Friday, July 14, 2006

Nature's mysteries

This evening the kingfishers were swooping up and down the creek and chattering their fool heads off. When they perch they look as if someone at the bird factory made a big mistake: those big spiky heads are patently wrong for those sleek bodies. But there is no flight more elegant than theirs, the way they fling themselves effortlessly through the air toward some target known only to themselves.

We saw a red-tailed hawk and heard at least one other hawk shrieking from a tree near the neighbor's hay field. Lots of black cohosh growing on the hillside and a handful of pawpaws dangling from branches like fuzzy green lightbulbs. Last year the raccoons and deer devastated our pawpaw patch, leaving only three of the sweet, sticky fruits for us. Maybe this year we'll rescue a few more.

The mystery of the week is the big brown woody fungus growing in the yard. Last year we had a bear's head fungus that looked charmingly like a person's face poking out of a tree, but this year's mega-fungus looks, how shall we say this, just icky. If the rain stops long enough for the sun to dry things out a bit maybe it'll just go away. Meanwhile, we'll guard our pawpaws and listen to the kingfishers.

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