Parkville Nature Journal - Eagles

Dad’s car glides down Highway 159 and follows the wide curve through Squaw Creek Wildlife Preserve. We are going to visit Grandma Mabel in Rulo, Nebraska. It is December 25th 1984, our first Christmas without Mom.

To our left, the wooded loess hills advance and recede, forming small grass coves. I tap Dad’s arm and point toward the trees. “Stop! STOP!!” His eyes widen as he, too, sees stark dabs of white and black amid grey trees. He crosses the median and shuts off the engine.

We stare at the trees in silence. Gently, we open the car doors, step carefully toward the barbed-wire fence and stand before them in the cold, entranced. Eagles - dozens of eagles - adorn the semicircle of trees that surround a field.

Casually, silently, one eagle drops, glides across the grass towards us and ascends. A second eagle follows. “Three, four, five, six…” The steam of my breath rises. I whisper a number for each eagle as it joins the spiral of black dashes and white dots rotating upward into the azure sky.

Nearly forty. It seems unlikely when I say it now, but on Christmas Day my father and I watched nearly forty eagles rise toward the heavens like smoke - then disappear. It was our miracle. It was our gift.

Because they follow large migrations of waterfowl, it would be rare to see “a convocation of eagles” in Parkville. Still, if you are watchful, during the coldest months you will probably see an eagle or two perched on a twisted oak branch above our river trail, in grey tree lines across the river from Parkville, or west of the Broadway extension toward downtown Kansas City.

Eagles are your gift, as simple and elegant as black and white.
Happy Holidays!

Parkville Nature Journal - Red Fox

Gracie explodes out of our back door onto the dimly-lit deck. Squirrels scramble up trees, fly across railings, dive down the deck stairs. Gracie barks and snaps after them, dry leaves flying behind her as one fugitive squirrel escapes through cedar pickets. Leaves crash. Squeals pierce the morning air. A flash of red carries its prisoner through bare trees toward the ravine. Our dog Gracie has helped her cousin the red fox catch its breakfast.

Foxes, true omnivores, eat whatever is available: small mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, fish, fruits and other plant foods. Excellent sight, hearing and sense of smell enable them to search for food at any opportunity, but foxes prefer to hunt at dawn and dusk when their prey is most active.

Customized hunting techniques fit specific prey and situations. Foxes casually browse to snap up insects. Using keen hearing, light body weight and long hind legs, foxes employ the “mousing leap” to accurately pin burrowing rodents. For animals that evade capture by running, a fox will crouch low to the ground, slowly stalking its quarry in cat-like fashion.

Foxes will sometimes “charm” their victims with highly-visible, playful antics. As the curious prey comes closer to investigate, the fox immediately pounces. A fox will also play dead to ambush vultures that come to feed on it. Such cleverness is the stuff that has inspired myth and legend.

In November, the normally solitary red fox begins to socialize and find prospective mates for the January mating season. At this time foxes may hunt co-operatively, one fox chasing prey toward another. Or…. perhaps a little white terrier could help a hungry fox hiding just beyond the fence line???

Parkville Nature Journal - Pawpaws

September is crisp and heavily fragrant of overripe fruit. Yellow heart-shaped basswood leaves rock side to side downward, speckling the forest floor. Trees rustle, click and pop with a constant sprinkle of acorns. Walnuts bounce and roll. A moist thud on the trail ahead stops me in my tracks. A cylindrical light-green fruit has broken open. Ants, Monarch butterflies and bees soon cover the yellow pulp. It is a Pawpaw.

Pawpaws are the only temperate members of the tropical Annonaceae family of trees. They flourish in Parkville’s deep rich river bottom soil in the understory of our oak/hickory forests. Their lush, 7-10” dark green leaves brighten to a palette of glowing yellows in the Fall.

Soft, thin-skinned Pawpaw fruit - the largest edible native American fruit – is born of springtime rose madder blossoms that mature and ripen during mid-August into October. Highly aromatic with a flavor that resembles a creamy mixture of banana, mango and pineapple, it is also called the Poor Man’s Banana. Nutritious Pawpaws are an important food source for several species of forest insects, birds and mammals. I’ve often seen evidence of clumsy overweight raccoons snapping slender Pawpaw trees during a late September Pawpaw heist.

Visit our Parkville Nature Sanctuary and explore the Pawpaw Path along White Alloe Creek. Enjoy the sweet scent of September -- and watch out for falling Pawpaws!

The Church of Forest Joy® - A New Language

Meditation Two: Where You Are, There It Is.

“Sangre de Cristo” by Elizabeth Tarbox

My names for god don’t work here in the desert because they are ocean words. I know how to stir the mystery of the dark waters and move the spirit of briny swells to life because it is my spirit, my mother that rises from the waves to meet my call. And I am not afraid.

But here I need a new language, a language that loves clean white branches reaching to a blue sky and the hard open mouth of a dry riverbed beneath the canyon wall. Who are these gods that strike the blood-red walls of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where spruce and aspen with crooked fingers clutch the wild wind’s laugh?

I am ill at ease out here where ravens fly upside down, huge feet curled with the ecstasy of high flight, preening their feathers in casual command of the wind’s army. I can imagine being caught by a hawk’s beak, carried to 10,000 feet, and being indigestible, dropped upon the desert floor. I can imagine thirst draining from my veins, withering my skin till it flakes away. And I am less than I have ever been, because I do not know how to call the spirit of the mountain, or how to name the gods that move among these rocks.

Kindly, the universe puts its great lips to my ear and whispers, listen.

Listen.

You do not need to know the name of god, or call it. You need only to know that you do not know, and lift your face and stand in its presence
and give thanks.

The Church of Forest Joy® - Find Good in Everything

Meditation One:
It's not that I'm starting my own church and expecting anyone else to join. I'm an Apatheist: I don't care what religion I am and I REALLY don't care what religion you are. But I get a reverent, church-y feeling while sitting in the back yard and watching sunlight passing through the trees, turning grey bark into yellow, orange and then gold.

Wrens yell "Cedrick! Cedrick! Cedrick! (Is HE their creator?) Owls are more questioning: "Who Cooks for You? Who Cooks for You-Allllll?" They don't have definitive answers. Neither do I.

No doubt you noticed the ®. Too bad that Cedrick, God, Yahweh, Moses, Christ, Buddah, Mohammed and the rest didn't have an ®. Didn't they know about keyboard option-R to create ®? Would have prevented a lot of confusion if we knew exactly what they said without interpretation and/or hijacking by middlemen. Knowledge of this simple keyboard trick allows me to state for the ages my feeling that if we all searched for answers in the forest, there'd be fewer wars over whose Belief is Bigger.

The Church of Forest Joy is about being with nature and finding personal inspiration. Shakespeare said it best:
"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stone, and good in everything."

Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!

Parkville Nature Journal - Blue-Black Spider Wasp

Gracie dog stopped short to sniff the pavement. A sleek, iridescent black wasp was crossing our path, laboriously dragging an immense Wolf Spider.

The metallic-armored warrior stayed focused on her task - until Gracie’s nose intruded. The wasp released the spider and flitted in fast circles around our feet. The spider aimlessly waved one leg over the hot cement. I stepped back, mesmerized. Was the spider anesthetized?

The wasp returned to the spider, bit onto a hairy leg and escorted the drunken figure over the curb and into the grass.

Encounters with nature often lead me to search for answers in an Audubon Society Field Guide. What I found was interesting but not comforting:

The Blue-Black Spider Wasp, usually female, digs into soft sandy soil to prepare a nest chamber for her larvae. Searching rapidly on the ground and around tree trunks, the wasp locates and stings a spider - preferably a meaty Wolf Spider - to permanently paralyze it. With focus and determination the wasp drags the spider to her chamber and lays an egg on its live body. She leaves, sealing the “nursery” where the larva hatches and eats the spider before spinning itself into a silky cocoon.

I immediately thought of my favorite poet in fifth grade, Mr. Ogden Nash.
The last word of this poem popped into my head:

The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.

To offset potentially disturbing facts about nature, I strongly recommend keeping The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery next to your Audubon Society Field Guide…

Parkville Nature Journal - The Belted Kingfisher

Drive East along Highway 45 and, after you cross Riss Lake, look to your left. Perching on the drooping power line, a stocky blue-gray bird with a broad white collar watches intently for movement in the water below.

Its large shaggy-crested head causes my friend Carol to call it the "Elvis Bird.” But the Kingfisher’s celebrity pre-dates the birth of Rock ‘n Roll. Our local Belted Kingfisher is from the Family Alcedinidae, commonly called Halcyons. In Greek Mythology, Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus (King of the Winds) found her husband Ceyx tragically drowned, and in her grief, drowned herself. But the Gods took pity upon the devoted couple and turned them into Kingfishers. King Aeolus forbade the winds to blow during the “Halcyon Days,” seven days before and seven after the winter solstice when, according to legend, the Kingfisher lays her eggs in a floating nest upon calm and peaceful seas.

Kingfishers do not, in fact, build floating nests. Instead the devoted couple takes turns using their beaks and feet to excavate a long burrow near the top of a sandy bank, gravel pit or the soil around an upturned tree. The female lays 6 or 7 white eggs in the nesting chamber. Both parents incubate them. Chicks hatch with sheathed feathers and they resemble tiny porcupines until the sheaths break to expose mature feathers. Adult Kingfishers share in the feeding of the young, and announce their arrival outside the burrow with their trademark rattle call.

You might hear Kingfishers’ rattle call as they dart above the trees in English Landing Park. If you are watchful, you could see one hover, plunge vertically and disappear into the water to catch its prey. Returning to his perch, the Elvis Bird always makes sure the fish is “All Shook Up” before he tosses it into the air and swallows it head first.

Quite an act!

Rex and Libby: Happy Fun Dogs.Kirk: Happy Fun Husband

To celebrate the 18th anniversary of our move to Parkville:
The happiest of all Parkville stories - Kirk's movie about our life with dogs.

Bloggy Bloggerson

It's tempting to write, even for us artists. Everybody writes, right?
Fear not, professional writers, I won't overstep my boundaries.
Here's a Fortune Cookie quote that I collected:

Keep it simple. The more you say the more mistakes you will make.

At Parkville Ink I want to write and illustrate stories about where I live.
For starters, I'm sharing my painting of the "somewhat extinct"
Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. We don't have "Ghost Birds" in Parkville, but during the winter months I've watched their impressive cousins the Pileated Woodpeckers drink water from our backyard fish pond.
That's just one of many reasons why I love Parkville.

Welcome to Parkville Ink!
(Next time I'll draw something that's not extinct.)

Hey! That rhymed!