World Bird Wednesday LXX

A Swan Song

"Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

                                                                                                            Oscar Wilde

    Whose complaining about two weeks of 70 and 80 degree weather in the middle of a Michigan March when our average highs are traditionally only 42? Not I. The brave daffodils are in bloom three weeks early, we are in a hurry, nature and me.
    Burning up with spring fever, the tropical weather has lit the fuse on my inner handyman, already the fruit trees are pruned, I am knee deep into installing a new window in the barn and establishing a new vegetable garden just for kicks. It was time for a break.
    I started getting a little nervous about missing the migration given the remarkable weather and took a early season drive to Fish Point Preserve to see if anything was shaking. Tornado warnings were in effect in the counties North and South of the lower shore of Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay. Large flocks of Tundra swans, Canadian geese, and Trumpeter swans had collected in the stubble fields to avoid the violent skies. I had never seen a Tundra swan migration before! A species that mates for life, and perhaps beyond, the bond was mirrored in the synchronicity of their wing play during the slow descent to earth. Love is literately in the air, a stirring marriage of body and mind. So sublime is their singularity of passion, if one of the pair should come to a premature end the other will prefer to spend the rest of it's days flying solo and unattached; except to the memory of that one lost soul mate.
    The grounded throngs numbered in the thousands, at least that's my guess, about two or three percent of the entire Eastern North American population corralled for the evening by the wicked weather. Breeding pairs of Tundra swans are among the first to arrive in the Arctic, by then they are ready to be alone, defending a breeding territory of nearly a mile square. The non-breeding cygnets remain elsewhere, flock bound in daycare, while the adults are off doing...it!

"The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart."

                                                              Buddha 

There were other targets to entice my attention like a pair of mad dashing Killdeer cutting up overhead.

My first GB heron and Great egret of the year were fishing in the paper dry reed beds of the marsh.

This nervous pair of love sick geese wanted nothing but to be left alone, obviously a first date!

Post script....
                     Yes! Mom received her Ipad and loves her little window on the world. She likes the comfy size. Her abandoned laptop has a stack of mail and clippings on it. It appears Microsoft has lost another customer and Apple can start tracking a new "over ninety" demographic!

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