Seasonal sightings

Late yesterday two whitetail deer poked their way along the edge of the woods behind the house. First whitetail sightings of the year on our property. This morning a couple of hen wild turkeys pecked at the seed droppings underneath the deck bird feeders. Later, a flock of about a dozen turkeys followed in the tracks left by the deer. First turkey sightings of the year on our property.

whitetails at a sunflower seed feeder a few years ago

Photo by J. Harrington

We saw one of the deer stop and browse on a young cedar tree. Last autumn’s acorn crop was close to nonexistent around here so I can’t begin to guess what the turkeys are feeding on and how they’re getting through a foot or so of mixed snow and ice cover. Ground hog day falls about midway through astronomical winter. We’re already past the midpoint of meteorological winter but March 1 doesn’t often resemble anything like actual spring here in the North Country. Late winter, early spring, is a hungry time for the wild animals that don’t have access to a bird feeder refilled by a two-legged animal.

To get to a fresh  food supply, most animals have to survive during the next couple of months. The sightings of the past 24 hours were a treat. I hope we get a better, complete, thaw soon and that winter’s toll is limited this year, although that may well mean a hunger season for the scavengers of the woods and fields. Spring is a new beginning only for those who make it ’til then.

Hunger Moon

By Jane Cooper

The last full moon of February stalks the fields; barbed wire casts a shadow.

Rising slowly, a beam moved toward the west

stealthily changing position

 

until now, in the small hours, across the snow

it advances on my pillow

to wake me, not rudely like the sun

but with the cocked gun of silence.

 

I am alone in a vast room

where a vain woman once slept.

The moon, in pale buckskins, crouches

on guard beside her bed.

 

Slowly the light wanes, the snow will melt

and all the fences thrum in the spring breeze

but not until that sleeper, trapped

in my body, turns and turns.

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