Saturday, July 25, 2009, 07:24
Broken Wing
Friday evening, Randy and I decided to go for a walk up the dirt road to see if we could find some wild raspberries. There are a couple of patches that sometimes have quite a few berries, but we really did not expect to find many since it has been so dry.
"Just in case" we took a cottage cheese container with us. If we were so fortunate to find that many, I could make a batch of raspberry jam.
As dusk began to fall and it started to get too hard to see any berries -- not to mention other critters in the berry patch, like bears -- we headed back. All together, we found about 2/3 of a cottage cheese container of mostly red and a few black raspberries. Last year, we only found a few, too, so I mixed the raspberries with rhubarb and made jam. That actually worked out pretty well, so I can do that this year, too.
Walking back along the dirt road, it was beginning to get dark. When we were still a few hundred feet from the Y where the road goes east one way and south the other way to our house, I saw a small dark lump in the road ahead of us. When were 10 feet from it, the lump flew up about a foot, fluttered its wings and settled back down on the road.
"Is that a nighthawk?" Randy asked.
"No," I said, "I don't think so."
"Maybe it's a woodcock," he said.
"No. Not a woodcock."
As we continued walking, the bird continued to flutter up a foot or so and settle down in the road ahead of us. As we moved forward, we could see there was a distinct pattern. The bird would fly up a foot and settle down in the middle of the road. Fly up a foot and fly to the edge of the road on the left side. Fly up a foot, settle in the middle. Fly up a foot and settle on the edge of the road on the right side. Back and forth. Back and forth.
"You know," I said. "I think that's a Whippoorwill!"
Randy watched the bird for a little while.
"I think you're right!" he said.
The bird continued her zigzagging progress ahead of us -- always staying only about 10 feet ahead.
"I bet she's got babies along here somewhere," Randy said. "She trying to lead us away from them!"
The bird flew ahead of us, always in the same exact pattern for quite a ways -- maybe several hundred feet all together.
"I don't want her to get too far away from her babies," Randy said after a while.
"Oh," I said, "I think she'll find them again. What I'd be worried about, though, is a car coming along and her not getting out of the way fast enough."
Soon we came to the Y in the road. The whippoorwill flew straight ahead to the edge of the road by the steep wooded bank.
"Let's walk way off to the side so she won't think we're still following her," Randy said.
We edged over as far as we could get and walked up the hill.
"That was so cool!" Randy said. "A Whippoorwill."
A while back, I was listening to a bird expert on public radio bemoaning the fact that Whippoorwills have become so rare. What was once a very common bird is now found only in a few parts of the state. The bird expert said rural subdivisions are partially to blame for the decline of the Whippoorwill because they have gobbled up their habitat. Whippoorwills like the brushy edges of farm fields. And we don't have too many of those anymore.
I recall that someone called in to the radio show that day to say he had lots of Whippoorwills around his house. Even though it was radio, I could practically see the bird expert's ears perking up.
"And where do you live?" he asked.
"I'm not telling you," the caller said. "Because the next thing you know, we'll have bird watchers all over the place."
And so, it would seem, Randy and I really did have a rare experience. We do hear whippoorwills around here frequently during the spring and the summer. Maybe not as many as there once were, but still quite a few.
And now we have seen one. I've never watched a Whippoorwill try to lead me away from her children before.
I really wish there was some way we could have let her know that we meant her no harm and that we certainly meant no harm to her babies.
Then again, maybe it was good for her to practice her fluttering "I have a broken wing and I can't fly too high" routine when there was no actual danger.
I wonder what the babies look like? I bet they're cute. Just like all babies. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 05:13
Dashed Hopes
It looked really good Tuesday morning. The sky was very dark and menacing to the west. There was a south/southeast wind. The air felt damp, like it was carrying moisture.
Right after I finished feeding the horses, I looked to the west, and it looked all white and misty, so I knew rain was coming.
Yipee! Rain!
I went into the house, and a few minutes later, it started to pour. As I watched it rain, I decided I'd better stick some five gallon buckets under the eaves to catch the water. My lettuce and peas in pots and tomatoes would love a little water.
I believe that was my mistake -- getting the buckets.
Minutes later, the rain quit. There was about an inch of water in the bottom of each bucket that had drained off the roof. And that was it. Several times during the day it looked like it might draw up a rain, but it never did.
This morning I was talking to the man who used to own the newspaper. He owned it for 30 years. He sold it about 10 years ago. He's in his 70s, but he still does printing jobs on the printing presses.
He said the drought was hard on area farmers. I agreed and said it was a little like the Great Depression, when there was general economic collapse made substantially worse in some areas by the drought of the Great Depression.
Of course, the big difference now is, so many people are so far removed from the land and from farms and from nature that they don't even realize it is not raining. They just think it's nice to have days and weeks and months and years of no rain because they'd hate to have their weekend camping ventures ruined by rain. And they hate to shovel snow in the winter.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Buy books. You'll make an author happy. And you will support the local economy.