Discovering the world around me.
Beggar lice. It sticks to everything! Dave’s coat; my hair; my socks, jeans, jacket and sweatshirt, even the strap on my hiking stick. We’ve gone for a walk in the woods on a beautiful autumn day looking for hickory nuts. What we got was 13 hickory nuts and bazillions of beggar lice. The term “beggar […]
Continue reading Aggravation
Coyotes The neighbor’s dog begins barking and howling. What’s up with that? And then we hear it—a jumble of high-pitched yips, barks, cries, snarls. And it sounds fairly close by. Clearly it’s not a pack of dogs. It’s not raccoons fighting. It sounds like coyotes making a kill. Or fighting among themselves. Or whatever coyotes […]
Continue reading The Trickster
Black Walnuts Fall has arrived on this early October day. Standing in the yard I hear several walnuts tumbling through the branches and plopping softly in the duff of fallen leaves and grass beneath the tree. As I walk through the yard, they squish and squirm beneath my feet. Owl Acres is studded with black […]
Continue reading The King of Nuts
Broad-Winged Tree Crickets It’s 10:00 on a late summer evening. Dave and I are out for the final walk of the day. The soundscape is complex and varied, with individual crickets here and there and a background of buzzes and whirs of katydids. The cicadas have gone to bed, but one other sound dominates the […]
Continue reading September Night Song
One Sunday in late August, an amazing ballet grabbed our attention. In the front yard a swarm of dragonflies whizzed around, filling the air from three to 50 feet above the ground. Outlined against the bright afternoon sky, we watched them hunting, each dragonfly pursuing its own quarry. What were they hunting? Closer inspection revealed […]
Continue reading Hunters’ Ballet
We are having a party, barbecuing in the yard, using the open garage as a staging area for the food and utensils. Suddenly something whizzes past into the garage, startling Bryan, a giant insect? No, it’s a hummingbird come to inspect the bright red handle on the rope that allows you to raise and lower […]
Continue reading Tiny Warriors
The barred owl is one of my favorites. I love to hear its easily recognizable call and its mate’s response. This year we’ve had at least one pair calling in the afternoons and evenings. They call and respond, and once in a while they have a more heated conversation and even a bit of squawking. […]
Continue reading Who Cooks for You?
When I was growing up, my mother maintained a little garden in a sheltered spot on the north side of the house. She said the former resident used to dump their ashes there, which made it very fertile now. At any rate, she planted some flowers there, including two varieties I thought were magical. One […]
Continue reading Not My Mother’s Honeysuckle
American Robins Photo credit: Richard Wilson I am trying to sleep in. It’s the third day of my retirement, and I don’t want to get out of bed. But the robin outside my window has other ideas. He sings his cheery song loud and clear. Some people think of it as “cheerily, cheerily cheer up […]
Continue reading Cheerily Cheerily Get Up Get Up
Owl Acres is a small patch of rural Iowa with woods, a yard, an open meadow, and a house where I live with my partner Bryan and my dog Dave. At evening and into the night, a pair of barred owls often calls through the trees, wooing and courting, discussing domestic issues, or arguing about […]
Continue reading Owl Acres