Inexorable Spring

April 24, 2020

Open water everywhere now! I’ve been hearing Canada Geese from my apartment for weeks. With the reduced traffic from COVID-19 lockdowns, I wonder if even people in the cities can hear them. When I lived in Arizona, they flew so high during migration that they looked like swarms of gnats.

Tired of looking at cats on the Internet? Here’s a duck.

There’s actually a female Mallard nearby in this photo, but she’s impossible to see with her camouflage coloring. Though males are more colorful, females are more vocal.

Video: Stan Malcolm

The Mallard is the most common wild duck, ancestor of the domestic white, found throughout the Northern Hemisphere with slight variations in coloring. This male has a lot of white on its body and a reddish belly and might be confused with a Merganser, also common in this area. The female confirms the identification.

“Like a duck to water,” goes the saying. I took this sighting as a message of being in one’s own element, feeling natural, effortless, and in control.

Coming Home to Nest

April 17, 2020

On an electric pole along the Ausable River, between the villages of Jay and Ausable Forks, I saw a pair of nesting ospreys on Wednesday. They’ve picked this particular site before, and the region experienced a half-day planned electricity outage last year as crews tore down the nest after the chicks were grown. Looked on the map and noticed a pond in a housing development, which may be stocked, flows into the river near this site.

Noonmark from Route 73, along Ausable River.

This video, which is amazing, is not the electric pole in question. These birds eat a LOT of fish. They can pull bigger fish than shown here out of the lakes in the Adirondacks.

video: Tatiana Sappheira

I’ve been trying to learn to differentiate Osprey, Pileated Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, and Northern Goshawk calls. Sounds doable when comparing recordings, but in the field it’s a bit more challenging.

video: Kees Vanger
video: mylensview

Crocodilian Rhapsody

April 10, 2020
Child-god Horus standing on crocodile.

As you cozy into your COVID cocoon, snug as a bug in a rug, now’s the time to think about crocodiles. They can’t get you now – you’re inside!

In Ancient Egypt that might not have helped, because crocodiles were kept as pets. They wore jewelry and had special piercings to display their jewelry. Crocodile Body Piercer: there’s a high risk occupation. I wonder if it was considered “essential business” during a fever epidemic. You can bet the Egyptians didn’t close the houses of worship for a little plague. They would be earnestly supplicating the divine temple crocodile Petsuchos – a living, breathing god incarnate – for relief.

River crocodiles are wily hunters who have been observed hunting in tandem. Sometimes they cower with brush on their snouts hoping to lure birds seeking nesting materials. They have good memories and monitor the routines of prey animals. Crocodiles clamp their victims in powerful jaws and hold them underwater until they drown. (Crocs themselves can stay underwater several hours.) Then they dismember the bodies by thrashing in the water until the pieces are small enough to swallow.

Crocodiles lay their eggs on land near water and cover them with grass, mud, or sand to protect from the heat. Then the mother crocodiles rest close by to guard the nest. When the babies are ready to hatch, they mew inside their eggs. As they emerge, the mother carries them in her snout to the water. She will protect them from predators while they are small.

Crocodilians have a lot of patience, and spend much of their lives waiting around for eggs to hatch or a meal to appear. This is a magical quality in much demand at the moment, as we wait for the pandemic to subside. More crocodile magic can be found in my book Divining with Animal Guides.

The Pivoting Point of Change

April 3, 2020

I take a lot of photos this time of year, as the light accelerates the land of ice and snow into a brown and gray world. Most photos show the Adirondacks in summer or autumn or, more rarely, winter; few depict this time of year. These scenes are meaningful to me partly because this is a landscape that will not last. In fact, it will disappear quickly. There is a tremendous amount of energy building, waiting to be released. This is the point of power, the transformation of one thing into another. To me, this what magic is about.