Things That Give Me Goosebumps

Strange things are all around. The other day I happen to look up and see a bald eagle fly over the house. About 15 seconds later a second bald eagle flies over, taking the same track as the first. Aren’t bald eagles migratory? This is mid-January. How are they going to catch any fish here? The Chester River and all its tributaries are frozen right out to their channels.

Next day, from a vantage on a low hill overlooking Rosin Creek, I see two canids slinking over the ice. They’re not dogs, I know every breed in two counties. They are moving along, one behind the other, noses low to the ice, long ears tucked back, long bushy tails held low. Just one word for the way they move – skulk.  I don’t think foxes typically move like that. Foxes I’ve seen kind of prance along, heads up, looking around. And foxes are solitary. Oh I know, for little foxes and so ad infinitum, they pair up sometimes. But I don’t think that’s the way they normally hunt. And these animals I’m watching are hunting. Plus, from a distance of a hundred yards, they appear way too big to be foxes. So what’s roaming along the Chester watershed? Coyotes?

Where to go for enlightenment but to Captain Andy McCown of Echo Hill Outdoor School, waterman, woodsman, teacher and spinner of excellent tales. He’s got some answers that surprise me. Bald eagles can be migratory – but the vast majority of ‘em in these parts do stay here. McCown says to think of Alaska, where you see wintertime pictures of the eagles sitting in a tree. He says they are concentrated in places where there’s a food source, and it’s the same for them in the Chesapeake region where there’s open water. “Many times in winter I’ve seen five bald eagles in a field and one dead goose. They are scavengers,” says McCown. “Sometimes I’ve seen them sitting around a deer carcass and there are vultures on the edge, waiting for them to leave.”

Okay, what about the hairy creatures I saw on the ice? Coyotes? “I doubt it. I think what you saw were foxes. Sometimes animals on a pure white background look bigger than they are. The silhouette looks bigger. A reason I doubt it, I’ve heard stories for the last 30 years about coyotes on the shore – but I’ve never seen a picture of a dead one. As soon as you hear of a bear, you see photos. But never one of a coyote. Also, you never go to a place where you know coyotes are and not hear them, yip-yip-yip. And I’ve never read a single account of anyone hearing them on the Delmarva Peninsula. So I say no.”

And there it is, eagles yes, foxes yes, coyotes no.  Captain Andy’s got a good explanation, too, for one phenomenon that some have been seeing lately: snow geese and Canadas mixed up together in the same field. Any hunter will tell you that the two species rarely come to feed in the same place. And when they do, you generally see a few of one keeping to the edge of a big flock of the other. They really do appear to be prejudiced. But now, integration has come. The reason for it, says McCown, is this hard winter. “Particularly when it gets cold and they find ground cover, they’re more willing to share the resource. It’s because there’s less opportunity, so they’ve got to do it.”

See, you can make sense of the natural world, if you’ve got a good teacher, and if you are sure of what you’re seeing. I tell myself this, then I think of the remarkable words of another wise man, Joseph Wood Krutch, who opined, “Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.” I’d be the last to argue with that.