Animal Calander

by **Hobb** Tue 30 May 2017 - 20:15

Today, May 31st, three patterns re-occurred. The hawthorns bloomed into their perfumed stink, a hummingbird moth was seen hovering over dandelions and a massive flock (easily 50+ birds) of Canadian geese went nosily over top toward the NNE. The hawthorn blooms always occurs within May 30th to June 4th, the moth and mega-flock sighting have occurred on the same day since 2014. I consider that overflight of geese to mark the beginning of summer, just as the arrival of geese marks the start of spring.

Here are three quotes from that I have combined into one mediation on the subject of recording nature's patterns.

A Place between The Tide: A naturalist's reflections on the Salt Marsh - Harry Thurston (2004) wrote:
For the naturalist who put down roots, there are two distinct kinds of pleasure that derive from being one place over time and tracking the rounds of the seasons. The first relates to the expected, the ability to predict what will happen at certain times of the year. Then there is the unexpected. The satisfaction of one being equal to the excitement of the other.

I must confess a certain satisfaction in knowing where and at what seasons to find certain species. This emotion is not so smug or acquisitive as it might seem, so much as comforting, a reassurance that all is right in the world, the ecosystem is functioning. The circle of season is revolving as it should. The pattern underlying the cycle of life is intact.

Record keeping reveals some curious symmetries, some animals return on the exact same day year after year. The recognition of such patterns, such rhythms in nature, is somehow pleasurable to humans, reminiscent of the pleasure derived from looking at the repeated arabesque in a Persian rug.

It is a rare and beautiful thing, the reward for staying in one place and keeping watch. Travel yields diversity, residence intimacy. Staying in one place while the seasons rotate around you, reveals that pattern inherent in the familiar. It is like an experiment repeated over and over again until some reproducible truth is teased out. Probability becomes an ally that in time reveals the sublime, snares the evanescent.