Inland, Dreaming of Waves

My Obsession

This morning began as a comedy of errors. Todd wanted to go to Buena Vista this weekend to scout locations for a family reunion, but I said, "No, there's a Valmont reservoir birding trip this weekend," so we stayed home.

Now, because Valmont reservoir is part of the Boulder power plant, you can't just waltz in there to bird. You have to go as part of a group and schedule it in advance. So I slept late, of course, and then when I went to buy breakfast at McDonald's on the way, the driver's side window refused to go up because it was only about 5 degrees! So I drove home, got the truck, and made it to the reservoir half an hour late. The parking lot was half full of cars, none of which appeared to belong to a birder.

I briefly considered trying to walk through the turnstile, but decided that breaking into a power plant after 9/11 was not a good idea. Not to mention that I'd be beaten to a pulp by all the old white ladies and gentlemen of the Boulder Bird Club for ruining their annual trip to the reservoir. So instead I called the power plant on the handy phone attached to the turnstile, and the very nice man who answered knew nothing about a birding trip. I was sure they had already gone inside, but I couldn't see any sign of a group of birders in the fog. I left.

I did my recycling and bought some bird food. I went to Walden Ponds to check out the birds there, and was so cold after 5 minutes that I left. Not getting into the reservoir was beginning to seem like a good thing because I don't think I would have been able to leave early if I'd gotten hypothermia. When I called information at 10 o'clock, it had warmed up to 12 degrees.

To cap off the morning, I went to Stearns Lake in Broomfield. As I was sitting all toasty warm in my truck, looking at the lake with its frozen white edges and a dark circle of open water in the center, several hundred Canada geese flew in. Now, Canada geese are not exactly a rare sight in the Denver area (they were rare at one point, so people started programs to increase their numbers, and the programs succeeded beyond anyone's dreams).

The sight of all those birds screeching their way into that circle of water was magical. And then, I spotted a harrier (a marsh hawk) doing its harrier thing. For you non-birders out there, that means it was flying just over the top of the cattails, tipping one wing and then another toward the ground, and every so often folding up its wings to pounce on some unfortunate rodent in the grass. I watched it for a long time. The sun was out, silhouetting the frost on the trees. By that point, I didn't mind missing the reservoir trip.

Some birders talk about "trash birds" (starlings house sparrows), but I try not to do that. Even the most common bird can remind us of the astonishment of creation.

posted by Price of Silence @ 11:43 AM