Morning Discoveries

Older Daughter and I took a walk on Saturday morning. It turned into a sunny day in the 50’s, but the day began frostily, especially in the shadier patches of trail.

We stopped to visit the resident raptors at the nature center before starting out, and we found a surprise: a squirrel who’d gotten trapped (temporarily, we hope) in one of the empty rooms.

He disappeared through an interior passageway somehow, and provided he didn’t end up in the hawk cages he probably came out all right. We saw no evidence of tragic demise when we returned on our way home.

It warmed eventually and we enjoyed some beautiful morning vistas.

There were lots of robins about…

…as well as some chickadees. I always think of Blackbeard the pirate when I look into these snappy little eyes.

There were some sobering sights as well. This pile of feathers is all that remains of some kind of ground bird or duck caught unawares.

And a little further on, this lay in the center of the trail.

Of course these are horrible sights and I hesitate to post them. (I did resist photographing the several piles of coyote scat we also saw along this upper meadow where the deer bed down at night.) But anyone who sets out to “discover nature” has to come face to face with them at some point. There is the beautiful, scenic, astonishingly adapted side of nature — and there is the predatory side. When I come upon things like this I can’t help but think of the last moments of whatever animal has become a meal, and of the violence the remains testify to. There are other factors too — the hunger of the predator, satisfied only by cunning and strength and persistence, and these are all part of the picture as well. But I still haven’t found a way to process sights like this easily.