A Terrific Day Afield

Today started with a bit of hope. I hoped to see a Great Horned Owl in an old, familiar place. I left early-ish, walked the Lab for a bit… and got distracted by a deep-winged, long-tailed hawk that flew over fairly high and was out of sight before I had my binoculars out of the bag. Then the two Bald Eagles flew over- sparring over territory I suppose since one flew off and the other flew back towards me.

Then I saw the large bird- flying like a woodpecker and heading into a copse of trees about 300 meters away. We headed in that direction and walked for a bit through the trees. Saw close to a hundred American Robins (first of spring?! I doubt that very much) and a small group of Bohemian Waxwings. There were also Ring-necked Ducks, a Common Goldeneye, Cackling Geese, Canada Geese, Mallards, and Wood Ducks. And Magpies. Too many Magpies not to be up to something. But the large woodpecker-ish bird escaped my detection.

We proceeded towards the possible Owl- now quite a bit later than I had hoped. Then we saw the Rough-legged Hawk…and the Prairie Falcon…and the Dark Morph Red-tailed Hawk.

We did not find the owl, but, again, we found 12-15 Magpies acting suspicious. Scanning every tree with binoculars yielded nothing more than English Sparrows and Black Capped Chickadees.10 minutes of scanning and we were off.

More Roughies. More English sparrows. More Common Goldeneyes. More dog walks. Then home- I hadn’t had breakfast and it was now noon.

Mid-day, I decided to take the Lab up on to Mt. Helena. I’ve been missing the Ambrose and Prairie trails, so I figured I would head out. 2,25 miles and two good falls later, we were home. The trails was decent for 98% of its length. The remaining 2% was split between about 200 feet of mixed icy cover and about 40 feet of plain, solid ice. The ice was located in a couple of hard-to-avoid stretches.

My first fall was somewhat controlled on the way down. I fell softly, but slipped off the trail and slid a couple of meters into a small ravine. No injury, but the Lab was looking at me like I was an imbecile.

Onward.

A few hundred meters later, after carefully avoid several suspicious looking patches of ice on the trail, I fell again when a second dog appeared quickly, engaged my Lab, and both dogs played and jumped around me while I traversed a stretch of icy trail. This fall was harder. As I stood up, I realized both dogs had stopped and both dogs were looking at me like I was an imbecile. I reminded them they have both lower centers of gravity and four legs. The rest of the walk was uneventful.

After an early dinner, I took one last walk at about 6pm- as darkness was taking hold. As I walked, I noticed Mars and Jupiter were high in the sky. I looked toward Mt. Helena and noticed that Venus and another bright ‘Star’ were just about to slip behind the mountain. I did a quick Star Walk check and realized that the ‘star’ just a degree or so away Venus was Saturn.

So, standing on Earth, and being able to quite easily see four other planets was a terrific way to end my day.

Circling back to the deep-winged, long-tailed hawk for a moment. I took the Lab on (yet another) walk about 4:30 and found several magpies scavenging a Canada goose carcass north too far from my earlier sighting of the unidentified hawk. Northern Goshawk, perhaps?

Now it’s a bit after 10pm and my left shoulder is reminding me that I fell somewhat hard today. I will try (again) to see the green comet that is causing such a stir, and then head for bed.

I didn’t find the owl, but I did see a lot of other awe inspiring bits of nature today. That makes for a terrific day afield.