Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Pimahâmowipîsim, a Cree word tied to the month of October when huge flocks of Canada geese began their southern migration. Many Native American tribes tied the seasons to the behavior of birds.
The Cree, a large tribe that lived around Hudson Bay and in the northern regions of Alberta, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, were perhaps the most literal in their use of birds to describe the changing seasons.
Pimahâmowipîsim translates as “Migrating Moon” in English.
The Cree had the Goose Hatching Moon, for springtime when the geese returned to hatch and raise their young, and the Flying Up Moon for August when the goslings first took to wing.
The Algonquin noticed the heavier foraging of native turkeys in early winter, giving their name for November as the Turkey Moon.
It’s no coincidence that the Wampanoags, whose language belongs to the Algonquian language family, were the Native Americans at the table in the first Thanksgiving in 1621.
We don’t have names for the seasons tied to birds. Our calendar originated with ancient Rome but was modernized by Pope Gregory in the late 16th century. There weren’t many birds in the Roman version of measuring time.
Still, we can see the changes in the seasons by the winged creatures around us.
The doves are already lining up on the power lines and dotting the tops of barbed wire fences around the county. I’ve watched them do this for over half a century in mid to late August.
Doves are categorized as an upland game bird by the Wyoming Game and Fish, but they are actually migratory fowl. Doves don’t care about regulations. They just care about eating enough wild seeds and grains to build up energy for the trip south. A mourning dove can eat 20% of its body weight each day. That’s why they gather on phone lines and atop fences. They’re digesting their latest intake of food without worrying about predators, except those that attack from above.
Anthropomorphism is a term I learned in a Wildlife class long ago at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Ron Beiswenger talked about it in his lectures. It’s the practice of applying human reason, emotion and action to wild animals. It’s a fallacy. Wild things don’t think like we do.
It is tempting sometimes to believe that they have powers of reason and recognition similar to us, but they don’t. They exist on a different plane.
That doesn’t mean they can’t adapt to new things in their environment. They certainly can.
There is a hawk, maybe two or three hawks, that has followed my orange Kubota tractor all summer. Whether I’m pulling the Hesston hydra-swing or baling with the 4255 Inline baler, the hawk or hawks hang around the field.
Why not?
In the process of cutting grass and alfalfa, the rodents and reptiles hiding in the tall forage are exposed briefly as the machine passes over. That’s when the hawk hits.
I watched one take three field mice in less than five minutes. Another one waited on top of a newly produced small bale, then flew about 12 feet into the air, hovered, then darted down to earth before flying off with a 10-inch snake.
Easy pickings for our raptor friends in the hayfield.
When I was a kid, one of my jobs was to open up the fields above and below the house with an International Super M tractor and a two-bottom, two-way plow. It was always cold in the evening when I got home from practice, whether it was October or April. The wind blew out of the west and I’d stand up to get a little warm exhaust when plowing west. That was good for a headache if I stayed out too long, but it did warm up my hands. The action wasn’t coming from the stack on the tractor. It was behind me in the newly opened ground.
Seagulls, sometimes hundreds of them, screamed, dived and fought as the plow passed. They were feeding on nightcrawlers unearthed by the plow.
An old farmer once said to always have chickens if you’re feeding whole corn to cattle, it makes a meal for two. You figure out what he was talking about.
The same held true for those opportunistic gulls.
Bird behavior and bird populations have changed since the 1970s. You rarely saw bald eagles in those days. Now they line the highway from Red Rocks to Dubois. Ospreys were an even rarer sight, yet they seem to be everywhere now.
Part of that sudden increase is the banning of DDT by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1972. Raptors were especially susceptible to the side effects of this widely used pesticide. It thinned their eggshells and populations declined when eggs broke during nesting..
Ospreys have made a tremendous comeback. There is a nest at Roy Peck Field in the light pole just right of centerfield, another one on the southwest corner of the track at the Intertribal Complex at Wyoming Indian High School, and one more on the west side of the bridge over the Little Wind River below Arapaho.
Last summer I caught a photograph of one with an eight-inch trout in its talons at Louis Lake. The osprey is a magnificent bird.
The Arapaho, with the unique phonetic “3” in their alphabet, call it “bii3i’ii koo’oh,” pronounced as bee-thee-ee (fish) koh-oh (hawk).
Wyoming is home to 20 different species of raptors. Hawks, owls, eagles, ospreys, harriers, kestrels, and falcons all call the Cowboy State home.
During the late winter and early spring, you can count dozens of red-tailed hawks on top of the power poles along 8-Mile Road to Missouri Valley all the way to Pavillion.
It’s another marker of the seasons.
A marker that doesn’t exist as it once did is the goose armada that filled the skies twice a year across Fremont County.
In the 1970s and ‘80s, you could hear them, high in the sky, flying in dozens of separate V formations as they headed south from Canada for wintering grounds in Mexico.
Wildlife biologists say their migration patterns have changed with warmer winters over the last two decades. Warmer winters, combined with abundant food in farm fields after harvest, spilled corn, oats and barley, and friendly city parks, have eliminated the need for thousands of additional miles of flight time.
Some won’t believe this because it hints of that inflammatory term, “Global Warming,” but ask your friends in Fort Collins or Greeley how they feel about the geese that hang out in their parks, on their sidewalks and on their playing fields. You’ll get a quick response.
The climate may change, migratory waterfowl don’t fill the skies as they once did, but the doves, turkeys, sage chickens and the raptors continue to mark the changing seasons as they have since time immemorial.