Death by Train
UPDATE - The Pennsyltucky Geographer is officially in the works, and I hope to have some horrible content up by the end of October. Meanwhile, the About section ha a bit of a preview of coming attractions
After a week of bad back, I hit the tracks on the coldest morning of the season so far.
Hard Frost
To shake the curse I head out into the 7 AM Sunday silence and a stiff, icy breeze. Just past full, the moon is up above Sapsucker Ridge, unsettlingly close to Jupiter. I adore my natal month, but I can’t help but think it’s about the nadir of the year for birding, particularly with a looming La Niña seeming to push everything south ahead of schedule. The tropical torrents of September are long gone, and the waterfowl have not yet begun to gather; it’s an in-between time of drab sparrows and a steadily growing population of Winter Wrens.
No matter, I tell myself, it’s more about the exercise, anyway. At precisely 7:02 the crowd of White-throated Sparrows in the privet jungle starts to chip as they flutter about, emitting snatches of song. Northern Cardinals and Carolina Wrens aren’t far behind. I notice a dark shape silhouetted on a snag below the moon and glass it, expecting a squirrel’s nest or at best a crow. Instead, it’s an Osprey. I’ve never seen where one sleeps before, and in typical Osprey fashion, it completely ignores me as I walk past. From up the ridge in back, an Eastern Screech-Owl’s call wavers, a sort of requiem, if you will.
The magic of the still and silent Osprey is obliterated all at once by a pestilent, west-bound garbage train, a hundred blue cars of trash suffusing the air with stench that lingers minutes after it’s gone.
Every few days, I check the pond for ducks, and I’m heading there now to see if winter’s crowds have begun to gather. The temperature drops to 27 and holds steady as the first American Crows sally noisily forth across the cloudless gap. I cross to the cliff side.
A screech-owl, stiff and motionless, lies next to the tracks, with little doubt the latest unwilling victim of Big Rail. It died from blunt force trauma to the back of the head. I tote it off to the side and, muttering some sort of invocation, inter it in a shallow grave. Not the type of October Surprise I was hoping for.
Screams Above the Water
Strike out: the pond only has a Mallard trio. As minuscule flocks of robins, pigeons, and geese begin to crisscross the Gap, I turn around and head back, just in time to glimpse the Osprey soaring off downstream, still silent. A few minutes later, a large bird dives noiselessly into the river nearby, but I can’t see what it was through the foliage. Pishing only rouses wrens. After a bit, the sun finally hits this part of the tracks and I try to warm up a bit (rite of passage for the first hard frost — to fully appreciate it, one must be woefully underdressed).
Suddenly, as I peer down at the Little Juniata, I see the reflection of an adult Bald Eagle go by within feet of me, and turn to see it alight in a branch some 10 yards away, directly above the river. I can’t see more than its head as it glares intently down into the water. As I back off a bit and try to get a better look, a huge shape flies into view from upriver, directly over my head to perch in a tree on Laurel Ridge just above the tracks. This second adult looks at me with what seems to be great suspicion or annoyance, and then the first eagle, which hasn’t moved, lets out a series of screams.
The screams continue off and on for about a minute until the newcomer has had enough and flies away. I think the call was to warn the second eagle away, not to protest at my presence.
On Monday the 14th, during my convalescence, I was able to hobble about the dusk field for a bit. I almost left before six when the birds quieted down, but the clouds kept me there. Good thing I stayed, as I got to watch the return-to-roost of a slow-moving Cooper’s Hawk and the last aerial maneuvers of the local Common Raven pair, Red-tailed Hawk, and sundry Turkey Vultures. As I had suspected, species diversity was way down, and the only real surprise was a phalanx of 13 Black Vultures flap-gliding quickly northeast toward some roost out in the valleys somewhere. The field was still chock-full of sparrows, but almost all of the common Field, White-throated, and Song variety, with no Lincoln’s left.
As for warblers, all I saw or heard were one measly solitary Palm and one Yellow-rumped. Nevertheless, near last light I caught a large flock of Red-winged Blackbirds, first of the season, rushing along the ridgetop to roost in some Logan Valley wetland.
I tried again on Friday morning, but the northern finches are still far away, and even the height of AM activity brought but a single warbler—Yellow-rumped, unsurprisingly. Amidst the sparrow melee, a Swamp Sparrow called from near the garage as Hermit Thrushes clucked from their usual hiding places, often flying in close when pished.
Even the night-time has gone mostly silent during this cold and windless stretch of weather. The occasional Savannah Sparrow alleviates the tedium of the myriad White-throats overhead and in the nighttime foliage, and once in a while a Killdeer cries. Hermit Thrushes pass over in flocks of a dozen or two at random moments throughout the night, while the last Swainson’s and Gray-cheekeds call every now and again, one separated from the next sometimes by hours.
awesome!