthly in the Finger Lakes Times. For a free checklist of the birds seen regularly in our four-county area, or to send your comments, questions and unusual sightings, email him at flbirdlife@yahoo.com.
- Outdoors notebook | Numerous hunting seasons start this week | The Columbus Dispatch 083015
Those bonded to the hunting cycle can celebrate a new year on Tuesday when open seasons for squirrels, mourning doves, Canada geese, sora and Virginia rails, common moorhen and common snipe commence in Ohio. | Early teal season begins on Saturday
| Lake Erie Marsh Zone, Oct. 17-Nov. 1 and Nov. 14-Dec. 27. | The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has begun a streamlining process by which the guidelines that states follow for setting their fall/winter duck and goose seasons will be announced in May of each year rather than mid-summer. … USFWS has added 21 national wildlife refuges to those that may be hunted at some time during the year. Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, which sits along Lake Erie between Port Clinton and Toledo, is among the 336 federal refuges where hunting opportunities are available.
About the Ghost Turtles
150 years after Robert Duncanson painted this luminist scene on the Little Miami River, I stood in the same spot and saw a soft-shelled turtle sunning on a snag. It slipped silently into the water when it heard me. That’s when I knew past is present and destiny, too. That’s when my vision of the Ghost Turtles began. Read more
Ecology of the Senses
Returning to Lake Superior year after year like a migrating loon, I’ve learned the other side of a slow, uncertain process that could be called “going blind.” With the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read more.Prayer at Big Creek
![Sandhill cranes land on Platte River sandbar roosts west of Rowe Sanctuary’s Iain Nicolson Audubon Center southwest of Gibbon, Nebraska. [Photo by Lori Porter| Kearney Hub]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sandhill_cranes_kearneyhub_032015-300x225.jpg)
At the threshold of consciousness, as I slipped back and forth between two worlds, I put my mind in the best place I could imagine, a marsh on Lake Erie called Big Creek. I knew I’d find cranes waiting for me. I cannot say whether I prayed for them, or to them, or with them. The cant of words doesn’t matter. I believe in the still, small voice. I believe what the poet Yehuda Amichai said. Gods come and go. Prayer is eternal. Read moreFreedom to Read
![An endangered Whooping crane takes flight. Yhe large bird has a 7-foot wingspan. It is all white except for black wing tips and face markings. In this photo its long neck stretches forward; its wings sweep upward; and its black legs trail straight behind it. [Source: International Crane Foundation]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Whooping-crane-eastern-ICF-080622-300x157.jpg)
Whenever I hear sanctimonious pronouncements about woke, parental rights, and banning books, I think of Whooping cranes. In my family, the gawky, audacious, elusive and endangered birds are synonymous with our values about the First Amendment and the freedom to read. Read more.Sister, Teacher, Pathfinder
A guidance counselor in high school told my sister Diana, “With your eye problems you will never make it in college. Just forget about it. Get married. Raise a family.” That advice only deepened her determination. She did it all in due time, in her own way –college, marriage, family. She became a guidance counselor herself. She certainly was the most important guide and pathfinder in my life. Read more.Flaneur & Bouquiniste
![Mark Willis peruses a 1745 volume by Voltaire at a bouquiniste book stall on the banks of the Seine in Paris. He wears a brown leather jacket and checkered flat cap. He holds the open book in his hands. Rows of old books are seen on shelves behind him. [2005 photo by Ms. Modigliani]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/mw_bouquiniste_05-300x225.jpg)
I remember the book I held in my hands that day. I remember the feel of its time-warped, water-stained pages. I remember its murky, moldy river smell, call it the book’s bouquet, suggesting years of storage on the banks of the Seine. Had I bought it then, I could feel and smell it now and know it from a hundred other books in my library. Read more.R & K: A Rant
Marjorie Taylor Green auditioned for R&K’s Authoritarian It Girl at the 2023 State of the Union address. She and her Republican colleagues yelled like Tarzan swinging through the trees as they jeered and booed the President’s speech. Read Rants & Kisses.R & K: A Kiss
Songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Singers like Dione Warwick and Dusty Springfield. What Do You Get When You Fall in Love? The Look of Love. I Say a Little Prayer. I sit in the car’s back seat and listen. I’m glad it’s dark. I’d be embarrassed if anyone could see the dreamy look on my face. Read Rants & Kisses.
