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The cries of killdeers combine with brilliant sunlight to suggest a sort of natural party on the other side of the morning blinds. The killdeers, at least a couple of them, have taken wing and are circling, sounds like, in wide arcs around the east side of the place. The birds are loud and declarative.
It's windy -- a southwest wind, gusting upwards 20 miles an hour. The wind pushes the green quarry water away toward the back cliffs, leaving little reflection. Grackles sail about in flocks, settle on the yellow grass, go through the motions of courtship. I look out the east loft window and see that a ragtag bunch of the blackbirds are dive-bombing a crow that's just sitting there. The crow soon gets the message and high-tails it. Below are two killdeers, standing straight and fancy on the flat south yard, a male and a female, I'm sure. While the male stands apart, as though foraging afield, the female has apparently chosen a nest spot about where a pair nested a few years ago, smack in the middle of the lawn. She squats down on the little hollow, making cooing sounds, lifting her tailfeathers, and wagging them back and forth seductively. I suppose she could just be digging out the hollow. She also grabs with her beak small items, pebbles and weed seed, and brings them in. I hear the killdeers for an hour or more. Once, when I step out front, I see three of them standing there. Soon after, all three are gone. The temperature never gets out of the fifties (F), but still it's pleasant. I notice a few mourning doves zipping about: they end up on the grass below the apple trees, chiefly. And I come upon an earthworm in a pickup truck rut. And in the lower yard hop robins. This cool late afternoon carries the sound of up-the-road dooryard birds. After dark, the air feels somehow mysterious yet enticing. Just before midnight, I see a couple low white flashes out of the corner of my eye: lightning in the dark north sky. |
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| Bird Report is a discursive daily record of what's outside my high north window in Rockland, Maine, USA (44°07'N latitude, 69°07'W longitude). --Brian Willson | |||||
©1998 by 3IP |