MD: Expectations Fulfilled! Swan Harbor County Park and Sandy Point State Park

Finally, spring!  The ice is off the wetlands and the willows are greening around the edges. Tufts of sedge and spikes of reed emerge from the flooded edges. The spring peepers are calling day and night. The slow-to-release winter gave us a strange inter-spring this year, a sputtering on and off of warm days punctuated with cold blasts and heavy rains that teased and prodded a full warmth to finally arrive. And things have been coming out!

Northern Watersnake in the wetlands at Swan Harbor Farm, Havre de Grace, MD.

I've been working pretty steadily on my dissertation these past few weekends, so not a lot of time to do my favorite long walks, but I've collected enough lunch walk pictures to stash into this post to show just how exciting spring's arrival has been.  This past week all of our spring's expectations have been fulfilled!

Eastern Painted Turtle, Swan Harbor Farm.

I always make sure to have my camera and backpack in the car no matter where I am. Even on long days when driving to and from meetings can takes hours out of my day, I try to stop for a lunch walk. I've had a two nice days out with my son and saw some things I wouldn't have seen on my work circuit. It's been an adventure capturing a few shots here and there to document the past two weeks.

Muskrat, king of the wetlands at Swan Harbor Farm.

At work at Swan Harbor Farm, the beautiful restored wetlands under the care and management of our local Ducks Unlimited chapter has been jumping with cool things to see and hear. Rails, warblers, snakes, muskrats, turtles, and all the birders coming out to enjoy it! With my office window open now, I can hear the spring peepers voices carry all the way across the fields. It's been hard ti concentrate on my reports, emails, writing assignments, and phone calls!

A birder & nature photographer enters the blind at Swan Harbor Farm.

Yellow warbler in the DU wetlands.

A broody Mallard hen prepares a nest near the DU blind.

Red-tailed Hawk.

Gashey's Creek will soon ripple with yellow perch. Swan Harbor Farm.

Spring Beauties, Swan Harbor Farm

Trout Lily, Swan Harbor Farm.

My son and I ventured over to Susquehannock State Park across the river in Lancaster County to check the overlooks. We took the Rhododendron Trail, the most difficult (black diamond!) trail in the park to enter a remote creek valley. While hiking the rocky trail down we heard two Louisiana Waterthrush calling out. We were able to watch one of them calling from mid-height - so beautiful.

Louisiana Waterthrush calling from the creek. Photo by George Eppig.

Bloodroot. Susquehannock State Park, Lancaster County, PA.

Zebra Swallowtail, Susquehannock SP.

Brown Orb Weaver, Susquehannock SP.

We also spent a day on the Greenway Trail that connects Conowingo Dam's Fisherman's Park to Susquehannah State Park in Harford County, MD. We could see great blue heron on their nests on the islands out in the rushing river.  Bald eagles were everywhere, as were osprey. We got a nice look at a pileated woodpecker and enjoyed the antics of tree swallows and fishing cormorants.

Bald Eagle enjoys a fresh-caught gizzard shad along the Greenway Trail, Conowingo Dam.

Tree Swallows chat with each other at Fisherman's Park, Conowingo Dam.

After a morning meeting in Annapolis, MD, today I took a quick lunch break and walk at Sandy Point State Park. A big storm was bearing down but I jogged out to the marsh and captured a few spring migrants with my camera before the rains came. The water out on the bay was whipped up to a frenzy as the gusts ripped through.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher hunkering in the wind at Sandy Point State Park, MD.

Female Red-Winged Blackbird in the rainy marsh at SPSP.

After a winter of drab ochre it was nice to see this Goldfinch in his breeding colors, SPSP.

Blue Grosbeak, SPSP.

A pleasant but quick walk out to the little marsh before the storm hit at Sandy Point.

So spring is here - at long last! (Even though I've turned the heat back on today at home.) I hope to spend some full days out and about these next few weeks as I catch up on my writing and begin to take my 'play days' away from the desk.  It's been fun though capturing spring as it comes on, day by day, hour by hour. A shot here and there add up to a nice progression of this season's happy appearances!

Rising from the Dead: Vultures Return on Easter Day

Around Easter 2011 I was hiking alone up a steep hillside trail at Susquehanna State Park trudging up from the river to a beautiful historic farm at the top. I was thinking about an upcoming move to NH to work more intensely on my field research in bumble bees. Lost in thought, I suddenly had the feeling that I was not alone. I turned around and saw a black vulture (Coragyps atratus) with her white-tipped wings partially opened for balance, skipping hoppity-hop along behind me. I stopped, she stopped. I hiked, she followed. This went on for the next half mile until I made it to  where an old stone wall parallels the trail near the crest of the hill. Perched on the wall were over twenty black vultures, wings outstretched, sunning in warmth and light.  My hiking companion hopped into place on the wall, gave me a sideways cock of the head ( I swear I saw her wink), threw open her five foot wingspan and soaked up the rays.

Vultures do a lot of walking - and sometimes, hike. With me.

This is black vulture season when they come soaring back north to hang out with friends and family till fall. I love their presence here along the river, a little tame, wise, comical, friendly, social. During this season of renewal, I am reminded of the cycle of death and rebirth when I see them returning. Their range is expanding north, reflected in the shifting USDA growing zone map that places them comfortably in Zone 6 wherever it might reach, now well into Pennsylvania, New York, and the coastal zones of New England.

With tree buds about to burst, these black vulture buds are hanging out for fish heads at the fish cleaning station.

Black vultures have been pushing north for some time now, since the mid-1800s. There's a local anecdote that claims that the carnage at Gettysburg and other nearby Civil War battlefields in Maryland and Virginia - where dead men and dead horses offered plenty of grisly fare  - drew the southern vultures north. But modern researchers think that shifts in range have been driven by local climate pattern change and have more to do with advancing springtime and a longer autumn. That's good news for expanding black vulture population but maybe not so much for the resident turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) that they may compete with for nesting sites. But along the Susquehanna there's plenty of food and nesting space  for everyone - hawks, eagles, and our two species of vulture.

A curious trail companion - black vulture along the River Road, Susquehanna River.

In other parts of the world vulture populations are subject to many different kinds of advance and decline, all of it human-assisted. In India entire populations of the revered white-rumped (Gyps bengalensis) and long-billed (Gyps indicus) vultures  have experienced a dramatic and devastating decline: dramatic due to the pain-killer drug diclofenac found residually in the corpses of humans and livestock and devastating because the Parsi people (and other ancient Persian and Asian cultures) have come to depend upon these enormous and sacred birds to remove their dead via 'sky burials.'  Although gruesome to some westerners - I won't post pictures of it in this blog - it suffices to say that the human corpse is respectfully returned to nature through a process of dismemberment carried out by funeral priests who then invite the vultures to the burial grounds for scavenging the remains.  In the Parsi tradition, burial grounds are enclosed as enormous vulture aviaries or towers, while in Himalaya cultures a high mountain meadow may serve the same purpose.

Parsi sky burial towers near what is now Mumbai with white-rumped vultures in attendance.  Circa 1900.

Dr. Lindsay Oaks, biologist and veterinarian working with the Peregrine Fund in the early 2000s, discovered the cause of the massive vulture die-off to be the pain-killer and sedative. India has since banned diclofenac but it is still used despite warnings not to. In some areas under observation by conservation enforcement and biologists, the decline seems to be slowing and vulture numbers stabilizing.  In 2011, the same year as my first Easter vulture hike,  Yeray Seminario, a biologist investigating the Asia Vulture Crisis posted a blog piece dedicated to Oaks who had recently passed. http://blogs.peregrinefund.org/article/688

My son engages a turkey vulture in a game of 'dip and tip' at the top of Mt. Monadnock, NH.

After reading about the Asia Vulture Crisis and having since followed the story for several years, I've come to truly appreciate the connection between people, our ideas of death and decay and faith, and cultural connections to these often maligned (in the west) but magnificent birds. I discovered that eastern U.S. native people, notably tribes who once lived in the river valleys and along river shores of Virginia and Maryland, often referred to vultures as 'Peace Eagles' since, they believed, at the time of human death, peace comes to every soul through the separation of physical body and spirit. Northeastern tribes mounted platforms in trees to hold the dead up high where winged scavengers and the the elements removed the flesh and released the soul.

Long-billed vulture. Photo Credit: Yeray Seminario, The Peregrine Fund. 

At Easter we immerse ourselves in ancient human themes of human death and spiritual resurrection and in nature we wonder how life returns so vibrant and green to landscapes only a few weeks ago frozen, death-like. I make time every Easter to go out and witness the return of black vultures to the Susquehanna Valley. Their presence reminds me that death is nothing to fear, that life returns spirit over and over again no matter what religion you hold to be true, or what side of the battlefield you fight for, or how brutal the winter might have been. What is not true is that death can be avoided - it comes to us all - that every living creature today will someday die. Our remains are given back to nature as dust, bone, or  ash which  will sooner (if you are given a sky burial) or later (stuffed into a coffin or jar) re-enter the earthly cycle with the assistance of  scavengers, microbes, insects, sun, and rain.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

- Ecclesiastes 12:7

Notes:

Black Vulture Fact Sheet w/ range map showing expansion

http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=3817

White-Rumped Vulture Fact Sheet w/ range map showing contraction

http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=3374

Loss of the white-rumped and long-billed vultures and the sky burial tradition

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/04/vultures-fate-parsi-sky-burials-uncertain-150401063720435.html

The Peregrine Fund - Check out the work being done on the Asian Vulture Crisis and the restoration of California and Andean condors! 

http://www.peregrinefund.org

Setting Aside Time for Crazy

It has been busy. Crazy busy. Things are left undone as priorities shift by the minute. It's especially true for this transition period from a long persistent winter to an emerging spring that is determined to come. Spring peepers are trilling between snow squalls. Geese and swans are pushing north against continuing Arctic fronts. My dissertation chapter deadline has long passed while I struggle to ready a trashy looking yard and trashier garden for the day when I will wake up to temps in the fifties. And then all my bees died in a flash freeze event.  Crazy season.

All that said, it's been a fun few weeks to watch the arrival of Wilson's snipe at Swan Harbor Farm, an assurance that spring is here even though the snowflakes are flying. With their needle-nose plier beaks, these wetland birds are pushing north despite the ice and snow that still blanket our fields. Most people don't know they exist, and those few who've even heard of a snipe think it's just a Boy Scout rite of passage. But they are real and they are hard to spot with their thick jacket of camouflage. To me they mean spring - dammit!  I should have been hurrying to my next meeting but instead I sat along the farm lane and admired them. What's fifteen minutes late when I might only get to see this once this year?

Some of the best crazy-making in early spring are the wild calling of killdeer as small flocks rush in to feed and impress potential mates. It's a little early for nesting and most of these birds are pushing north as well, but the strutting and dancing has begun accompanied by much frantic calling.  I prefer their crazy calling to the incessant beeping and pinging of my phone. I turned it off to listen to the killdeer and missed a call from one of my doctoral advisors. That's how spring goes, folks. 

Courtesy of the PA Game Commission.

The hit of this persistent winter and determined spring party has been the nesting bald eagles just twenty miles  west of where I live in South Central PA. There are a lot of bald eagles raising young right now on the Susquehanna just a few minutes down the road from me, but his Hanover pair was wired up to a live cam this winter and have endured a lot of snow, rain, wind, and very cold temps to finally hatch out two tiny grey balls of rock n' sock 'em sibling rivalry. The PA Game Commission announced that as of yesterday over one million people have logged on to watch and as one those watchers, I can attest to how anxious we've all been! I will admit to staring for hours at this live cam during the hatching period of two days while not really paying attention to paying bills and emailing. Priorities.

Patuxent NWR

In my busy travels for work these past two weeks I was able to catch an hour's hike at Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge near Washington D.C.  It was one of the warmer days  we've had this March though still with a cold breeze - but still, an abundance of spring peepers and a few wood frogs were calling like crazy. The next day it snowed.  I'd like to do a post dedicated just to this fascinating place but will wait for the green and warmth to arrive to do a good hike through and long visit. I felt cheated from my nature experience as I hurried from the trail to get back to work - only to find my car was running very rough and I had to go get help from the refuge maintenance guys.

My house is messy, smells of chicken poop, and covered in feathers that I try daily to sweep up. They belong to the last two of my laying hens, survivors from a raccoon attack that happened early one morning a week ago out in the coop. One is hurt pretty bad, another is lame.  These two were saved simply because I had been walking the dogs at 5am to get ready or an early day at work to drive hours to another meeting or workshop. I forget which. But in any case, it was still dark and the dogs ran to coop to intercept the huge and hungry raccoon that had already taken three birds. I barely made the meeting on time, arriving in southern Maryland just as the speaker began. Crazy. As of yesterday the coop is now predator proofed and these healed hens - well, one with a limp - are headed back out to the barn.  Today I clean. Clean everything. 

Courtesy of Hyperbole and A Half.

Notes: 

Keep up on all the goings on at the Hanover, PA, Codorus State Park live eagle cam:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1592549&mode=2

When things get very crazy like they are right now, I love revisiting my favorite blogs and Hyperbole and A Half is one of these. Although Allis hasn't been very active recently on her great blog that deals with the overwhelming nature of day-to-day life, the archived posts make me smile and laugh.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

OH: March 12 Trip Log: Malabar Farm, Northeast Ohio

Another five, six, I've lost count, hours in a windowless state archives building and I'm beyond done for the day. Out here in Ohio doing archival research for my PhD dissertation and with longer days and warmer temps, it's been perfect to escape in mid-afternoon for a hike. My last Trip Log entry for this trip is for Malabar Farm State Park in Northeast Ohio - not entirely an outing since I had planned to visit anyway. The farm is integral to my research in sustainable agriculture and restoration landscape ecology.

Not too far off of I-71 - an easy visit for travelers in NE Ohio.

Louis Bromfield and his family moved here in the 1940s after living in rural France for almost twenty years. He was born near here in Ohio and attended Cornell for agriculture, but left university to pursue his passions to become a writer. He won a Pulitzer with his third book and went on to write thirty more books before his death here in Ohio in 1957. But it's the farm that earned him the most fame. He took a run-down one hundred and fifty acres of eroded, stoney ground, and in less than five years (the family was here for fifteen years) applied restoration strategies to create a world famous pasture/beef/dairy operation. It was a story of bringing back the land - in a big way. The farm attracted thousands of guests a year, all of whom were welcomed by the Bromfield family.

Bromfield applied methods of soil conservation he had observed in Europe when he served during WWI and when he lived there with his family. The 'manure economy' of farmers who rotated their herds across many pastures ensured that soils were maintained for generations over hundreds of years. The careful management of forests ensured that woodland assets such as mushrooms, maple syrup, lumber, and nuts were always abundant. So, no cattle or pigs allowed in the woods - a real change of practice for American farmers who were used to letting cows and pigs roam freely through the woodlot!

Woods are protected from grazing livestock and deer populations heavily controlled to allow forests to thrive.

The farm is actually several farms that Bromfield bought and combined. He began right away to restore the stony, highly eroded soil. For generations this ground had been farmed poorly, mostly in corn, cultivated in rows that ran up and down the hills, and with no crop rotation or contour plowing. These methods simply did not exist in America up until the great Dust Bowl radically changed the way we thought about farming. 

Hilly ground was taken out of corn production and put into pasture use.

Bromfield purchased a small herd of dairy and beef cattle to graze large interconnected pastures that spanned across the wasted hillsides. He planted all kinds of grasses - good for both forage and soil holding qualities. By constantly moving herds - see my previous post on prairie restoration with bison - the soils stopped eroding, the grasses grew lush and high, and the cattle became fat! All within a few years!  Neighboring farmers who had previously teased and mocked his methods now stood in awe. Word spread and farmers from all over the country started stopping by.

The main barn and home site, tucked neatly into a hillside.

My visit today was to both learn more about the methods Bromfield and his farm staff applied to this broken and hurting landscape - as well as to hike the grounds of the park to gain a landscape-scale appreciation of what happened here. The trails were slushy under a foot of snow in some places so I kept to the roads, some paved, most in mud. Later in the season when the ground begins to dry, a hiker can do almost ten miles of interconnected trails. But not today - again, I was soaked up to my knees!

A cave!

The geology here is a complex layered mix of Silurian ocean bottom sandstone overlaid with  thick till and outwash from several glaciers that overspread Ohio over the past several million years. An ice cave can be visited up on the rocky ridge ( I couldn't down to it for the icy trails!). A young couple came stumbling and crawling out of it when I arrived - laughing "It's all ice in there!"  

Sugar house getting ready to boil sap this weekend -mmmmm!

Bromfield documented the transformation of this property primarily in two books Pleasant Valley (1945) and Malabar Farm (1948) but he makes mention of the methods and outcomes in many others including in his autobiography From My Experience (1955).  This 'experiment' became the basis for changing how and why we farm the way we do today in conservation agriculture. Though much work had been done during the Dust Bowl years to conserve soil and restore working lands, it seemed to all come together at Malabar and the farm has remained an agricultural demonstration site under the management of a Friends group and Ohio State Parks. And still people come. By the tens of thousands every year - a sort of pilgrimage site to many.

Cattle are important conservation staff at Malabar!

Today Malabar Farm hosts many sustainable agriculture workshops and conferences while it remains a working farm. Like in Bromfield's day, many area farmers, staff, and volunteers all contribute to making the farm a living example of how to do farming in hilly, highly erodible areas. The cattle are very important and when the pastures open for the season, they'll soon be romping and running on green grasses and dropping their precious cow plops all around.

Visitors Center and meeting rooms - an important education site.

My hike included stopping by the barn to visit with the livestock and the barn cat. There must be a barn cat, I thought. I was greeted by lambs, goats, little ponies, and the most loving, most adorable, most cutest-in-the-world calico barn cat ever. She followed me around the barn, tried to climb my Carharrts, jumped on to my backpack and rode around the barn complex purring into my ear, jumped off for hugs and kisses at a porch rail, and rejoined her best friend (according to a barn worker) a beautiful little Shetland pony for a nap in the fresh straw.

Barn cat was the sweetest kitty I've ever met.

As a working farm, Malabar produces grass-raised beef, cheese from Nubian dairy goats, alfalfa hay, soybeans, feed corn, wheat, and oats. The beef can be purchased here. In addition there is an active weavers group and wool sheep are raised here too. This time of year the sugar house is running on weekends while sap is collected from the maple woods. Tours of the farm and house are given on weekends in early spring but by April the farm will be up and running for visitors all week long through harvest. The trails are open all year for skiing in winter and hiking when the snows melt. I hiked on the roads today which was a little tricky between the normal community traffic and the slippery mud.

Don't let dusty old milk cans fool you - this is still a working farm!

In conservation farming, Malabar is also home to wildlife and an extraordinary list of native plants and trees. The bird, reptile, mammal, and amphibian lists are huge! Water is an important asset here, and when Bromfield purchased the land he noted that all five springs that once flowed into the creek from the various farm properties had been dry for years. After his applied conservation techniques began to secure the soils and his protected forests began to recover, all five springs came back to life and now contribute to thriving pond and wetland system throughout the park. It was one of his proudest accomplishments to make the water flow again. He wrote in From My Experience, his last book before his death from cancer:

I knew in my heart that we as a nation were already much further along the path to destruction that most people knew. What we needed was a new kind of pioneer, not the sort which tore out the forests and burned the prairies and raped the land, but rather pioneers who created new forests and healed and restored the richness of the country God had given us, that richness which, from the moment the first settler landed on the Atlantic coast we had done our best to destroy.

 I go out each morning and see miracles of restoration.  It makes you feel a little like God.

Notes: 

Malabar Farm State Park (note the many events and programs they hold here)  http://www.malabarfarm.org/

Contour farming is working the land according to its natural slope and aspect, rather than forcing it to conform to straight row plowing, a common and damaging way to farm up until the 1940s. http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_036800.pdf

Wikipage for Louis Bromfield - note the list of books!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bromfield

OH: March 11 Trip Log - Western Ohio's Battelle Darby Creek Prairie Restoration

After six solid hours at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus digging through over-stuffed archive boxes of fat file folders containing thousands of pieces of paper, I called it a day. My head was spinning and I needed air and sun. It was only 3:00pm so I took the time to drive 30 minutes to the till plains of Western Ohio and check out Battelle Darby Creek Metro Park, a whopping 7,000 acre conservation gem of prairie and oak savanna.

Oak savannah.

Ohio's Metropark system is, without a doubt, the most highly respected regional park system in the country. Leaders in ecological restoration, conservation, partnerships, and outdoor/environmental education, for each major region in the state maintains a unique grouping of parks, protected landscapes, and public spaces. Central Ohio Metroparks is comprised of nineteen units that range in size and scope  from historic farms, downtown birding corridors, public gardens, and large swaths of conservation properties. Battelle Darby Creek is a beautiful example of partners in agriculture, conservation, restoration ecology, and public support. I only had a few hours of fading sunlight to enjoy just a fraction of what this park entails. 

The new Battelle Darby Creek Nature Center - built into a glacial till slope.

I stopped at the new nature center first. I really could have stayed the whole time there talking to staff about it's off-the-grid systems and beautiful hillside contoured design, but the sun was casting long shadows so I quickly grabbed a map and flew out the door. On my way out one of the attendants said to join them  at the wet prairie at sunset for short eared owls! You bet! Of course I had to go see Big Darby Creek, a designated Wild and Scenic River. I could hear it long before I saw it churning away through the valley. The snow and ice melt these past few days has brought the river into the bottom woods. It was fast and broad and a little muddy. 

Big Darby Creek muscles its way into the woods.

The park manages a combination of public spaces (picnic and play grounds), prairie remnants, reclaimed agricultural land, forest, and oak savannah. The natural ecosystems that were found here before farmers claimed the prairie in the 1820s consisted of 350 square miles of wet prairie and oak savannah that existed for over 6,000 years prior to settlement. The flat till plains between Big and Little Darby Creeks flourished with immense savannah oaks and prairie plants and animals, many of which are now extinct. But there are clues to what those animals must have been like found in some of the plants here. The honey locust, found in profusion along the creek hillsides is a Pleistocene survivor, and with its  huge bundles of sharp thorns sprouting dagger-like straight up the trunk it appears out of place in today's somewhat subdued environment. It evolved this defense, however, to thwart browsing giant sloths and mastodons which disappeared with the spread of human hunters.

No sloths allowed!

In 1976 Metro Parks began a full scale restoration of the major ecological landscapes found in the till plains region. Farming had eliminated all but small remnants of original habitat and it took some time to develop relationships with farmers who were worried the parks were out to take their land.  Gradually area farmers began to see the value in maintaining functioning prairie habitats, and many were conservationists themselves. Huge swaths of cornfield were negotiated for purchase. Old tile and drain systems were broken to allow the prairie ponds to come back. "It only took a year before the waterfowl returned - ducks, geese, marsh hawks, short eared owl, and occasional sandhill cranes," said a park ranger who joined me for the owl watch, "Everybody, especially the farmers, were thrilled. It was immediate gratification - an almost instant reward for all the effort."

Large prairie oaks dominate the savannah.

Inviting the public to help, native prairie grass and wildflower seeds were collected by hand from the small remnant habitats. Seasonal fire was reintroduced into the landscape, an important ally in prairie restoration, as many savannah and prairie plants have evolved with it. But something was missing. Bison herds that once enriched the prairie with their manure, kneading the ground with their hooves during migrations, and browsing down invasive scrublands, hadn't been found in Ohio since 1803.  It was the missing piece of the restoration that finally came about in 2013 when a small herd of bison was reintroduced to the park. 

A cold blast of snow-fog swirls over the wet prairie ahead of a cold front.

I'd been hiking for about two hours following a popular greenway trail from a wet swampy woods (also under restoration management) through open oak savannah and out on to the great hilly tall grass prairie. A marsh hawk wheeled over the open ponds and red-winged blackbirds konk-a-reed  from prominent perches. It was almost impossible to imagine this all as cornfield. It was so complex and rich. "We are better at farming now, more than ever," explained a Darby Watershed Association member who happened also to be a farmer. He had joined me on the walk, heading out to the owl watch. "We don't need all this land like we once thought. We're more efficient, we have more reliable crops and seed, and with the technology we have today we can be precise and extremely mindful of how and where we grow crops. We can grow more food on less land by using sound conservation practices."

Marsh hawk over a wet prairie pond.

A strange cold mist had descended over the landscape. My companion explained it's a spring thing - one minute it's sixty degrees, the next minute you can't see for the fog and you are shivering. The wind kicked up and the distant wooded hills disappeared in smokey blue.  Then we saw them, coming up out of the ravines. Bison!

Coming up the hill from the creek!

Three cows and a bull moved silently into view, keeping an eye on my companion and I. To prevent human-bison conflicts, the park has fenced a large portion of the valley off from people. I realized we had been walking through a corridor of protective fencing for some time - I'd been too focused on birding to notice! The bison have plenty of room to roam - acres and acres of space across a large swath of hills - and the prairie they move through shows the signs of slow browsing - plenty of manure, shrub cropping, and a few wallows (these are critical wetland and water sources).  The big bull snuffed and snorted and the small group stopped and stared. Close enough, he seemed to say.

Hope for the prairie is a contented bison.

I heard a happy shout from a family coming down greenway trail "There they are! There they are!!" We stood for a long time admiring the bison, now so close I could smell their rich manure and shaggy winter coats. The dad lifted his young daughter on to his shoulders and said "Honey, you are the first Ohio generation to have them back in over two hundred years. Take care of them okay?" The little girl clapped her hands and said "Yes! Yes!" and  I thought I saw her dad wipe away a tear. 

I suppose the real hope for a restoration of the Ohio prairie comes as a bison, following the path people have made for him, on the heels of land deals, working partnerships, hand seeding and autumn burns, putting back what was removed - and most importantly - changing attitudes. But like the cold snow fog that was enveloping the landscape around us, it could all so easily disappear without dedicated stewardship. I wasn't sure what impressed me more - the sight of bison in Ohio or the years of hard work by hundreds of people to have that small herd come over the hill today. 

Notes:

Central Ohio Metroparks - http://www.metroparks.net/