Category: November

Murmuration of migration

It wasn’t a murmur I heard, by no means. But it was a murmuration I saw, though I didn’t know at the time the word for the swirling aerial ballet of thousands of flocking, migrating blackbirds.

The frenetic swirl of organized chaos rose out of the picked cornfield and rushed toward me like a living cloud, like a billowing curtain of smoke. Then the birds scattered among the treetops, alighting in bare branches in front of me, behind me and to my right and left. Some birds landed in the same maple tree from which I watch for deer. 

Against a quintessential November sky of steely gray, I was surrounded by rackety blackbirds silhouetted like so many black leaves replacing the fallen leaves of color. But it was not a stealthy invasion. The flock carried with it a loud and steady screeching and squawking, cascading from all directions above me. Was it the chatter of tension or freedom?

I closed my eyes in an attempt to define the noise that had interrupted the silence. It was like rain pounding on leaves, or a scratchier version of spring peepers. But what mostly came to mind was the staticky crackle of radio beyond a station’s range.

The birds were so dark against the sky that I could not identify species, but I know that in such flocks are red-winged blackbirds, grackles, starlings and cowbirds. To think that these birds of black, so vociferous in their defense of nesting territory in the spring, are now joined in the urgency of fall migration tells us something about the powerful rhythms of propagation and survival.

I have seen and heard this before in the November woodlots, this brief, noisy layover of the winged southbound. It never ceases to amaze me as I wonder why a hummingbird, for example, makes a solo migration flight, and a long one at that to Central America, while blackbirds flock in the hundreds and thousands for fall migration to southern states.

So how did this flock, any migrating flock, assemble? Are the birds drawn to a field simultaneously to feed for the trip ahead? Or do flocks begin modestly, joining forces every few fields until a super flock emerges and murmurs, its dizzying dance intended to confuse predators?

Before I was aware of the birds gathered in the cornfield, a barred owl passed silently, slicing through the leafless treetops. I didn’t recall that until later when I read that owls will feed on songbirds, sometimes in daytime. Did the owl trigger the flock to flee the field?   

The blackbirds seemed anxious and agitated in their noise, and in their flitting from one branch to another, one tree to another, until they worked themselves into a frenzied decision to move on. It had all lasted only five minutes. They reassembled the murmuration somewhere above me, and took the noise with them. 

The muted woods were all mine again. Stimulated and awed by this avian phenomenon, I grasped the mystery in the bare branches, and the beauty of the rusty, leaf-textured forest floor as the sun found a rift in the clouds. I settled back against the tree trunk. Staring into the bare soul of autumn, I heard the echo of the billowing cloud.

Note: My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through me, at bookstores, and from online sellers. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is available at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s, and in Marquette, Mich., at Snowbound Books.

The confliction of killing

Every hunt presents its own story, its own visuals, more often telling of the easy flow of the woodlands than the scene of downed game. I never know what the story will say, or what will be the photo of the day, or even what role I may play. 

On this day, the story is the calm amid indecision, the crows and squirrels without the deer, leaves surrendering silently, and the fruit of the hawthorn.

For the first time this fall, I’m strapped to a tree, renewing my contract with the season of confliction. Bow and arrow are cradled in my arms, resting on my lap. A camera hangs at my side.

I’ve come to the treestand a couple of weeks earlier this year, drawn by the sweet, nostalgic smell of autumn’s soft sigh of resignation. In the restless breeze, leaves flutter past, landing softly, as softly as the first snow that will cover them. I’m calmed.

I’m also drawn by a photo of a deer—a buck hanging around these parts—with antlers of outlandish size. I tend not to see trophy deer as white whales. Points and spreads are nice but not my obsession. Still, that buck in the photo…

Thus, the confliction commences. If given the opportunity, would I end the life of a majestic buck, or would I be fulfilled taking photos of the deer as it ambles through its kingdom?

I push the decision aside, imbedding myself in the autumnal woodland. Squirrels scurry past, stopping to thrust their mouths in the leaves, all the time unaware they are being watched. A crow flies over, four “caws” and then a pause, and then four more.

Leaves float past my elevated position, mostly at an even pace but then suddenly in a dizzying swirl when the wind at my back forces its way through the treetops. I hear the gust coming before the leaves feel its push. 

It’s cloudy this morning, as cloudy as my commitment to the hunt. Wait, that’s not entirely true. My passion to hunt burns as wildly as ever. But the passion to kill has weakened to a flicker. I know all the justifications for ending a deer’s life, but I also know the feeling of walking up to a wild animal, limp on the ground from the impact of my arrow, my decision.

I am not alone. In “Meditations on Hunting,” Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett wrote, “Every good hunter is uneasy in the depths of his conscious when faced with the death he is about to inflict on the enchanting animal.”

I have seen deer die in ways more suffering than by hunting—smashed on the highway, snared on a barbed wire fence, clawed by predators, impaled by their own species, and starved in a winter deer yard. So who can say that death by the hunter’s blazing bullet or swift arrow is less humane?

I also know the arguments for paring the herd, including lowering collisions with vehicles, crop damage, deforestation by overbrowsing, and the odds of lack of food for too many deer in a winter too harsh. And yet, my conscious is haunted by my inconsistency, my tendency to play favorites. I wouldn’t think of killing a chipmunk in the yard. But a deer? I’m fine with taking one a year for the venison, and for what I see as a need to sustain the health of the species.

Today, my conscious isn’t probed; I see no deer except for a buck walking along a picked cornfield as I arrived in dawn’s murky light. Nevertheless, I am filled; the hunt never leaves me longing. In my youth, the point of kill was the point of hunting. Now, the hunt is always a success measured in the cawing of crows, sunrays stroking the morning, birch trees glowing like lighthouses in the distance. 

Amid all this, I accept death as part of the hunt, just as I accept death as a part of life. Wrote Ortega, “One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted.”

As I walk out of the woods, I pass a cockspur hawthorn shrub that has held its ground since my childhood here. Only one of its scraggly, aged branches has green leaves, and on a twig of that branch hangs a single burgundy berry. It’s this hunt’s final chapter.

Note: My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available by contacting me at davegreschner@icloud.com or 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tale), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), Cable (Redbery Books),and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.