A Glimpse of Snowy-White Tail

Nearly all of my encounters with deer have been distant, a quick glimpse of snowy-white tail as the rest of the deer disappears into the brush. Or the slow crawl in a vehicle after a mama and her babies are spotted too-close to the road, picking their way delicately across the street before disappearing into the brush with a flash of snowy-white tail. The common theme is "disappearing into the brush."

This morning on the Greenway I stopped to admire a flock of juncos fluttering, their wings turned translucent, backlit by the morning sun. I must have paused too long, too close; a soft rustle behind me drew my attention to...a quick glimpse of snowy-white tails as a couple of deer disappeared into the brush. I had been fumbling to get the camera to capture the juncos--unzip the backpack, carefully extract the camera, take off the gloves, pop off the lens cap, re-zip the backpack, forget to turn on the power--I didn't bother trying to get a shot. The deer were long gone, and while I was distracted the juncos had moved off to a less-photogenic location. C'est la vie.

I often wonder, after failing to photograph a deer or pheasant, if photography or hunting is the more difficult endeavor? Naturally as a photographer, I conclude photography is the more challenging: not only do you have to point and shoot at the target, you have to have proper focus and lighting as well. The angles have to work out, and the darn critter has to have its face turned properly to avoid shadows while hopefully getting a nice spark of catchlight in their eye. But of course, you can't feed your family with a photograph.

On the way back from my Greenway stroll, I again flushed a couple of deer in the same area. This time I was ready! Or rather, this time the deer were polite enough to turn and stare at me after their initial bolt, instead of moving rapidly out of my range. Mama and a big baby, just a few meters away, watching me watching them for what seemed like several minutes before the youngster grew bored and walked away--joining a third deer I hadn't noticed earlier.

 Mama turned to face me head-on and let out a small snort. I felt a moment of panic--the snort was reminiscent of the noise cartoon bulls make before charging (an unfortunate amount of my visceral understanding of the world came from cartoons; it still lurks below the veneer of proper education)--but, as I later learned, the snort (or "blow") was more a signal of apprehension to other deer rather than a warning to skulking voyeurs like myself. Moments later, she joined her two young and they went on their way and I went on mine.

Since I'm Looking Out the Window Anyway....

I haven’t participated in Project Feederwatch* for the past several years. Since moving to a house in a new subdivision, the yard has been home to a depressingly small variety of birdlife: house sparrows and mourning doves, with some house finches and purple finches hanging around as well. Occasionally a few goldfinches or juncos wander through, and this morning saw an unusually inelegant Coopers hawk bumbling around the ground in the chicken-wire-fenced garden, trying to snatch an unfortunate sparrow that didn’t disappear quickly enough when the predator came into view.

Our previous house was in an older neighborhood, with huge old oak trees and established landscapes. Over an average winter weekend the backyard feeders could host a dozen or more bird species, from titmice and chickadees to three or four different varieties of woodpecker. There were house sparrows and mourning doves there too, but their numbers didn’t dominate the yard. It was fun to log so many different kinds of birds with Project Feederwatch, and note when I saw a record number of species or individuals of a particular species.

Now, at the new house, it was…less fun. Look, 10 house sparrows. No, 12. Now there are 17. Ooh, there’s a junco over in the neighbor’s yard…hop the fence so I can count you! Nope. Where are the house finches? Guess this weekend we saw 17 house sparrows and 3 mourning doves.

I know even boring data is important for science. In fact, boring data is probably incredibly important in establishing baseline data about populations and trends over the course of years or decades. So this year I decided to renew my participation Project Feederwatch for the low, low cost of $18. I will diligently log my house sparrows and mourning doves. No matter how dull the population of the backyard, I won’t cheat and count the crows that sometimes sip water out of the gutter on the front of the house—that’s outside the range of the feeders.

In time, as the neighborhood trees grow and mature, we will see more variety. We will get more cardinals and chickadees—I know they are in the area because I see them on neighborhood walks, just a couple blocks away where the houses are a decade older, the trees a few meters taller, and the birds feel more comfortable than in our wide-open expanses of turfgrass and baby trees. I will be able to watch the change in diversity: what once was dull cornfield, is now dull subdivision, but soon will be a (hopefully) more fully-formed ecosystem.

As the city changes—as houses pop up closer and closer to the Greenway, and streets are planned that will cut through the present-day isolation of the trail—nature changes along with it. Suitable habitat can become a wasteland, and wastelands in turn can become oases for wildlife with a little help from homeowners. Change is inevitable, and one thing we can do as observers is document the effect changes have on the smaller creatures who share our little patch of earth.

If you have a backyard feeder, consider joining Project Feederwatch this winter. It is a fun way to get to know the birds in your area (Cornell Lab offers many resources to help identify common feeder birds), and join a community of enthusiastic bird watchers helping contribute to science.

*Project Feederwatch is a citizen science program by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Participants count birds that come to their backyard feeders over a series of two-day periods, as frequently or infrequently as they like over the winter season.