One Night Stand

I spent one night in a motel in Cherokee, Oklahoma (alone) and the next morning standing on a chilly observation tower on the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge waiting with a camera for some Sandhill Cranes to show up. And show up they did, thousands of them. Actually, they were already there as they come into the refuge to overnight and then fly out to feed during the day. Not all of them of course, some sleep in, others stand around and rest, chatting among themselves on their favorite topics; food, the recent flight, and the weather.

The cranes breed in Canada and Alaska and then, as any sensible bird would, fly south for the winter. Salt Plains is but one stopover point. The Platte River in Nebraska is another well known resting spot. They're big birds, impressive, about 3 and 1/2 half feet long with a wingspan of six to seven feet. They have a unique call. Folks more knowledgeable than I describe it as a long, wooden, rattle, a sort of bugle. To me, it sounds a little like a Mourning Dove trying to gargle.

Not only was it cold that morning with a strong northwest wind and the temperature around 40 degrees, but the early light wasn't lining up for the best photography. The Sandhills take off into the wind which meant I was getting a lot of butt shots and very few where the bird was well lit. Challenging but still a lot of fun.

I had visited the same spot the previous evening at sundown when conditions were less harsh. As far as I could tell, there was not another human being around.  I had the entire area to myself, well, me and 20,000 birds. A thin band of clouds in the west hinted of a colorful sunset as I stood and watched and listened as flock after flock of cranes flew overhead and across the horizon. Some landed close, within a hundred yards, while others continued  to the far side of the lake for the safety of an island. Shorebirds skittered along the bank in front of me, dipping their fragile looking bills over and over, hoping for one last morsel of food before dark. The ducks were there as well, landing  with a loud whoosh as hundreds of webbed feet made contact with the water.

At some point, the light was finally gone and after taking just a few more shots of the cranes silhouetted against the orange sky, I turned the cameras off and made the short walk back to the truck. I laughed as two armadillos practically ran into me as they scampered across the trail. It was a good day.

What Time Is It?

I've never been a big fan of the time change; Spring forward, Fall back, that crap. For one thing, there's all those clocks to deal with.  Bedrooms; three clocks. Kitchen; two clocks. Office; two clocks. With the exception of one tick-tock here in the Man Cave, all the rest are digital which means you have to use your Sunday morning, fogged up brain, to figure out how to reset the damn things. Two of the clocks, of their own free will, decided to adjust to a whole new time about a week ago when the time change used to take effect. Whassup with that? Wasn't it president W. that screwed that up; decided it wasn't right to go with the change on the customary dates? Something about saving money? For who? Can't recall that it saved me any dough. So now we have that little reset to deal with as well as the official reset.



There's the clock on the cable box, but it changes automatically thanks be to whoever controls that function. And wonder of wonders, my little ol' Casio wrist watch, total cost $34, is tuned to some atomic clock rumored to be in Colorado, also switches to the correct time (to the second I might add) exactly at the stroke of 2:00 a.m. or is 3:00? Spring back, Fall forward? It's so confusing.

Then there's our internal clocks, the ones that tell us when it's time to wake up and when to go beddy-bye. How do you adjust that little time piece at 2 a.m. in the freakin' morning? Answer is, you don't. You wake up, the light outside is different, somethings wrong, it's a Twilight Zone thing. Something strange has happened during the night but you can't put your finger on it, not early on a Sunday morning anyway. It's three hours and a half a pot of coffee later that you realize your life pattern has changed and will stay that way for what, another six months when you have to suffer through it all over again?

And what about this? Did you damn time changers just once consider us Sunday Morning Bloody Mary drinkers? Huh? Thousands, maybe millions of us, whose routines have now been thrown into shambles? I think not. Oh, the humanity!

Wild Sounds

Unless you're in a national park where the animals have become accustomed to throngs of people, getting a photo of a truly wild animal can be quite challenging. I can't speak for other states but here in Oklahoma, the sight of a coyote or bobcat throws the locals into a state of blood lust whereupon they grab their weapons from the gun rack or behind the seat of their pickups and blast away. No surprise then, that our wildlife avoids the presence of humans if at all possible, running for their very lives at the sight of one. The animals seldom stop to look to see if its a camera lens or a gun barrel that's being aimed at them.

I started thinking about using a predator call to bring in some of the critters. There's dozens of them on the market, mostly designed for hunters of course, but no reason they couldn't just as well be used for photography. And although I would use it only for photos, there is still a bit of an ethical problem. Wild animals, in order to survive, must take in as much energy as they burn. For them to use that energy to find the source of what they think is potential game and then find nothing but a piece of plastic with a speaker on one end, is troublesome. The national wildlife refuges do not permit electronic callers to be used on refuge property for that very reason.

 However, I'm trying to justify using one, if only in my head, based on the conditions of plentiful food and mild weather. To lure a coyote through waist deep snow for instance, would be much more stressful than calling him in across an Oklahoma plain, or so it seems to me. Then there's always the hope, though remote, that a good photo of say, a bobcat, would make some potential shooters think twice and maybe even consider taking up a camera instead of a rifle. Their "trophy" could be a beautiful photo on the wall rather than a bloody carcass or a mount that eventually gets ratty and moth eaten only to eventually be thrown in some attic.

With all that in mind, I began shopping the Internet for a caller. Finding one in my price range, I studied the reviews to check on the quality of the product. That turned out to be a little disturbing. Dozens of users told of calling in the "yotes" (coyotes) and dropping them within minutes of turning the caller on. Another young man related how two raccoons and a skunk showed up on his first night out which he promptly shot and killed, proudly displaying their corpses on the tailgate of his pickup. I don't get it. Hunting for the dinner table or for survival or to control over-population or to protect livestock is one thing, but killing a coon or skunk just to watch it fall? What's up with that?

Maybe I'm getting soft and sentimental in my old age, but in my opinion, calling in a wild animal, in season or not, for no other reason than using it for target practice is not only unethical, it's just plain disgusting. Again, I don't get it.