{"id":5893,"date":"2013-07-28T20:52:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T02:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5893"},"modified":"2013-07-28T20:52:28","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T02:52:28","slug":"looking-at-birds-listening-to-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5893","title":{"rendered":"Looking at Birds, Listening to Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 1st started out well and then rapidly went downhill as I got the news about the Granite Mountain Hotshots on the Yarnell Fire in Arizona<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the 2nd, I was so drained from constantly accessing news videos, etc., that I had to get away, and so I went fishing. I wanted to try to different approach to a mountain stream that I fish now and then \u2014 it involved some gravel county roads, then two miles in four-wheel-drive down a steep descent into its canyon, followed by a short walk.<\/p>\n

As I came out of the dry juniper and oak brush into the lusher creekside vegetation hawk flew low over me \u2014 an accipter<\/a>, probably a sharp-shinned hawk<\/a>. Its head turned, and it looked at me.<\/p>\n

It felt like a welcome, I thought.<\/p>\n

“Bullshit,” I told myself, “it’s just cruising the riparian zone looking for lunch. I happened to be here, so it checked me out.”<\/p>\n

Maybe the flip side of the New Animism \u2014 the focus on relationships between yourself and the other-than-human world \u2014 is that you cannot think that these encounters are All About You.<\/p>\n

The wild birds are always watching, and they do talk to you. And they talk about you. Several times I have had crows and Steller’s jays tell me something when I was hunting deer or elk \u2014 but it is up to me to act correctly on their information. Apparently our relationship is not yet perfectly harmonious. But if they would help me more, they would have something to eat. Isn’t that fair?<\/p>\n

What gets under my skin is when someone says something like, “My totem is Hawk,” because I want to know which<\/em> hawk? There is a boatload of difference between a Cooper’s hawk and a Mississippi kite, for instance. (Oh well, they probably meant red-tailed hawk anyway, the pickup truck of buteos<\/a> \u2014 large, useful, and ubiquitous.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 1st started out well and then rapidly went downhill as I got the news about the Granite Mountain Hotshots on the Yarnell Fire in Arizona. By the 2nd, I was so drained from constantly accessing news videos, etc., that I had to get away, and so I went fishing. I wanted to try to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,221],"class_list":["post-5893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animism","tag-birds"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1x3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4944,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4944","url_meta":{"origin":5893,"position":0},"title":"Sex with Ghosts, Vengeful Mummies, etc.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"At The Hairpin, A Q&A with author, photographer, and ossuary expert Paul Koudounaris. Two quotes: Back in grad school I was known as the Fox Mulder of the art history department. Everyone else was working on Rembrandt and I was looking at woodblock prints of witches. . . . If\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Egypt\"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=egypt"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13134,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13134","url_meta":{"origin":5893,"position":1},"title":"Back for the Yule Log \u2014\u00a0Now with Goats!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"After two years' hiatus, the Yule Log was hunted again last Sunday in Beulah, Colorado, a small town in the foothills of the Wet Mountains. This hunt is a twentieth-century revival, passed (along with log splinters) from Lake Placid, New York to Palmer Lake, Colorado to Beulah, where the tradition\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/huntsman-and-companions.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13347","url_meta":{"origin":5893,"position":2},"title":"Beltane and the Birds","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Beltane snuck((OK, \"sneaked,\" if you don't like vernacular irregular conjugations.)) up on me this year. While much of Colorado had more snow than usual, here on the creek we did not. It was cold, dry, and windy week after week. Finally, a combination of rain and wet snow brought two\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Beltane\"","block_context":{"text":"Beltane","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=beltane"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bird-migration-1024x576.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bird-migration-1024x576.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/bird-migration-1024x576.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8228,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8228","url_meta":{"origin":5893,"position":3},"title":"Passing of Gavin Frost","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I learned this morning that S. Gavin Frost, co-founder of the Church (and School) of Wicca and someone whom I counted as a friend, died early this morning. He was born in 1930 in Staffordshire. Jo, his daughter, posted on Facebook: In our family, we do not believe in grieving\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"death\"","block_context":{"text":"death","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=death"},"img":{"alt_text":"lone-magus","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/lone-magus-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7644,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7644","url_meta":{"origin":5893,"position":4},"title":"Invoking the Birds and Hunting in the Woods at Yule","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"We Pagans may think that we \"own\" Hallowe'en, but we are own some ground at Christmas time \u2014 or Yuletide, if you prefer. Today M. and I drove 15 miles over twisty mountain gravel roads to a little town that celebrates a Yule log hunt. This tradition dates to 1952,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the lodge invokes both Heorot and a parish church.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/inside-lodge.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5928,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5928","url_meta":{"origin":5893,"position":5},"title":"Blog Carnival of Animism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The August animist blog carnival had the there of Birds, and you can find it linked on Animist Jottings here. There is quite a bit there, so go visit.","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5893"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5898,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5893\/revisions\/5898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}