One of my sons, a forest fire fighter in Oregon, is in town for a wedding. Since he is coming over to visit this morning I wanted to get my bike ride in early and thus headed up Tamm Ave. toward Forest Park at 6 o’clock in the morning.
Things have really changed in the park at this hour of the morning. Now it is just CROWDED with people. So many – walking, biking, exercising (in groups even), roller blading, all manner of folks. Large crowds and this was a Thursday morning. It is even more crowded on Saturday and Sunday. One fairly large group of young women exercise at Art Hill, doing various exercises at the bottom on the bike trail, then running up and down the hill many times. Dedicated group.
Two major changes here: the number of people using the park for various forms of exercise has dramatically increased. The hour at which they arrive has gotten earlier.
Mainly I am just delighted to see this. I’ve been calling for people to use this wonderful park, and believe it is good for the city to have these crowds flock to the park,
But, it is changing the relationship we all have with the park critters. Last year if I went to the park at 6 AM there were few folks there, and I could almost always count on seeing the coyote out and about, and run into an occasional other odd creature like turkey, raccoons or possum. No more. Too many people now. I think if I’m going to see many of these critters I’m going to have to leave my house in the dark at 5 AM at the latest to have much of a hope.
I don’t mind. Often in the heat of the summer, I like to get up pre-dawn and get my exercise in before the sun gets hot. But these past several days have been unseasonably cool and I’ve been riding later, just happened to be up early today because of my morning visit with my son.
However, it was still a day with interesting critter contacts. Today I did see the granddaddy hawk of the Forest Park group. There are many relatively small ones, ones with a wing span of about maybe 2 to 2½ foot. But this huge red-tailed hawk I saw today, which seems to be one I’ve seen before, is just gigantic with a wing span that is easily more than a yard across.
A first I didn’t realize it was the “big one.” He/she was gliding high up over the waterway by Steinberg. Then, as I sat on the wooden bridge checking things out, it came down and landed briefly in a large tree. Wow, it is magnificent. Today the red-wing blackbirds, which are all around, didn’t even attack it. It flew lower over the waters and I rode on up to the very old black iron bridge, which gives me a long clear view of the sky headed down toward the Muny. The bird flew off in that direction and just flew so fast it was hard to keep it in sight, A delightful sighting.
Then I got a second more hilarious reward. You’ve all seen pictures of fishermen lined up at trout streams where they are standing shoulder to shoulder and fly casting; it’s a popular photo theme. Well right below me were four birds. One of the very long-necked white birds which I think one of you on this list told me is actually a white egret, but everyone in the park calls it a white crane. Then next to it, almost touching it, was a large green egret, next to it a much smaller green egret, and finally another large green egret. The four of them in a row, standing stone still poised, obviously looking for breakfast. I sat and watched for 3-4 minutes and finally it was the white egret/crane’s neck that just snapped down and zip, pulled up a small fish. Then it tipped it’s head way back and gulp, the first course for breakfast was history.
It was all so cute, the four of them standing shoulder to shoulder, like people at a bar having a beer.
Today, however, I didn’t stop much, and was home in one hour and forty-five minutes, my 15 miles carefully toted up on my odometer. Lovely way to start my day.
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