Inland, Dreaming of Waves

Watching

I spent mucho time this weekend birding. Friday night I dragged Todd out to a twilight poorwill walk.

What's a poorwill, some of you may ask? (Others have already hit "next blog.")

It's a stumpy little bird with such a big mouth that people used to think they sucked goats' milk (hence the other name, "goatsuckers"). In the East, they have whipporwills. We have poorwills. Westerners are impatient--we like shorter names.

So it was me, the forty-something, Todd, the thirty-something, and a bunch of old white people. There is no diversity in birding.

We were standing in the Heil Ranch parking lot, and Suzi was using a taped recording of a poorwill to call them in. It took a while for me to hear them. Todd heard them first. He has a musician's ears. A couple of them flew right toward us, looking like brown streaks.

But the best part was when the poorwill would land on a rock and we would mark them with the flashlight. If you're standing right in front of them, you can see their red eyes. I think our flashlights mesmerized them for a second.

There were other sounds in the night, the most noticeable being the nighthawks (relatives of poorwills) flying over and making their buzzy sound. They also make a booming sound when they dive for insects. If somebody hadn't told me what it was, I would have assumed it was a distant cow.

I would have liked to stay up there longer and listen to the night. But instead we went home, and I watched part of Jerry Maguire for the second time in a row. That movie got to me. Something about Cameron Crowe movies--I like every one I see. The first was Say Anything, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.

One birder asked why Swainson's hawks, which go to South America in the winter, return to North America in the summer. Myron said that the migratory return was based on the amount of food available. If they're willing to fly all the way from Argentina to Colorado every spring, it's because Colorado has the right amount of food at the right time (when they're breeding).

posted by Price of Silence @ 8:46 AM