Reason for a Change-Mitch’s Blog

I just edited the Wikipedia article on my great-great-great uncle (my g-g-g-grandfather’s sister Ann married Gen. Coffee’s son, Alexander), Gen. John R. Coffee. Even though he is not a direct blood relative, the name has lived on in my family, my grandfather and his father were both named Alexander Coffee Sloss.

General Coffee was a close friend of Andrew Jackson, he married Jackson’s wife’s neice, Mary Donelson, and engaged in land speculation with Jackson in Tennessee. During the 1813 Jackson-Benton duel in downtown Nashville he pushed Thomas Hart Benton down a flight of stairs after Benton had shot Jackson in the shoulder. He went on to serve as Brigadere General commanding the cavalry under Jackson in the Tennessee miltia during the Creek War, and he was wounded at the Battle of Emuckfaw Creek. He recovered to command the southern flank in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. He marched to New Orleans and commanded the left flank at the Battle of New Orleans, firing from the Cypress swamps to the east of the Mississippi. After the war he became first a land speculator and then a surveyor, and is buried near Florence, Alabama, which he helped to found.

There is a family of hawks living in the woods behind Bryan Hall on campus, the 2 juvenilles have been calling for a couple of weeks. They fly from branch to branch and tree to trees. I watch seen parents fly in, and once saw one feeding on a limb. Today I was following them around trying to shoot a picture when I heard a swooshing and turned to see an adult hit the bricks in a flurry of feathers, and then take off. David, and IT guy at Chemistry was sitting on the observatory steps and saw the whole thing as the hawk came hurtling through the bushes to grab an unwary cardinal.

There has been a marked decline in rodent population in the “fertile crescent”, which is normally filled with rabbits, chipmunks, and other rodents. The birds are much quiter too, maybe because of the constant calling of the juvenilles.

My problem was identification, by the juvenille call I first heard, I thought a red-shouldered hawk. Then I heard the adults sounding like red-tailed hawks, but the the juvenille tail feathers were white striped! I at first guessed Sharp-shinned, and a guy from Sweden I met in the woods thought maybe Cooper’s Hawk, but I just didn’t have enough experience to tell. I wrote to Dawn Hewitt at the HT, and she felt pretty sure it was a Cooper’s Hawk, as they have been known to nest in the area in years past.

Next day:
They seem to be gone, not calling in the trees.

The Bloomington Farmers’ Market is our favorite venue, we enjoy the family/community atmosphere and audiences. We play for both adults and kids in mind, but it is the kids who end up surrounding us with their curious shy smiles.

Eileen and I went to Chicago for the 4th of July week, a bookend sort of time with Deb and Johnandrew’s wedding in Lafayette at the beginning and out neice Jessica’s Shower at the other end. We like to drive slow on the non-interstate roads, and so drove to Spencer and up SR 231 to Lafayette. The wedding was in an historic building amid other old buildings, Layfayette is obviously older than Bloomington, at least in the houses that have survived. We stayed the night, and headed towards Chicago by going east into Illinois and the Kankakee river. There are two roads that run parallel to the river into the city of Kankakee. On the north side are entrances to various parts of the state park, while on the south side are parking lots with access for fisherman and hunters. We took this southern road and pulled over to enjoy the cooling river current.

We found these butterflies were interested in the gravel that lead to the river, they just keep landing and spreading their wings in the sunlight.