Those are just some of my new life-list birding additions. You may not recognize the last bird on the list. He’s a subspecies of the Common Peckerwood. He’s loud, crude, and mean just like the Common but with a more lilting song.
“I don’t care how young they is, them sorry-ass young’uns never do nothin’. If they won’t get off their asses ‘n help, do dishes er sumpin, I ain’t never bringin’ ‘em agee-in.”
I am still in this valley of a thousand birds and bullfrogs and butterflies and the barest of breezes.
And no internet.
Now and then I eke out a message to my daughter or brother. Now and then some spam text trickles in.
It rained off and on yesterday, light rain mostly, but the length of the river/lake took on rain and it is slowly rising, looking to be about 3-4” higher than when I arrived. I missed the flood from last week that muddied everything. I’m in one of the lower spots but there is no heavy, flooding rain predicted before I leave.
All this mud and shade and still air is fertile earth for the birds and their prey.
The ubiquitous and vocal song sparrows, while rather plain, are true to their name, filling the valley with varied and beautiful songs. They, like so many other songbirds, thrushes, blackbirds, and woodpeckers, are here for the bugs.
I’m not generally bothered by bugs. I am fond of spiders, love snakes, (I’m told there were four copperheads in the bathhouse rafters last week), and have a healthy respect for other wild animals.
So when the host mentioned potato bugs in the bathhouse, I thought of this critter—one of a few insects so named.
She meant tree roaches—apparently of a species with which I am unfamiliar but that has as much gall to crawl and fly directly at its victims as do the big, ugly bast***s on the Gulf Coast. They aren’t much smaller, either. (Shudder)
I despise roaches. I have an irrational fear of them, actually. I can hold beetles, snakes, spiders, and dead things of all kinds. Don’t make me go near a roach.
I don’t despise the Common Peckerwood. Nothing irrational there. They’re just annoying.
Still, I want to be as far from both as possible. Trapped in a shower stall in the ladies’ shower with a tree roach ignoring my commands to “stay on your side, you ugly bast***!” was tremor-inducing.
The grumpy Kentucky Mountain Peckerwood became kind of entertaining after my initial, oh my gosh, hush! response.
These are the things that make the days memorable as I make this journey. Some of the parks run together and I can’t recall which name went with which beautiful lake or river. Human and critter interaction is what makes these places real and not simply postcard memory.
I will never return to this valley after Tuesday. It has been a difficult stay and I have four nights yet. My anxiety has reached a peak I never experienced in life except in the last several months of my marriage. I am not a mountain girl.
I have never suffered claustrophobia. I live in a tiny, fiberglass bubble on wheels and it doesn’t faze me.
These mountains, though—they are leafy, bird-filled prison walls. I have begun to have deep, irrational, absurd fears of a kind that have no basis in reality. Is it possible that the rain will come down so hard that all the roads out will wash out and I will be stuck here for weeks while they make repairs? There is that minute possibility. Is it possible my truck will breakdown and I will be stuck here for days awaiting help to get it repaired? There is that slightly-less-than-minute possibility. Is it possible that by the time I escape this internet wasteland, all my loved ones will be gone from this world and I will be utterly alone forever? Highly unlikely. Is it possible I will suffer a sudden fatal something or another and die here inside Blanche only to be discovered late Tuesday when the host notices the flies and Sammy’s howls to go potty. Highly unlikely.
But these are the kinds of dark thoughts engendered in the throes of anxiety attacks and their related irrational fears.
These irrational fears make “potato bugs” and peckerwoods harder to tolerate. They make mountains taller, darker, closer, and more far-reaching than they are in reality.
I will eventually drive out of the mountains and into gentler hills again. Wide open skies of sunrises and sunsets will embrace me in a soft and distant way. My brother laughs and says, “just in time for tornadoes.”
And maybe some Mississippi peckerwoods.
Ah well. Here’s video of a White-breasted Nuthatch. Enjoy.
Last Updated on July 22, 2023 by Lee Ellis
Love the photos—and the video: happy, glorious BiRDiES!
There is indeed something especially claustrophobic about the Appalachians. I think it is their colors dark grey with dark green woods and steep vertical walls and narrow hollows, so narrow, in fact, that it is sometimes, impossible to see the sky,
Yes. It was odd to me because I lived in Colorado. Higher mountains. Similar narrow roads. I love trees but the absolute saturation of the view with nothing but trees overwhelmed me. A quick trip into Hazard for a signal (barely) made it worse. Just as enclosed but now narrow streets crowded with buildings and trees. At least the campground had about 100 yards from shore to shore. No such relief in town.