Eat more cookies

Lindsay D.U.I.

Lindsay passed out in friend’s car.

Hollywood train wreck.

OK, we’ve ruled out the Prius - tiny trunk. The Camry is a fine option, but for the same price and gas mileage we can get the new RAV-4, with its roof rack, higher stance, and more inside storage options. The RAV-4 stacks up (for us) better than CRV, Santa Fe, Vue, Escape, etc.

So, should we get a RAV-4?

If so, what color?

Like most folks I imagine, we would pause to reflect a moment on Memorial Day, and then go back to our hot dogs and potato chips. That is, until we moved to Boalsburg, PA - the “Birthplace of Memorial Day“. Boalsburg is a postcard small town nestled between Mt. Nittany to the north and Tussey Mountain to the south. It’s also the home of the Pennsylvania Military Museum, a tribute to hometown heroes from Bunker Hill to Baghdad.

Robert Baumbach photo

Boal Mansion Museum

Memorial Day in Boalsburg cannot be ignored. It could be the bands, the buntings, the speeches, the smiles, the cannons . . . But there you are reminded that idyllic “small town America” comes with a price. A heartfelt “thank you” to the fallen is shared by everyone in Boalsburg, from the most conservative to the most liberal. In Boalsburg, they wipe the same tears on Memorial Day.

It’s been a few years since our last Boalsburg Memorial Day, and the holiday seems ignored by comparison here in Stillwater. We’ll celebrate tonight by dining on Indian food prepared by our Canadian friend. I guess that’s small town America too.

Not only have our kites returned from their South American sojourn, we noticed them last evening back in our own yard. I stepped outside and heard some soft, high-pitched chip notes, like those of some small sparrow. I looked up and saw two kites perched on a branch of our silver maple (the one in which young kites were fed about 10 months ago). The unusual call made me think that these birds were up to something unusual. Sure enough, they mated right there on our branch! The “cloacal kiss” took longer than I would have thought for these aerial acrobats - about 10 seconds. After the deed, the male flew off and swooped around our neighborhood for several minutes while the female repeatedly bill-wiped along the branch.

Fascinating stuff! Maybe they’ll again nest in view of our home . . .

Last Wednesday, I participated in a “big day” of birding. A big day is a 24-hour (or nearly so) effort to locate as many different species of birds as possible, usually within some defined geographic area. Big days are usually organized as fundraisers, with sponsors pledging some amount for every species found. The grandaddy of big days is the World Series of Birding in New Jersey, in which the elite teams surpass 220 species seen in a single day! Think about the sparrows, blue jays, and robins in your yard. Now think about the effort that would be involved to find, say, 217 other species.

My first official big day was as a founding member of Team Pished Off. We credit ourselves with catapulting the Shaver’s Creek Birding Cup from an obscure local fundraiser for a central PA nature center to a destination for birders from across the Northeast. When we first participated several years ago, the winning team had been finding 100-110 species. After a couple of tries, we cracked the 140 barrier, and now several teams have logged 130-140 species. That’s not too shabby for a 6-county area without a coastline.

When I moved to Oklahoma, I discovered that our local Payne County Audubon Society holds an annual big day called “Birdathon.” Without too many experienced (rabid?) birders here in Stillwater, this event had teams struggling to break the 100 species mark. We are limited out here, without a coastline and without all those migrating warblers we picked up in central PA, so I wasn’t sure just how much better than 100 a team could do. Last year, Team Timmy’s Titmouse Tabulators broke out with 119, and combined teams had over 140 species. That meant that it was theoretically possible to break 140, which is a fine long-term goal.

On Wedesday, the new Team Timmy’s Tyrannid Targeters set out with a goal of 120, just to see if we could improve on last year’s effort. We did, and even restricting our count entirely within Payne County, we ended up with an amazing 131!

Highlights for this wet spring included shorebirds in abundance: least, western, semipalmated, spotted, white-rumped, pectoral, Baird’s, and solitary sandpipers, plus long-billed dowitchers, willets, and two marbled godwits! We also found a singing sedge wren and a late Bonaparte’s Gull. So that was it: nothing really rare, just lots of hard birding to find things we knew would be around. Oh, and there was plenty of junk food and good-natured ribbing to go around, as befits a day when four guys spend 15 hours together . . .

You may be familiar with Liriodendron tulipifera, the “tulip-bearing lily tree” commonly called tuliptree, tulip poplar, yellow poplar, or canoetree. I never knew this tree from the beech-maple-hemlock forests of my upstate NY youth, but came to appreciate it years later as a spectacular member of humid forests in the Southeast and the central Appalachians. Why spectacular? Tuliptrees, for one, can get huge: in mature forests, specimens over 100 feet tall are common, and they might make 200 feet if left alone for long enough. The trunks on these big trees are massive as well, and they tend to be branchless for a good distance up. Their shiny green leaves are also vaguely shaped like a tulip, so the tree is easy to recognize during the growing season. They have persistent, big fruiting bodies that adorn the tree in winter, making it easy to recognize then as well. But my favorite thing about tuliptrees is their abundant, showy flowers with their subtle, but intoxicating, scent.

I was surveying waterthrushes in Pennsylvania many years ago, along a crystal clear Appalachian stream amid a cathedral of mature hemlocks and other trees. A fine, soft rain had been falling this spring morning, and a light breeze flowed through the woods. Suddenly, I was enveloped in perfume - a fresh, delicate scent quintessentially “springy” with a hint of lemon zest mixed in. It took me a moment to find the source, and there it was: a big tuliptree dripping with the flowers that belie the tree’s affinity with its grand relatives, the magnolias. When conditions are just right, you may experience life in its fullest abundance, downwind from a tuliptree.

I was thrilled to discover such a tree on our front lawn in Stillwater, and further thrilled to find it in full flower last week. For a moment, I caught a whiff of this tree, and it brought me instantly back to that Appalachian spring many moons ago.

the war is now lost

it could never have been won

please just bring them home