Christmas Birds

 I'm burdened with a very Audubon fascination with birds. Blessed with an abundance of feathered songbirds that flutter across my yard all year long. Nuthatch, Chickadee, Bluebird, and Jay. There's even a Mockingbird who has mastered both the sound of a golf cart backing up and the Apple Air Tag attached to my Labrador Retrievers.

There are Woodpeckers of all sizes and Mourning Doves, Cardinal, and Carolina Wrens.

Beyond the property line and into the 16 acres of wetlands that follow along Four Mile Creek there are Redtail and Cooper's hawks, Great Horned Owls, and Barred Owls. Black and Turkey Vultures and should I brave the cold today a nesting pair of Bald Eagles just 300 yards from a four lane that drivers race along at better than 60 miles an hour.

Perhaps my fascination is that of Wilbur and Orville Wright watching Osprey soar along the dunes at North Carolina's Outer Banks. I've even spent a weekend hang gliding off Jockey's Ridge when I was young foolish and believed that I was bullet proof. 

But today a long winter walk will have to suffice, and my wife and two Labrador Retrievers are willing companions and an excellent Eagle spotters. We follow the creek and encounter a Great Blue Heron, and then a Kingfisher as a Hawk springs into flight overhead.  

The Hawk banks right then to the left and circles, having found warmth in the afternoon sun and a strong thermal lift. Within a minute he's more than 800 feet above us. 

Robert Redford's line from the film Jeremiah Johnson: "Hawk. Goin' for the Musselshell. Take me a week's ridin', and he'll be there in... hell, he's there already." reminds me of my earth-bound status.

I'm envious of Redford and of the Hawk.

It's Christmas and unusually cold so cold the main pond in our golf course community is mostly frozen over and the Eagles are nowhere to be seen. But we are rewarded with a dozen sea gulls and more than 70 Double Crested Cormorants who have taken refuge in the smaller pond behind my neighbor's house. This pond is spring fed and enjoys a wide southern exposure and the combination of underground water and sunlight heats the pond just enough.

While the Canada Geese will brave the larger near frozen pond the warmth of the smaller pond seems to have attracted the normally solitary Cormorants. 

The afternoon winds down, and our Labs have internal clocks that know it's "time for food" so they give up exploring for a more purposeful trot towards the house. They need no encouragement as the sun begins a rapid descent into darkness.

The Bald Eagles will have to wait for another day, and then as if on some clue from God himself a reminder that it is indeed Christmas appears overhead.

A White Dove winging its way towards the heavens? I think so and a fitting reward for a Christmas walk in the woods. 

100 Years ago, perhaps on a day like this Robert Frost penned the words to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

The final lines are:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

and those words are not lost on me.