Growing daylength is the primary trigger for birds’ nesting and the migration that might precede it. But for the great horned owls, it is the longer nightlength that awakens their haunting winter music.
Birds
Autumn Kings:The Crowned Sparrows
One fall morning, a clear, high fluting rings out, three sweet whistles in a dying fall. The crowned sparrows have returned.
I Can Hear When They Call: American Crow
We thought ourselves alone and separate, the unique possessors of these streets. But there are two thinking beings in this town that we called ours.
Vulture: The Beautiful Purifier
But how beautiful he looked, gliding down on those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light over the precipice.
Mourning Doves: The Meek Inherit & The Lost are Found
Also invisible but invariably present at some indefinable distance are the mourning doves whose plaintive call suggests irresistibly a kind of seeking-out, the attempt by separated souls to restore a lost communion.
This Goldfinch is Not Lesser
Do we have a more brilliant goldfinch? Only one that fades. Do we have more golden birds? Only furtive natives of the tropics, who spend more time away than here. So when you ask what bird shines brightest in California’s amber and green seasons, the answer is this goldfinch, who neither forsakes us nor grows gray.
