March 21. A cold norther hits after a
westerly sandstorm that uprooted trees. In a gray haze of dust a Red-tailed
Hawk lifts off the dirt track. If I could understand the language of hawks my
ears would burn. He lifted slowly, looking over his shoulder, almost hovering
in the wind, as if wishing to come back to the lee side of the biggest prickly
pear clump. Then - fifty White-necked Ravens, silent. All fight the wind at 20
to 30 feet off the ground, swirling, and stalling out. I would not be surprised
to see one slam into a. fence post,
so awkward do they fly.
March 31. In a clump of prickly pear a
packrat the size of the pad nibbles on one of last year's pads. He is very
plump. A Curve-billed Thrasher sits on one of the clumps and peers at me, then
swoops darkly into a black-barked wolfberry. A Cactus Wren comes unaware to the
clump I'm using for shade. I'm cool and calm, but he's hot and agitated,
jumping up and down between the spines.
Two dove come to roost in yet another clump.
They veer into the shade, their wings whoofling the wind. They bend their necks
this way and that - worried exclusively about what is below them, not to the
side.
It is so sw-et smelling in the last rays of
the sun - the Lesquerella (bladderpod) making my mouth water like toast and
butter does. I see a Cassin's Sparrow pirouette one last time, fluttering
twenty feet up and then falling exhaustedly back to a bare mesquite limb, then
ducking away as he catches the glint of my eyeglasses when I carelessly poke my
head into the sun to watch him.
When a packrat has to leave the protection
of one clump of opuntia to go to another he becomes a travesty of grace. His
overly fat abdomen is held at a 45 degree angle as he bounces over hillocks
of bitterweed. A kangaroo rat using the same style of locomotion is perfect,
but a packrat is absurd. I'm surprised they let themselves be seen in daylight,
but they do aopear to be unassuming and almost domesticated. Either that, or a
packrat is too dumb to know fear of a human.
Lark Buntings are burblers. They don't sing
separately, but together, as one unit. Bobwhites perch on mesquite stumps and
chuckle. The Cassin's Sparrows slowly work their way into the lushness of bush
muhly grass clumps. By now the sun is down and with a little imagination I hear
the evening primroses pop open.
April 13. Last night from 9:30 to 10:30, a
bright red light appeared across the northern sky. The TV announcer says
"northern lights" but it's not like the pulsating northern lights I
saw many times in Washington State. Folklore has it that the appearance of the
aurora borealis in Texas presages a ten-year drought. But this morning, a
spokesman at NASA says the earth is going through a cloud of cosmic dust. The
light was the sun's reflection off the dust miles above the earth.
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