It took until November 29 for me to find a tick on my body. Tick season is a myth. Unless there is snow covering the grass, you are always vulnerable to ticks. Happily, it hadn't bit me; I'm have very sensitive skin, so last night, when I felt something on my knee, I pulled up my pant leg and found a small tick wandering around my kneecap. It was all black, but seemed to me too big to be a deer tick, yet definitely too small to be a dog tick and it didn't have a dot on it, so it wasn't a lone star tick, but I didn't spend a lot of time studying it from the living room to the bathroom where I flushed it down the toilet. At least this time of year the deer ticks are not nymphs, which are virtually impossible to see.
I probably picked it up in the WMA yesterday when I took a different trail that was a little more overgrown than the others. This is why I have my doctor test for tick-borne diseases.
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In his great book, The Pine Barrens, John McPhee, writing about the bird life in the barrens, says that the towhee is the most common species. This is more than 40 years ago, back when the bird was called the Rufous-sided Towhee instead of the Eastern. Things may have changed since then, because from my admittedly unscientific observations these last 3 1/2 month the most common bird around here is the Carolina Chickadee. Checking my eBird records I find that I've recorded
Carolina Chickadee: 427
Eastern Towhee: 14
These records are skewed, because I don't write down every chickadee I see or hear--I'd do almost nothing else if I did, but I do note every towhee I see or hear. A handsome bird with a maddening song: Drink your Teeeeeea.
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