- Lake Erie Birding Trail
Tremendous numbers and diversity of migrant songbirds fill lakeside woodlands in spring and fall. Waterbirds galore pack marshes and the open lake waters, and interesting marsh birds breed in coastal wetlands. Winter brings hardy northern ducks, gulls, and raptors. There is never a dull season. | The sites included in the Lake Erie Birding Trail are the best of the best, and collectively nearly 400 species have been seen in these areas. There is a wealth of information for each site, and we hope that our trail helps to make your visit to Ohio and Lake Erie a bird-filled adventure! | The Lake Erie Birding Trail is divided into seven loops. The sites within each loop are similar in habitat type and landscape. You may choose to visit the entire trail in one trip or explore the trail loop by loop. For ease-of-use, this website is organized by loop.
- Marcia Davis: Hummingbird Festival at Ijams starts at 8 a.m. Aug. 22 – Go Knoxville Story 081515
Experience the wonder of hummingbirds at the fifth annual Wonder of Hummingbirds Festival from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 22, at Knoxville’s Ijams Nature Center. The festival, sponsored by the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society and Ijams Nature Center, celebrates the ruby-throated hummingbird, one of Tennessee’s most popular and fascinating birds. | Hummingbird banding conducted by licensed bird bander Mark Armstrong is always a top crowd-pleaser. Hummer activity at feeders is greatest in the morning and evening. Since feeding activity slows down in the middle of the day, the banding station where hummers are captured at a feeder will operate from 8 a.m. until noon. | Visit the banding station to enjoy up close views of hummers. Take advantage of this opportunity to learn about bird banding. Banding involves a lot more than just putting a tiny uniquely numbered metal band on a bird’s leg. You’ll learn how bird banders sex and age hummingbirds and how they determine how much body fat a migratory bird has stored. In late summer, southbound migrating hummers stopover at local hummingbird feeders for a day or longer to replenish their fat reserves. Stored body fat supplies energy needed for migration.
- Killing cormorants: Study finding culling to have no impact ignored, Audubon Society says – Free – The Daily Astorian 081315
Despite the analysis, earlier this year U.S. Fish and Wildlife authorized the Corps to kill about 11,000 cormorants — or 5,600 breeding pairs — on East Sand Island at the mouth of the Columbia between Oregon and Washington. The uninhabited island is North America’s biggest cormorant nesting colony. The agency also authorized the Corps to oil 26,000 nests to prevent the eggs inside them from hatching.
- Eastern Whip-poor-will | American Bird Conservancy 081415
Soul-snatcher: One New England legend says the Whip-poor-will can sense a person’s soul departing, and capture it as it leaves. Native American lore considered the singing of these birds a death omen. | Recovery in Progress: Eastern Whip-poor-will populations have experienced steep declines, and the species was one of several added to the 2014 State of the Birds Watch List. ABC and partners are working to help address the decline of aerial insectivores like the Whip-poor-will and Purple Martin. Our Migratory Bird Program also aims to address the reasons for decline of this and many other birds throughout their life cycles. |ABC and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as partners of the Central Hardwoods Joint Venture, have contributed to an ongoing project in the Missouri Ozarks that is documenting habitat use by whips and Chuck-will’s-widows in the Mark Twain National Forest. Led by Dr. Frank Thompson from USDA Forest Service Research, this project is part of an effort to assess the response of these and other Watch List species to the national forest’s shortleaf pine and pine-oak woodland restoration efforts.
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.
