Lately I’ve been watching the annual, southerly migration of birds. The Meadowlarks have now all gone. A month or so ago the last of the Long-billed Curlews vacated these premises. The Burrowing Owls have been gone for about a month. The finches and warblers and Brown Thrashers have departed, as have the Mourning Doves, Robins, and Red-winged Blackbirds. The Starlings are gathering for their mass exodus, and the Sandhill Cranes’ haunting vocalizations are passing overhead moving toward warmer places.
But this migration does not just take birds away from us. It brings birds from the north countries to us. It brings ducks by the hundreds of thousands: Pintail and Teal, Canvasback and Shoveler, Gadwall, Scaup, Bufflehead, Golden-eye, and Widgeon. It brings the Canada Goose in huge V’s wavering across the skies, and Blues and Whites and Brants–all geese coming to us and sometimes wintering with us where they can find open water below the great dams along the Missouri River and elsewhere–wherever the waters are warm enough or in enough motion to keep them open.
And following the migration, part of it in fact, are the Bald Eagles and Ospreys, the majestic Peregrine Falcon, the Arctic Gyrfalcon (on occasion), the Merlins, and Harriers, shrikes, and Red-tailed Hawks, hundreds of which can likely be seen in central Kansas around Thanksgiving. The Swainson Hawks, a gregarious bird, often form great migratory cauldrons or pods moving southward. They swirl around climbing in a manner reminiscent of the Sandhill Crane and drift down and southward, also much like the cranes. By now most of the Great Blue Herons have left their nesting colonies; the Cattle Egrets and White Herons are seeking the warmer waters of the Mississippi deltas, and the bayous of Louisiana.
There are other striking parts of the Fall season here at the ranch. Dan and his brothers, Scott and Mike, and I, and several friends participate in an annual, traditional pheasant hunt. We hunt over outstanding bird dogs for three days in country where we see the grain harvest underway, the leaves of trees turning brilliant colors and falling; we see frost on the grasses and barbed wire fences; we smell the scents of sage and wild grape, of newly combined corn, and the last cutting of alfalfa being baled. There is motion and stillness; there is the peace that comes with a pause in the field to watch a flight of Sandhill Cranes pass overhead, and the thrill of a Springer Spaniel making noteworthy retrieves on a perfect double.
Something like that is the Fall here on the Cheyenne River when thin sheets of ice form at night on the puddles created by the springs where the bison often come to water and the evening sun casts its sweet light on the bluffs across the river, making us catch our breaths in awe; and we know that winter is on the way, and all the animals are donning their winter coats.