Bufflehead Ducks and a Story

Today I saw something I've never ever seen before. In the man-made retention pond beside the Kroger's in Fairborn, Ohio, I spotted two small ducks paddling around contentedly.  They were black and white and had markings I've never seen before.

I parked by the lake (my wife was in the nearby eye doctor's office), and tried to get close enough to the two ducks to get a photo. Needless to say, they weren't cooperative and kept navigating away as I approached. I snapped a couple of too-far-away photos with my iPhone anyway and returned to my vehicle.

I have a bird identification app on my iPhone (doesn't everybody?) and tried to identify said ducks. No luck.

Figuring these were migratory birds, I did a general image search for black and white migratory ducks in Ohio. Sure enough, after a couple of clicks, I identified my mysterious friends as Bufflehead Ducks. I found out a lot about this species of small marine diving ducks - and noted that Ohio is indeed on their migratory route, and 1 Nov is a likely time to spot 'em in Ohio. I even found out how best to cook 'em! I certainly didn't need to know that part!

The two I spotted were both male. I know nothing about migratory Bufflehead ducks, but it seemed unusual, to me, that the pair were both male. I would have guessed a male/female pair. Maybe these two were just best friends. Or perhaps they had a gay relationship - I've heard of gay penguins, so why not gay Bufflehead ducks? In my insensitive late-1950's schoolboy vernacular, that would make them "homo-ducks."

The name Bufflehead is derived from "Buffalo Head," in reference to the rather enlarged head of the male. (The photo above, I did not take, but found online.)

Speaking of identifying ducks - I've got a story for you. Trust me, this all relates.

Back in the early 1980's I had to travel frequently to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. My main point of contact there was a guy named Darwin Moss. He and I spent a good deal of time together over a 2-3 year period. He and I had a shared interest in black powder revolver shooting.

As senior intelligence analyst in my work group, it was part of my job to train and mentor junior analysts and as it happened I made a trip to Huntsville with a junior analyst named (and I'm not kidding) Don Johnson. He was a very bright young man and I was enjoying my role as mentor.

As it happened, one afternoon he and I deplaned in Huntsville and took a rental car to Darwin's office on Redstone. As we entered his work space, I introduced Don to Darwin and we were all seated around Darwin's desk.

Behind Darwin's desk, mounted on the wall, was an  impressive array of five different species of colorful taxidermy (stuffed) ducks. Darwin, you must know, was an ardent fisherman and duck hunter. I knew from my previous visits that Darwin had had one of each species of duck he'd shot stuffed and mounted behind his desk. I'd even heard his wager before - but I was unprepared for what followed.

As we were admiring his display of stuffed ducks (they were hard to ignore), Darwin issued this familiar challenge, "....and I'll give $50 to anybody who can name all five of those ducks."

As before, I was at a loss - knowing nothing about ducks. I looked over at young Don and he said straight-faced, "Donald, Daffy, Huey, Dewey, and Louie."

I was stunned for a second. Being a serious duck hunter, Darwin was not particularly amused, but I thought that was the funniest damned thing I'd ever heard. I had a robust laugh at Darwin's expense and allowed as how Don had indeed "named all five of those ducks." Darwin wouldn't pay up, though. I figured the laugh alone was worth $50.

Don was killed a couple of years later in a tragic traffic accident. I wrote his grieving parents and told them the duck story.

Telephone Pole: Part 2 - more than you ever wanted to know

As I wander my neighborhood with Mr. T (my dog) I notice that most of the “telephone poles” in the area are configured as shown in Figure 2. The wiring shown here is the electrical grid wiring, not the telephone and internet wiring that is also on these poles. I’ll talk about those later.

The single line at the top of the pole carries one phase of a 3-phase nominal 15000 VAC distribution circuit. This line is at about 7200 VAC with respect to the Neutral wire, or ground. Although it doesn’t seem like it, the 7200 volt line is called Medium Voltage – and it is, compared to lines further upstream from the neighborhood.

At intervals along the line of poles, you will find a transformer – a big steel canister full of carcinogens (PCBs). One wire lead from the Primary conductor is connected to the primary side of the transformer, the other side of the transformer input is connected to Neutral.

The secondary of the transformer (3 wires) are connected to the Service Drop, providing 220VAC to the residence. This drop is 3-phase and can then be configured in your house for either 110VAC or 220VAC. 

Sometimes the transformer feeds more than one house, so the transformer secondary is connected to three lines called the Secondary Main. Individual houses are supplied by service drops off the Secondary Main lines. This is shown in the configuration on the left in the Figure 2.

As you may notice, the higher the wire on the pole, the higher the voltage. The top-most line is at 7200 volts, the Secondary Main lines are at 110V with respect to ground, or 220V with respect to each other. The top line is obviously a Kill-Me-Quick. The Secondary Main lines are Kill-Me-Almost-As-Quick. Those are genuine electrical engineering terms - trust me.

The pole I climbed as a boy was of the configuration on the right in Figure 2. There were no Secondary Main lines for me to kill myself on, and I stayed well below the transformer and hence avoided the 7200 volt Kill-Me-Quick line at the very top.

Figure 2

As I walk my dog and study the poles. I notice that there is quite a lot more going on. Consider Figure 3.

There is an assortment of details here.  First, there is a thing called a Lightning Arrestor. This gizmo is supposed to provide a short circuit to ground in the event lightning strikes the Primary line.  If you look close you’ll see a wire running from the bottom of the arrestor to the pole and down the pole all the way to ground at the base of the pole.

Also in the wiring between the Primary and the transformer input is a giant fuse. This blows out in the event of a voltage or current surge – and is a common cause for local power outages.

I once witnessed a Primary fuse blow. Well, I witnessed a neighborhood grey squirrel cause the fuse to blow. He was inspecting, too closely as it turned out, the transformer inputs and somehow got himself across 7200 volts. This was coupled with a bright white flash and a sound like a .38-special going off. Those two stimuli got my attention and my eyes swiveled in time to see a rather charred-looking, formerly grey, squirrel executing a parabolic ballistic trajectory from the top of the transformer to the ground. In my mind, he left a faint smoke trail behind. Sure enough, his sacrifice took out all power in the neighborhood for an hour until the lineman came and reset the fuse.

Figure 3

As you move up the electrical distribution inverted pyramid, the electrical stuff on the poles gets more complicated. Consider Figure 4.

The cross piece at the top of the pole carries all three phases of the 7200 VAC. Voltage difference between these wire can be as great as 15,000 volts. This pole supports only a single transformer, but more can be used. Each transformer is connected to one of the high voltage lines through an arrestor and fuse. And each transformer can have a three-line secondary drop to a residence, or to a Secondary main.

Figure 4

A, B and C: Three phases of 7200VAC (only B is connected to the transformer)

D: Neutral

E: Fuse

F: Lightning arrestor

H: Transformer

G, J: Secondary drop

K: Communications lines (cable and telephone)

The lowest line involved in electrical transmission is the Neutral line, located below, or on the same level as, the transformer.

Incidentally, I notice that the 7200 volt lines and the Neutral line are not insulated. They appear to be bare metal. Their height above ground and their distance from each other is apparently sufficient safety margin. The secondary lines, except Neutral, are insulated. 

Any lines appearing below the Neutral electrical line are used for communications, meaning telephone and cable. The conglomeration of communications lines can easily become extremely complicated.

In cases where perhaps there are three Primary lines and maybe three, or more, transformers, and bundles of communications lines as well, the whole situation can look mighty chaotic. Consider this couple of photos I found/took.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 6 shows a single phase 7200VAC feeding a single secondary transformer which in turn feeds a Secondary Main from which there are two Secondary drops to houses. A streetlamp is also powered from the secondary. Cable/phone lines are also present.

Figure 7

Figure 7 shows the end of a power run. A single 7200 VAC line ends. A three-wire Secondary Main also ends with a drop to a house and power to a streetlamp. Two guy wires hold the pole up, and phone/cable lines are present.

Figure 8

Figure 8 shows a drop from one three-phase 7200 volt set to another set at right angles. There is no transformer present, but there is a Secondary Main travelling through (and powering a streetlamp). 

So, there you have it - my assessment of the "telephone poles" in my neighborhood.  Probably not too interesting to most of you, but something that has always nagged me. As a card-carrying Electronics Engineer for 40 years (despite never taking a single course in Electrical Engineering), I always felt this gap in my education. Now I don't. I've finally completed the self-education I began 62 years ago when I climbed a rural telephone pole in Florida.

Telephone Poles

As I walk my dog (see Figure 1), my mind wanders. My dog’s defecation habits can only be SO intriguing, after all. My attention eventually locked onto the utility poles along the way. Over time, I’ve been conducting a research project on the subject of utility poles, and the wires they carry. Basically, the question is, “What IS all that stuff on the utility poles?”

Figure 1

Being near three-quarters of a century old, I’m conditioned to still call the things “telephone poles.” I’ll always call them that, because that was what everybody called them back when I was a boy. I’ve even heard them called “telegraph poles.” That shows you just how old I am.

When I was about 10 years old, there was a “telephone pole” at one corner of our rural lot on Silver Palm Drive, out in the Dade County, Florida wilderness. This pole was of intense interest to me, for some reason, and I have a couple of clear boyhood recollections.

The first recollection is of a visiting mile-away neighbor boy showing me how to put my ear up to the creosoted wooden telephone pole and listen to sounds of all the people talking on the phone. Well, that’s what HE said the noise was. Sure enough, I could hear some kind of humming sound. In my naiveté, I took his word for the explanation and for a couple of years actually believed I was hearing thousands of overlapping conversations. Later, I decided that the noise was probably just the wind in the wires above. Now, being so much more advanced and knowing that the “telephone pole” also supports the electrical line power distribution, with its substantial 60 cycle-per-second (Hertz) component, I’m sure I was just hearing 60-cycle hum conducted from the power transformer to the “telephone pole.”

The other recollection I have is of a fascination with the fact that the “telephone pole” had steel spikes driven into it every couple of feet, beginning about 6 feet off the ground. I knew these spikes were for the purpose of climbing the pole. I even knew that the spike ladder didn’t go down further to keep idiots like me from climbing the pole.   Sometime in my youth, I remember seeing a lineman (I assumed a telephone lineman at the time) climb a pole, with blades strapped to his lower legs. (This was in the days long before cherry pickers.) He needed those blades to reach the bottom rung of the spike ladder. I thought the guy with the strap-on climbing blades was way cool, and for a time wanted to be a telephone lineman when (and if) I grew up.

The “if” part of that previous statement also relates to this story. Being a boy blessed with an adventurous spirit and not having a lot of distraction on Silver Palm Drive (other than scorpions and snakes), my imagination would sometimes take charge. We lived out in the “boondocks” as my Dad would say, amid nothing but papaya, avocado and citrus groves. There were no neighbors close by and no other kids to play with, except my younger sister. As I recall, she was not involved in this particular life-threatening adventure.

Anyway, back to the “telephone pole.”  Noting that the spikes were for climbing, but started way above my height, it seemed a worthy challenge to figure out a way to climb the telephone pole myself. I contemplated this adventure a while and waited for a time when neither parent was around. Somehow I knew that neither would particularly approve of telephone pole climbing. A year or two before, they had disapproved of my climbing the iron trellis by the porch of the pink tract house in Homestead – and hoisting myself up onto the roof. I did this more than once – it really gives an 8 year-old a whole new perspective on things. I also learned that climbing up on a roof is much easier than getting back down.

So, I leaned my two-wheeler bike up against the pole, climbed aboard and climbed up on the seat of the bike, holding on to the pole with my arms. I could indeed reach the bottom rung of the spike ladder and proceeded then to climb up the pole a few feet.

I was perhaps halfway between the ground and, what I now know to be, the power transformer on the pole when it occurred to me that I didn’t really know what I’d hoped to accomplish. But, whatever it was, I figured I’d already accomplished it. So I just listened to the humming conversations for a minute, and then climbed back down. No worse for wear, except for a couple of splinters from the pole.

My folks never did learn about me climbing a “telephone pole.”

Odd Encounter with my Headlamp

Last week, I had a close encounter of the weird kind - whilst walking my dog, Tommy, in the dark. Not the first weird encounter we’ve had, but this one is one of those fact-is-stranger-than-fiction things. At least it seemed so, given my advanced state of general ignorance about the world.

A couple of weeks ago I began wearing an LED headlamp whilst walking Tommy in the summer darkness. He likes walking in dark and I’ve lately incorporated a sort of Old Man’s neighborhood watch function in our walks. We’ve had some late-night prowlers in the area and I’ve been on the look-out for them. Actually spotted one with my headlamp a few days ago – but that’s not the story.

The story is about my headlamp. Being on my head with an intense beam, I am used to spotting the reflection in the eyes of various critters one would expect to find, late at night. Rabbits, dogs and cats, mostly. Sometime possums and skunks. Their eyes are perfect retro-reflectors and the returning reflected light pops out of the darkness dramatically. Spooky colors sometimes – especially dogs. There’s one we encounter whose eyes appear bright red – spooky. Tommy’s eyes reflect an amber color.

Well, back to my story. The last few nights, I’ve noticed tiny little scintillating bright green reflections in the grass and at the margins of the pavement. I thought, at first, I was seeing scraps of green tinsel from Christmas tree ornaments. The reflections scintillated and wavered and appeared/disappeared like maybe the breeze was blowing the tinsel around.

It occurred to me, tonight, that my Christmas tree tinsel explanation was probably pretty remote. Why would here be green tinsel all over South Enon Estates – in September?

That night, I spotted a brilliant jewel-like emerald reflection at the side of the road and bent over it with my bright headlamp. There in the middle of my intense light beam was a SPIDER!! About the size of quarter.

I checked a few more of these reflections in the grass on the way home. Sure enough, they were all spiders. The same kind, I think.

When I got home, I checked out “Common Spiders of Ohio,” on the internet and the most common is the Grass Spider. Since I found them in the grass, I concluded this must be it.

Then I looked up stuff about their eye reflections and discovered that EVERYBODY EXCEPT ME ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT THIS!! In fact, there are photographs of veritable seas of glowing spider eyes people have photographed!! Holy Crap!!

Since I could only see the reflection while the spider had its (many) eyes pointed at me – that explains why the lights flicker. He’s looking around. If you see a field of steady bright reflections, a whole shit-load of spiders is STARING AT YOU!!

Step out your back door in the dark with a headlamp on your head, do something to attract the neighborhood spiders’ attention, and you’ll see. This place is crawling with them, literally.

sgb