Monday, November 30, 2009
We did have an adventure yesterday. Backing up, on Thanksgiving, I made the family go for a walk with me. I’d kinda wanted to go to Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge, but I didn’t realize it until we decided to go to WSU instead. Anyway, the walk around WSU was fun – and there was a bridge for poohsticks – and it was a nice day. Afterwards, we went to Salmon Creek to see if the swans were there – and we saw some flying, but there seemed to be only one or two in the water, and they were so far away we couldn’t really see them.
My daughter noticed that the flying swans had black masks. I guess they do, I think they’re tundra swans.
Anyway, on Sunday I made Bob go with me to Ridgefield, and we went for a walk. They don’t let you walk or bike through the place with the most birds in the winter – because it’s nesting habitat or something, or wintering grounds, or they’re just mean. But we did take a short walk (maybe 2 miles) through another area. We saw the birds in the air. Lots of them. And, much better than that, we heard them. Birds upon birds. It sounded like a huge gathering. Burbling and calling. I thought it might be loons, because there’s a bit of that noise to it. But it was swans. They do NOT sound like trumpets. It’s a much more musical honk than a goose, but it’s a sound – sound – sound – sound. Over and over, and when there are 30 of them (or more, it sounded like hundreds, but we couldn’t see the ones in the water who were doing all the talking, only the occasional few who flew) it goes up and down over and over. Very cool. Hearing animals talk helps one realize that people consitute only a portion of the life of our planet. We tend to forget that.
