Birdwatch

Shy and Dry

This time of year, the fields are teeming with Killdeer that call their own name day or night

By Susan Campbell

The killdeer is a small, brown-and-white shorebird that breeds in the Sandhills and Piedmont of North Carolina but is widespread throughout North America. It can be found here year round in the right habitat, but that doesn’t mean you should go looking for it in wetlands. Despite its classification as a shorebird, most of the population lives away from the water’s edge. In fact, for egg-laying, the drier the spot, the better! And in truth, sandy soil like that in the Sandhills, is not that much different from the beaches, where one would expect a shorebird to nest.

This robin-sized bird, not surprisingly, gets its name from its call: a loud “kill-deer, kill-deer” which can be heard day or night. During migration, individuals frequently vocalize on the wing, high in the air. Adults will also circle above their territory calling incessantly in early spring.

On the ground, killdeer are a challenge to spot. They blend in well with the dark ground and practically disappear against the mottled background of a tilled field or a gravel surface. Killdeer employ a “run-and-stop” foraging strategy as they search for insect prey on the ground. As they run, they may sir up insects, which will be easily gobbled up as the birds come to a quick halt. Although they live in close proximity to humans, they are quite shy. Killdeer are more likely to run than fly if approached. When alarmed, they frequently use a quick head bob or two. This may be a strategy to make the birds seem larger than they appear.

During the winter months, flocks of killdeer concentrate in open, insect-rich habitat such as ball fields, golf courses, or harvested croplands. Come spring, pairs will search out drier substrates, preferring sandy or rocky areas for nesting. They may even use flat, gravel rooftops. The female merely scrapes a slight depression where she lays four to six speckled eggs that blend in with the surroundings. She will sit perfectly still on her nest and incubate the eggs for three to four weeks. If disturbed by a potential predator, the female killdeer will employ distractive displays to draw the intruder away from the eggs. This may go so far as to involve feigning a broken wing. Calling loudly and spreading out her tail, the mother bird makes herself as noticeable as possible, limping along and dragging a wing on the ground. This “broken wing act” can be very convincing, giving the predator the idea that following the female will result in an easy meal. Once far enough from the nest, the killdeer will fly off, not returning to the eggs until she is convinced the coast is clear. Should distractions by the adults not be effective, the pair will find a new nesting location and begin again. The species is a very determined nester. Killdeer are capable of producing up to three broods in a summer.

Normally, the eggs hatch almost all at the same time. As soon as they have dried off, the downy, long-legged young will immediately follow their mother away from the nest to a safer, more protected area nearby. They will follow her around for several weeks, being fed and brooded along the way. Once they are fully feathered, the young will have learned not only how to escape danger but how and where to find food for themselves.

So, if you hear a “kill-deer” over the next couple months, stop and look closely: you may be rewarded with a peek into the summer life of this fascinating little bird.  OH

Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com.

Botanicus

Paw de Deux

Or as we say in the South, “Paw Paw”

By Ross Howell

A simina triloba — a.k.a. pawpaw, papaw, paw paw, paw-paw, American custard apple, poor man’s banana, Quaker delight, hillbilly mango, Appalachian banana — is a small, deciduous tree native to the eastern United States and Canada, growing as far west as Nebraska. Mature trees can reach a height of 35 feet, producing maroon-colored flowers and sweet-tasting, aromatic fruit, the largest edible fruit native to North America, if you don’t count squash — and who other than the most persnickety of botanists would count squash as a fruit?

The pawpaw once enjoyed considerable popularity. Its earliest documented mention — according to Owen Native Foods of Cross Junction, Virginia, — is found in a 1541 expedition report of the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, who discovered Native Americans cultivating the plant east of the Mississippi River.

During the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806, the adventurers consumed pawpaws during their journey. Chilled pawpaw fruit was a favorite dessert of George Washington at Mount Vernon, and Thomas Jefferson planted pawpaws at his home, Monticello.

The pawpaw has a folk tradition, too. As part of my elementary school education in the mountains of Virginia, I learned to sing this little ditty:

Where, oh where is pretty little Susie? [repeated three times]

Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch.

Pickin’ up pawpaws, puttin’ ’em in her pocket, [repeated three times]

Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch.

Important safety tip! Pretty little Susie’s “pocket” was an apron. Pawpaw fruit is remarkably mushy when ripe, so you don’t want to tuck one in the hip pocket of your new Wranglers.

In the wild, pawpaws are understory trees, flourishing in fertile bottomland under the shade of taller trees, often propagating by sending up new saplings from their roots. So they’re often encountered in a “patch,” as in the lyrics of my boyhood song.

But there are exceptions.

Dara Dobson, who owns 7 Pines Native Plant Nursery near Defuniak Springs, Florida, explains that “more mature pawpaw trees are better able to stand strong sunlight.” Charlie Headington, a professor in UNCG’s Master’s in Applied Arts & Sciences program and advocate for low-maintenance, organic, edible and diverse community gardens, notes there are two pawpaws growing in full sunlight at Greensboro Montessori School on Horse Pen Creek Road. “They’re 10 to 12 feet tall and are located to the left of the school building in a terraced garden,” Headington says. “You can’t get in the gate but you can look at them over the fence that has scuppernong grapevines woven through it.

“There are two smaller pawpaws in the Meeting Place garden at the corner of Smith and Prescott streets,” Headington adds. “They’re labeled for identification.”

In addition to sending up saplings from their root systems, pawpaws also reproduce by way of flowers and the big seeds their fruit encases.

To my knowledge there are no songs celebrating the fragrance of the pawpaw flower, and for good reason. They produce little to no odor at all, but what fragrance they do emit smells remarkably like roadkill. Alas, the trees’ leaves, twigs and bark are also foul-smelling, loaded with natural insecticides called acetogenins. Rarely are their leaves eaten by rabbits or deer.

But they’re quite tasty to the palates of zebra swallowtail butterfly larvae. Not only do the larvae enjoy protection from the predation of birds and other critters by virtue of the acetogenins they ingest with the leaves, the spectacularly colored adult butterflies do, as well.

Raccoons, squirrels, opossums and other critters enjoy eating the ripe fruit of the pawpaw, thus helping spread its seed in the forest.

“Opossums are traditionally the raiders of the pawpaw patch,” says Greensboro resident David Waller, professor emeritus of the department of Biological Sciences at Kentucky State University, “but I bet bears were more important to the tree in pre-settlement America.”

Waller first heard about the pawpaw during a discussion with a KSU botanist friend about guanabana, a fruit found in Mexico that’s a relative of the pawpaw. Later he discovered a pawpaw patch thriving in a marshy area on the KSU campus.

“On sunny days, it was so pleasant to visit there and be in the bright green light under the huge leaves close overhead,” Waller says. “In spring the shocking, big, brown-petaled flowers popped out of woody branches, then came the lumpy-sausage fruits, fragrant when ripe in late summer — all surprisingly exotic, yet it’s a native tree!”

KSU has the only full-time pawpaw research program in the world. Focusing on issues like propagation, genetic diversity, orchard management, and techniques to improve fruit ripening and transport, the university hosts an international festival, which last year drew representatives from 19 states and European countries including Holland, Slovenia and Germany.

National Public Radio’s Ally Schweitzer, writing about a couple who’d planted a pawpaw orchard in rural Maryland, notes that with consumers’ increasing desire for fresh, locally produced foods, farmers markets and trendy breweries and eateries have “embraced the fruit.” These developments have even earned the pawpaw a new alias — “hipster banana.”

Interested in learning more about the resurgent pawpaw?

The 21st Annual Ohio Pawpaw Fest 2019 is scheduled for September 13–15 near Lake Snowden, Albany, Ohio. Waller has attended the festival a couple of times. “It’s an enthusiastic social event with plenty of pawpaw information, souvenirs and some saplings in pots to plant in your own back yard,” he says. “Along with other nature stuff by local groups.”

Closer by is the N.C. Cooperative Extension’s North Carolina Pawpaw Festival, which takes place in Forsyth County, usually on the last Saturday in August. While an event isn’t planned for 2019, vendors at past N.C. festivals have offered seeds and saplings for planting, ripe fruit for eating, along with samples of pawpaw and spiceberry jam, pawpaw gelato and pawpaw beer! You can follow the N.C. Pawpaw Festival on Facebook using the handle @ncpawpaw.  OH

Ross Howell Jr. planted a native pawpaw in a wet area at the far end of the lot at his wife Mary Leigh’s house in Florida. There was no discussion about the fragrance of pawpaw flowers before he planted the sapling, and he hopes there never will be.

Drinking with Writers

One Man’s Good Advice

Clyde Edgerton and the art of negotiation

By Wiley Cash   •   Photographs by Mallory Cash

In 2011, my wife and I were living in West Virginia when I learned that my first novel was going to be published. My editor asked me to reach out to any well-known authors I knew to see if they would offer a blurb for the book jacket. The problem? I didn’t know many well-known authors, so I began sleuthing for email addresses. Clyde Edgerton’s was one of the first I found. I wrote to him and told him that I, like him, was a North Carolina native who had written a North Carolina novel, and I wondered if he would be willing to give it a read and consider offering some kind words. He not only read my novel and offered some kind words that ended up on the front of the hardcover, he offered some criticism as well. There was one particular scene in the novel that he felt went on a little too long, and he suggested some edits. I made the edits; they were the last I made before the novel went to print, and they improved the novel in ways I never could have imagined. I had never met Clyde Edgerton. I had never been one of his students. He was just being kind, giving more of his time and talent than I ever expected.

Clyde’s kindness and giving of time continued in the spring of 2012 when he appeared at Pomegranate Books in Wilmington, North Carolina, to attend one of the first events of my book tour. I had not expected him to be there, and it was a little like shooting free throws while Michael Jordan watched from the stands, but I will never forget how deeply honored I felt. At the conclusion of that event, I spoke a little about a new novel that I was working on, and I expressed the difficulty I was having with the ending. A few days later, I received an email from Clyde, sharing his ideas about how to end novels in ways that satisfied both writers and readers.

Clyde and I struck up a friendship after my wife and I moved back to North Carolina and settled in Wilmington in 2013. He christened our second child. Our kids go to the same school. We have shared the stage with other authors at literary events and fundraisers around the South, and over the past few months we have fallen into a routine of eating omelets and biscuits and gravy and sharing sliced tomatoes in a booth at White Front Breakfast House at the corner of Market and 16th Street.

That was where we were sitting recently when I sought Clyde’s advice about a particularly difficult ethical situation I was facing in my professional life. Aside from the respect I have for Clyde as a writer, it is exceeded only by my respect for him as a citizen and altruist. After asking for his advice, Clyde shared some wisdom he had gleaned from a local reverend, friend and ally named Dante Murphy.

“Don’t get angry at people in these situations,” he said. “When it becomes personal that anger can poison you. Get angry at institutions. You can change an institution. It’s harder to change a person.”

Clyde knows what he is talking about. For the past few years he has been one of a handful of citizens leading the charge to uncover racial inequities in the New Hanover County School System, something he first encountered while tutoring students at Forest Hills Elementary. The school had a Spanish language immersion program, and while the student body was 46 percent African-American, every single one of the 40 slots in the language program had been taken by white students before open enrollment even began. Since then, the former principal and school system have given a number of excuses — some laughable, some offensive — about the racial disparity in the program. None of it has deterred Clyde and a group of citizens from following leads, learning of other instances of discrimination or wrongdoing, and meeting with parents, school board members and city and county employees.

None of the students on whose behalf Clyde is working have ever met him. They are not his children, but he is working for them regardless. It is similar to the compassion and care he showed me all those years ago, but the kindness he showed me never got him banned from county school property.

How does Clyde address these issues with school leaders? The same way he approaches finding a satisfying conclusion to a piece of fiction he is writing.

“Some writers think that story comes from conflict,” he says. “I don’t think that’s always true. Conflict can be impassable, and there’s no story with an impasse. I think good stories come from negotiation. Good stories happen when everyone can see they have a stake in a good outcome.”

For a good outcome, whether in a community or a novel or a literary friendship, negotiation is key. Clyde, please pass the sliced tomatoes.   OH

Wiley Cash lives in Wilmington with his wife and their two daughters. His latest novel, The Last Ballad, is available wherever books are sold.