Round Two?

These thoughts had begun fermentation in the morning as a contemplation of waning and winding down. Though the last week of June is hardly a time normally associated with fading, it is true that the first thistles are turning brown, and late May's daisies, earliest to bloom, are beginning to droop. It is also true that our field season is too quickly approaching its last remaining month.

It's been a difficult season of nest searching for this field crew, even a bad one. We've had scarce few finds, and sometimes, it seems, scarcer luck. The first wave of nesting sparrows all but eluded us earlier in the month, when time and odds were more on our side, leaving us collectively frustrated, dispirited. We, and almost surely our boss, whose research rides at least in part on our success, were concerned we may not find enough. We are still.

But the sun, barely into the fullness of its strength, still burns high in the summer sky over the yellowing grass of our open fields. The daisies may be wilting, but black-eyed susans have just begun to flower. Newly opened orange daylilies raise brilliant flowers on long green stalks along the roadsides, mixed with huge drifts of sweet pea and crown vetch in every shade of pink, while thorny blackberries stitching through the grass have barely begun to ripen their fruit. Summer in all its vigor is far, far from over. And today, we found two new nests.

Grassland sparrows often do nest twice in the course of the summer, with luck or skill raising two families of chicks to independence before the season is through. We've hoped for this second wave for several weeks now, since it became obvious the first had passed us by. Granted, two new nests does not yet a redemption make, not when we need to find many more to reach statistical viability. Many things could happen, including another crippling nest-drought. There may not be a second wave to pull us through to success. Nonetheless, like successive floods of flowering, two just-laid nests are a hopeful sign, and it surely does make for a good day. I'll open a good porter this evening in celebration and let tomorrow do as it will, with hopes of more good things. 

Rain

 

 

 

Photo courtesy of France Dewaghe (www.pbase.com/birdbum)

Sitting on our dilapidated couch watching early evening rain pour past our open front door on to the gravel parking lot and yards beyond, listening to soothingly low, pensive rumbles of thunder, brings to mind the old trope of a world washed clean. No pattering showers falling lightly on the world, this steady, thorough sluicing over roofs and cars and leaves of trees promises to carry the week's dust back down to the earth, leaving behind a vista vibrantly restored. Sometimes, I wish this could be done for human histories and lives.

Mind you, I'm not nearly so poetic when standing in the middle of a field as rain douses my head. In sodden boots and clinging trousers, so long as there is no danger to the creatures, fieldwork must go on. And it does. Our sparrows don't change their daily plans for rain. They live outdoors after all; running home to wait out the inconvenience of bad weather is not among their options. Sparrows continue on as usual, and so do we, dodging downpours beneath foliage much as they do, emerging again once the worst drenching has passed. It may make for some definite grumping, marching back and forth through the tall wet grass with my arms squished to my torso for warmth, glowering at the lack of rain pants that ensures I remain wet from nearly the waist down (water creeps up the fabric of regular pants as if infiltrating a sponge, I've discovered, even under the hem of a good rain jacket), but it also makes for an interesting philosophical point.

It's a very different thing to be out in nature, and a part of it, than it is to simply visit and appreciate it. Several years ago, before I left the field for a while and became accustomed to the physical “comforts” of the indoors, I was much more at peace with the both the joy and the privation that come of being intimately tuned to nature, and much more articulate about it as well. For me, at least, there has always been measure of inner peace to be found in accepting and adapting to the uncontrollable elements around me, and a sense of belonging that comes with respect for the surrounding world I experience with so much more of my being, rather than merely seeing it with the eyes and thinking about it in the head. That is, if I can get over being wet. It takes time to build, or to rebuild, rhythms that deep. I can feel the memories of them stirring even as I sputter and grumble about my squelching shoes. Someday soon, I hope to be writing about them again in the way I used to be.

Some Pictures While the Next Post Is In the Works

Banding in the early morning.

 

Baby grasshopper sparrow, nearly ready to fledge.  Note the rather cute lack of a tail.

Getting her/his bands.

 

All done, and no doubt wishing we would be, too.

A Good Day for Butterflies (June 1)

Butterflies were out in droves today, drifting and fluttering, tiny bits of light darting about in a stiff, comfortable breeze. Swallowtails and sulphurs, monarchs and skippers, even a lone mourning cloak (closely pursued by a swallowtail) skimmed the tall green grass beneath a brilliant, forgiving sun. In every corner, on every stalk, in bold freshly opened daisies and tiny flowers hidden in the grass, countless species of the bright winged insects pursued their tiny purposes.

Several stories above the kaleidoscope flitting among summer's first bloom, tree swallows frolicked beneath blue skies, pursuing insects at high speed with enviable acrobatics. All in all, it was a beautiful day to be in the field, the kind you want to be out in. A joyous sun-bright memory gilds over wet feet and hours of walking, long searches for recalcitrant sparrows reluctant to divulge location or nest. In the evening's cool, it's wind and wildflowers that remain.

Photo courtesy of France Dewaghe (www.pbase.com/birdbum)

Small Town America

Another expedition into unfamiliar territory, this time in the form of Clarion, a quiet little college town settled in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, where this half of the field crew is to live. Our first late morning explorations the Sunday after arriving turned up a main street that, with some adjustment for modernity, could have been designed by Norman Rockwell, or maybe Sinclair Lewis. Rows of small, mostly mom & pop looking shops lined either side of the street, nearly all closed for Sunday. Only a few eateries were open, two sub shops and a lone diner-style cafe, catering to small groups casually munching on Sunday brunch or picking up take out sandwiches. Outside  a closed hardware store, a slightly dour middle-aged woman, clearly in her springtime Sunday best florals and probably fresh from morning church services, perused a brochure, accompanied by a man in a Hawaiian shirt likely chosen when his wife demanded something more dignified than a t-shirt to face the pastor.

Nearly everything was eerily quiet. Enough cars passed by Main Street to keep me from wandering down the center of the road, but on the leafy green side streets bordered by neatly trimmed lawns, nothing moved.  Clarion appeared nearly empty.  I had begun our stroll with the feeling that this town, like Altoona, was alien to me in its feel: neat, midwestern, and peaceful. Yet the more I wandered, the more vague similarities I begin to see to other towns in other places.  The modest houses, faded but well maintained, with their moderate yards partially shaded by large old trees; the scruffy apartments clustered around a few blocks nearest the center of town, paltry rentals in a place where nearly everybody aspires to own; the obligatory defunct artillery gracing a small park in the center of town... Clarion felt like New England if one left out the whitewash and the unavoidable chunks of granite rising up from the lawn, like Scranton's satellite suburbs without the empty feel of economic depression, like central Minnesota and like Ohio... In fact without any identifiable quirks to call its own, it seemed more and more – and perhaps more and more eerily – like this town could be absolutely anywhere.

Altoona

There was going to be more about Altoona, Pennsylvania, my first landing spot in the summer's renewed Sparrow Hunt, but a brief stay, some very busy weeks, and a chunk of time without proper internet access drove that idea out. Instead, I'll make a sketch of what stands out in my memory, and leave the rest of the talking to the pictures.

Very blue-collar in it's history and appearance, Altoona is, or was, a new kind of town for me. In it's day, it was a prosperous rail city, as evidenced by the still active railyards dominating the length of the center of town, effectively dividing it in to separate sections accessible to each other only by leaving the city limits to circumnavigate the rails. Narrow, careworn houses line the very hilly streets in tightly packed rows, with barely enough space for a walkway between. Single lane “alleys” running perpendicular to the slope access off street parking and shady back yards often surprisingly spacious and welcoming compared to the drab, unadorned edifices fronting the main streets. Sometimes still in good shape, sometimes in utter disrepair, the houses, their yards, and their alleys march uphill from the railyards, becoming more well groomed and widely spaced as the upward climb continues, but remaining distinctly modest by any standard I'm familiar with. I had little time to research or explore Altoona before moving on, but what I did find suggests a town gone into decline like many others as rail and industry faded, now hoping to build itself again.

Maple Street, where the Altoona field crew lives.

The walk from street to back yard.

A train, polished for display, sits in a working railyard.

One of Altoona's many "alleys".

Railyard