Gordon's Sit Spot

The Song of the Woods

The song of the woods

We all can hear it

Whether with ear or with eye

Or with nose or with spirit

 

The birds sing the melody

Some powerful some vain

but the blue jay cries out, almost in pain

 

The trees and the wind

And the earth play together

No matter the day or the month

or the week or the weather

 

Each player and piece

Plays an integral role

In telling the story

And describing it whole

 

Our job is to listen

to each piece and each part

and try to understand

this great work of art

 

Cooper’s Hawk

Powerful predator perches

Penetrating eye scans and searches

Predator peers, pauses, and lurches

POW!

Poor prey has found what its worth is

 

Come With Appreciation 

Come with humility

Come with grace

Come with a ferocious smile on your face

Come without want

Of what to take away

Come with appreciation

You’ll find you will stay

Here in nature

Who sometimes confounds

Where silence is precious

And peace resounds

Where chaos is structured

And your center is found

100 yards before I enter Centennial Woods there was an eruption of sound in a planted Norway spruce stand. The red squirrels were chattering, the chickadees were chirping, and the blue jays were blaring. All this commotion could not have been for me. I paused and looked around for the blue jays and spotted a Coopers Hawk perched silently and still half way up the spruce. After five minutes of franticly snapping away with my camera the bird leaned tensed and jumped to another branch. I thought it was just being difficult, but on closer inspection I saw that it had killed a poor unsuspecting fowl. For the next hour I sat still and watched in astonishment as the Hawk picked apart the bird.

It is mostly on the way to my place that I see the most interesting wildlife. There is a tall white snag I call the pileated pecker post near my entryway to centennial woods. Here, as the name suggests, Ive seen a pileated woodpecker twice!

However, there is still evidence of woodpecker habitat in my actual spot. I noticed the deep furrows running vertically along a white pine while and inquisitive red squirrel was in front of them staring at me.

The other signs that wildlife are using my place as a habitat are my frequent sightings of cardinals, robins, blue jays, and sparrows.

The composition of birds I see is beginning to change. I do not see as many robins as I used to, nor do as many blue jays come to my spot. Along with these changes in wildlife I see changes in the flora. The young beech tree that shone a bright yellow the first week I sat and observed has lost all of its leaves. The ferns that used to cover the ground have browned, yellowed, drooped. The soil is now completely covered by pine needles. The tall skinny paper birches still hang on to their leaves though, along with the black cherry trees and the buckthorns lining the marsh.

 

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On the other side of the telephone wire clearing, past a grove of white pines I sit on a fallen white pine in and amongst an incredible diversity of organisms, my new seat as an observer. The 100 foot long tree is nestled over two small ridges on the side of a increasingly slanting hill on the edge of a marsh. It lies among some of its brethren and cousins (white pines and hemlocks respectively). Surrounding the fallen tree are ferns and saplings. The young trees consist of an american beech almost completely yellow, newly sprouted boxelders, invading Norway maples, and adolescent elm tree, one lone red oak and a small cluster of chestnut oaks. The larger over members of this family are mostly white pines and hemlocks. There is one black cherry tree who seems to have married into the family.

After sitting for just ten minutes a family or group of robins began to hang out in a pine perfectly in my view and wonderfully lit by the golden hour of sunlight. Twenty minutes later blue jays became more accustomed to my presence and began to flit around the pines and hemlocks. After an hour of personal, quality time with the jays, robins and a woodpecker the sun was beginning to set across the ridge. Just as I looked up and over the swampland a great blue heron glided over the marsh, a blue jay perched curiously close to me, and geese flew directly overhead on their journey south. This moment solidified it, I found my spot.