February 1, 2011

Our New Year bird hunt began with a home delivery: two local ravens arrived in the trees around Jaci’s pond. Ravens are large, burly, black all over birds, with a deep, hoarse croak. That croak does sound like the doom of Edgar Allan Poe’s imagination. They are smart birds, although not always reliable. Noah sent a raven to scout for land. When the raven didn’t return, Noah sent the doves instead. They are omnivores, as are we. And they are social. We thought that perhaps they came on New Year’s morning to wish us well in our pursuits; they more likely came to laugh at the domestic ducks who found a thin sheen of ice on the pond and were complaining, nipping at each other, and generally raising a ruckus over ther inability to get onto the pond.

Mid January, Jaci heard them before she saw them. Loud cacophony of honking, trumpeting, whistling, whooping.....then over the pasture and the house in long V's 50-70 Sand hill Cranes stretch north. Like arrows shot from bows, long necks tipped with red heads, Chinese fame tails and legs for rudders, they fly north below the higher gray clouds streaming south. They fly 50 miles an hour, which when you think of it....is about right. Rising with the sun from the Sacramento Delta would put them here at about 10am. All morning they come: three V's in the first half hour. Sounding their way to Tule lake...scooting around the windmills on Hatchet...headed for Chalk Mountain. Cranes are dancers, and when they graze they look like teenagers bobbing along with a boom box under those feathers. They mate for life. What is not to like?

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