THE BIG FLY BY
When summer ends and the first hints of Fall become evident in sudden chills and cooler night, the birds seem to get the message and we can see them gathering in small flocks. The congregate along the fringe of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east of our home here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia
If you watch carefully, especially in the evening hours, you can see sudden flickering of gray-black, crackled-paint patches against contrasting background or the sky; small flocks of birds gathering as local covens and and preparing for a massive movement south before the cold winds.
You see the small patches enlarging daily to become pulsing clouds after a few evenings. They fly about nervously in the evening seeking new adherents for the planned trip across the mountains to the east and south. They find a place, it seems, to settle in for the night and wait for the exact moment of departure.
I have often wondered how it is that the smaller groups become aware of a large flocks of bird which appear a few moments later from the western skies along the Appalachian Range. The local flocks are selective, it seems. They seem to know which southbound flocks they are to join. You will see them in the air circling meaninglessly before the long string of thousands of birds darkens a strip in the sky as a steadily moving caravan will be as much as a mile wide as it passes over us, irregularly shaped like a huge drifting cloud churning ahead. The parade seems endless. It may falter and become narrow somewhat at times, but it doesn't seem to have an end and it may continue for many miles. Thousands of fluttering creatures will be digging at the sky ahead of them and local groups will fly in an join them.
Just where so many birds come from has been a mystery with us for many year. We wonder, too, where they are going and if there will be food sufficient to feed them all – bugs, flyings insects, weed seeds, and other bird rations when they get wherever it is they are going. When we think it through we realize that they must reverse the process by which small group joined the larger one. Small groups will drop out of the large formations from time to time as they reach the spot they think is right for them, maybe the extant spot they had wintered the previous year. There is method in their meanderings, you can be sure even though we do not comprehend the exact nature of such subtle steps of survival.
We do not always realize that some will not make it. Some will die on the way. Other will meet with forces of destruction while in their southern home, and some will not be in shape to enough face the rigor oft the trip back to the north lands. The flock is changing constantly. The beat; the basic rhythm of it all, the fundamental meaning of banding together at times goes on.
Observe the birds and reflect on what tell us.
A.L.M. November 27, 2003 [c535wds]
