Reflections on Winter into Spring – Out and About in Bear Weather
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| Milkweed Seeds |
Unlike
me, animals don’t check the calendar for the end of winter. They
move out and about in bear weather. When the sun warms the air and
lengthens days, bears wake from hibernation and hunt for food.
Such
a day arrived Wednesday, March 13, a week before the spring equinox. Leaving my winter jacket on its hook, I pulled on a sweater then
grabbed a broom and paper grocery bag. I opened the sliding glass
door and stepped onto the sunny, 58ºF
(14ºC) deck.
Chickadees abandoned the deck for the white pine stand.
Pulling
off the suction cup bird feeder my husband Spence had attached to the
door [ See “Flutterings” January 27, 2019 ], I dumped sunflower
seed dregs into the paper bag.
A
chorus of chickadees squawked in protest.
“It’s
bear weather,” I shouted to them.
Chickadee-dee-dee-dee-dee.
Ignoring
their danger call, I swept mounds of discarded sunflower seed coats
from under the feeder, from behind Spence’s shelving boards, and
from between flower pots. I meticulously transferred every dropped
seed coat to the bag―no whisking the
pile over the deck to the garden for a hungry bear to find.
When
I went inside, a chickadee swooped to the spot on the glass door
where the feeder had hung. The chickadee fluttered, as if treading
air to inspect the area, then darted to the railing. After cocking
its head in humorous angles, the bird made another flight to the
glass door. Still no feeder. Back on the railing, it glared, with
more head cocking, then made a roller coaster flight to the end of
the south garden.
A
cardinal, song sparrow, goldfinch, and four more chickadees repeated the first chickadee’s
where’d-the-feeder-go search.
Their
antics pecked at my conscience. We’d made them dependent on the
feeder. Would they die before finding other food? I bit my lip and
turned my back on the glass door. The birds could eat seeds in the
field or fly to a neighbor’s feeder. I wouldn’t take a chance of
attracting a hungry bear to the deck.
The
next day, birds resumed their vain searches for the feeder.
Distracting myself from their flutterings, I noted signs of
approaching spring.
-
The first day the temperature rose above the fifties, 72ºF (22ºC) in fact.
-
The first day we opened the sliding glass door and bedroom window to warm the log house instead of building a wood stove fire.
-
The first day we saw a robin. When Spence and I left for an appointment with our tax preparer, a fat specimen sang cheer up, cheerily, cheer up from the wood shed roof.
Robin
Maybe
Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction had
come
true.
On
Friday,
only
a pair of cardinals
came
to the deck. The
male perched
on a flower pot and peered up at the empty glass door. His
mate hunted
seeds under
the feeder.
“Go
where the chickadees found food,” I called through the door and
went about my business―washing
laundry, registering
for the
Pennwriters Conference in May, and
driving our
cat Emma
to the vet’s for her
last mobility
check-up.
[See “Wobble, Hobble, Flop” March 3, 2019] Too
exhausted to wait up for Spence, who campaigned
against
lead
poisoning in Cleveland yet
again,
I carried Emma to bed with
me
at
9:00.
She
merrowed at the indignity of being carried―the
last sound I heard
until I shuffled
to the
bathroom at 11:30.
“We
had a visitor.” Spence called from the sofa.
Uh-oh.
Wide
awake, I washed my hands and marched to the great room. “A bear?”
Spence
tossed a handful of peanuts into his mouth and washed them down with
red wine. “I got home at ten fifteen―too
wired to sleep. I sat on the sofa reading news on my laptop.”
He reached down to pet Emma who, awake too, wandered past him on her
way to the food bowl. “At eleven fifteen, I
heard bumping. The bear light [a solar powered motion activated
light] came on. And a medium-sized bear walked up the ramp.”
Medium-sized.
Not the huge black bear
that
licked
the corner of
the feeder a year ago. [See
“Sign
of―Bump,
Thump, Clunk―Winter’s
End” March
12, 2018] How
had I slept through it bumping at the gate on the other side of the
eight-inch thick log wall? “On
its back legs?”
“No.
On all fours. It
paused
at the door and sniffed
around.” Spence put his wine glass down and twirled his hands
around is
if replicating
the geography of
the
bear’s sniffing.
“I wanted a good look at him. I put the laptop
on the table and got up to turn off the reading light. I tripped on
the cord. The laptop
crashed to the floor.”
“Yikes!”
I
hadn’t heard the laptop crash either.
“Did the bear react
to
the noise?”
“The
crash didn’t faze the bear.” As
if sliding his hands across a level surface, Spence
moved
his hands through
the air
in
opposite
directions.
“It
walked to the porch and
bumped around.
Then the
bear walked
back down the ramp.”
The
next morning I hustled
outside
to investigate. Unlike
last year’s visitor, this
year’s
bear
hadn’t left any hair on the gate. It
did leave the gate wide open and a pile of poop in the south garden.
Removing
the bird seed for bear weather was
right.
But had I endangered the birds?
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| Black Bear Left Gate Open |
Temperatures
plummeted
over night. After
wondering about
bird food
for twenty-four hours, I slipped into my boots. “Will
you take a walk with me, Spence? I want to search for food birds
could eat.” I grabbed
my camera
and winter
jacket for
a not so balmy 35ºF
(2ºC)
exploration.
His
feet hit
the floor, and he set
his laptop on the coffee table. I interpreted that as a yes.
Gravel
crunched under our feet on the walk up the driveway. We passed dried
thistles below the kitchen window. All the seeds had vanished―insatiable
goldfinches no doubt. I hoped the burning bush would have berries. It kept berries the longest of all our shrubs.
When we reached the end of the driveway, I stared at bare branches
with tight buds at the tips. “No berries, Spence. What will the
birds eat?”
“You’re
not looking like a bird.”
We
walked through the field. Pine, spruce, and fir cones hung from trees
in the nursery. Several robins hopped and scooted over the grass.
They tilted their heads to listen then stabbed worms which wiggled
out and about through the thawed, warmed soil. Would feeder birds
wrestle seeds from the cones or gobble worms?
Entering
the woods, I spotted a plethora of branches broken by winter storms.
“Maybe the exposed wood has insects for the birds?”
“Definitely.”
As
if to verify Spence’s answer, a downy woodpecker hammered on a tree.
Looping
through the woods to the south garden, I found seeds dangling from
dried milkweed pods and shriveled berries on dried asparagus plants.
After a winter of dining on gourmet sunflower seeds, the insects,
milkweed seeds, and dried asparagus berries didn’t seem adequate to
keep the bird feeder gang alive.
Last
Sunday dawned sunny, 23ºF (-5ºC),
and with a dusting of snow―not weather
encouraging bears to roam. While Spence typed away at Rhino!↑,
a newsletter for RHINO members, chickadees swooped to the deck looking for the feeder. After the
fourth chickadee searched in vane, Spence stopped typing. “Tell me
where the bird feeder is. I’ll put it up for the day. I’ll bring
it in tonight.”
In
his stocking feet, he walked onto the dusting of snow covering the
deck. He pushed the suction cups against the cold glass. The feeder
top slipped. He pushed. The feeder slipped. He pushed until it stayed
in place. Spence attached the bottom, which he’d filled a third
full with seeds.
Within
five minutes, a chickadee landed on the feeder and stabbed a seed.
A
song sparrow hopped on the deck below the feeder. Finding no tossed
seeds, it flew half way to the feeder, flipped backward, and
fluttered back down. On its second try, the sparrow bounced off the
feeder’s perch. After five tries, the sparrow landed on the perch
and pecked at the seeds. Perhaps tired, it flew to a flower pot and
hunted for dropped seeds on top of the potting soil.
As
soon as I hit publish for my “The Stinging Stench” blog,
bear sunshine and Spence beckoned me for a walk along Deer Creek. At
the widest section of the creek, I paused to enjoy the sparkling,
babbling water. The nearly-spring air smelled of greening woods and
fresh mud. Bird songs―robin, cardinal,
red-winged blackbird,
song
sparrow, and chickadee―echoed thorough
the woods. Crows cawed and a downy woodpecker hammered.
Spence
tapped my shoulder and whispered, “Look. An animal’s walking up
the bank by the tree.”
I
peered across the water at a maze of trees. “Where?”
He
pointed. “It went behind the uprooted tree on the bank.”
Movement
drew my eyes to a long slender animal with short legs and a pointy
nose. Covered in glistening reddish-brown fur, the animal hopped onto
the fallen tree and marched in our direction.
“It’s
a mink.” I pulled off the lens cap and focused on the critter.
Spence
chuckled. “A little bear.”
Raising
its head as if it heard our voices over the babbling creek, the
critter scooted to the end of the log and dove into a ditch.
Holding
the camera ready, I waited and waited.
Another tap on my shoulder. “It heard us. It’s hiding in the bank.”
The
out and about mink didn’t reappear, but a day later another critter
did.
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| Barred Owl with Half Open Eyes |
Monday
afternoon, still two days shy of calendar spring, Spence burst
through the front door while I rinsed my bathing suit after my
morning lap swim. In an urgent voice he said, “Bring your camera
and come.”
Jogging
to fetch the camera, I called over my shoulder. “What is it?”
“An
owl by the old hemlock trees.”
Returning,
I grabbed my winter jacket and followed Spence out the door.
“I
drove my tractor past it.” He strode across the field with me at
his side. “Don’t get your hopes up. It might be gone by now.”
In
silence, we crept around the forsythia bush loaded with buds that
promised spring flowers.
A
barred owl perched on branch of a young black walnut tree growing among the
branches of an old hemlock. Brown and white feathers covered the
nearly two foot tall bird. It blinked and focused its mostly closed
black eyes on us.
Looking
through my zoom lens, I studied its gold beak and strong claws. Close
enough.
The
owl swiveled its head to the left, swiveled it to the right, and
returned to the center. Without hooting its famous WHOO WHOO whoo
WHOOOOOO, the owl closed its eyes and went
back to sleep.
Spring
equinox finally arrived, after
much anticipation from the animals and me,
Wednesday at 5:58 p.m.―while
I ripped and twisted pages from an old phone book to
make
fire starter paper. Only
the birds ventured
out
and
about on
the cloudy, cool start of spring.
Spence
and I put the bird
feeder
out
in
the morning and took
the
feeder
in at night all
week.
Unlike
me, animals don’t
check the calendar for the end of winter. They move
out and about in
bear weather. When
the sun warms the air and lengthens days, bears
wake from hibernation and hunt
for food.
 |
| Barred Owl with Closed Eyes |
