Lisa – Page 6 – Don't Fleece the Bees

Ohio Bird Sanctuary

October 31, 2021September 26, 2022 Lisa

In the past few years, I’ve become mildly obsessed with birds—identifying them, recognizing their calls, learning more about their abilities and behaviors. They are such beautiful and intelligent creatures!

I get to see plenty of songbirds up close at the feeders and birdbath outside my house, but I rarely catch sight of large raptors, and certainly not close enough to really observe their features. So I was excited to visit the Ohio Bird Sanctuary in Mansfield, Ohio, about an hour north of Columbus. It’s a nonprofit organization dedicated to rehabilitating injured or orphaned birds. Though the primary goal is to release birds back into the wild, sometimes that is not possible. There are about 60 birds—including a number of raptors—that live as permanent residents of the Sanctuary, housed in enclosures on the peaceful 90-acre preserve.

On a crisp, sunny morning, I traveled the rural roads of Ohio to the Sanctuary. I stopped in the visitor center to pay the admission fee ($3 for adults) and chat with the volunteer greeter. She gave me a map of the grounds and a brief orientation before I went outside to meet the birds.

The Birds

You might expect a collection of 60+ birds to be cacophonous, but in fact most of the residents were quiet and watchful. Only the crows, true to form, were rowdy and raucous—much like a flock of middle schoolers in the cafeteria after a year-long pandemic hiatus.

Every owl, falcon, hawk, osprey, vulture, crow, and bald eagle who calls the Sanctuary home has a name and a unique story. Each spacious enclosure houses only one or two birds, so they have plenty of room to perch, walk, and even fly about. Several raptors were hit by cars, sustaining injuries to their wings. Some (like Saint Alice) suffer from long-term effects of illnesses like West Nile Virus. Others were found orphaned or abandoned, unable to care for themselves in the wild.

Ruby, a Red-tailed Hawk, suffered a damaged wing when she was shot.

Seeing the birds up close, I could really appreciate their uniqueness, beauty, and size.

Barkley, a Barred Owl, was injured in a barbed-wire fence.

Saint Alice, a Bald Eagle, made an audible “thud” as she hopped from one perch to another!

In addition to the individual raptor enclosures, there is a larger aviary where various songbirds coexist. Visitors can walk through the songbird house and even purchase a tiny cup of seed to feed the cardinals, bluejays, finches, and doves. If you’re lucky, one of the birds might even land on you.

However, one of the biggest surprises of the day was an encounter with this guy.

My first thought was, How did this bird get out of its cage!? But it was a wild vulture, airing out his wings for a moment as he visited the Sanctuary. Or more accurately, as he tormented the crows. They had been the noisiest birds all day, but they REALLY went berserk at the uninvited guest. The vulture lazily flapped up to the top of the crow enclosure, poking and prodding at the wires while the crows squawked in outrage.

The Trails and Treehouse

In addition to the aviary, the Sanctuary features several miles of beautiful trails, including one along the Clear Fork River. The birds were the main attraction, but I couldn’t resist a walk in the woods. On the day I visited I basically had the trails to myself. There are cozy picnic areas tucked throughout the trails, as well as activities for children. It would be hard to get lost since the trails are not very long, but even so they are marked with charming and helpful “bird blazes.”

One of the newest projects at the Sanctuary is a treehouse classroom. Volunteers and experts from Nelson Treehouse finished the 100-foot bridge connecting to an open-air treehouse in summer 2021.

*Treehouse under construction; Treehouse ready for visitors! (Credit: Ohio Bird Sanctuary)*

Programs and Support

The Ohio Bird Sanctuary offers a number of programs for visitors of all ages. Every Saturday they hold an “avian encounter” during which visitors can meet one of the bird ambassadors up close. Other on-site program options include workshops, camps, and tours. You can even host birthday parties there. For something more in-depth and personal, schools and organizations can arrange outreach visits from the birds and their caretakers. These days, of course, there are also “virtual” programs available. So many options!

If you are as impressed with this place as I am and want to support its work, you can do so in a variety of ways.

Become a member
Adopt a bird
Make a donation (they have a wish list of items on Amazon; toss one in your cart)
Purchase a memorial paver or bench
Volunteer your time!

Want to Learn More?

I’ve learned a lot from the resources listed here, and I think any fledgling or experienced birder would enjoy them as well:

What It’s Like to Be a Bird by David Allen Sibley. He is not only a master ornithologist, but also a talented artist and writer. This should be a coffee table book in every household.

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. This book details what a compliment—rather than an insult—it should be to call someone a “bird brain”! She recounts stories and research studies that highlight birds’ amazing abilities, from memory skills to musical talents to social prowess. It’s a fascinating read.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website is an incredible resource for learning more about all things bird-related. I’ve had a lot of fun listening to their collection of bird call recordings and trying to match them up with the sounds from my backyard feeders and metro-park rambles.

Eat

The Sweetness of Sourdough

August 2, 2021September 26, 2022 Lisa

Are you a fan of sourdough bread? That crusty outside, chewy inside, and distinctive tanginess? It tastes different from the typical loaf of bread today because it IS different. We have been baking bread for thousands of years, but modern technologies and techniques have dramatically changed the speed and nutritional content of the typical loaf. Quick-rise yeast breads must have seemed like magic when they were first introduced, but today we know that the real magic lies in a slow rise and long fermentation. True sourdough is a return to bread as it was meant to be.

In its simplest form, sourdough is just flour, water, and salt, fermented with lactic acid bacteria and wild yeast. And not only is it delicious, it also has myriad health benefits (it’s more easily digestible and its nutrients are more bioavailable than quick-rise yeast bread) since it is a fermented product.

People have been fermenting foods for ages. Before refrigeration, it was a way to preserve meat, dairy, and vegetables. The fermentation process spurs the growth of “good” bacteria and creates an acidic environment that discourages the growth of harmful bacteria. That still comes in handy today, but we’ve also discovered that fermented foods benefit our gut health. The probiotics—good bacteria and other microorganisms—in foods like yogurt and sauerkraut are great for the gut microbiome.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to explore the world of sourdough, because:

It featured prominently in a fun novel I read recently
It’s a San Francisco specialty . . . and I traveled to SF this summer
Well, I’m a fan of all things fermented

The Novel

I’ll start with the novel. It’s called Sourdough, by Robin Sloan.

The story goes like this: A young woman fresh out of college is successfully wooed by a San Francisco tech company. Lois thinks this is the start of a wonderful thing, but in fact she quickly is glumped by the stress and expectations and monotony. The one bright spot in her existence is the daily takeout of spicy soup and sourdough bread she has delivered each evening. She happened across the menu by chance, two brothers who make food in their apartment and deliver it by motorcycle. They belong to an obscure ethnic group called the “Mazg,” and the food is a revelation to her. They call Lois their “number one eater!” But then, because of issues with their visas, the brothers have to leave the country unexpectedly. Lois is devastated, but as a parting gift the brothers make a final delivery to her: a small crock containing their “culture.” Or as it’s more commonly known, the starter for their sourdough bread.

Lois is skeptical. She programs robots, she does not bake bread. (Or attend to ANY domestic matters, really.) But she follows their instructions for keeping the starter alive, feeding it, playing their special Mazg music for it, and even making bread with it. And the bread unlocks something in her. It sets her life on a whole new trajectory. There is something special, perhaps even magical, about that starter.

So What Is a Starter?

Some fermented foods require the addition of a “starter” culture of yeast and bacteria to kick off and facilitate the fermentation process. When you make sourdough, yogurt, or kombucha, for example, you must include some starter along with your other raw ingredients—you might think of the starter as a concentrated dose of the necessary yeast and bacteria. Without the starter, the crock of milk (for yogurt), sweetened black tea (for kombucha), or slurry of flour and water (for bread) will just spoil or turn moldy. Other foods, like sauerkraut and kimchi, will ferment just fine by allowing the naturally-occuring, wild bacteria that are present everywhere to proliferate in the jar.

Getting Started

With my interest in probiotics and fermentation, how could I not be inspired to experiment with sourdough too? Having a little crock of bubbling culture that needs tended, cultivated, kept alive? I loved the idea of having a special generations-old brew entrusted to me, but—unlike Lois—I didn’t know anyone who makes sourdough.

Until: About a week after returning from a trip to San Francisco this summer (where yes, I ate sourdough at Boudin’s bakery on Fisherman’s Wharf), my sister-in-law texted me: “Hey, do you want some sourdough starter? My friend gave me some. I can share it with you.”

Clearly, this was a sign from the universe.

I got busy reading up on sourdough starter care. It felt a bit like adopting a new pet. It IS a living thing, after all, and requires regular feeding. This sourdough tutorial from Emilie Raffa was a helpful source, as was her book Artisan Sourdough Made Simple.

I was excited but also a little nervous to take possession of the starter—would I be able to keep it alive?

As it turns out, feeding it is actually quite simple. People who bake a lot keep the starter at room temperature and feed it once or twice a day. Less-frequent bakers like me can store the jar of starter in the refrigerator and feed it once a week. When you feed it, you scoop out and discard about half of the current starter (otherwise it will outgrow its container!), then stir in equal weights of flour and water. (A big thing in sourdough, as well as in baking in general, is the WEIGHT of ingredients. Weight and volume are two different things. My feedings comprise about 1/2 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of filtered water, or 75 grams of each. Different volumes, same weight.) And if you find it painful to just “throw away” half of your starter at every feeding, don’t despair. There are actually lots of recipes that use up the discard!

Down the sourdough rabbit hole I went. Around the corner of a particularly alluring tunnel, I learned that you can create your OWN starter.

There are wild yeasts everywhere—in us, on us, around us—and you can get them to colonize a crock of flour and water if you provide the right conditions.

The process of creating a starter sounded a little fussy, but also . . . too easy. I really just mix together some flour and water, and the magic will happen? I mean, you do have to mix the correct proportion of flour and water, and you do have to house the crock at an advantageous temperature, and you DO have to feed the concoction every day for about five days. . . . But if you follow those steps, you can grow your very own starter culture.

I was curious: Does that mean that sourdough from starters grown in different parts of the country, or world, tastes different?

Supposedly. The natural variety in local yeasts and bacteria is believed by some to yield differences in the breads produced. San Francisco attributes its sourdough stardom to a special bacteria (Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis) that thrives in that particular climate. On the Cultures for Health website, they even sell a special “San Francisco Style” sourdough starter! (However, that same bacteria has been found all over the world in places with similar climates, so as with most things sourdough-related . . . it’s not a simple answer.)

Growing My Starter

It was July in Ohio when I attempted my homegrown starter. Nice and warm, good conditions for fermentation. Temperature plays a big role in fermentation rates, which is part of what makes baking sourdough both an art and a science. You have to develop an understanding of how the starter and dough should look, smell, feel. The process is not exactly the same all year long, which can be unsettling if you just want a formula to follow!

To give my starter the best chance of success, I did everything by the book. Stone-ground whole-wheat flour. Non-chlorinated filtered water. Kitchen scale and digital thermometer. I measured the weights of the ingredients; I checked and adjusted the temperature of the water (82 degrees). Ambient temperature of the home set at 75-80 degrees.

And what do you know. It worked!

After the first 24 hours, I saw a few tiny bubbles in the mixture. I discarded half of the starter, fed it the prescribed amounts of flour and water, and waited another 24 hours. The mixture bubbled and doubled in size. It did this for the next several feedings as well. After five days, the starter was doubling in size in just a couple of hours, and it also passed the “float test.” (Not a foolproof method, but one way to check if your starter is ready. You put a little dollop in some water and see if it floats. If it does, it’s ready.) Time to make some bread!

These two photos show my starter on Day 1 and Day 5. Wow!!

If I launch into a whole tutorial on making sourdough bread, this blog will be really long. It is a . . . lengthy process. Frankly it’s a bit daunting at first, when you see all the steps and the time involved. It is not all hands-on time, but from start to finish it’s like a 24-hour process to bake a loaf of sourdough. And it takes a lot of practice, to learn how different types of dough behave, and how the ambient temperature impacts the results. However, when you succeed in producing a beautiful, crusty, bubbly loaf of sourdough for the first time? All worth it!

Here’s the first ever loaf made with my homegrown starter. I forgot to score the top of the dough before baking the bread, but it turned out dang good!

Reading List

You may find, as I did, that the more I learned about making sourdough, the more questions I had! It’s fascinating: the history, the science, the artistry. Here are a few resources that you might find useful on your own sourdough adventures.

Sourdough Bread: A Beginner’s Guide by Emilie Raffa
In this blog post, Emilie walks you through the entire sourdough-making process. She explains everything very clearly and provides many helpful tips. I especially liked her sample baking schedule, because it can be tricky to figure out the timing of such a lengthy process.

The Sourdough School by Vanessa Kimbell
If you want to get really deep into the science of sourdough, Vanessa’s your lady. This book is incredibly detailed. I mean, she runs a school in England dedicated entirely to the baking of sourdough! Depending how serious you get about your bread, a field trip might just be in order.

This blogger provides a list of recipes for using the discard from your starter. She also provides a tutorial for creating a starter from scratch.

If you’re interested in creating some other fermented foods, I have written about making yogurt and sauerkraut in previous posts.

Create

You’re on Candid (Bird) Camera

May 23, 2021September 26, 2022 Lisa

Something that has brought me tremendous joy over the past several years is learning to identify the birds that visit our yard. I never tire of observing them at the feeders and birdbath. Admiring their dexterity, listening to their songs, laughing at their antics. We have all the usual midwestern suspects—cardinals, bluejays, finches, chickadees, wrens, titmice, sparrows, woodpeckers. Sometimes bluebirds. Once an oriole!

If you find yourself becoming slightly bird-obsessed too, a terrific book is What It’s Like to Be a Bird by David Allen Sibley.

It’s filled with beautiful artwork and incredible facts about our feathered friends. (Credit for all bird facts sprinkled throughout this post goes to Mr. Sibley!)

Now, my older sister is kind of a boss when it comes to giving thoughtful and unusual gifts, and Christmas 2020 was no exception. She surprised me with a bird feeder camera! As big a bird lover as I am, I had no idea such a thing existed. The rechargeable, motion-activated camera slips onto a tiny post at the base of the feeder, snapping photos quietly and discreetly as your avian visitors help themselves to a snack. It is weather resistant and stays charged for about 30 days before needing topped up.

I had that thing out of the box and into the yard before you could say “chickadee dee dee.”

The other gift my sister included is a box of birding “flashcards,” created by none other than David Sibley. The set features 100 common birds of Eastern and Western North America. One side of each card shows Sibley’s trademark renderings of the bird, while the reverse side describes the bird’s habitat and “voice.”

One nice thing about the feeder is that it was very easy to set up. I am not a very tech-y person, so if I could manage it, anyone should be able to. The enclosed directions were pretty minimal, but basically you charge the camera, pop in a micro memory card, fill the feeder with seeds, and you’re ready for customers!

The thing I love most, though, is that it always delivers a surprise. It’s a little bit like Christmas all over again every time I check for new photos. You never know who’s been stopping by to visit.

**House Finch:** If you spot a bird that looks like he’s been dip-dyed in cranberry juice, it’s a House Finch. The subtle red tint on his head and breast comes from carotenoid pigments in his diet.

**Cardinal:** The cardinal’s head crest is like a weathervane for its current mood. See a raised crest? She’s feeling excited or aggressive. If the crest is lowered, she’s in a relaxed or submissive state of mind.

**Black-capped Chickadee:** When these birds live in places with harsh winters, they show tremendous seed-storage abilities. They can hide up to 1,000 seeds per day for future consumption!

**Tufted Titmouse:** Some birds, like the titmouse, prefer to get their seeds to go. They carefully select one at a time from the feeder, then fly off to another perch to eat it. (He’s one of my favorite birds; just look at those big friendly eyes.)

**White-breasted Nuthatch:** The easiest way to identify a nuthatch? Look for the bird that is hopping around upside down on the tree trunk or feeder. He’s also got quite a lance-like beak.

Clearly, I really love this feeder-camera, but there are a few things I should mention in the interest of full disclosure….

It is a fun gadget for the recreational birder like myself, but if you are super serious about high-quality photography, it might not be the best fit for you. The image quality is probably the biggest complaint in the reviews online. The image resolution is 1.5 MP, if that means anything to you. I’ve been pretty happy with the shots I’ve gotten!

Mounting the feeder requires a bit of planning too. It’s not the type that you can suspend from a shepherd’s crook. It needs a fixed surface, but with some kind of baffle to thwart the squirrels and chipmunks. I happened to have a box feeder already attached to a window with suction cups, so I experimentally set the camera feeder on top of that, and it actually has worked out pretty well. The birds were used to coming to the window box; now they just hop up to the other feeder on occasion as well.

The last caveat is that the device also captures a lot of “junk” photos. The motion sensor must be pretty easily triggered—maybe by moving branches or something? There are always a lot of photos of my yard, without birds or other wildlife in the shot, so I’m not sure what that’s all about. It’s easy enough to delete those photos though.

But on the plus side: You’ll get some very flattering shots of yourself during installation and maintenance missions.

**Fleecy Bee:** Easily identified by her light gray coat, large head, and tuneless singing.

While I’m excited to see any visitors who come to the feeder, I was really hoping that in my most recent batch of photos I’d capture a goldfinch in the midst of its spring molt. They’re so patchy and shabby looking until their beautiful gold feathers fill in. It makes me giggle. Although I always feel a little embarrassed for them too—it’s like walking in on someone who’s only half-dressed. No luck this spring, but I’ll have another chance when they undergo their second molt late summer.

I’m glad you find me SO amusing. (Image source)

Until then, I’ll enjoy whoever comes calling!