FRIENDS
OF LATODAMI ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION CENTER
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Special Bonus The following is Randy’s Journal entry from March. .His previous entry from February can still be viewed here. Latodami And, I fear, it’s still too soon. I’m crunching up the hill to the upper meadow on a moonscape of icy footprints, my frozen breath preceding me and each step echoing behind. February is my longest month, but in March I’m most impatient. There’s so much just bursting to happen. All we need are a few warm days. At the meadow, jays are calling, cardinals are singing, and a woodpecker is drumming. Two chickadees weave through the grapevines in what looks like a mating chase. But these are all residents. While I love their exuberance, I’m leaping out of my skin to hear a red-winged blackbird. Cold gray mist filled the valley over Route 910 when I arrived. Now it has crept over the meadow. Bluebirds are singing invisibly from the fog. A titmouse joins them. The air was already cold; when the ghosts of snows-past slipped in, it grew even colder. Though it muffles the birdsongs, I wrap myself in my hood and crunch on toward the windmill tower. A cat and a fox have walked the meadow’s less trod-upon snow. A birdhouse looms ahead and, on it, sits the owner of one of those ghostly bluebird voices. He hardly notices as I trudge by. The windmill rises from the gloom and, a minute later, I’m nestled against the apple tree. My first impression is the invasion of bittersweet: they’ve flung themselves into and over the tree. When the sun does return, its rays will fall into bittersweet, not apple leaves. I’ll bring my clippers soon and give the apple tree one more year. But not today. As winter drags on, for some birds those berries may be the difference between soaring into spring or falling to the frozen earth to be the ants’ first feast. As I ponder this, three bluebirds fly into the vines that swarm over the windmill. Unlike most other birds, these are picking the berries by fluttering beneath them. Their approach seems like a waste of energy on a frigid day—rather like human excesses like fly-fishing, jogging, and birdwatching. However, they’re the ones that have survived February out here and, besides, they’re singing as they feast. Yet again, as counterpoint, a mockingbird swoops in hugely, chases the bluebirds away, then perches quietly on a twig to pull down berries at its leisure—the conventional way. An owl hoots from the woods behind me, and far down the line of trees, a young deer pokes its head tentatively into the open meadow. A few steps out, it turns, looks back to the woods, back to the meadow. It dithers, then turns back to the trees and disappears. A minute later, a cross-country skier chugs up over the crest of the hill and the deer’s dilemma is solved. So is mine. My feet have been getting cold. With the skier on the meadow, I surely won’t see the fox, so I follow the deer into the woods. I was pretty sure that doe wasn’t alone and, indeed, the snow beneath the trees counts many, many sharp-hoofed feet—and a fox or two, I think. The snow around the old woodchuck hole tells of small muddy feet coming and going. My feet aren’t doing so well: they’re colder than they should be. I suspect my boots have soaked through. The blackbirds haven’t returned yet. I hear no towhee calls. Winter still lies heavily on Latodami. Maybe it’s time to go home. But no—my feet aren’t that cold. I soldier on. Winter lies less heavily on Grom Run. Ice ledges rim its rocks and cling to its banks, but this is fragile, tentative ice. The fast runs are clear of it and, even where the stream runs slowly, the raccoons’ highway has become a thin crystalline lace. Bubbles weave below and through it as Grom Run breaks free. Proclaimed by jays, the flock of little birds filters through. They’re the regulars: chickadees and nuthatches, mostly. A kinglet flutters and flits above and gone. A downy woodpecker works her way up one tree, then another. For a few minutes, the woods are all activity. Then winter falls like a quiet snow over Latodami. The deer know the best paths down Grom Run, so I follow them back to my car. Latodami A week or so ago, two grackles appeared at my feeder—the
advance guard of the larger flock, I suppose.
Two days ago, at On a similar afternoon a couple of years ago at Latodami, the red-winged blackbirds arrived at the pond. The pond was quiet, but for the dry rustling of cattails, and then it was Grand Central Station. I guessed, when I saw the flock of grackles arrive this year, that the blackbirds were also descending on Latodami. But February just can’t seem to let go, this year. For two weeks we’ve counted the days as March, but only formally or as an act of faith. Most of them have looked like today: temperatures in the twenties, snow on the ground, and more falling. And so, this morning, I’m walking to the upper meadow in a snowstorm to look for the blackbirds and to see how they fare in such weather. So far, I’ve seen no birds at all and hear only the soft scrunch of my feet in the snow and the rattle of the little pellets on my coat. The only tracks as I approach the windmill are of people and their dogs. Not a birdsong; not a flutter. Comfort is a relative thing. Right now, the apple tree is a strong back to lean against and a bulwark against the wind. I’d swear that it’s warm. So, in the lee of the apple tree, I watch. Half an hour—maybe an hour—pass, but I see not a black feather, nor a red nor a blue. Nobody out here is moving. There’s little to write about, and perhaps that’s good: writing in this snow is like writing in the rain. This page of my notebook is wrinkled and blurred. My footprints blur as well as the snow refills them. At last, sounds: excited yapping from the parking area. And at last, movement: a cat trots quickly—but with dignity—from the east along the meadow trail and out of sight to the west. Several minutes later, a man and woman walk by, conversing softly as two dogs pull them down the path. They pull me, too, though indirectly. The birds aren’t here. It’s time to move on. Along the edge of the woods, there are a few rabbit tracks, but that’s all. Even the deer aren’t moving this morning. Across the meadow, along it’s northern edge, the snow is a blank page, the trees are mute. The titmouse has left post 21to the elements. So it goes, out of the meadow and down the hill. I’m the only creature silly enough to be out making tracks in this frigid late snow. But as I reach the car, the clouds break and sunshine pours through. A cardinal, then a titmouse begin to sing. Latodami Meg told me that the blackbirds arrived on Saturday, so I’ve come again to see how they cope with a late spring. Snow is falling again—or perhaps it’s more accurate to say “still.” A raw west wind is sweeping across the meadow, dusting it with small hard crystals. Snow lies on the moss, on dead branches, but not so far on the ground. Though the temperature hovers near freezing, the earth must be slightly warmer. Some birds are active. A song sparrow just lit in the branch above my head. He’s singing with gusto, far more concerned with his title to the apple tree than with the character huddled against the tree beneath him. A woodpecker drums nearby, cardinals whistle in the woods, and a robin is scolding something. Now the tree’s branches are whitening; curled brown leaves on the ground are little cups of snow. Winter is having tea before it goes—but go, it must. The first blackbird song whirs across the meadow from the hedgerow! Those are the first notes of the spring symphony! Well, they’re the first notes if I don’t count the resident musicians. The song sparrow’s repertoire is impressive, and he’s going through much of it from a bush nearby. One song baffles me: it begins with five or six preliminary notes, much like those of a field sparrow, but then returns to the basic trill. I think it must be the song sparrow improvising. Even these tiny creatures are capable of a lot more variability than the “hard-wired brain” theories would lead one to expect. A nuthatch, muttering to itself, inspects gaps in the cherry tree’s bark. Five or six chickadees quietly frisk the apple tree. I’m beginning to get cold and fidgety. Should I stay here or see what’s going on in the hedgerow? In asking, I’ve answered. There is more activity there. A robin, a song sparrow, a cardinal, and a couple of blackbirds pass by me as I shove my cold hands into my pockets. Spring, indeed! A male bluebird alights on a grass stem several yards out in the meadow, hunches over, intent on movements below. He flutters to the ground, then to another stem a few yards westward. He hunts there for a few minutes. A female lands on a stem a little behind him, a softer image on the same stern hunt. He flies to a nest box a few yards farther west, then turns to fly back up the meadow, eastwards. She follows. A blackbird flares and lands above me, clucks at me a couple of times, then sings. I suppose that means, in the larger scheme of blackbird events, that I’m irrelevant. Snow is accumulating on hummocks and tangles of grass. The blackbird leaves. My nose is dripping. The bluebird pair reappears, again hunting into the wind, east to west. They’re sweeping the same strip as before. He leads, she follows. At a point not far from the nest box they turn, fly downwind, and disappear. A song sparrow that was singing in the brambles drops into the short grasses in front of me. As he forages, he flicks his tail and wings as though nervous. He reminds me of a kinglet. Perhaps his tail- and wing-flicking is a form of shivering to keep warm? The bluebirds appear again, exactly as before! They seem to be repetitively sweeping the same area, always into the wind. Why? Facing the wind is probably warmer since the wind can’t break into the dead air space under their feathers. But what’s special about that strip of meadow? They know; I can’t even guess. Latodami 40oF A cold wet north wind is sweeping the meadow this morning. I shiver in a sea of brown waves. To the birds, though, this is spring. Song sparrows, blackbirds, robins, cardinals, and a flicker are singing all around me. One of the blackbirds and the flicker are sharing the sycamore, but I think the woodpecker is just passing through on a tour of his territory. He flies to the tip of the windmill, calls a few times, then scallops off to the corner of the woods, calls again, and disappears among the trees. A song sparrow replaces the flicker, sings of his love of this piece of the world, and moves on, too. His boundaries don’t seem to encompass much area beyond the meadow. Each species seems to have its own map of the world, divided into discrete, rigidly defined states. An interspecies map that overlaid all these world-views would probably look like a squashed roll of fencing, infinitely complex and undecipherable. My left hemisphere would like to reduce this to some formulaic order, but my right side has more sense: this is irreducible complexity based on each creature simply taking care of its own business. You can take notes, poetize, generalize, and admire, but to hope to conceive it all is next door to madness. Across the meadow, a bluebird perches, hunched over and facing the wind, in his corner of the world. And a new bird arrives on the windmill tower: reddish-brown cap, bi-colored bill, spot in the middle of its breast. A tree sparrow! The first one of the year! And another first: a tree swallow has displaced the bluebird. It seems cold and not eager to squander its body heat by flying the frigid wind in search of bugs that still hug grass stems in cold-blooded torpor. Personally, I wish I’d brought my mittens. But, again, what do I know? Several more swallows appear, all swooping through my (supposedly) sterile winds with purpose and gusto. Soon the fellow on the birdhouse joins them. I put my hood up. The song sparrow is back, singing and swaying on a spire of last year’s mullein. Indeed, as I look around at the brown, bare meadow, everything seems to be “last year’s:” birds, dead grasses, tight-closed buds. Only patches of yellow-green on the mosses look new. But now the sparrow is chasing another—but not “away.” She (I presume) flutters ten yards to a new mullein spire, he follows, she moves to the next spire, he follows, and so they circle the windmill copse. I think “newness” is on its way. I’m still cold, so I hike down the hill toward Grom Run. On the way, the ground beneath a spruce is littered with two- to three-inch tips of spruce boughs. Each has a little knob of sap on the cut end. (Meg says that this is the work of squirrels. She thinks they nip the twigs to lick the sap.) The woods seem less inclined toward spring than the meadow. The buds are still tightly closed. A few red berries hang from the barberry bushes, but most are gone. A titmouse whistled his way down the hill to the stream; now is whistling back up. He disappears momentarily over the crest, then reappears—a second of his kind is whistling from the crest. I’m following his flight, but more carefully and far more slowly. I often follow the deer paths. The deer usually know the best routes, though they slide easily under bushes and branches that I have to skirt. Also, when the hillside is muddy, I hope to cause less erosion by following paths they’ve already slashed with their sharp hooves. Above the Braille Trail, five jays scream over in a rough formation. At first, I thought they must be chasing a hawk, but there is no hawk. Off they go, over the hill. A pileated woodpecker rattles nearby. Even closer, a red-bellied woodpecker quietly drills a small branch. A cardinal above me seems to be echoing the call of another, farther away. Here come the jays again. They land, scattered across a treetop, and sit quietly for a moment. One takes off; the others follow, screaming. Aha! I think I understand. The troop lands in another treetop and wait. She takes off again, two follow, two give up the chase. There will be still more newness soon. The Braille Trail stream ripples noisily over its stony bed. Rills like dark runnels of sweat down a working man’s shirt trickle through last year’s oak leaves to meet it. Skunk cabbages poke out of the mud and through the leaves. Bright green of moss on rocks and dead branches shines through the general brownness. Oh, and there is the dark green of Christmas fern. And now, the blue of a bit of sky. But I have to leave. As I reach my car, “phoebe” floats above my head. OK, it’s spring. |
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