WOW - The Snow and Ice

When the temperatures are below freezing, or in the single digits, for several days, things freeze up pretty fast. A little snow can stay around for days, recording the goings of any creature that walks through it. Even birds can leave tracks larger than their footprints. I don't know what bird left these wing prints, but I hope it was successful in either catching some prey or escaping from a predator.

 Kentucky Lake is a large navigable waterway, so the middle stays open all the time. The diving ducks could hunt easily, but the dabblers who need shallow water had more trouble. If enough of them stayed together, they could keep a small opening in the ice from freezing over, just by swimming around. They often stayed with the geese who are bigger and better as ice breakers.

I worried about the Great Blue Herons who hunkered down a the edge of the ice trying to fluff up and keep warm. Other parts of the lake, miles away, might have some open shallow water, but not the herons by the state park.

A group of Sandhill Cranes landed at the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge to graze for a while, joined by a flock of geese. The Refuge is surrounded by privately owned property and the owners set up private hunting clubs, so we heard gunshot throughout the day. Some of the decoys are very elaborate and must cost a bunch. These hunters aren't allowed to bait a field with grain, but if they leave extra corn out the rest of he year, the waterfowl know to look there in winter, not realizing that they may get shot on one side of the road, but not on the other.

The native hunters aren't restricted and can hunt where ever they like. Our group saw a coyote casually strolling across the ice. Bald Eagles sat on the ice looking for a wounded duck to catch. We heard stories from some of the birders who had seen bobcats going after ducks on the ice too.

 By Sunday, the snow was all melted, and the ice on the lake was receding quickly. It broke into regular sized floes, and made a noise similar to rustling leaves as the water beneath moved it around.

WOW Birding Festival

We like to go to winter birding festivals - usually in warm Southern climes. January has been just awful in Kentucky - temps in the single digits with ice and snow. But we saw a notice for a new birding festival in Western Tennessee, at the lower end of Kentucky Lake. It's only about a 4 hour drive, assuming the weather cooperates, and the two speakers are some of our favorite people. Brian "Fox" Ellis does historical re-enactments of John James Audubon, Charles Darwin and others. This weekend he would attend as Audubon. Julie Zickefoose is an Ohio birding expert, bird rehabber, artist, author and singer! With stars like this we couldn't resist signing up for Wings in Winter at Paris Landing State Park.

For the pre-festival day, we signed up to go to Cross Creeks NWR, near Dover, TN. Of course, it was covered with snow and ice, and although there were birds, they were usually so far away you couldn't distinguish them well with just binoculars. However, the sun was bright (and me without a baseball hat in the car!) and they sky was blue, so it was the best day of the weekend. When the ducks got spooked by something, Julie gave us all wonderful lessons in duck identification on the wing. For example, the Gadwall is a plain looking gray bird with floating on the water. In flight though, it's almost entirely white. You can easily pick out the Pintails by their pointy tails in flight. And Northern Shovelers are mostly rusty on the bottom.

 Many of us were surprised to see good numbers of American Pelicans grouped on the sandbars. Then one took off and flew right over our heads!

Of course, the Bald Eagle numbers have rebounded in the last 25 years or so, and many of them either reside or come to winter on Kentucky Lake. We saw them perching in the trees, or sliding across the ice, hoping to nab a wounded duck.

The Wildlife Refuge manages the water and crops for the benefit of birds who will come to winter, so most fields have some kind of stubble, and the birds graze looking for leftover corn or millet. It's fun to look at the tracks and try to guess what made the. Not a deer, certainly.

When the geese started casually walking towards the corn stubble, it was easy to tell what made all those tracks! Once in a while, the Canada Geese would be joined by a Snow or Ross goose or some White-fronted Geese, so we had lots of variety.

We saw things I did not expect too, such as thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds in the fields along with the Grackles. I thought they all went much farther south in the winter.

Raptor numbers were good and we saw Harriers, Red Tails, Red Shoulders and Kestrels along with the Eagles.

We did NOT expect to find an armadillo, however. In Tennessee!? It ran across the road in the snow, leaving a trail of four footprints around a dragging tail mark.

Fall on Pine Mountain

Last weekend we took off for the mountains, specifically, Pine Mountain State Park. Pine Mountain itself is about 125 miles long, from Jellico, TN to Elkhorn City, KY, and runs along the Virginia border. Unlike much of Eastern Kentucky, it has NO coal, and has been spared the terrible destruction of coal mining over the centuries.  Kentucky Natural Lands Trust  has been working since 1995 to preserve this wilderness area via purchase or conservation easements, and now protects over 25,000 acres. Pine Mountain State Park brags that it is the first state park in Kentucky. The dining room overlooks the mountains and valleys, and in the morning, the valley is often filled with fog in an ocean of fluffy white clouds.

 Fall is my favorite time of year, when the October blue sky fills all the spaces between the trees...

... and the sun shines down through the leaves shine with gold and red.

We particularly like the lichens growing conveniently at eye level. In the spring and summer, I want to know all about the wildflowers and ferns. But when we walk along giant boulders, I want to study lichens. We found some British Soldiers too, but they were too small to photograph well.

One trail led back to Honeymoon Falls, which had water in it despite the dry weather.

Bittersweet berries were glowing orange on their bushes. Apparently these are the non-native variety. The native Bittersweet only has berries on the tips of the branch.

Clear Creek trail was built on the old rail road bed, when the rails were removed. I enjoyed a trail that only had a 6 foot change in elevation!

Living the High Life

Although Newport, RI, had a long history as a seaport, it may be more well know as the summer playground of the very wealthy during the late 1800's and early 1900's. On a rainy morning, we took the tour of The Breakers. The Breakers is the grandest of Newport's summer "cottages" and a symbol of the Vanderbilt family's social and financial preeminence in turn of the century America. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) established the family fortune in steamships and later in the New York Central Railroad, which was a pivotal development in the industrial growth of the nation during the late 19th century. Mark Twain coined the phrase "gilded age" and did not mean it to be a compliment.

The Commodore's grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, became Chairman and President of the New York Central Railroad system in 1885, and purchased a wooden house called The Breakers in Newport during that same year. In 1893, he commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a villa to replace the earlier wood-framed house which was destroyed by fire the previous year. Hunt directed an international team of craftsmen and artisans to create a 70 room Italian Renaissance- style palazzo inspired by the 16th century palaces of Genoa and Turin. Cornelius Vanderbilt only got to spend two summers here, since he died shortly after it was completed.

The Vanderbilts had seven children. Their youngest daughter, Gladys, who married Count Laszlo Szechenyi of Hungary, inherited the house on her mother's death in 1934. An ardent supporter of The Preservation Society of Newport County, she opened The Breakers in 1948 to raise funds for the Society. In 1972, the Preservation Society purchased the house from her heirs. Today, the house is designated a National Historic Landmark.  

The tours are well handled - each visitor is given an audio device, and can proceed at their leisure, with side tapes of related information, such as the servant's life in this mansion. I cannot imagine changing clothes 5 or 6 times a day for each activity. The house was built with electricity installed, and an option to change the lamps back to gas if the power failed. 20 bathrooms were available as well. 

Those are cast iron ovens on the wall in the kitchen. It must have baked the cooks as well as the bread! Each servant had one task to do each day, over and over. Their quarters were on the fourth floor, with small windows and little ventilation. Some servants had their children living in the house as well.  

After the implementation of Income Tax, two world wars and the Great Depression, even the wealthy could not afford these homes any more. Many were donated to the Preservation Society, while others were donated to small colleges in the community. Salve Regina College has a beautiful campus in the middle of this neighborhood.  

 The Cliff Walk winds along the rocky shore in front of these mansions. We saw several brave folks surfing in the cold water, timing their rides carefully to avoid being dashed on the rocks by the "breakers"!

Sailing with Madeleine

On Labor Day, the docks in Newport were packed elbow to elbow with people, and mast to mast with boats. Many boats were moored to buoys in the harbor. I wondered how the harbor master knew which one to assign to which boat to allow all of them, no matter how large, room to swing around in the wind and tide without running into the boat next door. The boats going out on trips were docked against the pier itself so passengers could easily board. I have trouble parking the big RROKI van, and was filled with admiration for the captains who drove these boats in and out of the docks.

 There were several companies to choose from, and we took the schooner Madeleine, shown above in full sail. It had 3 crew members, and promised a trip under sail around the bay.

The crew raised the sail when we had space and off we went!

We tacked, swinging the boom over, we heeled into the wind, and got splashed by water! What fun!

The big bridge was designed to come apart if damaged, so Navy ships could get out if the Germans attacked in WW II.

The green navigation buoys rocked with the waves. The bell mounted on it clanged, but the clappers were on the outside of the bell and there were four of them. No gulls or seals resting there as we saw in California.

Some cotton sails were dyed with tannins derived from tree bark, which gave them the reddish color. This was primarily to help preserve the sail, though it did also add a degree of camouflage when sailing near a sand/dirt shoreline. The red sails, especially on smaller vessels, would not stand out as much as bright white sails.

Rhode Island: The Ocean State

When we go on vacation, we usually spend the day exploring and hiking around, then in the evening, I go through the day's photos and post to this blog. In fact, I often become quite distraught if I am unable to do so. I get anxious if I get behind, because I know the risk that I will never get around to posting everything we did once we get home. The salt marshes and ponds dot the landscape in Cape Cod, but we seldom saw trails or places to park to explore them.

Beach Rose

 

Beach Roses grow everywhere, with small pink petals, which produce gigantic red rose hips. At first, you might think they are some kind of strange cherry tomato!

The Woods Hole Aquarium is closed on Mondays and holidays, so we were unable to go there this trip. We found a hiking area called Lowell Holly Reservation, owned by the Massachusetts Trustees. In the spring of 1891, the legislature voted to establish The Trustees of  Reservations “for the purposes of acquiring, holding, maintaining and opening to the public…beautiful and historic places…within the Commonwealth.”

At Lowell Holly, it appears that little or no activity by man –such as burning, plowing, or the felling of trees – has taken place for more than 200 years on the majority of land. The result is a forest that has largely escaped the influence of man and thus represents a unique natural resource for Cape Cod.This is the largest beech forest I've every seen, along with ponds and marsh lands. We got on the wrong trail, and ended up walking every last foot of the place before finding our car again.

It wasn't a long drive into downtown Newport, RI. I normally don't like "city" vacations, but Newport was absolutely wonderful! Our condo units were right on the docks - across the street from the Newport Shipyard and the piers for the lobster fishing fleet. Our first RI food was lobster bisque from the Lobster Shack, right on the dock where the fresh lobsters are brought to market each day. YUM!

"Lobsta' rolls" are a staple, and available at fancy expensive restaurants and the snack bar at the beach (which was actually the best one we had).

The harbor goes on and on, with boats of all sizes and prices bobbing on their mooring buoys. On Labor Day, the crowds were elbow to elbow, but the next morning, it was much easier to walk the docks.What shall we do with all these boats? Go sailing, of course!