More Progression of Spring

Well, I left you with the Spotted Salamanders, Wood Frogs, Spring Peepers and Pickerel Frogs (among others) who are out and breeding in early Spring. As Spring progresses into early April, you will hear a new voice in the marshes, and even along lake shores, a sweet trill that seems to magically arise from the ambient sounds and freeze you, or at least it freezes me. It is like some trill from an Elven flute, a magical sound that makes me lose my breath for a second until I recognize it. I never recognize it at first; it always catches me by surprise, arising from the sound of rushing water, of a light breeze, or from a near silence of the woodland. It takes me a magical second the identify this sound, even if I heard it a day before, and I never fail to blurt out "American Toad!".
I know that most people think the Toad is ugly, but I love them.

Here you can see the eye, one of the prettiest in the Animal Kingdom (my daughter likely has the prettiest, but I am prejudiced), looking like gold filigree. The American Toad can be told from his cousin (really a double first cousin, because they are capable of interbreeding and do on occasion) the Fowler's Toad by several characteristics, a good subject for another blog post.

At this time, the first week or so in April, the native flowers and trees begin to bloom. One that is totally mystical to me is the Appalachian Serviceberry, called Sarvice by the older locals. It is a stark white to occasionally white with a very subtle pink tinge, and is usually found in young woodlands and along woodland borders. It seems to appear magically out of the browns and grays of the late Spring woodland. Shortly after, in lower areas with more neutral soil, you will see Redbud trees making a pinkish purple haze. (Jimmy Hendrix would be proud...). Bloodroot and Trout Lily are also blooming, Bloodroot in more dry locations in more mature woods, and Trout Lily along the streams and trickles. Bloodroot will knock your eye out, but Trout Lily has to be looked for. At the Kephart Trail head on US 441 between Cherokee and Gatlinburg is a colony of Hepatica that is simply outstanding, showing several colors as the flowers mature. They are out in mid April.

Next are the Dogwood, with a white that is chalk to bone white, often a pure shining white, and occasionally with a hint of pink. The Sarvice are now gone, and most of the trees, especially Tulip Tree, or Yellow Poplar, are leafing out. Oaks will be out and pollinating, and people who search for Morel Mushrooms will be out too. The Fraser Magnolia, a native deciduous Magnolia, will bloom in late April, and a little later, the Tulip Tree, making a very pretty flower that can be lost amongst the leaves, and looking very like a tulip.

Late April is a fertile time here, with the trees now leafing out, and the mountains being a lush emerald green that almost makes you hungry. It is difficult to feel old at this time of year, with the streams running high, wild flowers blooming in every cove, hollow, and stream bank.

In May the trees mature their leaves and begin to take on a darker green, more of a hunter green, and many of the wild flowers have finished up.

So much goes on in Spring here, and I think of Spring as covering a span from early February to late May. It is a season to enjoy, as all the other seasons are to be enjoyed. Please come and enjoy, but also, PLEASE leave the Mountains as you found them. Too much of our Mountain land is being destroyed by people who "love" the Mountains and want to live here...

Progression of Spring

I can't believe I haven't published anything since late February. Gosh. Spring is cruising along, and it is fascinating to watch. In the years I worked in the Southeast Georgia area, I was treated to a very different Spring. It seemed the weather went from the relative cool of Winter, to the sweet comfort of Spring to the hard heat of Summer in a little over a month, maybe not even that long. It's different here.

Spring here is a progression, something that can be watched from day to day, especially if you live out of doors as I did in the late 1980's and early '90's. I worked for an Environmental Ed. center here, and was outside every day from early April to the last of May. Spring here covers more territory than that, though, and all of it is lovely.

In February, right around St. Valentine's Day, the Red Maples start to bud out in the forests, fence rows, wood edges, and thickets, with a light reddish blush that is hardly noticeable unless you are right on top of them, but there, they are quite striking.


At around the same time, Tag Alder and Hazel of both species (American and Leafy) are doing the same thing, but they are filling the air with pollen, causing horrible sinus problems with allergy sufferers.

This is Alder with my hand as a support. The long yellow things are the male catkins, which make pollen. The female catkins can be seen at the tips of the branch, and will make seed in the summer.

In the next photo of a Hazel colony near the French Broad, you can see how many of these things can be pollinating at once. Imagine every stream, pond, lake shore, brook, trickle, and marsh has some Alders, plus most river and stream flood plain woods has some Hazel, and you get the idea how many tons (yes, I said tons) of pollen are floating around in Western NC during February.

Now you have to remember that we are still in Winter's grip. The Equinox is still a ways off. But things are happening. Wood Frogs are to be found near the vernal pools, pools and ponds that are only filled with the Spring rains, and are empty by late summer. Their funny quacking song doesn't carry, but their cousins the Peepers, who are out at the same time, can be heard for miles.

This Wood Frog was kind enough to sit in my hand while I got a rather bad shot of him. He was found crossing the road on a rainy night in early March last year. I also found a Pickerel Frog on the road at the same time.

As you can see, Pickerel Frogs have square spots or blotches on their backs which blend in well with the forest floor.


This one was found this Spring on a rainy night in late March.

Someone else is out too in March during warm night rains. (By warm I mean above 40 degrees F.) The Spotted Salamanders are out seeking temporary pools and ponds which contain no fish that will eat their babies.

This is the first one I ever saw in the wild, one night in late March. I also saw a rare sight, also a first for me, a Mole Salamander, not quite so showy, but considered threatened over much of its range.

This one was nice enough to sit in the pine needles at the side of the road and let me take pictures (I moved him from the middle of the road). I was as high as a kite after finding these two, both firsts for me, and sights rarely seen by most people, since they are out on rainy nights at a time of year when most people don't go out. I am certainly glad I do.

I will write more on the progression of Spring. Have to let the pot bubble for a bit...

Early allergies

For those of us who have allergies, no, you don't have a cold. Early pollinators are out, and they are going to town. Most folks don't even know it's happening. If you live in the Northeast, like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or you live in the Southern Appalachians, it looks like Winter is still with us, but there are a few hardy shrubs who are always ready to jump the gun. They are the Hazels (both species) and the Tag Alder, Alder and the American, or Leafy Hazelnut are both found near streams and creeks, and both shedding pollen right now. The Beaked Hazelnut will not be far behind. Since they are wind pollinated, they don't have to worry about any hardy insects being out in what seems the dead of Winter.

Both are in the same family, called Betulaceae (or Corylaceae) by Botanists, and just plain old Birch (or sometimes Hazel) family by the layman. All of them, Birches, Hazels, Alders and relatives have similar floral parts and seeds, and all are pretty much wind pollinated.

This family has flowers called catkins, a type of aggregated flowers all in a bunch. The male catkins are pendulous, and the female ones, the ones that make the seed, are small and generally upright. In the Hazel, there is only one female flower, a tiny red one, generally on the end of the twigs. I am linking to a couple of pictures on the USDA Plants Database, as I don't have any good pictures. They are at USDA Alder, and USDA Hazel. Note that following these links will take you away from this page unless you open them in new tabs.

I will place a couple of my own that are not quite as nice to display the density of them. First a couple of Hazel photos taken along Hominy Creek near Asheville, and then some Alder photos taken along Gashes Creek near the Blue Ridge Parkway where is crosses US 74-A. The USDA photos show the red catkins of the female flowers both on Alder, and the single tiny flower of the female catkin of Hazel. The last photo is of Hazel taken near the Swannanoa River in Asheville.

If you look closely at the photos I present, though not technically very good, they illustrate the sheer mass of pollen being shed at this time of year. Think of these photos, and then think of every little creek, stream, branch, rill or trickle which is absolutely certain to have these lovely little shrubs along them, at least Alders, and you can figure that there are probably tons of Alder pollen (hazel is not quite so common) blowing around in the air right now in the Southern Appalachians. It is no wonder that people have "colds" they cannot seem to get rid of.

Frogwatch in the suburbs.

Yeah, I live in the suburbs. A sorry state for a Naturalist, I know. Maybe one day I will win the Lottery (never play it), have a rich great aunt leave me a bundle (all my great aunts are poor), or find a rich benefactor (yeah, right...), but until one of these things come to pass, I am stuck here in the suburbs where I have lived for most of 50 years. *Sigh*.

Anyway, I signed up for Frogwatch USA last year, and tonight I decided to go out and look for, or really, listen for, frogs. I got in my old van, started out through a rather stiff rain, and ran down to a local Wal-Mart shopping center. Frogs at Wally World? Well, yeah. See, they usually build ponds around the stores in order to cut down drainage from their parking lots, and to stop the drainage from blasting into the nearest river or stream. This is a perfect home for a number of species of frog. Nobody was home, though I thought I heard a Wood frog; the ambient noise was too great for these half century plus ears. I was undaunted, and took myself to a local soccer complex.

This soccer complex has a nice depression that was obviously planned as a drainage pond, but as it is on a bed of river sand and silt, it never holds water, and I bypassed it completely. As I was driving, I saw a frog shaped blob in the road. I stopped, backed up, and got out, right next to a fine little Wood Frog, Rana sylvatica. I missed catching him, and drove on to an old beaver pond along the river, where I heard Spring Peepers, Hyla (or Pseudacris) crucifer. Getting out, I spied another Wood Frog shaped blob in the headlight beams, and managed to catch this one, who gave an explosive bellow worthy of a Bullfrog - I have never heard a Wood Frog do this in the dozens (possibly hundreds) I have handled. I looked at him and crooned to him (I always talk to them - folks think I am silly, but since I am 6'3" and 250#, they rarely say anything about it). I of course let him go, and walked off a quarter mile or so to listen to the Peepers across the river, who were in full chorus.

This is a sign that Spring is poised to strike. Actually, the seasons here are a progression and never a discrete occurrence.

HTML Mail

OK. I have had it with technical old fogies. I mean, it is here in the year 2009, and people are still afraid of HTML mail? Give me a break!

A few days ago I was warned about HTML mail when I sent a message to a birding group here in the Carolinas. It was a second warning. I did not wait for a third warning (whereupon I would have been banned), but sent a nasty flame message to the whole group, and unsubscribed myself. Why, you ask, did I do this? After receiving a number of messages from people who told me they will not post to that group because their e-mail program doesn't send in plain text (oh, yeah, it does, but they don't know that), and are relegated to only receiving mail and not able to participate, I decided to say something about this, and hopefully refute the pervasive current "wisdom" about this. You see, I had added a little picture of a view from Mount Mitchell to my signature file, and in order for this picture to go through, the mail had to be in HTML. I also had a few links, one to a page where I can accept (much needed) donations to keep my blogs (like this one) and lists and web pages going. I even had a message bounced from a Yahoo group for birds in North Carolina. Well, I did not and do not see the problem. I will tell you why.

First off, it is 2009 for God's sake! Most e-mail proggies worth being called that can format and receive HTML with no problems. Let me refute a few things from a popular web site with some of my own opinions. Taken from Georgedillon.com's "7 reasons why HTML email is evil"

1. HTML e-mail is dangerous

So is breathing, swimming, horseback riding, sailing, skydiving, smoking, driving a car, and crosing the road. Most of us do many of those things, and many do all of them. We use safety equipment when we do many of them - some of even wear seat belts. A good virus program and some common sense can go a long way.

2. HTML e-mail always wastes bandwidth

Yep. Most of us these days are on some form of high speed, so the point is moot. Even dial-up is now at 56K.

3. HTML e-mail doesn't always work

Does if you want it to. If you use a modern e-mail program like Thunderbird or Windows Mail. This is an argument for 1998. I can't buy into it.

4. HTML e-mail can connect to the internet by itself

Once again, only if you want it to. Mozilla Thunderbird will not unless I tell it to. Plus, so what? I have a firewall and an antivirus. It's like whitewater canoeing. You wear the necessary safety equipment and the risks go way down.

5. HTML e-mail renders slowly

What year did I say this was? My computer, a low end desktop has a dual core processor and 2 gigs of memory. This might have applied 10 years ago. HTML mail comes up in the same time as plain text on mine, and did the same on my 8 year old computer (633Mhz with 192mb memory). This just doesn't apply any more.

6. HTML usually looks like it has been designed by stoned amateur chimpanzees using Front Page Express with their feet

What??? I get HTML mail from dozens of web sites, including my ISP. They all look good. What year did I say this was?

7. Digested lists hate HTML mail

Oh yeah, so they do. So they just rip out the formatting, as does Yahoo! No biggie.



So there. I just do not see what the fuss is about. I own several Yahoo lists, and moderate another. All are set to accept HTML. Yahoo kindly checks each message for viruses. My antivirus kindly checks each one as it is downloaded. My list clients can use whatever formatting they fancy or is the default on their e-mail program. And I don't have to worry about it.

Alex Netherton
Blue Ridge Discovery

Sandy Mush

I got to feeling an old timey urge to go hunting on Monday, so I grabbed a shotgun and went to Sandy Mush. Some people are going to get all bent out of shape at me being a Nature lover, tree hugger and environmentalist and actually HUNTING (GASP!), but I will beg you to remember that Aldo Leopold was a waterfowler, and had this to say: “That he is already overfed in no way dampens his avidity for gathering his meat from God.” Not that I gathered any meat - I am really an indifferent hunter, especially since my "accident", but if I went out only to hunt, I would certainly be poor specimen. I was also birding (Red Shouldered Hawk, Turkey Vulture, among others), botanizing, and sightseeing. Plus, I did some Geocaching, a game where people place a cache, or "hide", posts it on the Internet at Geocaching.com and people use their GPS receiver to find it. Sometimes it is not all that easy...

Sandy Mush is an area of old fields, woodlots, and farmland that the state of North Carolina bought up and began managing as game habitat, particularly dove. Most of it is very pretty (except the Bear Creek section, which is ugly), and has some of the most stunning views I can think of in Buncombe County. The elevation is just enough, at anywhere from 2200 to 3000 feet, that when you are on some of the ridges there, you have a near 360 degree view of the surrounding mountains. Monday they were covered in a light coat of snow or a heavy coat of rime (hoarfrost). They gave one of the most heartstopping views I have ever seen of the mountains. I urge everyone to go out there and check it out, even if they don't hunt. As it is only a 3 day a week area for hunting (Monday, Wednesday, Saturday), and is pretty much managed as "multiple use", it is ideal for a day hike. I plan to be out there in the spring and summer, to look for wildflowers. Hope to see you there

Old Time music

I have been trying to look up some song lyrics today, and it set me to thinking about Southern Appalachian music in general. The song I was looking for is "Whoa Mule", a song my banjo teacher, 3rd cousin, and world famous Mountain Fiddler Byard Ray taught me about 25 years ago. It was the first song he taught me on the banjo, though he didn't teach me the lyrics. He was a very good banjo teacher, and while learning from him, we discovered we were related by blood (his grandmother and my great-grandmother were sisters), so a friendship emerged that lasted until his death in the late 1980's.

Most people, when thinking about Appalachian music, think about Bluegrass, such as Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe and so on, but that sort of music was pretty much contrived from minstrel and show music, speeded up 'way faster than Mountain music, and played in such a way as to appeal to a post World War II crowd, and bacame for a while a part of the Country Music scene, what with Flatt and Scruggs on TV on Saturday nights in the 1960's. It has now become a phenomenon at Blue Grass conventions throughout the South. Byard would never entertain the idea that it was anything like Traditional Appalachian music, saying it was sort of like Mountain music, but played "too darned loud and too darned fast". Darned was not the word he used (nor do I use it when describing Bluegrass).

So, you ask, what, then, is Mountain music? It is music from the Mountains of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and North Georgia. Some people include other areas - Ozarks might be part of it, I don't know - but I pretty much see this area of the Southern Appalachians as the home of Mountain Music. Many will agree with me. Many will disagree.

When European people first started settling this area, they brought their music with them, a combination of English ballads, jigs, reels, and dance tunes, plus Scottish and Irish tunes of the same types. French and German pioneers added something in the stew, and a unique music was developed over centuries of isolation. This was a difficult area to get to from the first European settlements of the 1700's until the post WW II era of road building. When the area was opened up, the people were still rather insular (we still occasionally are), and held onto their traditions, though Thomas Wolfe would write eloquently about the destruction of a culture and a folkway by first the logging companies, the coal mines, and lastly the textile mills, all wresting people from their lands, and sending many into the cities where they didn't belong.

What does the music sound like? Not like Bluegrass, though there are similarities. Instead of the banjo taking the lead as in Bluegrass, the banjo and fiddle play in a sort of duet, playing off each other in a lively way. If a guitar is in there, it will be background, as will also be the mandolin and bass fiddle if they are there. The fiddle will be played in a bouncy fashion, the banjo will be played "clawhammer", or in a thumb and index finger picking style (sorry, no "three finger roll") that blends right in with the fiddle, and the guitar plays rythm, occasionally taking the lead in parts of the song. The banjo is not usually a "resonator" type, but an "open back" type, making more of a "thump" sound than the loud "clang" of the Bluegrass banjo.

If you are beginning to think that I am not too fond of Bluegrass, you are correct; I am not, though I am not alone. Many Old Time musicians feel the same as I, and will get all grumpy when accused of playing "Bluegrass". No, ours is a traditional music. Bluegrass is a "made up" music. Sorry. There it is.

Good Old Time musicians are Byard Ray (of course), Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham (fiddle and banjo), Wade Ward and Kyle Creed (fiddle and banjo), Doc Boggs (an odd three finger style banjo), Pete Steele (banjo), and several others. Look these up for some of the great music you would have heard about 100 years ago here in the Mountains.

The style I play is from Western North Carolina. It has no name, but is a type of "frailing", where the finger picks up on the string, followed by the rest of the hand strumming down, in a percussive, rythmic way. I also play a thumb and index style. Both were taught me by Byard, and are similar to banjo styles from Western North Carolina (Madison County) and Eastern Tennessee. Many other styles are found all over the south. They are:

• Clawhammer, which uses the back of the index or middle fingernail to pluck the melody string, followed by the rest of the fingers hitting all the strings in a strum, then the thumb hitting the "little string" as a sort of high pitched drone. Played by Tommy Jarrell and others and called "Galax" style, after Galax Virginia, this is likely the most popular style and is learned by many modern old time players all over the US.
• "Two finger", a thumb and index style. In Western NC it was usually an index finger lead. I play this and another taught to me by Byard.
  
• "Two finger", also a thumb and index style with a thumb lead, found in eastern Kentucky.
• Rapping, a style using the backs of the fingernails to "rap" the banjo. Similar to Clawhammer, but often only one finger used on the strings. Also called framming, knocking and flying hand.
• The style I mostly use is called by some "basic strum", but is a good deal more complicated than that. It replaces the down beat of the fingernail with an up pluck with the index finger. Very similar to Clawhammer, but often strings that were not plucked are hammered to create a syncopation that is difficult to reproduce otherwise. Played by Byard Ray and said to be from his uncle Dedrick Harris from just over the line in Tennessee, it is a style I have heard nowhere else. Shortly before he died he told me "Alex, you're the only other person in this world that plays the banjo thisaway, and when I'm gone, you'll be the only one. I just ask you to teach it to somebody before you go". I have been so far unable to keep this promise, since everybody who wants to play the banjo wants to "play that Bluegrass!". Maybe someday...

• So called "three finger" styles, actually thumb with index and middle finger, played by Doc Boggs of southern Virginia, and Charlie Poole of north central North Carolina, these styles are probably more properly called a Piedmont style, as these styles are what Bluegrass banjo grew out of, and most of the practitioners of these styles were from the Piedmont of North and South Carolina, like Junie Scruggs (Earl Scruggs's brother and mentor), Snuffy Jenkins, George Pegram and others from that area. Some seem to think these styles are more closely allied to minstrel styles of the post-civil war south, and some examples can be heard on recordings of Uncle Dave Macon, who was indeed a minstrel and medicine show man.

OK. Enough. I will climb down off the soap box and get ready for another blog entry.

Good night. Happy New Year

Goldfinch and Evening Primrose

Hi folks; I saw the first Pine Siskin in my yard, and my first on a feeder in over 20 years. Had to get Sibley out to check. This was the first I have seen outside of the one on territory on Waterrock Knob (last summer) since graduate studies at Boone in 1986.

On another track, I saw a Goldfinch on the seed head of the lone Evening Primrose that managed to flower last summer. Like many "biennial" plants, they actually flower, not the second year after the seed sprouts (this is under optimum conditions), but after the plant manages to gather enough resources to make flowering a possibility. Many species are also perennials. The past few years of drought has held them back, but a couple of years ago, the ones in my driveway managed a bumper crop of blooms, and thus seeds. In the winter, the Goldfinch covered them up, hanging sideways on the heads, and ignoring black oil seed and "Nyjer" until the Primrose seeds were all gone.

Evening Primrose would likely be a good plant for the bird and butterfly garden, plus, it looks like the host plant for at least one Lep. It is a member of the family Onagraceae, and the genus Oenothera. The one I have in my driveway is probably O. biennis, and is found all over the states of NC and SC in fields and scruffy places. It is probably pulled up by most gardeners as weeds, but if left and allowed to bloom, they grow to almost 6 feet, and make lovely blooms that start blooming late in the evening, and stay blooming until well into the next morning, probably to be pollinated by some giant Sphinx moths. After blooming, they make little cylindrical shaped seed pods about an inch or so long that split into four segments when ripe, releasing a horde of seeds, many of which stay on the seed head well into winter. If the seeds escape the Goldfinches, they fall to the ground and sprout, making a ground hugging rosette the first year, and doing the same thing in subsequent year until they gather up enough steam to flower, then one year, up comes a stem, and flowers that only show for a day, though there are over a months worth of them, sometimes more.

I would imagine that if anybody wants them in a hurry, a wildflower nursery might have them, though you can likely find them somewhere and get a bunch of seeds to take back home to plant. They are really a nice tall plant, often with red veined leaves, tall straight stems, and golden colored flowers in the early morning hours. Their only horticultural drawback is that they often get a nasty case of powdery mildew in the late summer, though it doesn't seem to slow them down any.

I know I ran on a bit, but I think these delightful plants are a perfect addition to the bird and butterfly garden, and the Goldfinch love them!

Alex