Ranger Report By Daniel F. Murley
Countless crystal clear rivulets which carried the heavy recent rainfall striped the gently sloping coastal hills and each ended in frothy bubbly pools whipped up by the rapid flow of gravity. The waters all eventually congregated in large temporary ponds and as an unfamiliar sun hesitantly peeked through the cloud cover, we stopped to investigate the sparkling ponds on the green pastures. I was looking for a familiar old visitor who I have had the pleasure of viewing over the years. Cinnamon teal oftentimes frequent these puddles and thereby live up to their name as “puddle ducks.” As I scanned the dabbling waterfowl whose feathered bottoms pointed upward while their bills scavenged for submerged vegetation, I was distracted by a circling dark form above the riverside fields. At first I noted that “red-headed” eagle, as we jokingly and disdainfully call Turkey Vultures, looked quite graceful as it soared effortlessly above us. Why, I wondered, was it flying so far from the group of other TV’s we could see circling about a half mile across the river? Maybe this scavenger had located a more delectable cache of carrion and was beating its buddies to that delectable “breakfast of champions.” The joke about the red head became ever so ironic as I noted that the bird above us was none other than an adult Haliaeetus leucocephalus and that in Latin, leuco-cephalus means white-head and its white head and tail soon became visible and obvious. This was a Bald Eagle.
The ducks became quickly insignificant as we watched with awe, the big bird whose wing span must have been 7 feet across. At one point it banked close enough to us that we could just make out its yellow bill. We were rewarded by about two minutes of viewing the revered avian icon. Though quite striking compared to a Turkey Vulture, we all remarked that oftentimes they took on the scavenger role but usually prefer a fish diet. As the feathered form passed high over the little pond we had initially been watching, the dabbling ducks sprung from the water’s surface and with rapid frantic wingbeats, disappeared upriver. Bald eagles also will have a little waterfowl lunch on occasion and the mallards and teal were taking no chances. Curiously as the eagle passed near the vultures it seemed to consciously veer off to avoid the group of circling birds before disappearing over the hill. Was he avoiding them, or were they shunning him? We will never know but we left the fields with smiling faces grateful for our morning’s fortune. Upon returning home, we looked up John James Audubon’s depiction of the bird in a cherished volume of his paintings which I received from the family for Christmas.
"White headed Eagle" (Bald eagle- Haliaeetus leucocephalus) by John James Audubon (1785-1851)
“He’s probably out scavenging the remains of the holiday festivities left by the revelers at the annual Turkey Vulture New Year’s Eve bash. Ah yes… road kill and wild rye moonshine with ‘The Counting Crows’ and ‘The Wallflowers’ providing the entertainment.” My joking, irreverent interpretation on the scene was disdainfully received by my companions.
In a more intellectual and anthropologically more sensitive analysis of our brief encounter with Canis latrans, which Hannah pointed out means “barking dog” in Latin, Sandy offered up a creation story from local legend. This tale had been shared by a wise and wonderful gentle Native friend. He has since gone “across the water” but his peaceful gaze and kindly compassionate manner have remained with us as has the story. Appropriately, while all of us had just been discussing the transition and rebirth offered by the changing of the yearly calendar and passing of the winter solstice, we considered the role of Coyote in the genesis of “The people from the top of land.”
After the fire and the flood, which destroyed the old race of people who lived here in this place, Coyote and his wife, the Frog Woman, had a meeting with two other leading deities in the Native cosmology, the Kingfisher and the Lizard. They saw that the time was now right to create new people. Coyote presented a fist full of feathers and then placed them two-by-two in the moist soil all over the floor of the Roundhouse. Each pair was bound together with fiber string. They felt that these would make a great group of new people. Then the four of them sat down and waited. After four days there was no change in the feathers, so they decided that maybe if the four of them fasted for “two- times-four days” that this would help in the transformation. So, they did just that, and after eight days of fasting the feathers had still not changed. Coyote thought that maybe they would give it eight more days with their backs to the fire, but nothing happened. Finally they lay with their heads toward the central fire and on the fourth day things began to stir in the shelter and on the eighth day each feather became a human being. The new people were all talking but each pair spoke a different language. It was decided that Coyote would choose a spot for each pair to go. Each pair shall then eat the food they find there and live there and be happy. Suddenly, after Coyote spoke, all the feathers disappeared and each couple found themselves in the right land and in exactly the correct spot where they were to live and prosper, and today all the local Native people live where their ancestors were placed on that day of creation.
We shared warm smiles and headed home with the fleeting image of the graceful creature and the folklore which surrounds its natural and supernatural history.
Coastal Coyote - Canis latrans By Daniel F. Murley
After a few days of fine seasonable damp and drippy weather, the sun shone brightly this morning and vapors of steam rose from the deeply moistened redwood trunks in the grove around the house. I sat transfixed and content as I watched the wispy ethereal mists drift into the morning air and I drifted off momentarily into this fairyland of ferns and fractured light. A singular sound pierced the quiet and the soloist was recognizable but somewhat lonely. Normally when this little critter is heard he is accompanied by a host of choral partners. These harmonic creaking voices of the après rain boys can be heard calling for their mates, or just belting out some sounds with their “mates” around the pond or pool. The rain brings out the best in these lovely little local vocalists. This solitary croak came from a beautiful brilliant lime-green tree frog. Common though they are, Pacific Tree-frogs (Hyla regilla) are more often heard rather than seen but this guy was not too shy and as I tip-toed through the wet grasses, I spied him. I was happy to view the striking little iridescent emissary of the wet and wild world beyond our walls. This adventuresome or wayward character was possibly living up to his lot in life as an amphibian, a word that loosely translated from the Latin means “double-life”. So maybe this guy was trying to get into the scene beyond the pond and strike out on his own. The two-inch crooner seemed “dressed to kill” with his iridescent day glow lime green jacket and a jaunty black-stripe over his eyes. Obliging his pose on a dandelion plant I snapped a publicity shot for a possible CD cover before he sprang away. The clever camouflage of the green gadfly allowed him to melt into the grasses and I never saw him again that day. That evening though, we did hear, coming from the seasonal creek, that telltale serenade of the little green frog with the booming voice.
