​What a pleasure! Two Texas trips in one year. Thanksgiving is our usual and most favorite times to visit my folks in Driftwood, Texas. This trip I brought my camera and had the intent of getting out there for wildlife photography as much as possible. It paid off! 

​A brief exploration on our trail that Amanda and I cleared through the green space in our neighborhood revealed some fresh deer scrapes and rubs on saplings. There was also a large deer track in the nearby mud. Near the fox den at the bend of the creek we discovered fresh scat and loose dirt recently pushed out of the den. Up on the wide path through the pine clearing we found coyote scat and tracks, making a plaster cast for our collection. 

6:08 AM - While on the way to prayer meeting, a large antlered buck ran out in front of my car on Indian Hills Road in Athens, near the Eaton plant. It came out from the wood line toward the road, then turned and ran nearly alongside my car for about 25 feet, then turned back to its right and darted back into the woods from where it emerged.   

7:45 AM - spotted a roadkill coyote laying just east of Simms Paving on Highway 78 at Bradley Gin Road. Too damaged to retrieve for skin or skull.

God has revealed Himself in nature, in the Scriptures, and in the person of His Son. But ​where are the Christians who see nature the way William Bartram saw it? Even A.W. Tozer chided: “The idea that God reveals Himself in the creation is not held with much vigor by modern Christains” (Knowledge of the Holy, p 13).

​The theories of Darwin have robbed us, along with the modern environmental movement which crosses the boundary into idolatrous nature worship, and have made Christians afraid to admire and write admiringly about this “glorious apartment of the boundless palace of the Sovereign Creator” as pre-Darwinian men like Bartram once did. 

Although many Christians do not regard the wonders of Creation, Tozer continues, “...it is, nevertheless, set forth in inspired Word, especially in the writings of David and Isaiah… ‘the heavens declare thy glory, Lord, in every star thy wisdom shines'…”.
 
Why should we fear to publish our love and admiration for nature, His creation, with its “infinite variety of animated scenes, inexpressibly beautiful and pleasing, [and] equally free to the inspection and enjoyment of His creatures”? (Bartram, Travels, page 13).

Friday, 7:43 AM – ​The fall roadsides frequently paint the picture that it was a tough night for the White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus). With the disappearance of wolves and large cats from the landscape, the deer’s only predator has become man, whether behind a rifle or behind a steering wheel. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spied several carcasses making wintertime fodder for the hosts of Black Vultures and Turkey Vultures now populating the countryside. Always interested in what I might find, I constantly scan the roadsides, but usually have no plans of stopping unless I see an antlered skull to add to my collection. 
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Nearing the end of my 40-minute early morning drive to work, I spied a large brown body laying in the median near the truck stop on Highway 78… and there were antlers! I made a quick u-turn to verify, and then sped off to my office to get a pick up truck.  

DOA deer with antlers always disappear quickly here in Georgia. A few weeks ago a nice 6-point buck got his back leg hung up while jumping a wrought-iron fence. He was hanging face down, but was still alive. Before the police officer could arrive to end his suffering, there was already a small crowd of spectators waiting in line hoping to get some venison or a nice display rack. So I didn’t have much hope this buck would still be waiting on me in the median when I returned. 

Getting back and pulling up closer to the scene, I saw a large Fed-Ex 18-wheeler pulled over to the side and the driver standing in the median taking pictures. I thought for sure my deer would be taken from before my very eyes. “Are you gonna take him, or just takin’ pictures?” I asked. He saw the Animal Control decal on the side of the truck and assumed I was the authority sent to remove the carcass. “I’m the one that hit him!” he declared. “I came up through here last night around nine-thirty and he came out of nowhere.  That’s my bumper over there”, he exclaimed pointing about 30 yards down the road. “Knocked his antler clean off and he left a good dent in my grill.” 

Looking closer at the deer, I saw what must have been a head-on collision had indeed broken one antler off his head right at the skull, reducing him to a two-point buck. Searching the median and roadside, the broken antler was nowhere to be found. It was either knocked clear back into the woods, or had been picked up by another motorist who passed by earlier than me.  His missing antler was most likely the reason he wasn’t already carted off in another country boy’s pickup truck. After helping the driver carry his bumper back to his truck, I figured, “Why not?” and with the assistance of the package handler, loaded him up to get a one-antlered display skull. 

After a few months of allowing nature’s taxidermists to clean the skull, I retrieved it from my cache in the woods and began the final cleaning.  I was amazed to see the damage from this head-on collision. The zygomatic arch under the eye on same side as the missing antler was broken in pieces. In fact, the upper and lower jawbones on that side of the skull were completely shattered. He had taken on that entire big rig with the right side of his face! 

As I sat gluing on the back of his skull, which had also been broken off in the impact, I began to contemplate. I fully understand that deer don’t have the full range of thought that we have, but I wondered what he was thinking as the darted across the highway in front of that truck. Was he too sure of himself and his fleet-footed speed? “I can outrun it! It will never catch me!” Was he an overconfident young buck disproportionately proud of new rack? “I can face this thing head on!” Did he lack fear and the realization of just what exactly this semi-truck  could do? “It won’t hurt me.” Or did he simply misjudge the timing and make a foolish mistake? Whatever his reasoning, the consequences were fatal. 

How many of us, with full capacity of thought and judgment, and with a host of examples of the fatal collisions of others before us, still make foolish decisions? How many people’s lives are wrecked by sin as they boast, “It will never catch up to me. I can outrun it. I can take on this thing!” But in the end, there’s the fatal, traumatic impact upon life that always occurs. 
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The crowning majesty of a deer is his rack. This young buck’s glory was broken by a lack of judgment. His skull now hangs in my office. Seeing his clearly lopsided visage, all who enter ask astonished, “What happened to him?” The sole antler sticking out the left side of his now imbalanced looking skull is a testimony to an imbalanced decision. How many people, by lack of proper judgment, end up in traumatic situations? Physical death may not always occur immediately, but the road of sin leads only one place: “In the day thou eastest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)  Even if we are confident that we can outrun it, or proudly think we can face it head on, or poorly judge the outcome, a head-on collision with sin has only one result, and the glory with which God has crowned man is broken, leaving the testimony of wrecked lives evident to all.  So teach me, God, “good judgment and knowledge.” 

The Mergansers are back at the shelter pond! They are paired up and practicing synchronized diving as they resurface with mouth's full of green goodness. Also enjoyed a Blue Heron's fishing show. 

​​Tuesday, 12:39 PM – Monroe, Georgia.  A few weeks back I had watched a hawk sail and land in the wood line near Walton Pond 2 behind my office. My curiosity peaked, I went back by the pond, this time with my eyes up in the trees. Narrowing his landing down to a grouping of tall pines and Sweetgums, I didn’t find the hawk, but the possibility of its nest. 

Today’s sixty-one degree, partly sunny afternoon afforded some warm rays and I decided to go sit under that nest I had previously spied out. After sitting 30 minutes reading Bartram’s Travels and seeing nothing, lunch break was over and I headed back toward my office. Just as I neared the back of the shelter, out from the woods and right in front of my face flew a large hawk. But what kind? A Red-tailed or a Red-shouldered? 

As he circled over the pond, my initial clue to his identity was the bold black and white markings on the wings and tail. No more need be known; I was looking at a beautiful Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus). The black and white banding on the tail being the “tail-tell” sign. The Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), being appropriately named, sports a red tail that lacks the bold black and white banding. 

​While the banded tail tells all, there are also several other differentiating clues. The Red-tailed Hawk, also common in this area, is a bit larger. Besides the tail being red, it is also much shorter than his Red-shouldered cousin’s tail. On September 29, 2012 as I was studying to better my skills at identifying hawks, a gorgeous Red-tail perched on a snag across from my house in Athens, Georgia, affording me a living illustration. His shorter red tail could be clearly seen as he sat with his back toward my front porch where I sat with a cup of coffee in one hand and Wheeler and Clark’s “Photographic Guide to North American Raptors” in the other. 

The chests of these two raptors can also give a clue to their identities.  As the hawk circled over the pond behind my office and rose higher into the air, I could discern the distinctly reddish-orange barred chest characteristic of the Red-shouldered Hawk. The Red-tailed Hawk possesses a darker streaked belly band just below a usually bare chest.
   
The size of the nest I had earlier observed was also a clue to this hawk’s identity. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Red-shouldered Hawk’s stick nest is about 2 feet in diameter and lined with bark, lichens, and conifer sprigs. The Red-tail’s nest is larger, being a tall pile of dry sticks up to 6.5 feet high and 3 feet across. 

If all these clues weren’t enough, a study of the habitat in which I observed this hawk would be another clue to his identity. Red-tails usually occupy open habitats such as grasslands, pastures, and fields.  Red-shouldered Hawks are forest raptors and tend to live in open sub-canopy stands near water; perfectly describing the pond and woods behind my office.
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After buzzing my face and circling the pond, my Red-shouldered Hawk disappeared below the horizon back near the grove of trees near where I had been staking out the nest. Perhaps, before I disturbed him, he was sitting and watching the banks of the pond to make a meal of the Northern Watersnake I had seen just the afternoon prior. Imagine, I sit below a hawk nest for nearly an hour and see nothing, only to be nearly hit in the head by him while walking back indoors! 

​Walton County, Georgia

Later one afternoon, I could hear from my office a peculiar churrrrrr of a woodpecker chiding someone or something. Going outside I spied a flash of black, white and red flitting in the trees. The bright red mohawk quickly clued me in that I had spied a Red-bellied Woodpecker. But if the head is red, why isn't it a Red-headed Woodpecker?  

The Cornell Lab of Orinthology writes, “Their strikingly barred backs and gleaming red caps make them an unforgettable sight – just resist the temptation to call them Red-headed Woodpeckers, a somewhat rarer species that's mostly black on the back with big white wing patches.”  The Red-headed Woodpecker has nearly an entirely red head, while the Red-bellied Woodpecker has a wide red mohawk. If you look closely, there is a red hue on its belly, thus giving it his name.  

I ran back inside for my camera. Upon returning outside, the Red-bellied Woodpecker was gone, but I found the object of his previous chiding churrrrrrs. Another, but smaller, flash of red, black and white was pecking away higher up in the branches of a pine snag. Only until I could get a close up view in the LCD of my Nikon could I see the short bill of a Downy Woodpecker that differentiates it from the similar Hairy Woodpecker. So confusing!

Walton County, Georgia 

​​Monday, 12:40 PM - I always consider it “my lucky day” when I discover or stumble upon a reptile, particularly a snake. This afternoon, the sun was sending warm rays through the cool, partly cloudy sky and presenting a beautiful sixty-one-degree fall day. I left the confines of my office at lunch break and was planning a short stroll up to the pond. But not even 50 feet out the back door of my office, I spied an odd looking “stick” laying across the access road. 

Noticing that his initial relaxed position was now tensing into slight curves along his body, I knew he too had seen me.  I raised my camera to get a few shots from a distance should he quickly shoot off either side of the road into the edge of the woods or into the pond.  But there he lay, subtle as can be, not moving an inch, except for the gradual tensing of his muscles.  I was able to walk quite close by and made a loop around him to the edge of the road where I could squat and get some eye-level photographs. He lay perfectly still, perhaps repeating in his not-wanting-to-be-noticed reptilian mind, “I’m a stick. I’m a stick. I’m just a stick.”

Desiring a different pose, I approached him and gently tapped his tail with my foot. Instantly he assumed the dreadful defensive position and feisty, aggressive attitude by which this species, and most watersnakes, are known. He assumed the most perfect coil giving him the advantage of maximum striking distance. His body flattened out, making him appear much more heavy bodied and Cottonmouth-ish. 
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After a few calculated and precise strikes at my boot and leg, he decided retreat was in order and quickly shot his way down the bank, winding toward the pond where, diving into the water, he disappeared into the watery vegetation on the edge of the pond. No doubt he will be back out again on another warm day, craftily disguised as a stick on the bank of the pond. Truly, it was my lucky day. 

​November 11, 2012, 8:45 PM - Amanda spotted 3 deer crossing from a neighbor’s yard; 1 doe and 2 fawns. They slowly sauntered across the road, hooves clicking on asphalt, before disappearing in the wood line two houses down. These are most likely the family we frequently see in our area, though now grown bigger and browner. 

​November 3, 2012 - on a drive south to the Rock Ranch in Thomaston, GA saw
- 3 roadkill raccoons
- 1 roadkill bobcat
- 1 roadkill deer

​At sunset on the drive home, beautiful golden rays and shadows casting across the landscape, we passed 2 Red-tailed Hawks along the way sitting on pasture fences. One smaller hawk, either a Coopers or Sharp-shinned, flew swiftly in front of our vehicle. At almost dusk, while crossing over a bridged creek near Monticello, a Great Blue Heron flew up from the creek, over the road, and curved around back down into the cover of the trees. 

​With the time change, this first week of November has placed my drive home in the golden hours of dusk. Now it looks like fall! The reds of the sumac and dogwoods absolutely glow. The orange sunlight gives even the yellows a beautiful, deep golden radiance. Truly, it “looks” like fall, even if the temperatures, still going above 70 degrees, feel like a lingering summer.