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On May
28, 2017, I was in Tillman Ravine, one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Here a burbling brook, fed by a natural spring, bounces down a ravine lined
with ferns, hemlocks, and broad-leaved trees. When you are deep in Tillman
Ravine, you can feel that you have turned the pages back in the history book
and a buckskin-clad Natty Bumppo and his Mohican foster brother, Chingachgook, are
about to break through the foliage.
I've
seen a porcupine here, a creature I'd never seen in the wild before, and a
willow flycatcher, a new species for me. In fact, willow flycatchers did not
exist in American ornithology until after I began birdwatching. Before that
they were considered the same species as the alder flycatcher.
I was
there early in the morning and there were no other people. All I heard was the
stream hitting the rocks and hooded warblers calling from the rich understory.
To me their call sounded like the repeated, urgent, "teacher,
teacher" of an ovenbird combined with a final three syllable, "switcheroo!"
I
followed the dirt road to Buttermilk Falls. To my right, flat fields gave way
to scrubby brush. To my left the earth rose abruptly hundreds feet – but I'm
bad at estimating measurements. The forest floor of this steep rise was covered
with rich ferns. The rising sun was just cresting this rise and its light
cascaded down the hillside as if the light were a capricious waterfall. It
highlighted the tops of ferns now here, now there, turning them yellow and
translucent, while their roots and their neighbors remained in dusky shadow. It
was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
Buttermilk
Falls was breathtaking. Water falling straight down the mountainside. I climbed
up the wooden staircase beside the falls and scared myself, the trail was so
steep.
After
descending, and walking back on the now sunny road, I saw and heard
black-throated green warblers, yellow-billed cuckoos, fiery Baltimore orioles,
quilt-patterned rufous-sided towhees, and sleek indigo buntings – a cacophony of
color. I walked through a meadow under a bright sun and watched bright, patterned
prairie warblers and goldfinch and listened to the sweet song of the field
sparrow, who sounds like a body feels when it surrenders to a hammock.
I
reached the Big Flat Brook. A man in camouflage waders was fly fishing. I had
come to this area to have a surface on which no foliage grew. I put my pack down
on the road and inspected my jeans-covered legs. There they were, just as I
suspected: numerous ticks. This will be a bad tick year. The freakishly warm
winter provided no kill-off temperatures. I picked the ticks off my jeans. I
rolled up my jeans and found one fixing to attach itself to my leg. Picked that
one off, too. A day after I got back from Tillman, I saw a tick walking up the
wall of my apartment. Probably had hidden in my backpack. I killed it with
extreme prejudice. They are so damn ugly and diabolically efficient at what
they do. It's hard to believe that they are not guilty of malice aforethought.
I have to remind myself that they are little evolutionary machines, tuned to
suck my blood, totally unaware of the diseases they vector.
CNN
reports that on Sunday, June 4, 2017, Hoosier two-year-old Kenley Ratliff died
of what doctors suspect was Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a tick-borne disease.
Her family took her to a couple of doctors who did not know what she had. By
the time she made it to Riley Children's Hospital, she had gone limp.
CNN
reports: "The family had gone camping 10 days before Kenley's symptoms
began and she was seen twice by other health care providers before she was seen
at Riley…'As soon as we saw her, we put her on doxycycline. The longer you
wait, the less likely patients are to respond to treatment, so it was tough to
know if treatment would have made any difference in this case because she had
come in in a pretty advanced state of the disease.'"
***
I and
lots of photographers had been watching the red-tailed hawk nest at Garret
Mountain. If you could see through the leaves surrounding the nest you'd see
the Manhattan skyline in the distance. At first the chicks were mere gray and
white balls of fluff, with very noticeable white spots on the back of their
gray heads. By the way, the word for a hawk chick is "eyas." Just in
case anyone asks.
The other
day, one of the chicks was an awkward mix of baby down and an almost full set
of adult feathers poking through, its body about three times the size it had
been when I first saw it. Just looking at this suit of clothes made me feel
itchy. The chick kept jumping up and down on the nest as if it were a
trampoline. It kept beating its wings furiously. Soon enough it would take
flight.
One
day mama or papa hawk arrived with a cry. Red-tailed hawks sound impressive.
Movie-makers often select the cry of the red-tail to coincide with bald eagle
scenes. Bald eagles make a weak, trembling, crying whistle.
The
parent landed on a nearby branch. She had her kids' dinner in her talons. I
quickly looked away. I could see what she had. It was a decapitated chipmunk's
body. I recognized the pattern in the fur. Mom flew closer and her nestlings
eagerly tore the little chipmunk corpse to shreds.
When
I was writing my dissertation, I used to take breaks in the backyard near a
wood pile that hosted a chipmunk family. They were so cute. They would scurry
out of the wood pile, stare at me, and I would leave them little bits of my
lunch.
I
walked on. About a mile away from the nest, as I walked through trees,
something under my foot made me stop walking. It was a fresh, eyes-open,
chipmunk head.
***
I was
walking up a suburban road in Wayne, NJ. Overhead I saw crows being mobbed by
other birds. You see this a lot. Crows prey on smaller birds' nests and
nestlings. The parents were chasing the crow. But then, colorlessly silhouetted
against the gray sky, I saw something I'd never seen before. Flapping. Whatever
the crow was holding was flapping. Fighting for its life.
The
crow dropped its lunch. Then all the birds disappeared. I waited for the
traffic to ease up and I walked out onto the road. It was a baby robin. Its
eyes were closed. I was horrified. I couldn't tell if it was alive or dead. I
didn't want to leave it here to die slowly. I thought I should step on its
head. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I went back to the sidewalk and determined
to wait until I saw a car run over the little bird, so I knew it wasn't dying
slowly. One car, no. Next car, no. Next – a pickup truck. Yes. That robin's
suffering was over.
I
walked on. As soon as I walked on, the crow reappeared, swooped down into the
road, picked up its lunch, and flew off.
***
I
remember walking a railroad track that ran through trees, cornfields, a
cemetery, and suburban backyards. It was snowing. A flock of songbirds emerged
from the flurries. And that quick an accipiter, a cooper's hawk or a
sharp-shin, flew overhead, dipped into the flock of songbirds, grabbed one, and
flew off. Cooper's hawks kill their prey by squeezing them to death.
Accipiters
typically catch their prey with extraordinarily quick and agile flight. I once
watched a house sparrow evade a pursuing accipiter in a hedge on a busy street
corner in Bloomington, Indiana. The sparrow flew in, under, through, around,
over the foliage. The accipiter was right behind.
Cornell
reports, "Dashing through vegetation to catch birds is a dangerous
lifestyle. In a study of more than 300 Cooper’s Hawk skeletons, 23 percent
showed old, healed-over fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the
furcula, or wishbone."
***
I
remember walking down a sidewalk on a summer day and seeing a wasp trying to
drag something – I forget if it was an insect or a spider – into a hole in the
sidewalk. This was probably a parasitic wasp. She'd lay her eggs in her prey,
which would remain alive. The eggs would feed off the paralyzed, zombified host
until they emerged from its hollowed-out shell.
***
I
know. I know I know I know.
It's
all part of the circle of life.
It
was the baby robin that pushed me over the edge, and prompted me to write this
post.
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