When I’m out in nature I think of myself as a ‘watcher’ as I try to take in all the small details of my environment (remember Tyler, the biologist in Never Cry Wolf?). But sometimes the watcher becomes the watched. (4 photos)
I often wonder what my life would have been like but for a small quirk of fate 58 years ago.
Late last week we encountered two coyotes walking east along the north side of the Antelope Island Causeway. One was a very light-colored adult and the other a slightly darker and smaller youngster. This summer has been a mighty survival struggle for the island’s coyotes – the vole populations crashed and the extreme heat and drought have taken their toll. These two actually seemed forlorn and destitute in both posture and demeanor as they walked the shore of the causeway. But they did show me several interesting behaviors that I was able to photograph.
I recently received an email from one of my blog readers (thank you so much Ingrid Taylor!) that has caused me to pause for some serious reflection. Ingrid had noticed in one of my posts my mention of the fact that I had raised pigeons as a youngster in southern California. She loves pigeons and when she and her husband rescued and fostered two homing pigeons, “Chauncey and Clive”, they became deeply attached to them. In her email Ingrid asked me if I “retain any similar affections for pigeons” left over from my childhood. Do I ever! When I think back on just how much those few years with my pigeons changed my life for the better I’m simply astounded. When I was in 6th grade and living in Poway, California my friend Dennis (on the right in the photo, that’s me on the left) introduced me to the joys of raising pigeons. We each kept a variety of breeds – homers, tumblers, rollers, fantails, tippets, helmets and others. This is the pigeon coop that I built from scrap lumber and chicken wire at age 11 in 1959. I spent countless hours in that coop with my pigeons – caring for them, watching their behaviors and reading and then re-reading the huge book you see in my hand – “The Pigeon”, by Wendell Mitchell Levi. My parents supported and nurtured my obsession with my birds, largely for a reason I found out years later – that it “kept me out of trouble”. And they were probably right……
