What's That Green Bug?

Early yesterday afternoon, after cutting down a few small field trees and lopping off a few strategic yard tree branches, I sat on the front steps to cool off in the shade. The temperature was in the low 90s. By late afternoon, the thermometer hit 97 and set a new record high for the date. While I sipped my water, I noticed this shiny green bug in the river rock that borders around part of the house. About a half inch long and iridescent green, the bug was actually being chased around by much smaller ants.

The longer I watched the scene, the more it became clear as to what was happening. I often cool off in the shade and watch the ants in from the steps. Typically they are very business-like and work in straight lines hauling crumbs to and fro like a symphony. This time they were frantically scurrying about the river rock like bebop jazz. Occasionally, an ant would attack the green bug and the bug would scoot away. Less frequently, the green bug would attack and kill an ant. Believe me, the ant did go down without a fight.

As the ants drove the green bug farther away from me, the frantic scurrying of the ants closest to me slowed down and eventually the ants disappear into the river rock. However, when the green bug came back, the frantic scurrying started up again. And so went the struggle.

What was that green bug? With a little googlling, I found the bug was a six spotted tiger beetle. I learned this on an interesting web site called What's That Bug? There were all kinds of other bugs identified on this site. I also found a site that gave even more detail on the lives of the six spotted tiger beetle or Cicindela sexguttata, as the bug is known scientifically. The ants I was seeing in this life and death territorial struggle are officially knows as little black ants and scientifically knows as Monomorium minimum.

I wonder if the concept of "leisure time" exists in the world's of anything on the planet other than humans? Maybe that's just the calm between the next storm...Whatever the answer, from little black ants to six spotted tiger beetles to the big guy sitting on the front steps cooling off, life seems to be about survival, sheltering, protection and defending, belonging, dignity, and making the world a better place. Of maybe, humans are the only ones able to reach the upper levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: 1. Physiological; 2. Safety; 3. Love/Belonging; 4. Esteem; 5. Actualization.

After finishing up my outside chores, I went in the house, showered and watched the last 25 laps of the Indy 500. While the cars were hitting average lap speeds of 214 mph, I wondered how fast do ants travel...

Solitude: Now More Than Ever

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

John Muir
A Sierra Club profile.
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The picture above is titled Solitude and painted by Loretta Kasper.
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I have a bench in a shady spot that over looks the pond in the back. The hills sweep down to the shore of the pond in a little valley that provides a contemplative vista. It's no Grand Canyon, but you get to overlooks a piece of Mother Nature that offers quiet beauty, a chance to see various forms of bird and animal. Most of all, it gives the opportunity to sit, sip on a glass of water and appreciate the world around me.

John Muir had it right over a century ago. He was a true visionary and I first encountered his ideas in high school. His book, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, provides a good look at what drove the "Father of Our National Parks" and gives a good taste of the hardships and struggles of growing up on a Wisconsin farm in the mid-1800s.

Birds Of A Feather

Whistles and a flurry of crimson wings
signals he watches when she looks for him;
skyward, eyes where he sways on cedar, sings,
flinging bursts of flattering hymns at whim.

from Cardinal Designs
by Helga Ross

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Today was our 22nd wedding anniversary. My wife called me at work this morning and told me she had the best wedding present she could ask for -- a male cardinal perched on the backyard fence. She said she had an prefect view of it from the kitchen window. She said later the male and female cardinals were hunting up worms in the backyard.

With the exception of our pet canary, the cardinal is the official bird of our house. One of the presents I gave my wife for our first Christmas was a framed picture of a cardinal. More cardinal pictures have followed.

Maybe it's the pine trees that have grown up around the five acres over the past 17 years that provide the reason for the influx of cardinals in our yard? We've always seen them in the trees at the edge of the field, but now there are a number of pairs in the yard around the house. The hang out with the robins. I think the cardinals use the robins as an early warning system. Robins spoke easier than cardinals and make a distinct chirping call as they fly off.

It will be interesting to see if the blue birds continue to do their twice-daily invasion of our front and back bird baths: front in the morning; back in the afternoon. It is quite a pool party to behold. The bluebirds hangout with the purple finches and an occasional gold finch.

As the hayfield we built our house on has filled our with pines and shade tress over the last 18 years, the bird population has shifted noticeably. The meadowlarks can now only be heard off in the distance. Killdeers are rarely seen or heard. But mockingbirds have made an appearance as have catbirds.

Likewise, many things have changed in our 22 years of marriage. We've buried all our parents, my wife's brother and her niece. We've had our ups and downs and have learned, as my Mom used to say, "life's not bed of roses." Long ago, when she told me that, I said that it is a bed of roses -- it's a mix of the softness, beauty, and attractiveness mixed with the thorns that go with them.

Quite Enough

"Rather than searching everywhere, search more deeply within and within togetherness. Once the beginning is found, the mystery in each man and woman is quite enough."

From the The Tao of Relationships by Ray Grigg
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There's some days when, if silence was golden, we'd be living a life of poverty. There are other days when the spare change from a friend's conversation is worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox. Tonight you can fill in your own blanks...

Blue Collar Bird

O great blue heron, now
That the summer house has burned
So many rockets ago,
So many smokes and fires
And beach-lights and water-glow
Reflecting pinwheel and flare:
The old logs hauled away,
The pines and driftwood cleared
From that bare strip of shore
Where dozens of children play;
Now there is only you
Heavy upon my eye.

Taken from the poem The Great Blue Heron

Read the entire poem: by Carolyn Kizer and learn more about the author.
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Sunday was a yard-work day. In between weed-whacking, edge trimming, fence fixing and lawn mower adjustments, I watched and listened to the birds.

A red trail hawk, circling effortlessly overhead, minding its own business, enjoying the day and doing what it does best, was suddenly under attack from a couple of crows. They flew up from below and made a couple of cheap-shot lunges at the hawk. Obviously, they weren't going to do any damage to the hawk, but the hawk was taken off his game and definitely look uncool. He or she -- it's hard to tell from a 100 yards below -- straighten out its glide path, pointed its nose down and to the north and headed to a less popular fly zone.

A hour or so later, the same crows where being chased by a couple of black birds. They too were escorted out of the neighborhood. At this time of the year, the pine trees are loaded with baby birds and it can turn into a rather active feeding zone for the hawks and crows.

Later in the afternoon, a great blue heron flew over on his way to the lake out back. To me, the great blue heron is the ultimate blue collar bird. Storks are pictured bringing babies and herons should be pictured carrying a lunch bucket. They are a no-frills flying machine.

Some days, in the morning, when the herons leave the lake and fly west, I imaging their flight is a straight line to the marsh land around 10-Mile creek. Every wing flap is for a purpose. When the herons later return to the lake, as soon as they reach the point where the hill slopes down to the lake, they quit flapping and lock into their landing approach. No need to waste any energy. That would require catching an additional frog to compensate.

As I watched the heron return Sunday afternoon, I thought about how I'd never seen any birds bother a heron. Not a hawk or a crow or a red-wing blackbird. Obviously, the bird world understands who their enemies are. Right...

Wrong! On Monday morning I drove to work on County Road E past the Twin Lakes area. High-wire power line parallel the south side of the road. It is great for hawk and eagle watching. This time of the year, there is usually one or two eagles sitting on top of the power line posts by Twin Lakes. They are there on the way to and from work. Once I saw two adults and one immature eagle, each with their own poll. Between Highway 65 and County Road A, I have counted up to eight red-tail hawks on a given morning or afternoon. I hook at each one...got to keep them on their talons.

On Monday morning, I saw a heron flapping its way to the east lake from the north. Suddenly, the three red-wing blackbirds rose up from the weeds and started harassing the heron. The heron made an awkward adjustment, set its wings and glided toward the lake probably to get that extra frog it was going to need for that interruption in its blue collar efficiency.

Sunday Promenade

As through this life you travel, you'll meet some funny men,
Some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.
As through this life you travel, as through this life you roam,
You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from its home.

Woody Guthrie
Song: Pretty Boy Floyd

It was cool at the cabin this morning. The wife said she checked the thermometer around 6:30 and it was around the freezing mark. Hey, this is Wisconsin in May.

Gramma used to say "You don't plant your tomatoes until after Memorial Day." Of course, she was talking about the old, inconvenient Memorial Day of May 31 -- the one where people understood why the day was set aside. Not to be confused with the three-day-weekend convenient Memorial Day we've had for the past 30 or so years. A cellar for of her canned fruits and vegetables and a large, successful garden every year stamped her in my mind as an authority on the subject.

I took a little road cruise into town mid-morning a pickup a Sunday paper and swung by the hardware store for a couple of screws to fix my lawnmower. I took the round-about way home going passed a couple little lakes and crossing over the Willow River. Where the town road cuts between to small ponds, I could see a pair of Canadian Geese on the road. Slowing to a stop, I could see the geese herding their babies into the danger mode. I creeped my car up along side them, as they scurried down the bank into the water. The male was first in the water, he turned and faced me with a honk that meant business should I challenge the group. Mother goose and the babies scrambled somewhat orderly into the pond and swam determinedly away. Father goose held his ground -- rather water -- and kept on quacking.

I don't see many geese flying this time of year, but I do see pairs of them with babies in tow down by the lake out back. Recently, a large male fox hanging around. If this year is like past years, a bald eagle will soon be hanging out in the big tree down by the lake. Baby geese draw a crowd of others with their own babies to feed. Over the past 18 years on these five acres, I've learned to appreciated the annual patterns and notice the cycles and trends that happen over time: coyotes come and they go; foxes do to; rabbits are everywhere and then disappear; gophers invade and badgers follow.

You Can See The Future Through The Trees

A poem by Gary Snyder

Old Bones

Out there walking round, looking out for food,
a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed that you can crack
plucking, digging, snaring, snagging,
barely getting by,

no food out there on dusty slopes of scree—
carry some—look for some,
go for a hungry dream.
Deer bone, Dall sheep,
bones hunger home.

Out there somewhere
a shrine for the old ones,
the dust of the old bones,
old songs and tales.

What we ate—who ate what—
how we all prevailed.

from Mountains and Rivers Without End, published by Counterpoint Press, 1996.

That cabin pictured on the top of this blog has its start, because of a scene of the vast timber stands that blanketed Wisconsin in the mid-1800s. My great grandfather worked his way down from Canada to be a lumberjack in the white pine forest of northern Wisconsin. Since he was descended from Tories who crossed over to Canada during the Revolutionary War era, I'm not sure he would be classified an illegal alien in today's raging debate.

Lumber jacking led to friendships that still interact today. Swedes, Norwegians, Danes...there was a whole mix of immigrant labor clearing the land for the farms that would follow. Without calling my aunt, I don't know my great grandfather Phillips first name. He eventually built a log cabin southeast of Clear Lake in the 1860s that was still standing a few years ago when I last drove up that way. It was a small homestead farm where my Gramma grew up. Where she and my great Gramma who would stay up all night when the lambs were being born and fend off the wolves with a lantern and guns. Her dad and big brothers were up working in the woods. She once told me, after here dad and brothers returned from the logger camp, they would have to be thoroughly scrubbed and deloused before even getting close to the cabin.

It was rusty living at the turn of the century and it wasn't then "good old days." Back in the late 1970s, when my cousin and his wife brought the cabin back to life and an attempt to get back to nature, my Gramma used to say, "they can have the go old days, I'll take my stove and refrigerator." I believe the "back to nature" experiment lasted until the first baby came.

From the log house, there would be many treks to the lake that cabin overlooks. The mode of transportation would include horseback, buckboard, Model A's and T', 1954 Studebaker, Ford Fairlanes, Firebirds and dodge trucks. There were fish to catch and stores to tell around the campfire on the corner of the universe where Fox Creek flows out of Bone Lake in Polk County, Wisconsin.

Sunshine, goldfinches, dandelions and Mother's Day

How many days was it raining? This morning the sun broke through and the dandelions opened up in yellow brilliance and shown like stars in the backyard. With cup of coffee close by and my guitar in hand, I worked through my song book and took into the morning warming up and springing to life just beyond the patio door.

Mother Nature's, with her paint pallet of infinite shades of green, had been busy over the past week. The grass would be cut later in the afternoon and the dandelions would be getting their "haircut." Until it warmed up and dried out, my morning agenda consisted of coffee and folk songs.

The other day I mentioned seeing my first oriole of the season. That's definitely a good sign. This morning I was treated to a visit from a male goldfinch in all his splendor. Hopping around around the dandelions, picking at them and nabbing an occasional bug, the goldfinch provided me with another reminder of one of the joys of spring and early summer.

At my place, we have the variety of lawn -- as my wife learned the other day on the Wisconsin Public Radio garden show -- call "freedom lawn." There's no pesticides, fertilizers or sprinklers used at our place. The lawn does what it does and for the next few weeks the dandelions will be turning from yellow to gray. When the gray hits, the backyard becomes a seed buffet for a variety of birds that include goldfinches, purple finches, bluebirds and a few others stopping by for a snack. It's quite a sight to see those birds just outside the patio door devouring the seeds of a ripe dandelion. It reminds me of how I work my way through a big bowl of ice cream.

My Mother past away 23 years ago and the goldfinch reminded me that the Mother's Day gifts I used to give to my Mom were usually pictures of birds like hawks and owls. For some reason, she liked owls the best. They were usually small pen and ink drawings that were framed and eventually hung on the wall. Even though it's days like today that tend to re-open the wound of sadness that never really heals after the death of one so close as your Mother, I was comforted by the warmth, hope and glory my Mother Nature offered me as I sang "Will The Circle Be Unbroken."

Summer Has Been Spotted

As a lazy -- but alert -- bird watcher, I know the the robin's arrival means that spring is just around the bend. But there's an old saying that spring won't come until it snows three times on the robins. Then I see blue birds, meadowlarks, killdeers, herons, red wing black birds. Then you know the spring and winter are definately at the tipping point.

But I'm not convinced till I actually see a Baltimore oriole. On my walk the past few days I knew I hear an oriole. However, catbirds can fool you -- especially if the singing is coming from the mid-section of the trees. I look for the orioles on the top of the trees. Yesterday, I looked out my window at work and there was my first official oriole sighting of the season. When you get a chance, take a walk an listen -- really listen -- to the bird song symphony. It's amazing!

Then I remembered that I had to stop at Fleet Farm and pick up a part to fix my lawnmower deck...