Gull Rescue

I've mentioned in earlier posts about the visible carnage around Dunkirk Harbor, most of it a natural outcome of having a huge gathering of birds in very severe weather. I found  many places where a bird's breast and belly feathers had frozen to the ice or asphalt, and had to be ripped out for the bird to go anywhere.

This looked to me like swan or goose down--a large (foot-long) patch of the softest white down and body feathers. 

The walking wounded--a domestic goose whose foot should be fully hidden in dense feathers. But his flank feathers have been ripped out, most likely by freezing to the ground. Many of the birds I saw had disheveled belly feathers from these events. The temperature hadn't risen above the single digits for weeks. 

I feel similar bare patches on my psyche this winter, things pulled out by this wicked freeze, that ought to have remained in place. It's been a character-building experience. Writing this, I'm looking out at about 9" of compacted snow. A buck, his antlers newly shed, punching through it in a search for seed and corn under the feeder.  I trust by the time this post sees publication, it will all be gone. I hope it will. If this winter's taught me anything, it's not to take anything for granted. March snowstorms, April snowstorms. They happen right here in Ohio. I've been in a May blizzard on Cranberry Mountain in West Virginia. One in June, too, near Steele, North Dakota. Sometimes it snows in June.

 My rehabiliator's heart was aching. I hoped this goose could make it through the rest of this brutal winter with half his flank feathers gone.

All around--death and celebration. A beautiful immature glaucous gull feasting on a red-breasted merganser.

And another young glaucous gull, taking its last rest, frozen into the ice. No one saw it before it was too late.

So when I saw an immature herring gull flapping and struggling on a sidewalk, I broke into a trot. This one, at least, wouldn't die young.

As I ran, I felt in my pocket for my car keys.

The poor thing had settled down, defecated, and its own excrement had run under its belly and frozen solid. Oh, boy. There's a metaphor in that. Stuck in your own frozen sh-t. I feel ya, kid. Let me see what I can do.

Often when I'm flapping my wings against the ground, I'll call Shila. She'll whip out her car keys, deftly scrape my feathers free...

listen to my squawks of protest

tell me it's all going to be OK

and toss me back into the air to fly another day.