PawPaws and Waterthrushes-Hidden Jewels

This spring I took a trip to Barren River State Park in western Kentucky.  I had been asked to give a talk to the Kentucky Ornithological Society. The trip was squozed in between a couple of others, and I knew it'd be tight, but I wanted to see something of Kentucky, as I'd only been to Louisville and back. It was a beautiful place, just as I knew it would be. 

 Lyre-leaved sage Salvia lyrata turned the meadows misty blue

 and I learned something about pawpaws I hadn't known.

A few were still in bloom, but most of them were fruiting, a couple of weeks ahead of ours in southern Ohio.

 I learned that each pawpaw flower can make a bunch of little fruits, which explains something I"d always wondered. I'd see a small pawpaw tree with maybe five flowers on it, and then in September I'd see clusters of fruit. Well, those clusters all come from one little flower.  And here they are, the baby fruits forming. I was so excited I squealed.

 In September, they'll look like this, each the size of a small mango. Five in this cluster! Pretty cool.

Overhead, summer tanagers sang their halting songs in leafy fastnesses

and I crept silently through the underbrush to catch a glimpse of a pileated woodpecker and yes, I was pretending it was his huge cousin Campephilus--the setting was so perfect for seeing black, white and scarlet streaking and hitching through the watery mystery

I was helping my new KOS friend Scott Marsh--the tall one; that's my other Kentucky friend Carol Besse, president of KOS, in fetching pink-- lead a walking birding trip through the park. 

We found a phoebe nest, and Scott was tall enough to hold my camera up to immortalize its contents, which are doubtless flying and catching their own moths by now. 

It was here at Barren River State Park that I had one of my favorite-ever moments as a naturalist. Our little band of birders was walking up this beautiful stream, and there was a Louisiana waterthrush singing lustily, his wild ringing song filling the green spaces. We came to a little stone bridge and the waterthrush flew up, chipped at me twice, then flew a short distance away, watching me and bobbing his tail. It was clear to me he had a nest nearby. He might as well have said it in English.

"This is a perfect spot for a waterthrush nest," I told the group. I stood on the bank and quietly studied the opposite side, which was hung with grasses and roots. 

 

Just the kind of spot a Louisiana waterthrush would choose to hide its leafy, rooty little nest. Within seconds I found what I was looking for...some muddy leaves, tucked way up inside a nook in the bank, where no muddy leaves ought to be. The Louisiana waterthrush builds a little porch of muddy wet leaves that, when they dry, make a sturdy landing platform for the parents as they come and go.  It's one of the best-hidden warbler nests I know of; in fact when Hal Harrison wrote his photographic field guide to bird nests (in the Houghton Mifflin Peterson series)  the only one he couldn't find himself was the nest of the Louisiana waterthrush!

And the female waterthrush was sitting on her nest. With some difficulty, I pointed her out to everyone. It was hard to make her out. Her two white eye stripes, converging at her bill, gave her away. In this photo she's head-on, and you can see her eyes and bill. 

Knowing the gig was up, she hunkered even lower until all we could make out was one bright eye with a white stripe over it. It's under a little triangle of white grasses.

And the best part of all was that, in discovering her, we never put her off her nest. That's the beauty of listening to what the birds tell you, knowing where to look, standing back quietly, and having the right optics to do it. Serendipity favors the prepared mind.

The Pawpaw Festival!

One of my favorite photos from the 2008 festival.

For those of you who saw this post on Tuesday, then watched it and your comments disappear, my apologies. The monarch piece rared up and grabbed the spotlight. So here it is again. Whew. what a week it's been!

Celebrating pawpaws--we've done it in our own woods, and every September I like to celebrate them with others. In Albany, Ohio, right outside Athens, there's a little festival that reached its tipping point this year. Now it's a medium-sized festival, headed toward largeish.

Everything was good this year, better even than last. The big Percherons were still giving carriage rides. Picture the four of us stuffing ourselves with all manner of food made with pawpaws (a creamy white sauce over chicken breast, a pawpaw/peach/hot chili salsa, a pawpaw beurre blanc over scallops,

(all of the above made by Chef Dave Rudie)

who showed us how to flip onions in a sautee pan, which I'm sure I could do if I had hours to practice and a tarp on the kitchen floor.I just came from the kitchen, where, following Chef Rudie's lead, I made a pawpaw cream sauce sweetened with our own pawpaw pulp and some sourwood honey from the Smoky Mountains, a gift from our editor, Lisa White of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Heavy whipping cream, softened butter, caramelized shallots, salt, pepper, and a dollop of honey mustard...and heaven can wait. We're going to try it over pork tenderloin at Margaret and Zane's. It was just ridiculously good. How can you go wrong with that ingredient list? I totally winged it, no recipe--just remembered how Dave demonstrated it, and it was ossum as creamed possum.

But wait--there was more in the vendor stalls that we sampled, including a
pawpaw crepe, pawpaw jelly roll, and a pawpaw mango ginger mint smoothie to name just a few.

But wait, there was still more...great live music and a mess of our friends who simultaneously and serendipitously decided to make the hour-plus trek to Albany for the festival at the same time.
David and Zane consult an iPhone for something...iPhone users are forever consulting them.

We hung out and listened to the music and watched the kids dance with Oona, who can really shake her moneymaker.

There was a lot of moneymakershaking going on at the bandstand.
I lost track of Bill for quite awhile...he was watching the hula-hooping, I think. Who could blame him.

This is quite a different demographic than we are accustomed to seeing, only an hour and a half away. Having Ohio University in Athens certainly results in more interesting people-watching than we get in Whipple. For me, most of enjoying a festival is people-watching, but this one has delicious food and great music, too. I give it a five out of five.

Many of those interesting young folks brought their dogs--it's hard to find a place where you can bring your dog anymore.

I did not because, having brought Chet to the last two festivals and having had a loose pitbull straddle and growl at him in 2008, I deemed it not worth the angst or the constant pull on my arm. It's hard to drink a pint when there's an unearthly strong steady pull on your other arm.

This little pied beauty stopped every few seconds to scratch, another reason I was glad I hadn't brought my as-yet-flea-free puppeh.

A dog rumble went down--Chet would've gladly flown into the middle of it.
It was rowdy but friendly, and fun to watch. Dogs who are socialized can do this without getting all snarly. Chet's not quite there.
He likes to be Numba One. He'd have been Offisa Puppin' all over those dogs.

The moon rose, the pawpaw wheat beer was wonderful, and still the children played.

A man walked by with a little light that put sparkles on the ground

arresting the attention of a sweet baby who pointed (don't miss that tiny finger...) and then knelt to try to rub the sparkles out

charming me even more
                             

And the moon rose in a pastel sky and Mary Jane showed us how to catch it

and Phoebe tried, but her photographer couldn't see very well, as the photo of Mary Jane attests...
but Phoebe could see the moon in the viewfinder, so with her help I finally captured the shining orb

and the sky went blank for a moment

nothing but watercolor tints I could never replicate.

As it got dark there hove into view a giant and hilariously funny pawpaw whose barely audible voice came from the depths of his foam costume, asking us to give him a high five
but he had no hands so we squeezed him instead. And nothing popped out.

Plan to come to the Pawpaw Festival at Lake Snowden in Albany, Ohio, next September. I guarantee you'll love it.

If you'd like to get some fresh pawpaws shipped, or, after they're out of season in late October, some frozen pulp to play with in your own kitchen, see Integration Acres' cool web site. We have them to thank for this wonderful festival, and for making "pawpaw" a household word in Appalachian Ohio. Well, in some houses. Soitainly ours.

Here end the pawpaw posts.