Saturday, April 30, 2005

Nukes, duct tape, woodchuck April 30 Tell me you've never left something on top of a vehicle and driven off. Over the years, I have driven off with a camera, several fishing rods, more coffee mugs than I care to remember and assorted other items sitting on the roof or tailgate. (One guy I know left a $10,000 British-made double gun on the roof of his station wagon. Got it back, though a bit beat up.) Today, I added a roll of duct tape to the roadside litter. Not just any duct tape, though - this was printed with one of the designer camouflage patterns that have become so popular in the last decade. No one ever asked the deer, ducks or turkeys if they are impressed with the new stuff, but that doesn't keep Bill Jordan, Jim Crumley and Toxey Haas from cranking out a new pattern every year or so. Those three are the Diors and the Guccis of the outdoor scene. I'd love to see them at a runway show when the new spring fashions are introduced! Anyway, I had stopped to deal with the trailer's flickering taillights and ended up taping the hitch to try to take care of the problem, but it didn't do it. I left the roll of tape sitting on the camper's propane tanks and drove off. The lights kept flickering, so I called Roskopf's in Menomonee Falls, where I just had the wiring repaired a week ago. Frank suggested I pinch the contacts on the plug closer together. I did, using a hemostat I carry for emergencies like that, and it worked! It cost me a roll of camouflage duct tape, but it was cheaper than finding an RV store, hoping they had time to look at it and then getting gouged because they knew where to kick. Woke up this morning to a chorus of geese, mallards and gulls in a big cattail marsh, two rows of dunes removed from Lake Michigan. Spent an hour this morning walking the beach about a quarter mile from the Zion nuclear power plant, which is sandwiched between the northern and southern units of Illinois Dunes State Park. Would make a great setting for a movie: the nuclear plant, a 50's-vintage concrete bathhouse and a deserted beach, with sand-blow dunes and wispy pods of wiregrass. Heard what I think were cricket frogs in a small roadside pond near the park visitor's center where we parked to walk down to the beach. Not much in the way of wildlife on I-90. I know there must be turkeys in northern Indiana and Ohio, but I have looked for them in vain on nearly every trip on 80/90 and I don't ever recall seeing one. Coyotes, yes. A raccoon in a cornfield this afternoon, but no turkeys. Not many crows, either. Saw a few, although I didn't count them. A couple years ago, at the height of the first West Nile virus epidemic, ornithologist Noel Cutright said he counted seven crows between Chicago and Cleveland. I wonder if they've bounced back from that. I'll have to pay more attention tomorrow and on the return trip. Most interesting critter was a fat woodchuck in what looked like a big apple tree next to a small pond. Haven't seen one in a tree in years, though I know they routinely climb them. I once spotted a woodchuck way up in a tree on the Chippewa River on Highway 13 near Glidden in Ashland County. I got out of the car and shot a bunch of photos and he never moved. Spending the night in Geneva State Park on Lake Erie, where it is at least 10 degrees warmer than where we spent last night on Lake Michigan. We made the decision early this afternoon that we would spend another night on the road, which means I won't be hunting turkeys in New York tomorrow morning after all. This has become a pattern. I've missed opening day for the past two years, but still managed to get a bird. Later... 10:49:56 PM    comment [] Zion whippoorwill April 30 We didn't get very far last night because by the time we left Milwaukee after our last errand, it was already 9:00 p.m. Shivani perused the Woodall's guide as we headed south toward Chicago. Illinois Dunes State Park sounded about right for our first stop. Better to get a decent night's sleep and try to make up time the next day. As we drove in, I noticed the southern unit of the park is named after Bill Cullerton, Sr., a well-known outdoor writer and broadcaster from the Chicago area. I wonder if Bill ever visits his park? Exploring an unfamiliar campground at night is always an adventure, so when we came upon a gated road, we backtracked to the resort that is part of this park and I went in to ask for directions. When I stepped out of the truck, I heard a whippoorwill singing off in the woods. Peter, the helpful clerk at the reception desk, informed me that I had missed the turn for the campground and that we could probably have any site we wanted. I thanked him and said, "You know you have whippoorwills?" "What's a whippoorwill?" he asked. "It's a bird," I said. "If you go out into your courtyard you can hear it singing in the woods." He wanted to know how big they are and what they look like, so I did my best to describe one. I didn't bother to explain that you never see them, but that their song fills a void in a summer evening you didn't know was there until you hear it. I did see one once, resting on a gravel road on the White River. It looked just like the pictures in the bird guides. A member of the goatsucker family, which name is a story in itself, whippoorwills feed by flying around at night with their mouths agape, snapping up insects. Another relative, the Chuck Will's widow, has a little different song. I've never heard it, but I assume it's "chuck" is louder than that of its cousin, hence the name. If you're lucky, you might be close enough to a whippoorwill to hear the "chuck," a sharp sound like you might make by clucking your tongue against the roof of your mouth, which precedes the song itself. I often heard whippoorwills singing at dusk on the White. The late Bob Sneed, who showed me how and where to fish that river, used to say it was time to start fishing when the whippoorwills sing. That's about when the evening Brown Drake hatch would start to come off the river. No doubt the whippoorwills feasted on them just as the trout did. Anyway, we found the campground, set up and crashed, leaving the trailer hitched to the truck. We'll explore it in the morning. Later... 9:03:10 AM    comment []

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