American crow.
On today’s Beech Hill hike with Jack, I couldn’t hear much with the rush of the wind in my ears and the clatter of the wind through the still-mostly-leafless branches. I got to thinking about the wind, as I often do—the sound of it, the power of it, its fickleness. I sometimes wonder if the wind would lose its power, its sound, if there was nothing for it to blow. On some smooth, lifeless planet, without oceans or mountains, would there even be any wind? I suppose our winds are born in the oceans, as the sun warms and evaporates the water, and the resulting upsurge starts molecules in motion, and the moving molecules gather and sweep onto land and across continents and end up sluicing down a hill in coastal Maine and rushing against the ears of a hiking man and ruffling the fur of his dog.
American crow, Beech Hill, Rockport, Maine, 24 April 2012.
I can hear the physicists laughing, but I like to make up reasons for things.
Today I also made up a reason why the raven was flying fast in the wind above the trees, headed southeast, calling repeatedly in a high falsetto voice. It’d been fiddling around in the wood and had lost track of some other raven and was hollering, “Wait up!” And the solitary crow on the barrens below the summit was wondering, just before it flew: “What’s that guy looking at? Hm, he’s standing still too long. I’m outta here.”
But I’m not an ornithologist.
Tonight, I happened to see a friend’s post on Facebook noting that the International Space Station was due to fly over any minute, so I stepped back out onto the deck—where a moment before I’d been watching Venus and the new moon—and here it came. Bright, fast, silent, traveling in a straight line toward the southwest. Wow, I thought, is it so bright because sunlight is still angling over the horizon and reflecting on its surface? When, about two-thirds of the way across the sky, it suddenly dimmed and went dark, I figured I might’ve even been right about that one.
American crow.
Some stories seem more plausible.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 5:30 p.m., I hiked the wooded trails.
1. Herring gull*
2. Black-capped chickadee*
3. American robin (v)*
4. Common raven
5. Eastern towhee (v)
6. American crow*
7. House finch (v)*
Elsewhere
8. Northern cardinal (v)
9. House finch (v)
10. Rock pigeon
11. Mourning dove
12. Tufted titmouse (v)
v = Voice only
*Also elsewhere
Beech Nut.
Tags: American crow, American robin, black-capped chickadee, eastern towhee, herring gull, house finch, mourning dove, northern cardinal, rock pigeon, tufted titmouse
