The Birds!

Springtime is in full effect. The fox is doing that crazy yelping in the backyard at night, the squirrels are pregnent with a new crop of pups, spring-tails are gathering in the melting hilltop snow. And the birds are back.

Yesterday at the edge of lake ice, two LARGE hawks were up to something. When I say 'large', I mean 'children in feathered costumes' large. My best guess is Golden Eagles. The even larger (in height if not bulk) sandhill cranes are also back making the river echo with their saurian CRONKs. A broad-wing hawk stalked out tree-line near the bird-feeder again. The telephone lines are littered with small hawks.

With predatory raptors now swarming everywhere, my appreciation for the mildness of winter birds increases. More Sun = more energy = more food = more flesh = more flesh-eaters.

I figure this a good time to re-post my previous attempt to capture this mood of impending avian doom:
https://roadtonowhere.forumotion.org/t10-avian-induced-claustrophobia

Western culture uses the wonky Greco-Roman calander which is a jumbled mix of Emperors (Julius, Augustus), Gods (Janus, Mars) and Numbers (Deca, Octo). The Numbered Months don't even line-up properly, Sept-Octo-Novem-Deca are the numbers 7 through 10, yet the months of Septemer to December are the 9th to 12th month. All of this is crammed into one full orbit of the Earth around the Sun which takes an awkward 364.25 days leading to February's funky flexibility.

Using the solar guideposts of the Equinoxes and Solstices is tidier and etymological cleaner giving us 'Equal-Nights' and 'Sun-Stands-Still' - yet there is a mathematical-celestial abstractness to them that feels appropriate for magic or science but to removed from the local experience of the seasons.

A further option, one that has only slowly revealed itself to me, is Canadian Geese. The geese have a rhythm that has a clockwork regularity but a local specificness and presence. The Greco-Roman calanader is a fossil laden with banality, the celestial calendar is a silent as the stars, but a flock of geese is loud and lively.

Here is the Canadian Goose Calendar for Whitefish, Ont.

SPRING begins = Last week of March - Canada Geese return and hold their evening jamboree on Vermillion River

SUMMER = Last week of May/First week of June - The Geese form mega-flocks and head further north

LATE SUMMER = Aug 11th - Geese begin to return

FALL = First Week of September - The Geese form mega-flocks and head further south

WINTER = Last Week on November/First of December - Geese gather in Grassy Lake and then leave until April.

Last week (Aug 11th) at the Lost Highway Pond, a flock of geese came awkwardly over-top of us, each member of the flock wanted to turn away from us but they could not coordinate as a group, so they keep bumping into each other as they did an unintentionally slow and low pass. Another flock was seen on the way home. It is now Late Summer according to the Geese and it feels like Late Summer in my bones.