A place full of life: Cave Hill Cemetery is among Louisville's top spots to see wildlife
In the nine years since Lee Payne began working at Cave Hill Cemetery, he’s applied his love of nature to care for the graveyard's living residents. Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville's Highlands neighborhood has been home to 141,000 graves since 1848, and is now home to more than the population of Kentucky's third-largest city, Bowling Green. Lee Payne, the customer service and security team manager at the cemetery, has been observing wildlife closely, using a network of cameras around the cemetery to watch foxes, otters, and owls in their natural habitats. The cemetery is home to around 190 species of birds and has made it into the top 10 places in Louisville for birding.
نشرت : قبل 10 شهور بواسطة Maggie Menderski في Science
Lee Payne knows when he’s being watched at Cave Hill Cemetery.
But that sensation has nothing to do with the 141,000 graves scattered across the 175-year-old cemetery in Louisville's Highlands neighborhood.
Usually, it comes from a rustle in trees. Sometimes, a splash in the rock quarry.
Once a fox stared him down in the middle of the road.
The historic cemetery and arboretum has welcomed the dead since the Kentucky General Assembly charted it as a “rural cemetery” in 1848. Over the past 175 or so years, a bustling neighborhood has cropped up around the sleepy grounds, but Cave Hill has remained a quiet oasis. Today it has more souls buried in its 296 acres than the population of Kentucky’s third-largest city, Bowling Green.
In the nine years since Payne joined the cemetery as customer service and security team manager, he’s taken his love of nature and applied it to the living and breathing residents at Cave Hill — the wildlife.
So, on an overcast morning in late spring, Courier Journal photographer Matt Stone and I spent about 90 minutes in a golf cart with the hope of seeing this hallowed place for the dead in the same way Payne does ― as a place full of life.
The lakes in the cemetery have attracted wildlife spectators for generations, said Gwen Mooney, president and CEO of Cave Hill Cemetery. Over the past decade, she’s heard countless stories from visitors young and old about the cherished time they’ve spent feeding the ducks.
But when Mooney first arrived there in 2015, the waterfowl population felt a bit grim. Bunnies, squirrels, and even foxes were few and far between, too.
So Mooney and Payne reached out to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife to relocate an invasive population of cayotes and two highly territorial white swans that were destroying other birds’ nests along the perimeter of the lake.
“It’s like they know they’re in a safe zone here,” Mooney said. “And (Payne) is just amazing. He’s like this animal whisperer … They trust him, and he’s approachable, and they know he’s safe.”
Now Payne has a network of cameras scattered around the cemetery where he can watch foxes, otters, and owls in their natural habitats. There are roughly 190 documented species of birds in Cave Hill Cemetery, and over the years as he has added more to the registry, it has inched its way into the top 10 places in Louisville for birding. Payne, a board member of the Louisville Audubon Society, says he can list every known bird on the grounds and identify many of them amid flight.
Many don’t need much encouragement to swoop in for a quick “hello.”
“So, you’re basically Snow White of the cemetery,” I asked him.
But since we didn’t have all day to birdwatch, this Snow White brought along bird-calling devices so that he could essentially sing them to us. With this machine’s help, he’s been able to call owls down from the sky and even watch them land directly on some monuments.
As I listened, Payne played a common hoot that phonetically sounds like “who cooks for you” hoping to attract the attention of a pair of barred owls, hoo he insists never let him down. The cemetery is also home to barn owls, great horn owls, and eastern screech owls.
In a matter of seconds, Payne picked out two robins talking among a chattering of birds, a sure sign that a predator was within sight. He picked up the speaker, dashed across a field of graves and beneath a covering of trees.
“There!” he shouted, as a barred owl soared across the sky, like a torpedo, and then landed into the branches of a tree, concealed by natural camouflage, just barely visible.
A few more minutes passed, and its mate appeared.
Then the pair began singing a duet that halfway sounded like the soundtrack of a graveyard scene in a movie, but in the daylight, that mix of cackles, hoots, caws, and gurgles felt more like a melody.
In a way, it’s their love song.
“That duet (means) ‘I love you, baby, I love you,’” Payne told us. “These owls are the most affectionate owls that I know. They will hug and lick on each other and get almost X-rated. These two, this pair really loves each other.”
He’s hopeful that she’ll lay eggs soon, he said. Initially, they’d chosen one of the camera-ready, nesting boxes he’d set up around the cemetery, but the owls abandoned it once they realized a fox family was nearby.
Without the camera, he’ll have to rely on nature to keep him informed.
He’ll be able to tell she’s laid eggs once the male starts hunting the cemetery alone. Going to find food while she watches over the eggs, he says, is the only reason he’d ever leave her side.
From there, Payne drove us to the edge of the cemetery where four otters live within a 60-foot-deep rock quarry. They first appeared in 2019, after nearby Beargrass Creek flooded and broke through a barrier wall that separates the cemetery from Lexington Road.
Up until that point, skipjack fish had never lived in the lake, but flood waters must have brought them in, Payne said. Now that population thrives.
He believes all those fish must have attracted the otters, and the osprey in the cemetery are big fans of them, too.
As we stepped out of the cart, Payne warned me not to get too excited about the otters. Most of the photos that nature photographers have captured of them happen during the snow. In the spring and summer months, otters are nocturnal, but they keep more traditional hours in the winter.
“Otters are all over the place in our city," he told me. "You just have to open up your eyes and see them.”
Then he gestured to a small splash and a pool of ripples on the water. That might have been one, he explained. Occasionally, curiosity will get the best of them, even when they’re sleepy.
“Just start talking out loud,” he said. “Have a conversation with people, they are curious when you talk, and that's when they mostly come and pop up on you.”
Hoping to see another splash, we stared at the quarry a little longer. When one didn’t come, we headed back to the cart. Payne had plenty more for us to see.
Over at the main lake, near the cemetery’s administrative office, he introduced us to a pair of stunning Australian Black Swans that didn’t need any coaxing to come into view. These are friendlier than white swans that once lived in the lake and were surrounded by several ducks and geese. The female, Petunia, has lived on the grounds since 2021, and recently her mate, John, died. So, Cave Hill’s administration brought in another male, Percy, from the same farm in Florida where Petunia was born and raised.
It wasn’t quite love at first sight, though.
“At first Petunia was really rough on him,” Payne explained. “She let him know who was in charge. She beat him up real good, and then a few days passed, and now they’re in love.”
Now you rarely spot one without the other.
Just an eyeshot away, Payne gestured to a small bird no more than two inches long. This was a spotted sandpiper, he explained, and they’re unique because even when they land on the ground, their rear ends keep wiggling.
He pulled out his speaker again and used a birdcall to draw it closer.
Patience is key with this bird.
A few moments and a few calls later, that spotted sandpiper landed on a rock just feet from us. Sure enough, it bobbed its booty just like Payne said it would. We all laughed, and I couldn’t help but wonder just how many graves the cemetery’s spotted sandpipers might have danced on over the years.
'I am in love with a fox'
Our final stop on this miniature wildlife tour was at the Satterwhite Temple, near one of the dens that belonged to the cemetery's many red foxes.
It’s hard to know exactly where the foxes would be, Payne said. They’ve got a few dens scattered between Cave Hill and neighboring Eastern Cemetery, 641 Baxter Ave., and recently the mother fox, Snow, has been on the move with her kits. They can climb from one cemetery to the next using the trees as a bridge of sorts over the wall that divides them. Her mate, Cotton, steers clear of humans.
And perhaps, rightfully so.
“I tell people ‘I am in love with a fox,’” Payne said, of Snow. “This fox is amazing to me.”
Snow has built an unusual friendship with Payne that arguably defies the laws of nature. On the day they met in 2015, he found her lying in the middle of one of the roads. At first, he thought she was hurt. But when he went to see if he could help her, she stared at him. Then she stood up with ease and started walking.
When he followed her, she didn’t dart away from him.
Instead, she led him to her den and showed him where her babies lived.
Stunned and enamored, Payne says this friendship has blossomed over the past nine years. If Payne knows which den she’s living in, she will come when he calls for her. Sometimes she will sit at his feet or roll over and show him her belly. Snow doesn’t allow him to pet her, but she does something much more trusting.
There are times she will leave her pups with him. He’ll wait with them for a few minutes until he has to leave and do the nonwildlife part of his job.
The second she hears his car start, she sprints back toward the den. That's all it takes for her to know they're vulnerable without Payne.
Much to my disappointment, I didn’t get to see this ritual. On the day we visited, Payne wasn’t sure into which den they had relocated. That was OK, though. Payne has met enough doubters over the years that he's recorded some of his interactions with Snow.
In one YouTube video, he called out to Snow from the spot where we were standing. She popped out from under the bush just long enough to see that it was him and a few friends. Then she turned back inside and beckoned her seven kits to follow her into the sun. Three of them nursed on her while the others tumbled and played, all within yards of humans.
Their connection is remarkable, and it’s about a year away from becoming even more official.
Most red foxes don’t live more than four years in the wild, but next year, Payne and Snow are celebrating their 10th anniversary.
Payne suspects that Snow might qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-living documented red fox in the wild. Sure, Cave Hill is regularly noted in the history books. The cemetery is the final home of international sensations including Colonel Harland Sanders and Muhammad Ali.
That accolade won’t have anything to do with the 141,000 graves on Cave Hill's grounds, but rather, the thriving life Payne sees at the cemetery every day.
Features columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful, and occasionally, a little weird. If you've got something in your family, your town or even your closet that fits that description — she wants to hear from you. Say hello at [email protected]. Follow along on Instagram @MaggieMenderski.
المواضيع: Wildlife