Nature Wins

Back in the 1970s, when I first lived in the South Carolina Lowcountry, I had a small boat that I liked to take out on weekends to fish for reds and trout in the creeks or sometimes Spanish mackerel and blues off the beach. But nature always seemed to conspire against me. We'd get five days of beautiful, flat calm seas that ended Friday nights when a cold front would move in from some place like Ohio and stay all weekend.

Gradually and reluctantly, I learned the wisdom of the old seafarer's saying, "I'd rather be in here wishing I was out there than out there wishing I was in here." It only took a couple of times of feeling like a cork in a washing machine to get that.

Isaac arrives in the Keys (NOAA Photo)

So when then Tropical Storm Isaac decided to pay a call on the Florida Keys at the same time that I was planning to be diving in the Dry Tortugas 70 miles west of Key West, I had only brief regrets. I always yield to that kind of weather.

Some of my friends seemed more upset by the cancellation than I was (maybe they were looking forward to me being out of town). Sure, I hate to miss a dive trip, and I haven't been blowing bubbles nearly as much as I need to lately.

There is a larger issue in this for me, though. It's all about my relationship with nature. As a nature photographer, that's obviously pretty important.

Back when the weather gods always seem to have it in for me, of course, I was also at the mercy of an employer who expected me to be in the office Monday to Friday. I am fortunate today to be able to make my own schedule. I can take advantage of the weather when it's good, hunker down and make plans to clean my apartment when it's not. Fortunately, the weather usually improves before I have to put those plans into action.

But the nice thing about having this freedom is that I can regulate my activities with the rhythms of nature, which seems more natural somehow. I have long believed that the root cause of human discontent is our separation from the natural world. We have created artificial everything to shield us from the inconveniences of nature, and I think that does something bad to our souls.

Whistling ducks on the wing

I feel more in tune with the natural world than I used to, because most of my activities depend on the time of day and the state of the weather. I am most active as a photographer early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when the light is most beautiful and animals are most active. When it rains hard I seek shelter and enjoy the sounds of thunder and the flash of lightning. When it drizzles I relish the soft wetness on my skin and the sounds of the frogs in the nearby retention ponds. Of necessity, I am aware of moon and tide cycles, and I study the seasons to know migration patterns.

I'm no Thoreau. I'm writing this at 10:30 at night on a laptop computer with an electric light beside me and the air conditioner tempering the humidity. I like my comforts and my entertainment as much as anyone. But I am fortunate that the passions that consume me tie me closely to nature's schedule. It helps me feel more a part of nature rather than apart from it.

Anhinga with crappie

That enables me to be there when an anhinga swims by trying to swallow a crappie or when a pair of whistling ducks speeds by flashing their wings in time with their eerie shrieks. Those just happened to be two of the highlights on Sunday afternoon at a nearby wildlife refuge. 

Which is where I was instead of diving in the Dry Tortugas.

In The Way

I'm waiting to hear what I expect will be bad news from the Center for Birds of Prey. I took an injured Cooper's Hawk up there Sunday in hopes that the medical staff could work a miracle or two and get this beautiful bird up in the air where it belongs.

Back in June I attended a workshop and got certified to be a transporter for the renowned Raptor Center, as it is popularly known. With a well-staffed and equipped medical clinic, the center takes in injured hawks, owls, eagles, vultures, kites and ospreys to heal their wounds and release them back to the wild if at all possible.

Healthy Coopers Hawk

There's nothing terribly glamorous about being a transporter. No flashing lights or sirens on my car as I drive through the ACE Basin and  across Charleston to the Raptor Center's grounds about 19 miles north of Charleston. I don't even listen to the radio, as any noise just adds stress to a bird that is very likely in shock already.

Twice this month I've gotten calls from the Raptor Center asking me to contact someone who has collected an injured bird. I arrange to meet that person and transfer the bird to my own cardboard pet carrier, lined with towels.

The drive takes a little over two hours if traffic isn't too bad. With no NPR or music to distract me, my mind drifts recklessly from the sublime to the ridiculous. Once in a while, for a change of pace, I might whisper to the bird that we only have another 30 minutes to go. There's no response.

My first bird, a Mississippi kite with spinal trauma, occasionally scratched at the box, which I took as a positive sign; if it can move its feet, surely it can be  rehabilitated. Wrong. After five days of steroids and physical therapy, the  vets at the Raptor Center had to put that bird to sleep.

I never even saw the kite. The woman who had collected it is an experienced bird rehabilitator who contacted the Raptor Center when she could make no progress. She already had the kite in a box and had attached a letter explaining the situation. There was no need to stress the bird further by opening the box just so I could see it. I put the box in my car and drove to the Raptor Center. The vet thanked me, read the letter and shook her head sadly as she said, "It doesn't look good." And she was right.

Today, she and the staff are working on the Cooper's hawk I brought them Sunday. I did see this bird as I took it from the laundry basket where the woman who found it  in her backyard had placed it after it apparently collided with her window. The bird was awake and moved its feet feebly. It looked at me with a yellow eye that seemed more curious than afraid.

When we opened the box at the Raptor Center, the bird was in the same position, its eye still open and looking up curiously. Again the vet said, "It doesn't look good." I was expecting that.

Actually it is what all transporters are taught to expect. The majority of birds brought to the medical center don't make it, but the success rate is higher than that of humans who get CPR.

But we have to try. Trying is what makes humans humane. Just because expectations are low doesn't mean we should abandon hope. And I am confident that one day the  Raptor Center will call to tell me the bird I brought them a week earlier has just been released, alive, healthy and free.

Don't Get In the Way

I was telling a friend about my bird transporter duties the other day, and explained how they get injured. Flying into windows is common, flying into or failing to get out of the way of moving vehicles even more common. My friend said, "We humans are just in the way, aren't we?"

That reminded me of something else I had heard a few days earlier in a TED talk about our relationship with another predator, sharks. And since this is the notorious "Shark Week" on the Discovery Channel, I thought I'd finish this up by linking you to that talk. This is a five minute debunking of the  most common myths about shark "attacks" and "rogue sharks." 

It won't spoil it to tell you that the last line of the talk is "We're not on the menu, we're just in the way." We need to remember that. And we have to do what we can to mitigate it.