Acair Fearann

I had the occasion to drive down through the central section of Connecticut today. (And what is it about the Connecticut Valley? Somehow the towns do ‘lonely, down at the heel’ with astonishing ease, more so because you know there are So many people and yet….) It is mostly flat, and would like to be mile upon mile of Red and Silver Maple swamps, with the odd oak hillock. It is rich land of deep soil and slow rivers, but because of that richness it grows back to woodland with a speed that borders on the uneasy.  Made more uneasy because the trees that are hard along the highway are mostly the ‘junk’ trees, the urban survivors, locust, ash, bittersweet, tree of heaven, Norway maple, barberry, rose, Russian olive, poison ivy; they grow and grow well. It is an odd strip of land.

It also happens to be raptor city in the winter. No less than seven hawks seen in less than fifteen miles, solemnly perched on their lightpoles or roadside trees, forever hunting the margins. And one big raven circling an old train yard. It wasn’t like I was exactly trying to count them either! Mostly red tails, but I think there were one or two others, at least one that read as a slate grey back so I don’t know what he was.  A little hard to tell on size and color, they were all fluffed out to deal with the cold.

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and getting colder!

This guy doesn’t seem to mind too much….an amazing little guy, he weighs in at about 1/3 of an ounce (two or so quarters). He’s waiting for the feeder here, a photo through a window.

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Depending on one’s outlook, Mourning Doves are cherished, ridiculed as stupid, or are pests. The latter I fail to understand. Their stupidity…well I have evidence of….but I couldn’t begin to imagine Connecticut without them. Whether the soft dawn chorus, the whistling wings, or just their constant presence; there is never malice nor aggression in evidence, and if that meekness leads to ridicule? Well, that’s a deeper and darker thought than today needs. They are lovely birds, all the colors of a gentle dawn.

Which is a long way of explaining why I was so glad that I checked the fish pond the other day. We have been having difficulties with the current arrangement (see Zombie Fish) and I had set the heater to run* and turned the pump off. What I didn’t consider was that turning off the pump meant turning off the waterfall.  This meant that all the open water was now under the net around the bubblers. The net is fine, black mesh. The mourning dove flock had a habit of coming to the waterfall at dusk for their drink. I think you can guess where this is going.

When I checked at dusk the other day, most of the flock left.  All but one, one panicked dove caught beneath the netting. Maybe it was the brave one that figured out a way to get underneath. Maybe if I hadn’t come, it would have gotten out again.  I don’t know. I do know that I moved very fast indeed to catch the panicked bird before it thrashed its way to damaged wings or a dunking in ice cold water.  I think it had been caught for awhile since it rested in my hands for a solid five plus minutes before any indication that it wanted to leave. And when it did? One brief clasp of a claw around a finger, and then fast flashing wings up into the tree where the rest of the flock waited.

Photo of a Mourning Dove, at rest.

*It didn’t run, which meant a new heater today….we will see if It runs!)

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Because I work in retail, I mostly get it…but.

I found it deeply perverse that on the first truly bitterly cold night of winter (It was so clear that the moonlight through the trees was illuminating my car’s interior in a very disconcerting fashion, until I figured it out, on the way home) and with two solid months, the real months, of winter stretching ahead with March as a potential third…. I am being inundated by ‘spring!’. Now, I like the seed and plant catalogs, although they have impulse shopping for green down to a science, but the clothes, the gifts, the fact that there is Valentine candy in the store…the fact that the dark, winter beer are being shoved aside for ‘crisp’ lemony ‘spring’ ale?

Fine, the last is the most annoying.  Well actually, the pink! Valentine candy was the most annoying. But would it kill the retailers to at least wait till January? I know, you can’t sell what is in the back room, and heaven knows the buyers had to guess the market and order correctly about four months ago, and the manufacturers (well they do what they want when they want).  But Pink! Lemon! Spring Grass! Wear a bathing suit!

Bah.

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Medieval Scribal Marginalia

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