Today, I am giving myself something of a treat. The oppressive humidity that we experienced last week has finally broken and I am set up outside where I can feel like I’m part of nature while writing about it. Dappled sunlight filters down through the leaves of my beloved cottonwood tree and shines in sparkling flashes on my keyboard, almost as if Nature herself is suggesting what I should write about. I appreciate the help, but my mind was already made up before I even sat down.
At this moment we find ourselves in the middle of what I call “baby time.” All of the animals outside are currently engaged in caring for offspring, or even setting up a second round of offspring in some cases. Even as I write these words I am being scrutinized by the mother house wren that I wrote about last week. She is no longer able to take extended scrutiny breaks, however, because her four chicks are getting close to the age where they will fledge and they are hungry. Both she and her mate spend almost all of their time looking for food and the noise from the nest box just increases with every passing day.
The woodpeckers are also being followed around by hungry fledglings. My peanut feeders are cleaned out every other day and the adult birds are finding their delivery trips shortening with increasing speed. At this point, some of the young birds are sitting on the feeders with their parents and the adults simply need to extract a morsel and hand it over to the screaming, insistent chicks. At one point I felt so sorry for one mother downy woodpecker that I spent some of my outdoor time taking peanuts out of their shells so she didn’t have to do it herself.
The young red squirrels continue to entertain and terrorize the area surrounding the deck with their ever-increasingly violent sibling confrontations. Nevil, Euclid and Murgatroyd von Brondstein are no longer the only young squirrels here, however. Another mother brought another batch of babies and slipped away while they weren’t watching. So now, for the time being, there are 5-6 youngsters here at one time and they all have attitudes that would make a grizzly bear proud.
On a recent drive I couldn’t help but notice that the sides of the country road on which I live were peppered with baby rabbits and I had to remind myself to slow down in case one of these little creatures ran out in front of my car. But the real prize in my “baby time” collection for 2020 is the portrait of a doe with her fawn; a picture that almost didn’t happen.
I was out at a natural area with my friend Howard (social distancing protocols in full effect) and I was scanning the shoreline of a shallow pond. A sandbar covered with cattails lay between my position and the far shore and Howard asked what kind of animals we might see. I mentioned deer were a possibility, but I also stressed the fact that we would have to get lucky. Two minutes later Howard exclaimed, “Holy crap! There’s a deer!”
In that moment, I forgot I had a camera around my neck and I watched in delight as a female deer and her new baby paused at the water’s edge. It was only after they were gone from view that I remembered my camera, but by then it was far too late. We chatted excitedly about the possibility that I might be able to tell the future, but I was sad to have missed the shot. That is when the photo gods favored me with a second chance.
While trying to take photos of rough-winged swallows that were flying back and forth across the pond I happened to notice a patch of cinnamon brown appear on the far bank. I saw the doe and all I had to do was shift the angle of my camera ever so slightly and – click! – I got the shot. It was actually better than the one that I missed and I paused to give thanks to Nikonus and Iso for their kindness to me.
Babies will continue to dominate the narrative of Nature for weeks to come, but the very youngest wild creatures will grow quickly and enter the next phases of their lives. So, if you are able to take advantage of the current conditions, sit outside to look and listen for signs of new life on the surface of this very ancient planet of ours. It happens every year, but that shouldn’t make this year’s babies any less interesting.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 23 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.