once living

morning sun, osage orange

feeding the birds

During one of my days at Pioneers Park Nature Center, I had the opportunity to feed the raptors that live there. They are all disabled in some way and now live in an outdoor aviary on the grounds of the Nature Center. Because of their disabilities, they would not survive in the wild. That day, I defrosted something like 55 white mice to feed three red tails, two great horned owls, and one barred owl.  I took a picture of the defrosted mice to share, but decided to post a picture of my shadow holding the bowl of mice instead, in case you're squeamish. The great horned owls were my favorite -- they were curious and timid, but jumped on the mice once I left the aviary. Being so close to these birds was incredible -- they look like wise visitors from another planet. 

me holding bowl of mice

great horned owl

I did see a barred owl in the wild this morning at Wilderness Park in Lincoln. It swooped down from a tree, without a noise to a perch quite close to me. I watched it for a few minutes, its dark hollow eyes surveying me, before it disappeared in the early morning light. 

Here's a picture of the barred owl at the Nature Center. The staff calls him Elliott, which is my father-in-law's name. Elliott Sober (my father-in-law) is a professor, so I call this bird Professor Sober. 

barred owl

poems

merge with sunlight and air

My friend Ferris, a Nebraska native, has been urging me to read works by Loren Eiseley, a Lincoln born scientist and writer. He lent me a book containing an excerpt from Eiseley's The Immense Journey, titled "The Flow of the River." In this piece, Eiseley describes wading into the Platte river and floating, becoming the water, he writes, "It was then that I felt the cold needles of the alpine springs at my finger tips, and the warmth of the Gulf pulling me southward." Love it.

And these few sentences hit me in the stomach --

"Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort."

late season, big color

This is prairie gentian. I was out this morning at Nine Mile Prairie enjoying this warm October day. The air is so dry, the land has cracked open, and all the ponds in and around this stretch of prairie have vanished. You can see the water line on the cottonwoods, like a brush stroke that tells a lost story. 

blue jays

They are overbearing, yes, but take another look...