09 November 2009

Seagull Showers

Learning cycles by observation, scientists track annual meteor showers across our night windows like celestial migrations, and somewhere a child in a field makes wishes on falling stars. Here in Los Brujos I too have been recording cycles of celestial visions, patiently waiting for annual repetition finding nature’s hidden symbols to mark the seasons, cycles large and small.

From the last weeks of October through early November, hundreds of Andean gulls flash white wings and black hoods through the quebradas of the coastal mountain range, steering toward the wetland plains, following the rivers to the sea. They pass overhead in the muffled wind of wing beats one flock at a time sometimes calling to each other, sometimes in uniform silence, just over the blossoming branches of the Notro trees arching red flowers. A vision of beauty, stark white formation passing at speed against a backdrop of spring greenery like watching the tail of a falling star suddenly blaze and then dissolve in the distance.

They are a symbol of the sea these gulls that migrate across our mountains, connecting us to the coast in their presence, their calls. At sunset drawing dusk in between Spring storms, the seagull showers bottleneck up our quebradas, flocks passing within minutes of each other, sometimes sharing the same breezy lift and then calling their kin back towards their group as they dive down the northern slopes of the pine plantations towards Valdivia and the sea. Their wings bent like aircraft they dive and spin and try to avoid the attention of raptors also soaring overhead.

On clear evenings I like to watch the seagulls pass, wish them well on their journey from atop the pine plantation hill across the street. Salvia and Trigo eagerly accompany me to search out quails or mountain pigeons in the grasses, foxglove pushing up green leaves preparing to unfold future flowers. But my attention is fixed elsewhere, standing upon a clear-cut stump like the Lorax, I gaze in every direction the horizon, as through mist and sun the seagulls come, great showers of flashing light, black hoods and darting white so close overhead or alongside you feel their beating wings in the air and they are gone. The seagull showers of middle-Spring, carrying us toward Summer, out of Winter, with a graceful migration worth pausing for, staring up in awe, a smile, a wish, a wave.

In memory of Mimi Hipps, Lou-Lou, and Grandma French who now all share this week in November as their time of transition, a lifetime’s migration, to distant shores.

2 Comments:

Blogger Mahajohn said...

A couple of months ago - before the (permanent?) death of the TV in my home - I was watching a fascinating PBS program ("Outdoors Maryland") about Maryland's crows. It seems that over the last few decades, more and more crows have "come home to roost" in Hagerstown. Much to townsfolk’s' dismay, they now host hundreds of thousands of crows every night. Everything is covered in their poop, and they make quite a noise. It used to be that crows roosted in very rural areas, or in forests, but they've found it much easier to roost in human habitats. In fact, they take over. The townspeople decided to destroy a little forest they lived in, but when they did so, the crows just roosted on top of the nearby warehouse, which just made the situation worse for the humans who thought they were solving their problems! Time after time, the crows outsmart the people.

Anyway, it turns out that many of these crows are the crows one may see anywhere in the DC metropolitan area during the day. They leave their roosts in the early morning and fan out across the region, upwards of 70-80 miles. Hundreds of thousands of them. They return home every evening. They even have "way stations" where they gather and squawk with each other ("Man, I found the most awesome used condom, and I played with it for about five minutes before a biped youth threw a stick at me!" "Awesome, dude! I ate a dead raccoon's eyeball! It was DEEEElicious!!!") in ever larger groups before the entire flock joins up again in Hagerstown.

It was literally the next day when I happened to find myself waiting for a bus in Georgetown at about 5:30. The sun was low in the sky, but it wasn't evening yet. I noticed - for the first time, really - that there was a steady stream of crows flying above me, looking as though they were using the Potomac River to guide them northwards. I'd like to think - and not without reason - that I was observing the very phenomenon I saw on the program.

As an aside, the producers interviewed a local naturalist, one of the few experts on crows (of which not much is really known!). He said that he'd observed crows for so long that many have come to know him over the years, and it was not unusual to spot a crow flying over a distant mountain near his home (we're talking about western MD here), nothing more than a speck in the distance, and watch it home in on his property, and then literally swoop in and land on his shoulder!

Crows are awesome.

December 01, 2009 4:23 PM  
Blogger Carol Bushar said...

Crows have always fascinated me. They are so widely taken for granted and yet they are keen observers and intimate witnesses to our urban lifestyles. I remember hearing a report in Seattle documenting crow rituals and other bizarre behavior that strangely mimics our own migrations from youth to adulthood, urban to suburban. Crows are good modern-day reminder of our relationship with nature, even if we do not always enjoy the reflection.

December 11, 2009 1:02 AM  

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