Archives

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="096d4c00dduajq.gif"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="95" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 46 WIDTH="91"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="46" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="91" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id89.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ruth Beasley"><U>Ruth Beasley</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#003333" FACE="Arial" ><B>The Best of Texas Nature Writing . . . </B></FONT>     |     <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Best of Texas Nature Writing . . . "><U>home</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id118.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Current Column"><U>Current Column</U></A>   |   <B>Archives</B></div> <div> Archives</div> <div> <B><U>Learning the Birds</U></B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>When Birds Drop In</B></div> <div> <B>Ruth Rogers Erickson</B></div> <bR> <div> April 17, 2003 </div> <div> The Canadian Record</div> <div> © 2003 Ruth Rogers Erickson</div> <bR> <div>      When you live in the country, people drop in. Birds drop in, too.</div> <bR> <div>      Just the other day I found a Bob White trapped in my garage. It was in a panic of confusion regarding a glass window, and was hurling itself against the glass trying to get out.</div> <bR> <div>      As luck would have it, I knew what to do. I grabbed an empty feed sack and held it up against the glass, so I could envelope the bird with the sack and grab hold of it. When I let it go, it flew off easily enough, so I'm guessing it was fine.</div> <bR> <div>      Sometimes birds drop in the house. One day a Phoebe flew into the living room after being briefly blinded by a light on the porch. The next thing I knew it was "Phoebe on the lampshade," "Phoebe on the mantle," for a long while it was "Phoebe on the fridge" --- a frantic Phoebe indeed who eluded every one of my clumsy attempts to shoe her near the door.</div> <bR> <div>      If I'd known then about the feed-sack trick, I could have used a towel and gathered her up, but I learned that trick too late. As it was, I was making no progress catching her with my bare hands, but the cat had become interested in the proceedings. The next time the Phoebe flew into reach, the cat made a move and was heading up the stairs with the bird in his mouth when I caught up with them, and I laid down the law.</div> <bR> <div>      Somewhat miraculously, the cat opened his mouth and gave me the bird, which was unmarked and apparently unharmed. Its little heart was certainly beating very fast when I carried it to the door. When I put it down on the porch, it fluttered off into the gathering darkness.</div> <bR> <div>      Sometimes, they drop from the sky. After a furious storm one night, I found a Merlin hawk dead in the yard. I knew it for a Merlin from its small size and cryptic coloring of grayish tan and white. I felt lucky to get such a close look at the handsome little raptor, but I hated that we had to meet that way.</div> <bR> <div>      One day I heard a sound like gunshot, as though someone had fired at my house. Thinking this unlikely, I stepped outside and found a larger hawk than the Merlin, one who had apparently just flown directly into my downstairs window. The big bird was sprawled face down in the dirt taking rapid breaths. While I watched, it turned its head to look at me, and there was a panicky look in its yellow eye.</div> <bR> <div>      From head to tail, there were 18 inches of stripy sandy-brown and white. There was yellow around that hooked beak, to match the eyes and feet. I think it was a Prairie Falcon. I could see a wound over one eye that looked recent, but no blood. It was likely he had quite a headache, but was clearly alive --- perhaps he was only stunned.</div> <bR> <div>      I went inside and put on gloves and a leather jacket. (I didn't have a clue what to do, but whatever it was I'd need protection.) When I got back outside, the bird was gone without a trace. There wasn't even a mark in the dirt to prove he'd ever been there.</div> <bR> <div>      I was glad he'd gathered his wits and flown off, devastated that I hadn't stayed around to watch. It seems to prove that we'd better be on our toes when the birds drop in.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>By Any Other Name</B></div> <div> <B>Ruth Rogers Erickson</B></div> <bR> <div> March 18, 2003 </div> <div> The Canadian Record</div> <div> © 2003 Ruth Rogers Erickson</div> <bR> <div>      It is an irony of Bird World that a number of birds are far more interesting than their names might suggest. The Brown Thrasher is on my list of these.</div> <bR> <div>      It's the “brown” in his name, I think, that puts us off - brown sounds pretty boring when used in the name of a bird. A respectable name would have a word like cinnamon, mahogany, coffee, or bronze.</div> <bR> <div>      A few of his old nicknames suit him better: the sandy-mocker, the fox-colored thrush, and the red mavis more adequately describe this handsome bird. His back, wings, and tail are a coppery cinnamon, and his underparts are the color of golden sand with dark speckled streaks. He has a pair of surprising yellow eyes that seem lit from within.</div> <bR> <div>      Thrashers got their name for several reasons. When they forage on the ground, rifling with their long bills and overturning leaves, there is undeniably a fair amount of thrashing going on.</div> <bR> <div>      But there are also many accounts of thrashers acting in defense of nest and young, doling out to their attackers actual thrashings. That sharp bill can be a formidable weapon. An opponent would need a stout heart to stand up to an angry thrasher.</div> <bR> <div>      The word “thrush” is often associated with this bird, but mistakenly. Thrushes are birds of the air, and include robins and bluebirds. Thrashers are larger, ground-loving birds, members of the Mimid family, as are mockingbirds and catbirds. Thrush/thrasher confusion is long-established, though, as an old name for the mimid family was mimic thrush. </div> <bR> <div>      Like their official mockingbird and catbird kin, brown thrashers have remarkable vocal abilities. Mockingbirds are known for mimicking other birds, reciting long lists of birdsong not their own. Catbirds do this, too, mixing in renditions of croaking frogs, squawking chickens, and as you might expect, cats. </div> <bR> <div>      What sets the brown thrasher apart is a propensity for improvisation. Mockingbirds and catbirds, for all their virtuosity, sing their songs the same way every time. A brown thrasher sings a phrase twice or three times, tinkers a bit and sings it again in its slightly altered state. In a single concert, one brown thrasher may sing thousands of different songs.</div> <bR> <div>      There are several theories about why mimids sing the way they do. Singing a number of different songs might communicate to a female age, experience, or learning ability. Or it might run off a rival, fooling him into thinking an area is already full of competent males. But what drives a thrasher to continually improvise does not seem clearly understood.</div> <bR> <div>      In spring planting season, people say the brown thrasher sings a song of advice and encouragement. The words most often put to the song are “plant-a-seed, plant-a-seed, drop it, drop it, drop-it, cover-it-up.” </div> <bR> <div>      If you hear the thrashing of a thrasher in the leaves, or listen to his innovative music from the treetops, remember that a word as forgettable as “brown” may well describe a multitude of virtues.</div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Bird Words</B></div> <div> <B>Ruth Rogers Erickson</B></div> <bR> <div> March 9, 2003 </div> <div> The Canadian Record</div> <div> © 2003 Ruth Rogers Erickson</div> <bR> <div>      A large part of learning the birds is the attempt to gain fluency in a new language. Bird words, I call `em. Memorable words like melanistic, pileated, accipiter, and axillar - none my spell-checker recognizes. These fine words permeate the bird books, meticulously staking out descriptive territory. </div> <bR> <div>      There's an intoxicating rhythm in the hyphenated phrases: </div> <div>         white-breasted, brown-crested;</div> <div>         ladder-backed, dusky-capped;</div> <div>         sulphur-bellied, scissor-tailed.</div> <div>        (The list of these is long.)</div> <bR> <div>      Birders are people for whom subtle differences are carefully noted, and it's important to get the lingo right. Colors are precise, with shades of tawny, bay, cinnamon, chestnut, and buff. I'm still figuring out the difference between ruddy and rufous, sooty and slatey, mottled and splotched. </div> <bR> <div>      Birds are chunky, dumpy, stubby, or stocky; richly spangled or semipalmated; chisel-billed or zebra-backed. Owls can be flammulated or ferruginous. Many birds are gregarious, colonial, or cosmopolitan. </div> <bR> <div>      Body parts are carefully articulated: there are upperparts, underparts, and outerparts; primaries and secondaries; mandibles, scapulars, and speculum. We hear about rumps, flanks, cheeks, napes, throats, chins, and vents. </div> <bR> <div>      Birds are found wearing things. They wear badges, masks, hoods, necklaces, bibs, and crowns; mustaches, whiskers, eye-rings, and spectacles. They sport ear-tufts, eye-stripes, wing patches, air-sacs, tail spots, and throat-collars. </div> <bR> <div>      There is bird-slang, too, though it's buried in the literature: Hummingbirds are hummers, Empidonax flycatchers are empids, and loggerhead shrikes are “butcher birds.”</div> <bR> <div>      Proper bird names can be as colorful as the slang is. Consider the Magnificent Frigatebird, the Elegant Trogon, or the Solitary Sandpiper. Names affect our perception of a bird despite ourselves. I'm still hoping to see a Blue-Footed Booby and a Chuck-Will's-Widow, but I'm not so keen on the Lesser Scaup, the Sooty Tern, or the Parasitic Jaeger.</div> <bR> <div>      Careful attention is paid to a bird's migratory status. There are residents, visitors, breeders, migrants, and vagrants. Some are abundant, others are casual, common, uncommon, accidental, or rare.</div> <bR> <div>      There are avian activities and proclivities, such as nomadism, albinism, dimorphism, and kleptoparasitism. Family life includes monogamy, bigamy, and polygamy; cooperative breeding, nest swapping, egg-dumping, and siblicide.</div> <bR> <div>      The world of birdsong may be where bird lovers outdo themselves in descriptive ecstasy. Songs can be:</div> <div>       bubbling, burbling, warbling, drawling;</div> <div>       nasal, sibilant, petulant, mournful;</div> <div>       harsh, hollow, guttural, ghostly;</div> <div>       plaintive, staccato, liquid, tremulous;</div> <div>       rolling, vigorous, emphatic, ecstatic!</div> <bR> <div>      You could go on and on, if you wanted to. Bird books are full of passionate description. Finding an excuse to talk this way is reason enough to study birds!</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>The Mystery of the Great Horned Owls</B></div> <div> <B>Ruth Rogers Erickson</B></div> <bR> <div> October 3, 2002</div> <div> The Canadian Record</div> <div> © 2003 Ruth Rogers Erickson</div> <bR> <div>         For two summers now, the great horned owls have been doing something odd by the chicken house. I'll see one or two most evenings, lurking about, examining the acreage between here and the barn. Now and then, they pounce. </div> <bR> <div> What's odd is they're not hunting from some lofty perch, as owls are wont to do, diving after hapless prey with their deadly talons. These owls are hunting on the ground - walking, running, even stumbling around in the dusk after <I>something</I>, and when they find it, they hop. </div> <bR> <div> There's something slightly off about the proportions of an owl that you might never notice except when you watch them walk. Their legs are either too short or too long, I can't decide. But they seem to teeter like those inflated dolls that you can't knock down. </div> <bR> <div> They lurch about, bent over, studying the ground - and then they hop. One ungainly fellow was so intent upon his purpose, he bumped headlong into a tree and tumbled over. For something as majestic as a great horned owl - well, they must really fancy what they're after, to sacrifice their dignity like that. </div> <bR> <div> What would cause them to behave in such an inglorious manner? I don't know but it could be kangaroo rats. They're listed as food for the great horned owl, and I see kangaroo rats aplenty out here at night, hopping on their long hind legs down the road in the headlight beams. It seems appropriate, then, that the owls would be hopping after them.</div> <bR> <div> Whatever it is, it puts the owls into a kind of trance, a type of concentration so intense they could ignore the presence of a crowd of people close by on the patio. Owls have a sense of hearing so acute, it's said they can hear the sound of a person's finger rubbing against another 50 yards away. We weren't half that distance - they must have heard us, they just didn't care.</div> <bR> <div> Now lest you think I'm making mockery of a raptor of the highest order, let me tell you what I've learned of late, about the awesome owls. </div> <bR> <div> Their eyes face straight ahead like ours do, but their eyeballs do not move. To improve their view and to better judge distance, they bob their heads up and down and side to side. This explains some of that wobbling around out there. </div> <bR> <div> There's no truth to the rumor they can turn their heads all the way around. But they can turn far enough to look behind themselves, a flexibility that helps compensate for the fixed eyeballs.</div> <bR> <div> Their ears are even stranger. Not those tufts of feathers that look like their ears - real owl ears are lower down. The strange thing is they don't match! Owl ears in most species are unequal in shape, size, and location. They might have a small ear near the top of their head on the left side, and a big ear lower down on the right. Their poor skulls look as though something went horribly wrong on the assembly line, but in fact it's all part of a wonderful plan: These asymmetrical ears allow an owl to locate sound on the vertical axis, a thing impossible for us. In other words, when those of us with matching ears hear a sound, we can identify the right and left of where it's coming from, but not the up and down. Only owls can do that.</div> <bR> <div> Owl feet are notable, too. Their outer toe can rotate into several configurations: three toes forward and one back, two forward and two back- why those toes might be able to spell the alphabet, for all we know. Just know that you wouldn't want to see them coming toward you from above, especially if you're a kangaroo rat.</div> <bR> <div> Now like I said, I can't be sure about the kangaroo rat as favorite food theory. But you've got to love whatever it is that takes up all that owl attention. With their mighty arsenal of adaptation aimed at tasty tidbits on the ground, these great horned owls perform an illuminating spectacle: the sight of a raptor in a rapturous pursuit.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>