Grackles

October 23, 2022

Sunrise, 10/15/2022

It was a beautiful morning. It was relatively still and the temperature had dropped into the 30s, colder than the lake. Fog was rising from the lake into the light of the first rays of the sun which had just peeked over the horizon. Though the atmosphere was beautiful and settled, she was not feeling settled this morning.

It happened a lot, this sense of uneasiness. She wondered sometimes if people thought she was some kind of nature fairy, always at peace with her beautiful surrounds. The truth was much different – she came here every day because it helped to settle the uneasiness inside. Today she stood on the rocks and watched the fog rise trying to imagine the uneasiness inside her rising and dissipating into the air with as much ease.

Across the lake she could see a large raft of American coots, a few hundred she guessed. She could recognize the coots from a distance with their way of swimming in a back-and-forth, almost bouncy movement while also moving as one big unit. The warm, moist air rising from the lake blurred whatever was sitting on the lake such that it was hard to see the birds clearly. These “thermals” as she had learned to call them made it hard for bird ID but then again that was never her main purpose here.

As she turned, she noticed a commotion behind her, just around the edge of the embankment. With the lake so low, thanks to an ongoing drought, she was 10 feet out into what was usually lake and could easily walk around the corner to see what was going on in the ever-shrinking cove. When she reached the corner she saw a large flock of blackbirds with shiny blue-black heads and all black bodies – common grackles.

She guessed there might be a hundred or so grackles noisily clambering through the trees and another couple dozen on the ground digging around in the leaves and drinking from the water. As she watched, more grackles streamed in over her head, from where she didn’t know. Every once in a while, for no reason she could discern, they would all suddenly fly up from the ground and scramble into the trees further from the water. Five or ten minutes later they would come back and resume their noisy foraging.

More grackles streamed in and slowly the grackles made their way north along the water’s edge. She kept trying to get a decent photo when they all took off but without any warning and with so much movement coupled with a “noisy” background of shrubs, most of the photos weren’t worth keeping. Still, it was fun to watch them and try to capture something worth sharing.

As the grackles moved away, she said a prayer of gratitude for the blessing of calm. Though the grackles were busy and noisy, focusing her attention on them through her lens let the uneasiness inside disappear for a while. Mindfulness was easy when something fully grabbed her attention – the rest of the time she had to work at it. She hoped one day she’d be able to be as calm as she was behind the lens without the use of the camera.

The all brown birds are female common grackles.

Hello friends! I hope this Sunday morning finds you well. I’m writing this on Friday and then planning to go get my Covid booster and flu shot and settle in to do a lot of resting this weekend. Who knows, maybe this time they will go easier but either way having some protection is better than none. I’m still holding out a lot of hope for the nasal vaccines and hoping they are coming soon.

Meanwhile migration continues, though it has seemed much slower than years past. I do wonder how the drought is affecting migration patterns. Are the birds going around to areas that have better food, water and mud flats? It seems logical they might. The lake is the lowest I can remember and there are warning signs letting boaters know the water is dangerously low.

Regardless, we do have birds migrating through! One of my favorite birds, the American Avocet, gave me a nice flyby the other day. There were four of them and they found a place to land way out in the lake where it looked like water but their feet were clearly on the ground. Still, nice of them to at least say hello!

American avocet

This week we had record lows (nearly down to 20F, I had to break out the mittens and long coat!) and this weekend we will have near-record highs (mid-80s!). There’s a chance of rain early next week. I did my little rain-prayer-dance this morning because we need the rain so badly. It feels like mid-winter dry right now and it’s only October.

This year “dry” is passing for “fall colors

Meanwhile every-birdy looks better in fall colors - even if our main fall color is “dry” - as evidenced by these fine feathered friends:

Savannah sparrow

Blue jay

Blue jays travel through in larger packs during migration, a few dozen at at time. The robins are starting to arrive for the winter roost too, though so far the numbers seem small.

Fog produces it’s own kind of spectacular photo opportunities too:

Killdeer flying past me in the fog

Blue heron taking off in the fog as it’s lit up by the sunrise

Be well friends. Take good care of your hearts, minds and bodies. Stop to watch whatever is happening where you are. May it be your calm in a world of crazy.