Having just read a few of my archived River Ranch Diary entries, I realized that something was missing because we are not just about buffalo and grass and water and fences. We are also about food (principally Jill’s venue–and who better?), health (each of us has his or her own very close encounters with that–broken bones, illnesses, events, and surgeries). environment (a major concern in all our lives), and wildlife. In this entry I want talk about wildlife. Primarily, I will address birds.
Dan is an internationally recognized falconer; Erney and I have been licensed falconers also for many years. We are less recognized but that doesn’t matter. Falconry is never just about the birds of prey: the falcons, hawks, eagles, etc. It is about the interaction between predator and prey species. But falconry is not just about that either, and I am not writing about falconry, but about what it requires of the practitioner. It requires becoming a bird watcher; it requires knowing what birds are likely to appear where and at what times of the day and season. The end result of this requirement is the creation of a kind of amiable monster, an anecdotal specialist of bird behavior.
On this ranch, as in other places, there is a seasonal changing of the guard of various bird species. Some are here throughout the year: turkeys and crows, for example can capture the attention of the observer for years without a break. And everyone knows the migratory patterns of geese, ducks, and Sandhill Cranes, White Pelicans, and Vultures. There are yet others, much less known, perhaps more available in one area than another. In this category we here at the ranch are well-sited. Within several miles of us are two or three Great Blue Heron rookeries. The spring migration brings the Ring-necked and Mourning Doves as well as the usual compliment of Robins, White-crowned Sparrows, Goldfinches, Brown Thrashers, Killdeer, Kestrels, Redtail and Coopers Hawks, Golden Eagles and a number of warblers, swifts and swallows. But we also have a substantial number of Burrowing Owls, living in the Prairie Dog towns. They produce their young in a habitat shared with rabbits and rattlesnakes and buffalo. Along the gravel roads on fence posts we often see the Upland Plover.
But beyond that we have the Long-billed Curlew that can capture the heart of even the least experienced observer. The birds stands about a foot tall, colored for camouflage in the brown/golden grasses of the prairie, bearing an exceptionally long down-curved beak and looks like it should be a shore bird but is not, or perhaps looks like a Dr. Suess character–and who knows–may be. These birds pair up and nest in the prairie grass to raise their young. They have a very distinctive call, perhaps a distress or a warning call, whenever they feel intruded upon or threatened. Like the Killdeer, they will feign injury to lead the intruder away. Failing that they will be raucous and fly alongside a car or horse as if to herd the intruder away. I have never seen a baby Curlew until the Fall when they gather into sizable groups and prepare for their first migration. By then they are merely young and no longer babies.
We sometimes consider the movements and migrations of birds as our unofficial but uncannily accurate calendar, not of days and months, necessarily but of seasonal and environmental events and changes. They become also our barometer as to the health of the prairie upon which our activity here resolutely focuses.