Naturally
There are days when I say, “What a beautiful day!” with such gusto it’s as if I’d never seen a beautiful day before. I’ve learned that the weather doesn’t determine a day's loveliness. It’s all on me, but birds help. It’s as Mary Oliver wrote, “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Life can be like the child’s steering wheel on a shopping cart. It doesn’t take us where we want to go, but every day is a gift. Looking at birds is an excellent way to unwrap it.
A rooster pheasant crowed vehemently. Roosters crow loudly in the spring and summer, especially at dawn and dusk. Its crow is often followed by a loud, rapid beating of his wings that close ears can hear.
There is a certain degree of everydayness to a house sparrow, but they are handsome birds. To a turkey vulture, every squirrel is an organ donor.
Each year around this time, my mother reminded me that a robin needs three snows on its tail before it’s truly spring.
The vinca bloomed early. It made me smile. I should have laughed. I’ve heard all my life, with only brief interludes of hearing other things, that the world laughs in flowers.
I’d spent the night at a lovely place called the Little Bluff Inn in Trempealeau, Wisconsin. A car parked next to me was covered in bird droppings. If the vehicle had been a Honda, the birds would have done their Civic doody. Spring worried that I felt incomplete due to a near lack of winter. It went about remedying that situation. I stood along the backwaters of the Mississippi River in Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge as snow fell in the early light of the day, accumulating on my binoculars, and I listened to the sounds of trumpeter swans (sounding like a junior high French horn or trumpet player warming up), the bugling of sandhill cranes, the squeals and wheezy whistles of wood ducks and coots running on the water. I doubt the trumpeter swan's name will be changed to the French-horned swan. I marveled at the beauty of rusty blackbirds.
I remembered another day when the weather had emptied its files on me while I stood alongside another body of water. It was a foggy, rainy, snowy and eerily quiet day. As I listened to the silence, I saw something flying toward me out of the too-much weather. It was a pair of trumpeter swans. The silence was broken by the sounds of their wings flying over my head. I can close my eyes and still hear that. It was a beautiful moment.
See sandhill cranes from the comfort of your sofa
Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary near Gibbon features spectacular views of the sandhill crane migration that occurs along the Platte River in Nebraska. The five-mile stretch of river covered by the camera is a densely populated roost with 100,000-200,000 cranes at the height of migration.
https://explore.org/livecams/national-audubon-society/crane-camera
Q&A
“How does a skunk smell?” With its nose, of course. The reason skunks smell bad is because of a gland under their tail that produces and sprays a stink. The spray is an oily liquid primarily made up of a substance called thiols, with a sulfur component that is the earmark of the signature skunk odor. Skunk smell is difficult to eliminate because the compounds in its oil reactivate the odor when in contact with water, causing the odor to resurface after you thought it was gone. Skunks are born with the ability to make and spray thiols. The spray is a defense mechanism and they spray if they are surprised or feel threatened. Skunks often give warning signs like stamping their feet or flicking their tails. I’ve heard the skunk’s smell described as a combination of rotten eggs, garlic and burnt rubber. Sulfur has a rotten egg scent that’s disliked by most, making a skunk's spray extremely pungent. The pervasive scent is powerful enough it can be detected up to half a mile away and can linger for weeks.
“Are the sandhill cranes staging along the Platte River the ones that nest in Minnesota?” The most numerous species found there is the lesser sandhill crane. The greater sandhill crane comprises about 5% of those cranes and does nest in Minnesota, in the Great Lakes region and into Manitoba. The lesser sandhill crane is a traveler and nests in Canada, Alaska and Siberia.
Thanks for stopping by
“Joy comes to us in ordinary moments. We risk missing out when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.”—Brene Brown.
“Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Do good.
©Al Batt 2024
The large shovel-shaped bill of the northern shoveler distinguishes it from other dabbling ducks. The bill has over 100 lamellae (fine tooth-like projections) along the edges for straining food from the water. This duck has several other common names, such as “spoonbill” or “spoony.” Other colloquial nicknames include Hollywood mallard, smiling mallard, grinner and spadeface. Why Hollywood? Maybe it’s because they’re always smiling for the camera. Photo by Al Batt.