Tag: Red-tailed Hawk

A Cold Peace

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Nature, Reflections3 Comments

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I like snow. While our first fall of the year didn’t amount to much, I made the most of it. My old labrador’s response pretty much sums up my initial excitement:

A  little later in the day, after rounding up my fellow explorers, I found a flock of Canada Geese loitering on the river. Usually we see them flying overhead in formation, raucously honking, bringing in the cool blue haze of a winter dusk, but last Friday afternoon they were merely drifting, skirting the light ice along the river’s edge. Eventually a small flotilla ventured over as if to investigate us, which made me wonder whether they were used to living in ponds where people fed them, but when I approached they backed off. (Which is just as well, considering I had one dog on leash who just loves water birds).

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The snow ushered in the stiff, still cold of mid-winter that settles onto me an almost inexplicable peace.As I walk, I smile at the flock of black vultures hunched in a gnarled, bare tree. I quietly watch a herd of six white-tailed deer cross the trail in front of me, leaving behind them a mess of hoof-prints in the snow. I wait for the red-tailed hawk standing sentry over the floodplain to soar from its post. It can be tempting to run from the cold, dashing from car to front door, but it’s so rewarding to hunker down and live in it for a moment.

Predator and Prey

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Nature, Reflections5 Comments

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As I’ve mentioned before, birds of prey are cool, and particularly noticeable in the winter, when they perch atop the barren branches of leafless trees. Most often I see red-tailed hawks, their voices as sharp and breathtaking as their angular profiles.  Many other predatory birds make their home along the river, some scanning the waters for fish and others prowling the banks for snakes, rodents, and even other birds. So, while I think that they’re cool, there’s a rather large population of living things who most certainly do not.

I rarely see these birds make their kills, but it’s not uncommon for me to find the evidence of them, most often a clutch of feathers and nothing more. They do, however, leave something else behind: the “pellets” of undigested fur and bone that they regurgitate about 10 to 12 hours after their meals. While middle school biology classes seem to dissect only the pellets of owls, all birds of prey produce them, so I’m unsure who produced the one that I found last week, which, on cursory examination with a stick, contained the remains of a shrew.

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As a caretaker of many rodents – from the trio of mice I kept when I was eleven (Nicholas, Timothy, and Sebastian, because such little gentlemen deserved long and formal names) to our family’s current pair of white rats (the ladies Sugar and Anastasia, themselves temporary caretakers of other rodents; I’m sure that you can guess which one I named) – I have compassion for all of these souls who ended their lives as meals. But I have equal compassion for the birds, who need to eat to survive, feed their young, and go on being the cool creatures that they are.

It’s a difficult balance and heartbreaking at times, but there’s life there, asking to be seen and acknowledged and treasured in all of its terror and delicacy. I can see the void or I can see the life that void has made. Fur, bones, feathers and a beating heart.

Happy new year, from me to you.

 

Four Feet on the Monocacy

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy RiverLeave a comment

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Yesterday was a good day for sitting by the river. It was warm, and I had my binoculars, lots of trash bags, and only my younger son with me. The older was in the mountains with his father and our younger dog (who, as it turns out, was dodging hunter’s bullets), and, when I took out the leash before our walk, our old labrador had cracked open her eyes, sighed and given me the most rueful expression a dog could muster. I took pity and, with one boy and no dogs, found enough peace to sit down with my binoculars and look for birds.

It’s a time of transition. The noisy red-winged blackbirds have left the marshes, replaced by finches and sparrows and other lesser-seen migrants feasting on the seeds of spent grasses and wildflowers. My favorite juncos have reappeared on my deck, looking for the seed I had kept tossed across it last winter and spring. Just for them (and the cardinals, finches and increasingly vocal squirrels), I resumed the custom last week. Every day now, it feels as if I’m having old friends over at the house.

On the river yesterday, I saw chickadees, nuthatches, juncos, goldfinches, chipping sparrows, house finches, robins, cardinals, crows, a kingfisher and a red-tailed hawk. In other words, nothing new or remarkable enough to be of interest to my younger son, who was contenting himself with styling swords and spears out of branches. Then, just as I was giving up my search (because this is always the way and is so narratively handy), I saw something large moving on the opposite bank of the river. Thinking that it might be a wild turkey, I grabbed my binoculars, only to realize, as it further emerged from the trees, that it was a fox.

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As it happens, I am uncommonly fond of foxes, a fact for which, I am ashamed to say, Disney must either be blamed or credited. When I was a girl, I fell in love with the animated Robin Hood of Walt Disney, who, as you may remember, was drawn as a handsome, well-spoken, red fox. Likely this early crush was only exacerbated by Wes Anderson’s stop-action adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is chock-full of lovely foxes (including the title character, voiced by George Clooney). Of course, they’re beautiful, interesting creatures all on their own (if you’re not raising chickens). Lots of nature photographers and videographers have caught them adeptly diving for mice in the snow or slinking about with their long tails held low and keen eyes high. So, of course, I was overjoyed when I saw this fox prowling along the shores of the Monocacy.

After I satisfied my own hungry eyes, I quietly alerted my younger son, who took the binoculars and held on to them until the fox disappeared into the distance. While he watched, he hushed me when I tried to speak or move and was clearly as mesmerized as I was. Even after the fox was gone, we both just smiled at each other as if we shared some special secret. Or at least I thought so.

Until my son looked at me seriously and said, “Now I’m gonna have the song What Does the Fox Say? stuck in my head the rest of the day.”

Sublimity, meet the Internet.

Birds of Prey Are Cool

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Birds1 Comment

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A few summers ago, my son participated in a day camp at the Catoctin Creek Nature Center.  One day, he came home eager to share something with us: a YouTube video. (Yeah, I know, I thought that it would be a cool feather or something, too). So, he typed “Birds of Prey Are Cool” into the search tool, and up came an educational video about (obviously) birds of prey, featuring a montage of film and pictures set to a weirdly catchy, folksy, guitar-strumming song cataloging each bird. Although it’s been years, we all still break out into song almost every time we see a hawk, eagle or vulture, which, embarrassingly, is not rarely.  In case you would like to do the same, here it is:

Birds of prey are common along the Monocacy, and, while I do see eagles, vultures (both Black and Turkey), red-tailed hawks, and barred owls are the most easily spotted (or heard). There is a pair of hawks that reliably nest not far from my neighborhood, and vultures glide over us in broad circles nearly every day.  In general, I see these birds from afar, but lately my interactions with them have been a little more personal.  While walking through a wooded area a few weeks ago, I disturbed a couple of turkey vultures and a crow who were feasting on a rabbit. While the crow chased off one vulture, the other flew in my direction, headed for a nearby branch.  Though not beautiful, turkey vultures are large, impressive birds, and my young hound mix was threatened enough to jump onto her hind legs, pull against her leash, and let loose a barrage of growling barks.  Eventually it was annoyed enough to leave, flying low and heavy through the trees.  Then, only two nights ago, at dusk, a barred owl squatted comfortably on a neighbor’s roof, allowing itself to be seen and chattered at by every small bird within a quarter mile’s radius. It was completely nonplussed, and no doubt was the same owl who couldn’t stop repeating his questioning hoots a few nights before. (The barred owl is the one who so famously asks, “Who cooks for you?”)  It took my son forever to fall asleep because he couldn’t resist opening the window and leaning out into the cool dark to hear the owl better.  The owl did get his answer that night, but it was from another barred owl, not us.

Today, in addition to a red-tailed hawk diving into the trees and a turkey vulture soaring in the distance, I saw a few other surprising birds, who, while not birds of prey, are predators in the eyes of fish and other swimming things.  Just as I approached the river, a belted kingfisher leapt from a tree toward the opposite bank, and below, on the water, I found a double-crested cormorant swimming on its own.  Both of these birds are ones that I feel lucky to have found, especially on the same day.  If you haven’t seen a belted kingfisher, you should look at my “Birds of the Monocacy” page, where I record all of my avian sightings.  The belted kingfisher really is a hilarious bird, something of a mix between a blue jay and a kookaburra.

But what has this to do with trash?  Well, to be sure, the vultures do a far better job keeping the river clean than I do.  They’re not very interested in picking up all the plastic, of course, but I’m not so inclined to deal with rotting flesh. I happily leave that to them.