Thursday September 23, 2021

 No Translation Needed

 

      Spectacular September clouds from 2020; I saw some similar to these last week but I didn’t have my digital camera with me, only my inexpensive cellphone whose images are so reliably poor in quality, that I didn't bother to try. Although I didn’t buy it to take fantastic digital images like Chairman Joe’s iPhone 11 does, I feel unarmed when I carry it and such grandeur presents itself overhead. or leaps out of the woods and stands still, it looking at me, and me looking at it, as in the case of the wild turkey I saw on Sunday.

I was slowly driving on one of our field roads when I saw it standing on a trail watching me go by. I’m sure it heard the sound of the truck and felt safe enough, half-hidden, to observe me from that distance. It was the first one I had seen since spring; a pleasant change from seeing deer everyday. (Turkey season starts Oct 2!)

My wife and I have noticed how little wildlife there has come to be around us these past few weeks with the exception of innumerable flocks of migrating Canadian geese and the lesser number of goose hunters that hunt them in the early mornings. 

On one of her almost-daily walks to the mailbox, (a mile round-trip) she discovered a gaggle of geese mid-way out on on a neighbor’s field a quarter mile south of her route, and a clutch of goose hunters set-up in an adjoining field to the west, anticipating their imminent flight. Although not in danger of being shot herself, she quickened her pace away, so not to spook the ever-watchful geese prematurely and send them off to their possible doom .

But where have the other birds gone? Have their numbers really become so low in our lifetimes that we missed their gradual demise? Didn’t we used to see more robins? Blackbirds, sparrows, doves? hawks? 

Except for bird-feeding we do beginning at the first snowfall, (or deer season) chickadees have even become scarce, same for nuthatches. We see a flock of gold finches once in awhile after a rain; and yeah, maybe a few more flickers, a mourning dove or two, but it seems; least ways in our old heads, that birds were everywhere we looked ‘back in the old days,’ and since then, it’s apparent we just took them for granted.

I remember standing out in the corral some evenings and seeing owls fly in to sit on corral rail posts at dusk to hunt mice. But maybe it’s the mice that are getting scarce and not the owls?

I enjoy listening to the Great-Horned owl that frequents the South Fork of Roseau River woods at Chairman Joe’s, but it’s rare to hear it along Mikinaak Creek less than a mile away. A mutual friend of ours was at Joe's one evening, and demonstrated his booming owl-calling  skill to much adoration and amazement. An owl answered him in kind, leaving us to our imaginations. But I knew what it said ...

“OH YEAH? YER MAMA!”


Or words to that effect.