Wild Wildlife: Knock, Knock…

My parents like to insist—as no doubt most parents do about their offspring—that I was a precocious child. In some respects it’s probably true, but I think that at three years old my joke-inventing ability left something to be desired: apparently I was very fond of a knock-knock joke I’d created that goes like this:

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Duck.
Duck who?
Duck up in a tree! Hahahahahaha!!!

Hilarious, right?

I bring this joke up now not simply to illustrate the early signs of my comic genius but because I was reminded of it this past Wednesday, when Annie and I visited friends in Asheville, NC.

While Annie and our friends soaked in a mineral hot spring, I wandered a small portion of the Appalachian Trail (I can now say I hiked it! Briefly!), admiring the beauty of the woods, the incredible abundance and diversity of invertebrates (more on those soon), and the soothing sound of the waters of the French Broad River rushing by.

I was also astonished to discover the presence of reptiles, right there in the woods!

First, alerted by a rustling of dried leaves, I observed this little lizard on a log:

[it’s about the length of my palm, I think]

And later, walking back down the trail while looking for a place to eat an apple, I heard another rustling and looked around. I didn’t see anything moving, but, in a little sapling growing by the water’s edge, I noticed this:

That’s funny, I thought to myself, that almost looks like...a snake…

Sure enough, it was a snake! A snake up in a tree!

Because this snake was in a tree that was small and next the water, I took photos of it. (Had it been in the branches of a tree above me, I would have shrieked like a small child and run away with all the stealth and grace of a gored boar.) Even so, I wasn’t willing to get close enough to get a perfect head shot, so this was the best I could do.

I’m assuming it’s one of the many non-poisonous snakes around, but the herpetologistically inclined among my readers should feel free to correct me if I’m wrong; now that I’m back in DC, I don’t mind learning it was actually poisonous.

I didn’t stick around it for too long in any case, not out of fear (mainly), but out of courtesy; as with the other hikers I met along the trail, it seemed to be enjoying a moment of solitary contemplation, and far be it from me to interrupt that—at least, for longer than it takes to take four or five photos.

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'Tis the Season of Renewal

(And preening, of course.)

This wild (trumpeter?) swan, visiting the Detroit Zoo, wishes you all a happy Easter and happy spring!

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The Red Sea Parted?!

This camel (from the Detroit Zoo) wishes you all a happy Passover.

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Flamingo Friday: My New Favorite Photo

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Spring Is Just a Basin of Cherries

It’s been two years now that we’ve lived in DC and three cherry-blossom seasons, but this was the first time I got myself down to the tidal basin during their (this year creepily early) peak flowering.

I admit it; I was completely enchanted, so much so that I took some typical monuments-and-flowers shots of the kind I usually scoff at.

I’m not necessarily proud of having taken the photos, but I’m not ashamed to acknowledge how very taken I was by the blossoms. There’s something amazing about them—first, their profusion, so that as you approach them it looks as if banks of rose-tinted clouds have settled in vast lines, floating right above the water.

But even more than their numbers, it’s their astonishing, contradictory delicacy that’s so appealing: that on these dark, gnarled, rigid boughs and trunks this gauze, this fragile lacework, should float, like gossamer veils trailing from tough, pruny old ladies.

That fragility and flexibility—the petals trembling, the branches leaning almost into the water of the basin—seduced me completely.

I wasn’t the only one, either; even at 9:30am on a Wednesday, the path was well-traveled by tourists and intense-looking people with cameras. It was also positively filled with birdsong, mostly from the starlings singing their lusty little hearts out in the cherry trees. It appears to be a popular nesting ground for them, and so intent were they on sex that they didn’t seem to mind at all the voyeuristic photographers aiming lenses at them.

Do the starlings favor the cherries simply because their thick branches and sometimes-hollowed trunks provide plenty of space for nests, or is there some part of them that, like us, delights in the profligate, fleeting beauty of the blossoms? After all, birds do show aesthetic preferences in their choice of mates—and, in some species, of nest or decorated bower. Who’s to say that they don’t also have an eye for beauty when they choose nesting sites?

Or maybe there are just plenty of crumbs left by the visiting tourists and picnickers with which to stuff demanding fledglings.

Either way, it was a somewhat magical morning, and I’m glad I managed to visit at a day and time when I was still sharing the view with more starlings than humans. Whatever the birds’ visual preferences, they’re a lot more restful—and prettier—to be around.

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