The bald eagle

The bald eagle is not bald at all. I wonder how they came up with this misnomer. A better name would be “whitehead eagle”, but I guess it’s too late now.

We saw these immense birds in the fall. They seemed unapproachable then, and always kept their distance.

They returned early in the spring, before the ice was gone. Food was scarce and the bald eagles started to circle over Tapawingo Lodge. Their calls were a long thin shriek that sounded desperate. It’s not easy on an empty belly.

We once counted eleven bald eagles at the same time. The ice was still thick on Bistcho Lake, no open water for the eagles to catch fish. It was a bit strange. Why did they return to the Canadian north so early?

The ice melted in May, almost two months after the first bald eagles arrived. The bald eagles once again kept their distance, and regained their pride and posture.

The black-capped chickadee

We had another cold front before Easter ─ windy for a change ─ and the wind chill went to the bones. The wind churned up particles and made the snow drift like smoke over Bistcho Lake.

I was driving the snowmobile from Indian Cabins and back to Tapawingo. I was driving without goggles and my eyes turned red and painful.

Towards the evening the row of pines shook wild and dark. We could hear branches break and fall.

The next day the wind had calmed, but it was even colder. We’d noticed the black-capped chickadee before, even down to ÷50˚C, but this morning was different. I kept staring at this little bird, this tiny little ball of feathers. I kept staring.

The wolf-bird

The raven has been called the wolf-bird, because of its tight connection to wolves. The ravens will enter the scene only a few minutes after the wolves have succeeded with a kill. The ravens follow the wolves, but could it also be the other way around?

Of course, the wolves will observe ravens in the air, circling around a carcass. But I’m thinking about something else. I’m thinking about an active role, a tell and show; a raven’s clue for the wolf to follow.

The ravens know what’s going on. It’s an overview in everything they do. The ravens also know what they would like to eat, but the wolves have to kill it first (unless the humans dump it).

I once tried a sound decoy on the ravens. They were gathered in the trees maybe a hundred meter away. I hid in the bushes and started the wild death-cry of the snowshoe hare.

Within seconds I had a black ball of circling ravens above me. The intensity of the ravens took me by surprise.

An hour later I tried again, but this time I observed the ravens through the binoculars. Not one of the ravens got fooled. They just sat in the trees, and if anything they reacted with contempt to my little act. But it did look like they gave each other some sidelong glances.

The owls

One of the most common sounds in the dark, during our stay at Tapawingo, was the calls of the great horned owl. It sounded something like “hoho hoo-hoo”, and then it would be quiet for maybe 10-20 seconds, before the call was repeated.

The great horned owl is a big hunter, up to 1.5 meter wingspan, and highly skilled (as all the owls). I once saw a great horned owl early in the dusk; it just swept from the tree and down the cut line in front of me. The wings were almost touching the snow. It was remarkable how this huge bird could fly totally silent.

We never got a good picture of the great horned owl, and I was getting a bit obsessed, since we often could hear the calling at dawn. The first times I dressed quickly, but later I stopped, thinking “damn it, the bird will be gone anyway,” and undressed. The call would continue. Hoho hoo-hoo. I couldn’t listen to this for long. I dressed up again, grabbed the camera, and went out. The bird was gone.

It sounded like a couple was going to nest close by the cabin. We even found the tree. The owls swallow their smaller prey whole, and we could see the regurgitated nuggets of bone and fur, but up in the dense pine there was nothing.

Nina discovered the boreal owl; it was just sitting in the snow, like it was sick or injured. This is a small owl, rarely seen. It seemed to accept that I was crawling around in the snow for a good shot. But the eyes flared up in panic when our cat entered the scene. We managed to hold the cat, though.

A couple of hours later the boreal owl was gone. We couldn’t see any animal tracks around, and hoped the owl got better and flew away.

The owls are mysterious, and subjected to at lot of myths in medieval Europe. We once photographed the horned owl from a great distance, it didn’t turn out well, but after enlarging the picture we could see how the owl seemed to be without a head. It was flying headless. This, of course, has been taken for an incarnation of the dead: “There is a decapitated man flying in our yard!” They didn’t need horror movies in those days.

If eyes could kill. We saw this great grey owl on our way to High Level. There were several along the road.

Ravens flying

The ravens started mating in April, and it turned out they chose Tapawingo and the surroundings as mating grounds. Or battle field. It may have had something to do with the fact that we dumped eight barrels of discarded fish, meant for wolf bait.

The snow was getting granular and sluggish as brown sugar. We started to see dark holes and open channels on the ice at Bistcho Lake, but we used the snowmobile anyway. The barrels were heavy. They also had a poignant smell, which of course would attract black bears, unless we could get it away from the cabins pretty quick.

The ravens loved the fish. And they had more time fighting each other. The males would sometimes interlock their talons and swirl to the ground. But they would always release the grip before touch down.

The raven has one eye for genes and nature, and one eye for himself.

The heron

Down Illinois River we started to see the herons, with their eyes focused on the water below. The bird looks like it’s carved out from bleached sun-dried wood.

If compared to humans the heron is like a lanky academic in a grey suit. You don’t like him in a personal way, but have to respect that he’s sharp and serious in his field.

The herons seemed to have divided the river into exact portions among themselves. We passed them at regular intervals. Some of them were still as statues. Others got nervous and started to move their long thin beak, it was just a short movement back and forth, like a person who suddenly gets a whiff of something disgusting.

They always fled downstream and landed on the bank again. The situation would repeat as we came closer.

In Kentucky Lake and further down the Tenn-Tom Waterway, when it was getting really cold in November, the herons looked even more introvert.

The heron likes solitude. If disturbed in the dark he would scream like it was the worst thing ever.

Pelicans

Brown pelicans always remind me about men working. The pelicans are like most fathers used to be; silent, distant, weared out after hard manual labour. The brown pelicans never make any sound, exept when crash landing in the sea. They are clumsy and heavy.

The pelicans often fly in teams, without any fuss. They never seem to get upset. It's like everybody knows what the others are doing.

In the Mississippi, or in the lakes, we saw white pelicans with some grace, allthough similar in many other ways. But down in Mobile harbour the pelicans were all brown.

The equality among the boats must be the tug boat. And the brown pelican also liked to sit on the tug boats low gunwales, waiting for work. Other pelicans were gliding like convoys in the fog.

In Grand Isle we had brown pelicans sitting on the wooden poles. These birds seemed old and sun bleached, with a vague resemblance to very old men. They could sit for hours beside our boat, like they were meditating, or wasted. They never seemed to be eating. The long wooden beak was resting down against the curve of the neck. The back of the head was bony and had just a couple of white fluffy feathers.

Corvus Corax

At Bistcho Lake we sometimes saw a young raven along the shoreline. It was easily scared and took off for nothing.
 
We've seen ravens around dumpsters back in High Level; they are all the same. We've seen drunk natives crossing the parking lot, leaning forward in the wind.

How come that we so often are better off with nothing?


I once sat fishing on a slanting plastic chair, out on the ice. I was hung over and almost asleep. The raven came from behind. I only heard the wings, the speed of the dive; then it started climbing again, gaining distance and height. I didn't move. Maybe the raven thought I was dead. For a while it seemed like the young raven was turning around for another dive, but suddenly it sensed danger and got scared away.

Annie Dillard once wrote in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and I'm just quoting after memory: "In nature it's not so much about seeing, but to sense that you are being seen". Or maybe my memory fails me.

Some days later I was walking along the row of pines. I had this strong feeling of being followed. The young raven was coming from behind again, and it got really startled when I suddenly turned around. The black shape was cawing harshly and irritated as it disappeared into the forest, into the darkness between the trees.

Corvus Corax; it sounds like a raven saying its own name.




 

About the eyes

A street artist will begin with the eyes, and most people (who can't draw a portrait) will usually start with the eyes. People who can't write will begin their descriptions with the eyes. Eyes are important in all kinds of lifeless art. It's like an automatic approach.

A bird will also start with the eyes. It's been reported that shipwrecked sailors sometimes let go of their life jacket. They would rather drown right away, than wait for a doubtful chance of rescue, while their eyes get picked out by hungry sea birds.

We saw this dead fish at the beach in Grand Isle, south of New Orleans; it reminded me about how the ravens acted at Bistcho Lake, in northern Canada. The ravens always started with the eyes, even though the fish was lying on the ice in ÷40˚C, dead and stiff, as an unwanted by-catch by the fishermen.

But the ravens have come a long way. They are smart. Still, they pick out the eyes in a rather methodical manner. Or religious manner. The picture hasn't left me; all the fish with empty eye sockets, and the ravens in the distant trees, sort of looking away.

The nothingness of ravens

Spending a winter in the Canadian wilderness was like crossing an ocean. Weeks passed with solitude. But the ravens were always around, keeping an eye on things.

In the autumn they walked outside our cabin in the rain, controlling squirrels and men; they could walk or jump until their talons collected so much mud that it looked like shoes.

In the spring, during the mating season, they barked like dogs, or made strange imploding sounds, like an iron rod in water; a deep guttural sound and then suddenly nothing.

We often had a raven outside our window, sort of just giving us glances, as if we were of no interest. It used to scratch the beak towards the branch, then fly away.

Barry Lopez once wrote about the raven, in Desert Notes: "(...) he will open his mouth as if to say something. Then he will look the other way and say nothing."

In the autumn, before the snow, we had an old raven walking between the sheds at Tapawingo, it was a big male, and he was dying. We'd seen this raven before; heavy in the air, always scaring the smaller ravens away. Now they came back at him. He was black and shiny, almost blue in the sun, and always slipping towards death.

We had ravens around the cabin every morning, waiting for something to happen, stirring up some commotion, getting even. But they never seemed to like us out in the primeval forest; we were too noisy in the impervious thicket. We could sometimes see the ravens just hanging motionless in the wind, looking down, and the next moment it was just snow, drifting like smoke over the pines.

Barry Lopez also wrote: "The raven is cautious, but he is thorough. He will sense your peaceful intentions. Let him have the first word. Be careful: he will tell you he knows nothing."

Birds and guilt

Anchored close to Ashbrigde's Bay Park in Toronto, I noticed a bright red flickering among the foliage. Not even considering shoes, I grabbed the camera, rowed ashore and felt the moisture soak through as I followed the red bird into the park. I circled the trees in my wet socks, searching for my bird, and sensed people in my peripheral vision, slowing down in their tracks, wondering.

That's when I somewhat realized that I was hooked on birds. Nina seemed to calmly add another fixation to my monomania.

This bright red bird is a Northern Cardinal, a rather common bird around parks and gardens in North-America. I didn't know that. I didn't know the Common Crackle either, or all the different warblers. I mistook a lot of birds for major discoveries.

How come I turned into a birder? I've always considered it a rather lame hobby. I've found that kind of stalking unwise, maybe even unworthy. And I've thought I could sense an undercurrent of compensation, of guilt, as birders are often men, who once were boys with slingshots and air guns. The bigger the lenses, the bigger the guilt.

Common Crackle, female

Some sort of Warbler, male