Reading: The Virgin in the Garden

Moving: four mile walk arcing around the lake

Listening: birds, leaves, wind

Learning: about raptors.

14 October 2000: Barr Lake

We went out to Barr Lake State today. You can't swim in it, which disappointed me until I actually saw the lake for the first time last year.

But you can watch birds. We had an amazing day. When we arrived, RDC peed and I, bladder of steel, did not. We walked along the canal around the lake to the gazebo and saw a raptor swoop into the cottonwoods along the bank. RDC wants everything to be a falcon, but this was a sharp-shinned hawk. It was my first and I was proud to be able to identify it. Then I returned to the bank along the boardwalk (built from bank to gazebo for fluctuating water levels) to use a Port-O-Let. I wasn't in any particular hurry to getting back, just strolling and watching magpies, but then I looked out at the dead tree, looked again, and heard RDC shout for me.

The gazebo was built to overlook the water and, conveniently, a dead tree bald eagles nest in. The nest is empty this time of year, of course, but it's still home, apparently. There was a bald eagle! Then I rushed. RDC had his old binoculars, and I snatched up the nice pair that my mother, completely without prompting, bought all on her own as one of the most inspired gifts she has ever given me. I was wearing glasses, and first tried the binoculars against my glasses, but the distance between eye lens and glass lens distorted the image and reduced the binoculars to the one-eyed telescope I used to use them as. So then I used the binoculars against my naked eyes, as binoculars, but I needed so much of the device's strength to correct my vision that I couldn't bring the eagle in very close. But still, there it was.

In the right of the two dead trees, at the top, are two dots. The larger, messier one is a nest; the smaller, tidier, higher one is the eagle (honest). RDC had seen it come in over the cottonwoods and perch, and after I got there we sat on the ring around the spotting scope (something like a 2x) with our 'nocs propped on the railing, watching. I saw it look left and right, up and down, and I could tell (having had lots of birdwatching experience at home) by its movements that it was preening. I could photograph no more than a dot, but with my naked (or with standard correction) eye, I saw the white head. It faced us, so I couldn't see the tail. With the binoculars, I could see some but not all of its actions.

I got all cute about watching a bird preen, an eagle that, if it wanted, could take off my hand. I'm strange like that. Cockatiels and cockatoos are the only parrots that lift a foot over its respective wing to preen the belly feathers on that side. All other parrots can lift the foot straight out. I wanted to know how the eagle managed its belly. But it was concentrated on its wings and breast and besides, I couldn't see brown leg bloomer against brown belly even if it had contorted itself. I'm watching Blake preen as I type this. Really, it's very cute, like watching a cat wash its face or a dog scratch its ear. (Oh, last weekend I heard a sound I've missed in my dogless years: that icky noise of a dog breathing through its clenched teeth as it gnaws at an itch.) As we watched, a ferruginous hawk entered our view finders and we moved our glasses to watch it fly toward us and over the gazebo roof before returning our focus to the agle.

As we watched, chins against the railing, we felt, before we heard, other people on the boardwalk approaching the gazebo. So six of us stood and watched and watched and watched until the eagle lifted up and off, dropping a few feet before its huge wings got some air. It flew along the trees for a bit, then rose, and rose, and we realized its mate was in the sky, and a third dot that was probably this year's chick. They flew in and out of clouds, far up and away, too distant for us to tell which was the larger (and therefore presumably the female) and if the third had no white (and therefore presumably a juvenile). While we scanned, and RDC and I with our younger eyes and better binoculars could see the soaring dots in the clouds, we tried to help the others mark the eagles. While scanning for landmarks, I spotted another hawk. All of us could watch it bide its time and eventually fly away; it was a smallish hawk but not shaped right for a falcon. No one identified it. Finally, we gave up on the eagles.

By this time, the six of us had made fast friends, the two from Cleveland visiting the other two from Parker (Colorado) and doing all the Denver sights and scenes. We all headed back to the nature center. Halfway there, some small movement alerted us to yet a fifth raptor perched on a rock on the inside of a curve in the trail. We'd never have seen it if it hadn't ruffled its tail. We watched it for a while too, looking for distinguishing characteristics. By its actions--its indecisive manner and the fact it was perched on a rock, below the level of the human trail, I thought it was a juvenile red-tailed hawk. When it took off, though, we saw a broad white band across the top of its tail, and that made it a Harris's hawk. We saw another raptor circling low, then stoop, but break off the stoop and zoom out horizontal. So I recommended to everyone the book Equinox, about falconry and including falconry jargon like stooping (when a bird stops soaring and drops toward its prey).

(Another term: feaking is what you call the stropping motion a bird makes against whatever available surface to clean its beak. Blake feaks, but not always successfully. He hates to have his beak wiped, so he'll give you a dirty look as his puts his face forward into the damp paper towel. He knows he has to put up with it, but that doesn't mean he likes it.

Five or six different kinds of raptors in one day: one eagle, three hawk, and one possible falcon but probably another hawk. Wow.

---

Then we went to Watercourse Foods and I should have gotten the pesto pasta primavera but RDC's choice of buckwheat pancakes sounded so good that I had those too, topped with granola and bananas and blueberries. Yum.

We were going to see the re-released "Exorcist" that night, but the cinema had a sneak preview of "Pay It Forward" instead of the 7:20 show. We ran into HAO in the mall and she helped us in our evil task, which was to buy a DVD from Sam Goody to watch at home. We bought "The Exorcist." It wasn't a cinema experience, which was okay. I had only ever seen it on broadcast or cable television, never pay channels, and so I had never seen the full version. It's still a great movie.

Not so the movie we found on IFC the night before, Friday the 13th under a full moon: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." What a painfully stupid movie. I was not in the least frightened but more laughing, as Roger Ebert reports current audiences of "The Exorcist" react to that movie. I would like to know why, how, it has been so influential. There's no telling, of course; who could have predicted "Rocky Horror Picture Show"?

"The Exorcist" is a great movie and scary; "The Omen" (which is screened at midnight on weekends at the Mayan; "RHPS" is at the Esquire) is a stupid movie and not at all scary except that last scene, where the evil kid, holding You-Know-Who's hand, turns to the camera and stares at you.

---

Note to self: when bird-watching, even if you have a cold that makes your eyes itch, wear contacts so that a pair of binoculars actually does you some good.

Note to self: add the reason above to the list of why glasses are inferior to contacts.