Weather, Pinfeathers and Foxes

We observe. 

The sun is shining brightly in a mild morning breeze. Dry winds. It is warming.   Finally. After a week of heavy rain, it was getting to be a bit much.  Overcast, chilly and hardly springlike. Even T.T.T. and E.T.S.  (loyal readers know that would be Tilly the Tall and Ebony the Short,  the resident pups extraordinaire ) were getting tired of being wet and  traipsing through endless muddy puddles. They began walking around them.   (They like water, but not that cold dirty wet kind apparently.)
With weird, severe  weather, lives are disrupted and economic costs can be staggering.  Here the Trans-Canada Highway is still closed and supposedly will be for a couple more days.   Recent flooding in Thunder Bay, Ontario is expected to cost  $50 million in Thunder Bay alone--or perhaps a lot more with thousands of insurance claims.  It is no longer news.  Flooded basements. Ruinous loss. Big cleanup.  Official Disaster. Geographically we didn't quite dodge the bullet this time. We thank our lucky stars for our higher elevation and observe.  

 It didn't take a quantum leap to recognize that some of Mother Nature's own little critters out there-- in the same quirky weather- inevitably end up in challenging circumstance too.  The robin in our temporarily  untrimmed cedar tree hunches down into her nest, staying perfectly motionless if anyone gets too close. The nest had two  blue eggs.  A pair of robin baby blues in their perfection,  imagine that.
A couple of days ago a judicious look revealed a single,  naked chick,wrinkles dried off, homely as only a hatchling an hour old can be. The tiny one was sporting only a pinfeather or two.  Let's go with the idea that early birds get the worm.  Was hatching a day early smart, wearing only two or three less than adequate pinfeathers? Somehow it seems not.
 The second egg was still unhatched. Maybe a genetically superior, wise egg?  Was that yet-to-be born chick waiting for warmer weather?
 Was  that natural selection in a hurry, or just a thinner shell?
 Mother robin returned to keep the nest, the remaining egg, and the naked little one warm. She came right on time too.
   The temperature dropped to -5C the same night.  It made me question how anything as tiny and helpless --and buck naked-- can survive.

How does anything in nature survive?  Two red fox pups, barely bigger than small domestic cats, try  to cross the highway, playing chicken with highway traffic.  They race across the road to join a very anxious adult, waiting helplessly,  watching them gamble with their very lives.  We gamble with our lives for the same reason as foxes do don't you think? Crossing the road of life to get to the other side. 

1.0   Baby Foxes

Nature does play games with us, whacks us sometimes, surprises us once in a while-- but always challenges wildlife that seemingly cannot provide itself with the most basic protection at times. 
Are we better off than animals and birds when it comes to Mother Nature's whims? Have we grown our own feathers and learned to dodge traffic?
That's a good question.





What were we complaining about?   Oh, nothing... it was raining. Cold. The sun is shining to make up for it now. It's one of the reversals we can expect in life.    Let's do something else.  In the garden we planted cabbages first. They appreciate life. They don't mind cold and wet, they don't need feathers either.  Trenched the peas in.  Besides, it really is warming, little by little.  It's also drying out, bit by bit.  Rain, shine, rain shine!   We survive, by contrivance, with rubber boots if necessary-- but will the little ones out there survive too?

 

 

           2.0  Baby Robins   June 07 2012           

A couple of days later back at the nest, mini- robins display big, open yellow beaks and equal amounts of ' fashionable-minimalist outdoor feather-wear'-- for adverse weather and flying trials soon to come. Small wing-feathers are already visible, clearly preparation for the next big test. That was fast.
In observing, -- what is the bottom line?  What is the big hurry for?  A test of life itself?   
 Oh, wait....I was in a big rush to have coffee and get out and  plant the garden even though it was still cold and wet, wasn't I?  
Perhaps we are in a hurry to grow in thought process too, another  lesson in survival.  At Incoming Bytes we're learning to go around the puddles.


Is that incoming I hear? 


photo credits
   1.  baby foxes     www.sodahead.com
   2.  baby robins    (c) r.a. kukkee