Archives for December 2008

The 12 Days of Christmas

December 14, 2008 by admin Leave a Comment

“It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go….”
(Meredith Wilson)

Living where there are four distinct seasons is a delightful thing; so many things catch your eye when the light and landscape continually shift in the seamless, effortless and circular annual pattern. Yet, in these final days of fall, when the daylight hours decrease to what will be their smallest number of the natural year, the grey, dismal gloom reaches its opposing peak and, for one who prefers outdoor photography, such a gluttonous serving of morose monotony is discouraging; it is frustrating, and sometimes it is decidedly depressing. In this part of our fair state we tend to have far fewer replete-with-potential-for-magical-images “White Christmases” than might be expected; indeed, it is more common to get a nice dump of snow early in the month and nothing else until January (unless you want to count the stereotypical ice storm that accompanies most New Years Eve celebrations). This often leaves our small corner of the world barren, stark, and rather dirty and forlorn by now and I find I am getting…well, yes, I hate to use the word but I am getting…bored.

‘Tis such a pity, these dank, dreary days, for the hawks are active and, along with the winter contingent of songbirds, very visible. And though it is still good photographic exercise to get out there in the bracing chill (read: finger, toe, and mind-numbing cold) and work at getting decent shots of them, grey after grey day yields little about which to write home. Let’s face it, one can only take so many morosely-lit photographs of squirrels, little birds, and perched hawks. So while out driving the past few days, it occurred to me to give my Self a photographic goal; to go after something a little different in order to rekindle my creative fires and push my limits at the same time.

I’m making a list and I’m checking it twice. Gonna find my way to some very nice seasonal displays that continue to catch my eye in what I’ll refer to as “The 12 Days of Christmas” project. Of course right at this moment my list contains all of 5 such places, but a couple of them have the potential to be spectacular if we’d only get one decent snowfall. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do about the other 7 days, and maybe in the end there won’t be 12 after all, but as I always say, you only fail when you don’t even try.

Returning To The Beginning

December 12, 2008 by admin 2 Comments

“The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.”
(Empedocles)

I was a photographer before I became a wildlife rehabilitator. Yet it was becoming a wildlife rehabilitator that pushed my photography to the prominent level in my life at which it exists today. I suppose you could say that in more than one way it started small, documenting all the tiny, precious lives that came through my door. As they grew up and moved out, it naturally expanded to documenting the rest of the world, with an emphasis on wildlife and nature.

The wildlife rehabilitation is recorded at A Squirrel’s Tale, where such things belong, yet this is a case where I would be remiss to not write about it here. For as it always goes, there has come a point in time where life has come full circle.

But let me start at the beginning.

Nine years ago I found a baby squirrel who ended up not being releaseable. She was also my most beloved familiar, something that was immediately obvious to her but took me time to fully understand. She grew up in front of my camera’s lens; a small, fur-covered ham perfectly at ease in the spotlight, and perfectly comfortable with her role as an ambassador for wildlife and wildlife rehabilitation. When she died of cancer last summer, in one entirely too-small and therefore woefully inadequate word, I was devastated. It is impossible to describe the aching emptiness that still exists inside of me and I suppose my reaction to it was the same as most who have suffered a similar loss – I ignored it. For months I simply avoided her cage, never cleaning it out, really not even looking it at.

I have always known and always trusted that Time is a healer and so it was that as the months have passed it did become easier to bear the dreadful change in routine, the choking silence that replaced Sunny’s merry little grunty-oofing calls and the singular sounds of her climbing around inside her cage that used to emanate from the corner of the dining room. And the fall babies grew up, necessitating the requisite shuffling as they were moved into bigger pens for the winter and thereby bringing a semblance of normalcy back to the house. This left only little George Staples in a big cage that still sat in a temporary spot and the 3 “mini” fox squirrels who needed to be moved into a big cage to overwinter indoors.

In my heart of hearts, I knew what needed to be done next but it took a while to actually force my Self to do it. I cried as I removed Sunny’s long-empty food dish from her cage, then again when I took out her bed. There were more tears as I cleaned her cage thoroughly and set it up for its new resident.

George Staples would be the lucky recipient of Sunny’s “prime location” for the educational animals here and I was both surprised and my intuitive decision confirmed when he took to his new digs without the slightest bit of concern or fuss that is normal for ever-status-quo-preferring squirrels. Indeed, it is as if he belongs there in the same way that Sunny did; he is utterly content and his behaviors are as if this had been his post-weaning home all along.

The adjustment has been harder for me. As George scrambled around the cage exploring that first evening, the comfortingly familiar sound that has gone unheard for 5 and a half months shot through my heart like an arrow. There was a fleeting sense of time folding back upon itself, yet an intellectual pang that such a thing is not possible. I was not going to turn around and see Sunny’s beloved little face grinning at me and while George Staples is a “talker”, it isn’t his way to vocally beg for anything the way that Sunny always did.

I pulled out the camera to record this momentous day in George’s life, and it was then that thoughts about the circle of life began to bubble up. This was how what is now such a large part of my life began 9 years ago and in its inevitable and inexorable way, yet another new cycle begins again.

I can only hope that this next one contains the same enormous quantity of love and joy.

Through Hoops For Hawks

December 6, 2008 by admin 1 Comment

“I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.”
(W. Somerset Maugham)

Sometimes it feels like you can’t win for losing. It’s been a busier-than-usual busy week here so not much time for shooting. The only interesting opportunity found the young Cooper’s hawk tucked inside lots of little branches so it was more stick-picking for me. I’m getting better at it, to be sure, but I wanted something with more in-your-face appeal. Even the furballs hadn’t been around much or doing anything amusing when I had a minute with the camera so by Thursday I was feeling a little antsy.

It was a vacation day and we had plans to drive to Lansing for the monthly meeting of the Natural Resources Commission. I’ve been attending these meetings in my capacity as president of the Michigan Wildlife Rehabilitators Association since we’ve been working closely with the Department of Natural Resources to modify the conservation orders after Chronic Wasting Disease was found here back in August. This was the day the final decision was going to be made about the various options we’d come up with to continue deer rehabilitation.

I worked for a little while and then decided to double-check the meeting agenda so as to know just when we needed to hit the road for the somewhat long drive. Normally our item of concern was reviewed during the afternoon portion of the day-long meeting but to my chagrin I saw that this time it was up for review at 10:00 a.m. It was now 10:07 a.m.

Oops.

I quickly wrote a note to my counterparts at the DNR to apologize for my mix-up and ask them to let me know how it went. Then started making other plans for the rest of the day. It wasn’t long, however, before I got a return message back from one of them, obviously working during the meeting on his Blackberry, letting me know the review went well and the Commission would vote on our matter later in the afternoon after public appearances. And would I be there later?

After all these months of hard work, you bet I was going to be there. So plans were shifted back and the morning continued on. But so, too, continued the speedbumps.

Around midday Bob called for me to step out back. “Listen,” he said. “What do you think that is?”

“A hawk,” I immediately replied.

“No, it sounds more like…like maybe a rabbit,” he said almost questioningly.

I listened some more and yes, the sound could have also been made by a small mammal in some sort of fearful distress. It was not a big sound, but it was rather high-pitched and quite ardent.

Suddenly, the source of the sound made itself known, appearing in the brushy growth surrounding one of the trees on the fence line 2 doors down: a sub-adult Cooper’s hawk, and its almost-plaintive calling continued. Then we heard a second sound, a little farther away, and quickly realized it was in response to the first.

There were 2 Cooper’s hawks over there!

Not one to skip the opportunity to shoot a hawk perched nearly at eye level, I quickly went inside and grabbed Matilda. It would be more stick-picking, but the distances was so comparatively small there was every chance this could be interesting. I carefully set up near our own fence, checked the settings, and pressed the shutter release button.

Nothing.

I pressed the shutter release several more times and then saw the dreaded “EE” error message. I hadn’t accidentally shifted the f-stop ring so looked at the control panel on top of the camera.

I’ll be doggoned if I didn’t have a near-dead battery.

The only thing to do was race inside, drop the battery into the charger, grab the D70, and put the 80-200mm lens on it. A heft to hand-hold and shoot, but the only people who fail are those who don’t try so I raced out the front door and then quickly and quietly went down the street and up a neighbor’s driveway to try and peg a shot.

The angle wasn’t very good with the Coop so deep in the low brush, so I went down to the next house. It was very cold and I felt a little conspicuous standing so near the house of one of the less-friendly neighbors. Apparently there would be no good shot from any other angle except that from within our own yard, and it was almost a relief when the young Coop flew up and out of its brushy hiding place. I returned home and tried to be philosophical about it.

But on top of the earlier meeting time faux pas it smarted. A potentially great shot foiled by my own forgetfulness to charge the camera battery. I told Bob that everything happens for a reason; more to convince me than him, really, and with a small sigh of resignation went back to doing the daily chores. Within what seemed like only minutes, however, Bob called in from the patio to tell me that the young hawk was back! By now, the quick-charging battery had enough juice to pull off some shots so I snatched it up and ran back outside.

Sure enough, there was the young beauty. Slightly less-hidden and knowing I was out there watching it:

But something more was going on. The young hawk was still calling and it was still being answered. It was still looking all around, as if to try and see its responder. Then it started looking down and its wings came out from its body. For a second I thought it was getting ready to take flight, but instead it continued to simply gaze eagerly towards the ground:

Suddenly, there was a soft but clear and insidious “whoosh!” and up flew an adult Cooper’s hawk. It landed on a nearby branch and both hawks began to “cloak” and bob at one another. Then the adult moved closer to the younger hawk and the wing and feather spreading grew enormous, reminding us how closely connected birds remain to their ancient ancestors and bringing to mind the myths of dragons:

The younger hawk was making a lot more noise than the older one, and after a few absolutely amazing minutes the adult Cooper’s hawk flew away. Not long afterwards, the young Coop flew off, too, but it went only as far as the enormous mulberry tree that sits on the lot line we share with our neighbors immediately to our east. I walked around to the front and took aim from their driveway. It was at this time that the day’s gloom began to briefly break up and the light was magical:

Almost thoroughly frozen through by now, I returned to the house. But the young hawk had decided to rest for quite a while and it wasn’t long before I took my half-thawed Self back out onto the patio to get a few more shots.

It hadn’t been apparent until then but the young hawk had managed to eat. As it rested in the frigid gusts of breeze that caused its feathers to ruffle and the entire tree sway slightly, it would occasionally throw its head up and back, mouth wide open, in order to empty its crop. I managed to capture this as it was returning to a normal posture:

It was all so very terribly exciting. I feel almost vindicated for forgetting to recharge the camera battery now; if I hadn’t messed up, I’d have attempted a few shots and we’d likely have just gone back inside and missed the whole awesome show.

And yes, we did make it to Lansing and, though a whirlwind trip, it ended up being very worthwhile.