silent spring

[ritaxis]

Early days yet (Buena Vista/Calabasas Roads, Watsonville, March 24, 2006)

I saw two hawks today, and I heard another.
I saw sourgrass blooming bright and acid yellow in the orchards.
The ditches were running with brown water.
The wind was fresh, the clouds were fecund,
everything moist and burgeoning.
The apple trees, pruned, reaching for blossom time,
the fields, plowed and fallow, weed-bedecked, ready.
In five miles of open land,
twelve Brewer blackbirds trying to make a flock.

The sky clear of blackening wings.
The wires unsagging from the weight of missing blackbirds.
No rusty hinge squealing, announcing the return of the redwings.
The fences uncrusted by the marks of their leavings.

It's early days yet. Yes? There's time. Yes?
This year's matings can produce an avian resurgence. Yes?
Yes?

Comments

[pameladean]

The redwings are back here. What's happening out there?

P.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I think it's that Buena Vista and Calabasas Roads are not good redwing habitat, not having any long grass anywhere (the fallow places appear to have only mustard, radish, sourgrass, and stuff like that). But in times past I saw them in force in Neary Lagoon, and when I was there last week I didn't see one. I'll have to go and spend a long time there this weekend. It's around the corner and one of my favorite places but I hardly ever go there because I can't take the dog.

[pameladean]

I forgot to say, the poem scared me so much that my reply was the one you got -- "Hey, we have redwings, really!"

P.

I live in a forest in the city

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

And the few days I've left my window cracked open the birds let me know 'it's time to get up!" More annoyingly than my 19-year-old-cat....

On a birding note, we've had Coopers Hawks moving into our city, I've seen them during my commute, they're as large as red tail hawks but their whole conformation is different.

Pretty cool.

Re: I live in a forest in the city

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

In town, at my house, I'm getting reasonable dawn chorus. But I'm not seeing the great flocks of birds I expect at this time of year in open lands.

Okay, so I shouldn't expect redwings in farmland, even though I always used to when I was young. But what about the other birds that flock in the spring?

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

We already have the swirling flocks of little birds, but we also have a small flock of crows and a batch of seagulls. I'm not sure what's up with the seagulls, they usually hang by the fast-food restaurant dumpsters.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

See, that's what I haven't seen -- swirling flocks of little birds. I might have been looking in the wrong places. But I expect to see them in fallow fields. Isn't that about right? I don't expect the swallows much until later in the year, and I am seeing them a bit. But the flocking things -- where are they?