Posts Tagged → warbler
A thousand in hand, none in the bag
Several days ago, sitting on a stump on the edge of a brushy power line right of way, a rifle across my knees, looking for a fat doe to tag, my eyes kept involuntarily darting around, tracking small things flitting about. The warming rays of sunlight had apparently caused otherwise dormant insects to become active, and in came a thousand “LBBs”, Little Brown Birds, as Robb sardonically calls them.
I was surrounded by troops of bluebirds, hordes of nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals, a thrush, hairy woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, woody woodpecker woodpeckers, tufted titmouseses, and a dozen other species of colorful songbirds I would not expect to encounter in December. Especially in such profusion. It was literally a bird riot, but without a murder of crows.
A golden wing warbler kept landing on the dead branch my right boot rested on, eyeing me curiously, closer and closer each visit.
Deerless, I nonetheless felt immensely richer for this baptism-by-bird experience. Deep Nature immersion is one of those common themes hunters talk about, probably the main side benefit of hunting. Hunters see stuff you people would never believe.
About twenty years ago I was spring turkey hunting, covered in camo and with a head net, motionless, my back to a white oak along an old woods trail. Morning had just broken, and before I could begin calling, an enormous hawk streaked right past my face and nailed a timber rattler maybe ten feet to my left, hidden in the leaves. Before I could fully register what had happened, the raptor was already energetically pumping its wings and lifting its heavy writhing meal off through the forest to some secluded snacking branch.
Reluctantly beginning my present hunt on foot, I stood up, stretched, and naturally spooked the whole carnival into flying in every direction. Like a fragmentation grenade made of feathers. A lifetime in the woods, and this was my first experience like this. A thousand beautiful little winged gems all around me, literally in the palm of my hand, all peacefully collected in my mind without hurting a soul.
Someday, like tears in rain, these dramatic images in my mind will be lost to me and to the rest of humanity. But, for now and for whomever I would later try to share it with, it was a huge, distinct, memorable event.
“Nothing in the bag on this hunt, but already as successful as it could ever be,” my mind said to itself.