Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Joe Neal essay: Eighth wonder of the World


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The 8th Wonder of the World‏

The 8th Wonder of the World



6:39 AM


To: ARBIRD-L@LISTSERV.uark.edu

FOR MANY YEARS, ONE OF MY REGULAR STOPS ON FAYETTEVILLE CBC has been at Eleanor Johnson’s, including the feeder, bushes in her backyard, and adjoining wooded lot with gnarled post oaks. We always knock on El’s door, where she has cookies, offers a welcome pit stop. Her place is just west of the University, a block or two from Razorback Stadium. They built their home in the 1950s, the first in what was one of Fayetteville’s earliest subdivisions. El traded being a vagabond artist for settled life with The Professor, traveling around collecting lichens on vacations, nurturing graduate students, raising a daughter and son. Dr Johnson – “The Professor” she called him – walked every day the few blocks to his classroom and lab.
When I met her in the late 1960s, I was a former firm-believing Southern Baptist badly disillusioned by the napalming of Vietnamese villages and the murder of Martin Luther King. She hired me to weed flowerbeds and provided a simple lunch and civil conversation. It was the 8th Wonder of the World that obvious sanity survived midst B-52s over jungles. It took me a while to re-believe. 
Enclosed by native sandstones, her flowerbeds were magnets for interesting bugs watched by robins, midst almighty Ozark weeds. Years before, she’d found arrowhead-like stone tools while planting tulip bulbs. We had plenty of time to become acquainted. She remembered when Dr William Berg, noted entomologist and Arkansas bird man in the era before Doug James, collected tarantulas in her yard.
As we became friends, I was invited insider for lunch. She showed me the little Golden Guide to Birds where she and her kids kept a list of yard birds. Cuckoo, white-throat sparrow, Baltimore Orioles in the oaks – that sort of thing. A serious yard list of over 50 species, with a pair of what amounted to opera glasses. And when my own bird books were published, she kept them in the same honored place with the Golden Guide. She gave me the Leitz binoculars her father used for bird watching.
That was 30 years ago. She passed just short of her 100th. On last Sunday’s CBC, when we went up Palmer Street west of the stadium, her house was gone. Where she parked her old VW bug “Alexander” – which she drove delivering meals to shut-ins she called “my old people” – gone. Native sandstone flowerbeds I weeded -- gone. Big spreading post oaks – gone. Both lots dozed to bare dirt.

I am reminded, not of eternity, but ephemerality. Our restless universe constantly reclaims. A kind, artistic woman once lived here. Like the stone tools of ancient ways, it remains that she saw something in me that I had not yet seen in myself.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Kessler Mountain bird blitz report by Joe Neal


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KESSLER MOUNTAIN BIOBLITZ BIRDS‏

 
 
4:17 PM
 
 
To: ARBIRD-L@LISTSERV.uark.edu
Cc: Robert N. Wiedenmann
Below is a list from the bioblitz held in the Kessler Mountain Preserve park at Fayetteville, from 3 PM September  6 to 3 PM September 7, 2014. We birders were invited to participate by Robert Wiedenmann in UA Entomology and Terri Lane of Northwest Arkansas Land Trust. Another sponsor was Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association, who kept the food coming. They made it possible to just go birding.

Our own Mitchell Pruitt from Arkansas Audubon Society collected bird data both days and linked up with folks from JD Willson Lab (herps) and the entomologists, who set up an ID lab with necessary microscopes right on site at Frank Sharp’s place. This morning (September 7) we had three birding groups on the mountain.

Doug James and Elizabeth Adam took care of the roadside birding on the lower slopes. Mitchell and I divided a group of 15 or so and tramped two miles of trails through forest across the top of the mountain. Lovely elm-leaf goldenrod the whole way.

The bold-faced birds are transients that are always good finds here, including obvious fly-overs (4 Franklin’s Gulls) and a kettle of Mississippi Kites (8) Mitchell saw this morning; maybe they night roosted nearby.  Mitchell’s Yellow-bellied Flycatcher was in the shale barren in the center of the preserve. We found Scarlet Tanagers in several places (they nest on the mountain), all eye-catching lime green with black wings. 

Kessler’s forest includes an abundance of snags, just heaven for woodpeckers, and especially Hairy Woodpeckers, one of my personal favorites. And lots and lots of fungi, which I imagine they are still identifying in the lab, along with tiny insects. Thanks guys and may god who cares about all creatures great and small bless and restore your eyes.

Canada Goose
Turkey Vulture
Mississippi Kite
Cooper's Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Killdeer
Franklin's Gull
Mourning Dove
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Barred Owl
Common Nighthawk
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher
Acadian Flycatcher
Alder Flycatcher
Eastern Phoebe
Great Crested Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
White-eyed Vireo
Yellow-throated Vireo
Philadelphia Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Eastern Bluebird
American Robin
Gray Catbird
Northern Mockingbird
Brown Thrasher
European Starling
Nashville Warbler
Northern Parula
Previous messageNext messageBack to messages

KESSLER MOUNTAIN BIOBLITZ BIRDS‏

 
 
4:17 PM
 
 
To: ARBIRD-L@LISTSERV.uark.edu
Cc: Robert N. Wiedenmann
Below is a list from the bioblitz held in the Kessler Mountain Preserve park at Fayetteville, from 3 PM September  6 to 3 PM September 7, 2014. We birders were invited to participate by Robert Wiedenmann in UA Entomology and Terri Lane of Northwest Arkansas Land Trust. Another sponsor was Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association, who kept the food coming. They made it possible to just go birding.

Our own Mitchell Pruitt from Arkansas Audubon Society collected bird data both days and linked up with folks from JD Willson Lab (herps) and the entomologists, who set up an ID lab with necessary microscopes right on site at Frank Sharp’s place. This morning (September 7) we had three birding groups on the mountain.

Doug James and Elizabeth Adam took care of the roadside birding on the lower slopes. Mitchell and I divided a group of 15 or so and tramped two miles of trails through forest across the top of the mountain. Lovely elm-leaf goldenrod the whole way.

The bold-faced birds are transients that are always good finds here, including obvious fly-overs (4 Franklin’s Gulls) and a kettle of Mississippi Kites (8) Mitchell saw this morning; maybe they night roosted nearby.  Mitchell’s Yellow-bellied Flycatcher was in the shale barren in the center of the preserve. We found Scarlet Tanagers in several places (they nest on the mountain), all eye-catching lime green with black wings. 

Kessler’s forest includes an abundance of snags, just heaven for woodpeckers, and especially Hairy Woodpeckers, one of my personal favorites. And lots and lots of fungi, which I imagine they are still identifying in the lab, along with tiny insects. Thanks guys and may god who cares about all creatures great and small bless and restore your eyes.

Canada Goose
Turkey Vulture
Mississippi Kite
Cooper's Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Killdeer
Franklin's Gull
Mourning Dove
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Barred Owl
Common Nighthawk
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher
Acadian Flycatcher
Alder Flycatcher
Eastern Phoebe
Great Crested Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
White-eyed Vireo
Yellow-throated Vireo
Philadelphia Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Eastern Bluebird
American Robin
Gray Catbird
Northern Mockingbird
Brown Thrasher
European Starling
Nashville Warbler
Northern Parula
Magnolia Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Ovenbird
Canada Warbler
Summer Tanager
Scarlet Tanager
Field Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Blue Grosbeak
Indigo Bunting
American Goldfinch
Magnolia Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Ovenbird
Canada Warbler
Summer Tanager
Scarlet Tanager
Field Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Blue Grosbeak
Indigo Bunting
American Goldfinch

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Trails should be built outside the riparian zone of streams

Trail only 18 inches higher than flow of Town Branch of the West Fork of the White River under S. School Avenue. Whose idea was this? Rain had slacked off but more could come. Video at 8:23 a.m. Tuesday, September 2, 2014. Ever drive South College when was was flowing over the bridge and bridge was temporarily closed? Now there is less room for water under the bridge.
http://youtu.be/I-8w_HpVdKU?list=UUwcZunxqSV3zcgvRJqBn-Qw

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Inappropriate reduction of stream-protection map proposed by Fayetteville planning and engineering staff members: View 39 minute video of issue when presented to planning commission with public comment plus site photos added by Aubrey James Shepherd

Please click on image or link to Enlarge and go to You Tube to select full-page view.
39-minute video of presentation and discussion of staff-proposed reduction of stream-protection map governing portion of Scull Creek in Fayetteville's headwaters of Illinois River watershed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0xSmfBdl70&feature=share&list=UUwcZunxqSV3zcgvRJqBn-Qw