a profundity of beasts

My late father had a vision for the six and a half acres of land here in south-central Pennsylvania - to make it a safe haven for all sorts of flying and crawling and bounding beasts. While the township will not allow the front of the property to become wild, the rear of the property, which receives but minimal mowing, is slowly fulfilling his dream.

Over the past months, I have been witness to a wide variety of beasts moving through or living on our land. The most recent and exciting addition is a Barred Owl, or hoot owl, who has made her nest somewhere on the northern slope of this small valley. She is a fine bird, wide in wing and broad in head, who, I suspect, due to the fact that she is hunting during the day, is raising a brood of chicks in one of the many rotting trees. Hopefully the large, snow-white feral cat that lives in the barn does not try to raid her nest or otherwise scare her off.
I found the owl just yesterday fishing in the stream in broad daylight. Startled by my appearance, she flew silently to an adjacent sapling, where she eyed me with bland curiosity as I attempted to pole-vault over the stream and proceeded to fall ten feet into the gravel stream bed. Aside from a few cuts on my right elbow, I am unharmed.

Last week, while walking to the barn to fire up the Kubota tractor for a bit of mowing, I discovered a large snapping turtle sunning in the grass near the culvert. Wholly indifferent to my presence, the turtle, a fine specimen with a foot-long shell wainscoted by dried algae, moved not an inch when the tractor lumbered past five feet from its head. I was shocked to hear of the annual local tradition of making turtle soup out of these splendid creatures, and will be vigilant for anyone attempting to capture this snapper on our land.

Last year, I startled a large whooping crane fishing in the culvert's spill area, a pool not five feet wide and two deep. the bird rose on its grey and white wings, flying east toward Codorus Park, her long spindly legs tucked deep into her belly. In the same spot, the rushing current escaping the culvert, I found last week a pair of mating Mallard ducks who flew a dozen yards downstream, their wings clipping the overhanging bushes as they planed in for a landing in the shallow stream.

A woodpecker has been dismantling the rotting maple near the lane, eying me suspiciously when I walk out onto the front porch to see what all the knocking was about. Since her departure for trees unknown, finches have taken over the nesting hole she bored into the soft wood. Robins hop across the broad front lawn, pecking at the soil and throwing down the bugs and worms they find there. Brilliant cardinals flash bright red in the trees. A murder of crows, perhaps ten in number, harass the striped-tailed hawks and other birds of prey that circle the valley in search of food, pecking in flight at their feet.
Either the crows have moved on, or they do not mind the presence of the massive buzzard that wheels in the valley's updrafts, so large that when it passes overhead I mistake its shadow for a passing airplane.

These and many other, smaller, but no less worthy beasts live or eat in this valley. As I discover them, I will here mark their passage.

Ultima Ratio Regum. JP