6:00 a.m. 62 degrees, wind NW 1 mph. Sky: ground fog blankets a lush and thriving valley; visibility less than a hundred yards; a magical transformation; the kind of fog that must have hidden George Washington's nine thousand troops, on the morning of August 27, 1776, when they rowed across the East River, from Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan, to avoid surrendering to British General Howe, which would have promptly ended the American Revolution. Incredibly, yet again, wrote the historian David McCollough, circumstances—fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as would be said so often—intervened. Coyote Hollow fog may not be as transformative, may not be as historically significant, but looms as inventive, as profound, and, likely, as gorgeous . . . grinds down terrain with soft, ephemeral moisture. Hides contours; fades colors; tree crowns cleaved. Hawk can't see. Merganser swims with impunity.
Permanent streams: refreshed by yesterday's thunderstorm, which dropped more rain in half-an-hour than Tropical Storm Isaias in an entire afternoon. Upper: swollen and boisterous; Lower: flows all the way home; water striders back; skate the water tension, dimpling the surface; graceful, quick, lethal. Intermittent streams: resurrected. Wetlands: chowder fog. Pond: a total mist-in; one painted turtle breaks the surface, yellow-striped neck a beacon (needs a log to haul out on); snapping turtle patrols the far end of the pond, body submerged, head periscoped; a hungry island of antiquity.
DOR: many mosquitos, carcasses complements of me; recently hatch; recently slapped, pinched, ground.
AOR: hen turkey and her poult.
Hairy woodpecker muted taps, feeding quietly. Three red-breasted nuthatches yank. A titmouse and a pewee whistle. A pocket of chickadees. One red-eyed vireo, a fog-bound virtuoso. A soaked jay, feathers more gray than blue. Goldfinches flit above every uncut meadow and pasture; robins silent, go about their business unseen.
Two yellow-billed cuckoos call, a door-knocking ku, ku, ku, ku, ku, seeping like mist out of crowns of ash and cherry. If I walked at the pace cuckoos move through the canopy, I wouldn't arrive home until lunchtime. I wait . . . and wait. Finally, a glimpse. No more. A long, thin bird, as yellow-brown as bleached leaves, belly immaculately white, sits hunched over. Nicknamed rain crow because of a supposed tendency call before a storm, cuckoos, both black-billed and yellow-billed, are disinclined to weather-predict in Coyote Hollow, and probably everywhere else.
Yellow-billed cuckoo: seventeen days from egg-laying to fledging; doesn't get any faster. A chick's feathers erupt from their sheaths in less than two hours; also, doesn't get any faster. Loves to eat giant, slow-moving insects: smooth, spiny, and hairy caterpillars, katydids, grasshoppers, cicadas, crickets; occasionally, treefrogs and nestlings. A cuckoo eats so many bristly caterpillars its stomach fills with noxious, indigestible spines; then, like a cat spitting up a hairball, it spits up the entire lining of its abdomen, a process frequently repeated during the year.
A glimpse of the cuckoo is all I get, a furtive bird veiled by leaves—sulks in Coyote Hollow and winters east of the Andes. To get there, cuckoo exposes itself. Exhausted birds feed aplomado falcons over the plains of Mexico; a tiger shark caught offshore from Sarasota, Florida, had cuckoo feet and feathers in its stomach. I stand stock-still struggling to see more than a bird doubled over in discontent, white belly obscured. Leashes in hand, I listen to the cuckoo's swallowed, hollowed voice ku, ku, ku, ku, ku—a communique from a secretive, itinerant bird that I may not see here again for years.
Bat behind the barn door, again.
2020: summer of the comet; summer of the goshawk; summer of the otter; summer of the cuckoo. Memorandums from far beyond a pandemic.
Loving the information about cuckoos, which I have seen like twice in my life. Listening to something off the deck yesterday adjacent to/behind trees with loads of tent caterpillars...tried the AllBirds recording, but this was more like two dry sticks knocking together...just 'kuk, kuk, kuk'...wondering if it's a cuckoo. Will just keep watching for them...