Another Day In Paradise — Cold, Wet, Windy, and Miserable

This morning turned out to have several unexpected surprises, not the least of which was the weather. Normally it warms up pretty fast. Not today.

Two hours into my four hour transect, the winds picked up and the clouds came barreling in. The temperature plummeted. It steadily began to drizzle.

Since one cannot collect data on birds very well in the rain and wind (they stop singing and tend to hunker down), I had to give up and start walking back. Of course I was about as far as I could be from shelter, wearing a T-shirt and without a jacket. My arms and hands got completely numb by the time I reached shelter, an hour later. It was a winter storm, with temperatures in the low 50s.

The morning wasn’t completely without it’s splendor though. Right before the storm hit, I heard a most peculiar noise. I would describe it as having the general quality of a donkey, but without the unmistakable hee-haw they’re famous for. Donkeys don’t inhabitat mountains either.

The only other large mammal I knew to be up here is feral hogs. (That’s another story, one coming later). It didn’t sound piggish, but I’d run out of guesses. Hogs are as nasty as they are smart. Coming between a mother and her piglet is a mistake sure to result in a trip to the emergency room and lots of stitches to the legs. Accordingly, I proceeded with great caution, since the noise was coming towards me, and I was headed toward the noise.

Through the trees I caught sight of a brown horse sized creature. The light-bulb went off in my head. Cervus elaphus, of course. An elk. No sooner had our lines of sight aligned than it took off, heading uphill. Humble folk like myself from the lowlands of west Texas simply cannot appreciate the size of elk. We think of them as big deer. Yeah, and asteroids are big rocks.

As I was coming down a slippery trail as quickly as I could, I flushed a couple of Montezuma Quail, perhaps the most beautiful of U.S. quail species. I stood in the freezing drizzle for ten minutes hoping they would come back into view, but alas they did not.

Hear’s hoping tomorrow’s a little warmer. It is June after all.