Thursday, July 7, 2005

The crows around here must be blind Shivani often says I rarely notice when she makes dramatic changes in the house, garden or her appearance. Maybe so, but I do notice some things. Last week (June 29, to be exact), I was getting the mail after lunch, when I noticed a black spot in Mueller's field. It looked too big to be a crow, so I got my binoculars and checked it out. I'm always on the lookout for turkeys, deer or other critters in fields, especially when I'm driving. It's a bad habit I got from my dad when my two brothers and I were little. To keep us from fighting and causing him to drive off the road, he assigned each of us a window and ordered us to look for animals. If we saw one and identified it correctly and he could verify it, we earned money. He would give us a penny for most animals, a nickel for some and five bucks for a moose. You can bet we kept our eyes peeled for moose, even though Dad knew his cash was safe, as there were no moose in western NY. When we vacationed in the Adirondacks, however, our hopes and chances rose astronomically. Anyway, this black spot did not move, but it stood out in a mowed field, so I got out a spotting scope and cranked it up to 50X. The spot was definitely alive, as it poked its head out to the side from time to time. I thought perhaps it was a snapping turtle digging a nest. It seemed late in the season for that, but it was stuck in one place and unlikely to be anything else. I checked several times that afternoon, and each time the black spot was still there, but it seemed to have sunk lower to the ground. Now I was sure it was a turtle. The turtle was still there after dinner, so Shivani and I decided to check it out. I paced off the rough yardage as we crossed an alfalfa field and entered recently mowed wheat stubble. We stopped several times to glass the critter, but it never moved. At 50 feet, it still looked like a turtle in the binoculars. Ten steps closer and the mystery was solved when a hen turkey got up and ran to the nearby woods. We walked to her nest, counted 10 eggs, took a few photos and beat a hasty retreat, not wanting to leave too much scent or disturb the eggs. My rough yardage estimate was 550 from our mailbox. Isolated as it is in the middle of wheat stubble, where there is not much to attract a raccoon, skunk or opossum, the nest is probably safe from ambulatory marauders. But crows? Back at our driveway, I watched three crows flying over the field. I couldn't tell where they were in relation to the nest, but it is hard to imagine one flying directly overhead would fail to see the eggs. A crow would certainly see the hen on the nest, but would it remember the spot and come back to check it out when the hen was off feeding? Later that evening, the hen was feeding near the woods edge. In the days since, I have glassed the nest from the road and occasionally seen her on it, although the surrounding vegetation is beginning to obscure her. DNR biologist Ricky Lien thought this was pretty late in the season for a turkey to be on a nest, even if it is a renesting attempt. I'll keep watch on it from a distance and let you know when and if the eggs hatch. BTW, I'm still looking for that moose. Later... 7:07:37 AM    comment []