Autumn entering may well be my favorite time of year. It breaks the sweltering days of summer and presents the prelude to winter. More than that it provides the harvest, assuming there is one, and assures or indicates to the harvester a future. If a drought is broken, even if only temporarily, it brings hope, relief and a little comfort to those who have weathered it.
On this ranch, which has benefitted from more rain than we have seen in four or five years, we feel a little of that relief. We have more grass than we have become accustomed to seeing, which translates into several things: a) an abundance of grazing for the buffalo, b) a healthy environment for wildlife and c) the beauty of the land flourishing. As we believe the presence of wildlife on the ranch is a major barometer for measuring the health of the land we try to become fairly astute observers of wildlife.
In that regard I seem often to focus on three kinds of wildlife: predators, prey species and birds. This focus does not ignore the big game species. There is hardly anything more exciting to watch than a whitetail doe gingerly leading her twin fawns quietly and delicately through the brush on the side of a hill. Correlative to that is the presence of a wide variety of birds bespeaking habitat and food supplies that support them. Granted in the fall the migration of birds is underway. This may create a false sense of local environmental health; however, the variety of summer residents plus the length of time the migratory birds stay before moving on gives us another glimpse at that environment.
So I watch the obvious summer residents: the meadowlarks, the lark buntings, the brown thrashers and goldfinches. These are the most common and easiest to identify and observe. Some of the others keep me thumbing through my old yet faithful bird book. Even then some of the smaller and less frequently seen species remain to me a mystery. Like the warblers, they perplex me. I love them but almost cannot distinguish one from another. I watch the game species: the grouse and partridge and try to keep a mental note about their numbers and location.
And I watch the predators: coyotes, fox, eagles, hawks, and falcons because the presence of a variety of predators indicates the presence of a variety of prey species. All of these species, because of their habitat and food requirements, reveal to the observer the relative natural health of the environment they inhabit. They assure us that the quality of the ranch’s environment contributes to and continues to insure the quality of meat we produce from our harvest.