A Gallon of Sunflower

Early morning, I take an empty milk gallon carton I’d cut the bottom out of and fill it with sunflower seeds.  A cup bearer with a crude vessel, I head off around the garage and down into the back yard.  Once I come into my office window’s view, I begin tossing seeds around on the lawn area, first down below, and then back up towards my window.  I can hear the birds and the squirrels in the bush talking amidst themselves about this strange development, as I walk back to the front door, with a gallon of sunflower seeds now deposited on the lawn. 

Predictably, squirrels and sparrows and cardinals and blue jays as well as a few chipmunks, are all beginning to scour the lawn, by the time I’m back up at my desk.  There is far more available than any one creature could consume, but they still bicker chase each other away from their petty hoards.  And even these efforts are half-hearted because there is such a bounty.   Their activity also attracts the next rung of the food chain.  There are foxes and fishers in the woods, owls in the trees and hawks sailing around overhead.  There is nothing half-hearted about what happens once someone on the lawn has indicated that there is danger afoot:  In that case, everyone clears the open ground in a flash, with chipmunks in bushes and squirrels up trees.  Every time it happens, I take a glance upward to see if there is a hawk in the sky.  Usually, though it seems to be just a false alarm and they slowly return to what they’d been doing.  It is impossible for any of them to relax when they eat.  Peril is always close at hand. 

We took a walk later in the day, down to the trail.  The big barred owl that was calling the other day, cut off to the left, through the woods, as we made our way down the yard.  I took my binoculars with me for the walk and tried to find him.  Remarkable how he can fly so capably with his broad wings through the dense winter brush.  We cut around to the trail and when we did he flew off again.  But by now he was too far and I could only see his shape in the distance.  Later, down on the rail trail, fifty yards off in the opposite direction, what must have been a different owl, (the significant other?) flew off to the north west.  Once again, I only got a glimpse. 

At around 5:30PM, the sun was setting and my sister and my nephew stopped by.  We were eating cheese and humous in the living room when I told everyone to “shhh” and stretched over to turn off the music.  “There he is.  Can you hear him?”   Four staccato hoots followed by five.  Over and over.  I looked out and the twilight on the lawn.  No owl within site and certainly no little critters anywhere to be seen, down on the lawn. 

Monday 02/17/20