What's good for the goose …

Snow geese and Canada geese (background) gather in a field  left uncovered by spring near Pioneer Peak

With overnight snow in the forecast for the next few days, winter still clings to the landscape like a puppy who won't let go of the rope.  But winter is losing as temperatures rise and more of those spring signs show up daily.  Although the flights must have been in progress, I hadn’t noticed a wedge of geese until maybe a week ago.

Snow geese begin to encroach into Canada territory.

Then driving out of town yesterday I noticed a line of cars parked along the roadside just near the farm right at the edge of the residential area.

White spots against the sandy tan background of a fallow field had drawn the attention of passersby and I pulled over as well.  Snow geese and Canada geese were picking their way through the field very close to the road, much to the delight of folks who stopped.

I made the photograph at the tip with my iPhone, took a few more and just before I left I spotted a fellow with his daughter of 3 or 4 attempting to take one of those long-armed self portraits of the two of them so I offered to take one for them with their camera.  I hope it came out, glare was so bad it was difficult to see on their phone's screen.

Diversity in the goose world.  I only saw one little dust up.

Upon waking today I looked at the photo on my facebook page and decided it was too fuzzy (camera shake in an old guy's hands) and with the sun coming out wrestled with the idea of going back with a real camera, wrestled at least until I realized there would be no more sleep until I did.

Of course, when I reached the field the geese had moved way back from the road and the closest approach (it is private land with a healthy fence around it) would not have the mountain in the background.  Still  a sharp picture was worth making and I did.

A flight of geese approaches the field.

As I was preparing to leave I drove back to where I had taken the picture the previous day, thinking white spots way off in the field with the mountain in sunlight might still make a good photo.  But  before I could get the car in position and get out, all together the snow geese rose from the field, formed a loosely organized wedge and flew off toward the mountain. They didn't circle like birds will do when they are disturbed by something. looking to come back and land once it's safe. Those birds were going somewhere. Oddly, none of the Canada geese flew way, but continued pecking about in the field. What trigger had signaled all the white geese to take off in the same direction at the same time?  Obviously nothing had frightened them into flight or all the geese would have taken off.  But something basic had sparked all the snow geese to rise at once and leave while their darker cousins couldn't have cared less.

By the time I recovered from that thought process enough to remember the camera in my hands, the snow geese had disappeared into the white of the mountain background leaving me and maybe a Canada goose or two to wonder what the heck caused that.

Snow geese not long before the big takeoff.

Fred

Fred and his mate

The Canada goose who hangs out near the off ramp to the blue highway has been mentioned several times on this blog.  He finally showed up for a photo op.  One of those two geese is Fred, the other, most likely his mate for life. The photo is so shaky and out of focus it almost hurts the eyes, a function of operator error in getting an iPhone to focus,  Perhaps a better photo will happen one of these days.  In the meantime there is at least proof of a Canada goose or two by the roadside.

If this is May, it must be Alaska

Snow in the weather forecast keeps getting pushed back a day or two, and predicted in lesser amounts and at higher elevations.  If the trend continues for another two weeks or so it might never show up.  There have been May snowfalls, one with flakes so big they looked like pillows, but the longer it goes, the less chance for it to happen.  Difficult to believe it could be threatening out there someplace given it is above 50 degrees here at local noon with sun shining out of a clear sky onto the garden and the growing plants in the windows.

On the old commuter trail yesterday, two Canada geese walked the road side in the same place they have been for the past five or six springs.  The pond for swans was empty for the third year after that fellow shot them on another lake. Unpleasant. For humor, a car passed me weaving a little and when it pulled ahead a bumper sticker became visible with the words "Hang up: and one of the those circles with a line through it over the image of a cell phone.  The silhouette of the person in the driver's seat showed he obviously had a cell phone to his ear.  Do as I say, I guess, not as I do.

Endured the guilt of going to a job interview on May Day after intending to go Occupy that day in the Town Square Park.  I hauled along different clothes so I could change out of my suit before I stepped out to get my fair share of abuse but in driving by I saw only a dozen or so people and small cadres of police standing around.  It just didn't seem worth the effort plus it was cold and windy all of which seemed like enough of an excuse and I trucked on home.

In an email received another prop about writing and that almost made up for the agonizing issues earlier plus it sent me back to work today and gave up two good hours of progress.  I only need a few more to finish this and then descend once more into the depths of the major project, one I feel can be sustained much easier than this one.

Meanwhile the yard looks a little better every day as a bit more progress is made.

Olfactory surprise

According to the directions that came with the fancy disposable greenhouse I bought by accident, once the plants have good leaves you cut back the weaker ones in each little cell. This is the one I put the peas in. So, I did that today and it was a bit of a surprise when after i had cut a few I caught the very distinct scent of fresh peas. Anyone who has ever shucked peas or had some garden fresh knows that scent, it is unmistakable. Maybe that is a good sign that in time there may be whole peas. At least it confirms the seeds I bought really are for peas. Now those plants can join the petunias outside during the day for the hardening process.

On other notes: A Canada goose was strolling along the main highway not far from where Fred used to hang out. Maybe he's back. Overhead Arctic terns were hovering on the Knik River tidal marshes. They may be mating or may be past it. Without a longer observation it's difficult to tell. They have such an interesting way of courting. Female will stand on a high spot, a piling or in this case electrical wires. Males come to her and hover in front of her the way terns can, flapping their wings rapidly. In their beaks they hold small fish in offering. I have seen a female actually refuse this offering by lifting her beak and turning to the side in a rejection that can only be called haughty. One time and too many beers ago we sat on the bow of the boat scoring the dives the terns made into the harbor for prey, giving them points from 1 to 10 the way an Olympic diving judge might. The Russian judge always low-balled them.

The pond is totally free of ice now and still no swans on it. It would seem the ones that fellow shot last summer belonged on this pond. What a despicable act.

The porcupine blossoming hasn't happened yet, and for some reason the moon didn't show last night on the whole drive home despite a clear sky with daylight and rose-colored horizon well after midnight. But, on the way to work today a porcupine beside the road.

And one more thing. Just to shatter the pastoral atmosphere. This started today, too. I love the sound of a high-rpm drag car running the quarter mile on a Sunday afternoon.

Green Day, plus two or three

So, after more careful watching than ever before, it happened on a day I didn't drive the road, or two days after either. So, here's a picture from two days late. Unfortunately my continual choice of doing things on the shaded north side of things messed me up again and that spot I chose to illustrate green day is about the last along the road to turn. If you look closely there are buds on the twigs. More green farther down the road. Last Wednesday when I went to work all those trees were still brown. Saturday green. Some spring events are still to come, though. For one, the bloom of porcupines has yet to occur, haven't seen a one. Second, while the pond is now open, no sign of swans yet either. But, I did see that Canada goose Fred standing by the roadside Saturday. He has a bright yellow tagging marker around his neck now. It would be interesting to learn where he obtained his fancy new neckwear. So spring is progressing but not quite there yet and I am now the proud owner of a $7 "nearly wild" rose bush that I put out during the day and bring in every night until it's safe to plant for good. The strawberry plant from last year has growth coming from one of its stringers and the lilac is showing new growth despite providing a meal for a moose. This weekend will bring the trip to the greenhouse to fill out the garden. I expect to be housebound and have wealth of free time next week and then go at it full tilt. And when I put the rose bush out this morning -- two robins.

Reflections from an off-hours commute

At first the idea of commuting from the Knik River Valley to a night job in Anchorage seemed daunting and the first few trips all but interminable. But, over time the world along the highway began to unfold and that drive has now become one of the more enjoyable parts to any day.

Particularly at this time of year with light in both directions, almost every day presents some interesting aspect of nature, highlighting the entire trip. Some mornings it might only be the magpies patrolling the shoulders in their relentless foraging for the previous night's inevitable road kill. On another, it was the mother moose trotting along the bike path next to the Fort Richardson fence leading two calves that couldn't have been more than a few days old. That one was even more intriguing, given the two bicyclists passed heading out of town around a curve from the oncoming moose. No easy stopping point presented itself to afford a view of the impending drama so it unfolded without spectators. Nothing showed up in the next day's news so they must have passed without injury to anyone involved.

For a while this spring Fred the Canada goose greeted drivers on the off ramp to the Old Glenn Highway every morning. They mate for life and maybe his mate had been hit by a car and he was waiting there for her return. Then he disappeared for a few days raising concerns he had met the same fate. Imagine the pleasant surprise when one day he was back, only this time with another adult and a bunch of little ones scurrying around their legs.

Every spring, in late May a bloom of porcupines appears along the Old Glenn, like a hatch of mosquitoes after a rain. Porcupines are slow and apparently dumb. believing their quills will protect them even from oncoming cars, They lumber across the highway or stand on the side watching. Occasionally those magpies find one that didn't make it all the way across the blacktop.

A muskeg pond, maybe a slack slough off the Knik River, entertains swans in the spring and fall, One pair sticks around but disappears deeper into the maze of ponds and sloughs, perhaps to nest and raise a young one or two over the summer. Last fall nine of them waited on the pond for several days anticipating the call to head south.

An eagle often peruses the offerings of the Knik River as it flows past his perch in a dead cottonwood just west of the bridge and terns, nature's perfect fliers, hover over iris-bordered ponds and puddles in the flats north of Eklutna.

One evening the Chugach mountains turned an incredibly dark shade of purple, almost black, alpenglow under a heavily overcast sky. On another night a full moon rose over those same mountains directly above the lighted cross on a church near Peters Creek, creating stirrings from a long suppressed spiritual training.

There is always hope for the exotic, too. No bear has poked its nose out of the roadside brush so far, but one dusky evening, a lynx stood on the shoulder warily watching as cars pass.

Sunday nights Anchorage returns from wherever people have been playing out there in Alaska, sporting their toys of choice: the Subarus with their skis or kayaks and bicycles; pickups towing trailers with snowmachines or four-wheelers and motorcycles, or the occasional boat. Now and then a trailer passes with a machine of some sort and a packed sled or trailer telling you this is someone who does more than simply ride around, but packs in to a remote haven somewhere. About the funniest was the night dawdling in the center lane when two pickups passed. The one on the right towed a trailer with a snowmachine on it. Almost simultaneously one passed on the left with a wave runner on his trailer. Now, where else in the world are you going to see that juxtaposition?

On the last stretch to the house, thick alders encroach into the roadway necessitating a slower speed. The alders present no problem, but the songbirds that nest in them do. They fly blindly out into the roadway without regard for oncoming traffic. It gets even worse when the little ones who fear nothing begin to careen through the brush and across the road. Why can't they stay on one side of the road? Of course the only reasoning critter on the planet has never stayed on one side of the road either.

And then, there is the solitary man. He often stands just inside the tree line in one of the heavily wooded areas along the route, simply watching traffic, or hikes the trail behind the guard rail along the side of the highway. One day he hustled across in front of the car, jumping the guard rail to the safety of the trail, much more nimble than any of those porcupines. Best guess is he lives in those woods. Is he homeless? He probably doesn't think so, simply living his version of the compromise many of us have made between societal demands and desire for the solitude of wilderness.

The drive certainly fails to satisfy that desire, but it does come a whole lot closer than righteously could have been expected. And the fact that the daily journey at least in part satisfies the desire, makes living with the compromise just a little more comfortable.
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