I hope you’ve settled in for a very good season of birding. June is when most birds fall proper into your lap, singing, wooing, defending territories and usually strutting their stuff. They’re of their brightest colours.
Usually, I’d talk about the significance of shade and subject marks, however as a substitute of figuring out birds, let’s assemble one.
Each shade, each subject mark, is there for a purpose. Each chicken wants to maneuver, reproduce, eat and keep away from being eaten. Any species that failed even considered one of these necessities went extinct way back.
Take consuming. How would you design a chicken to crack seeds? After all, you’d do it the identical approach you crack walnuts, with a invoice heavy sufficient to interrupt the shell.
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How would you design a chicken to catch flying bugs? After all, with a thinner however longer invoice that may snatch a moth out of the air in the identical approach you may grasp a morsel with chopsticks. Simply by the invoice, you possibly can maybe inform the distinction between a finch and a flycatcher.
What about birds that eat each bugs and seeds? Nicely, duh. Their invoice is twin function. A chickadee’s invoice is heavy sufficient to open a sunflower seed, and nimble sufficient to glean a spider from tree bark, however not helpful for grabbing an insect out of the air. A robin’s invoice is designed to pluck berries and probe for shallow worms, however it will want the longer invoice of an American woodcock to probe for deeper worms.
A chimney swift spends a lot of its life within the air. Its legs are tiny, barely there, as a result of chimney swifts by no means stroll and solely hardly ever perch. Longer legs would solely make it much less maneuverable whereas airborne, chasing after its weight loss plan of flying bugs and moths.
Alternatively, let’s say you needed to design a chicken that feeds each on land and within the water. You’d give it lengthy legs for wading, and likewise a protracted invoice and a protracted neck for reaching the bottom, proper? You’d design a heron.
Let’s talk about courtship subsequent. How would you design a chicken that should visually entice a mate? Vivid colours like a cardinal? Daring patterns like a black-and-white warbler? It could be harmful to place brilliant colours on a chicken that should keep hidden in daylight, so all our nocturnal species are drab and mottled.
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Nonetheless, in case you don’t have colourful feathers to entice the women, how do you entice a mate? Voice is a method. Owls, woodcocks and whip-poor-wills are well-known for his or her nocturnal calls.
Shows are one other. Nighthawks, woodcocks and Wilson’s snipe placed on spectacular aerial flights at night time, making bizarre sounds all the way in which. Horny.
Let’s assemble a hummingbird. It must hover, and even fly backward, so the wings should beat shortly and rotate as wanted. Most significantly, it wants a invoice designed to feed on flower nectar.
In japanese North America, the ruby-throated hummingbird can attain into most blossoms native to this a part of the continent. However out west and within the tropics, the flowers fluctuate wildly. So do the specialised invoice shapes for a number of hummingbird species that feed on them. The deeper the blossom, the longer the invoice.
Let’s make a fish-eater, one that may dive into the water to grab dinner. It wants a invoice lengthy sufficient to get a very good grip on its slippery, wriggly prey, however not so lengthy that it’s unwieldy.
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It should have the ability to wait and look ahead to fish to method the floor, so circling or hovering is a should. The wings have to be lengthy sufficient to hover, however brief sufficient to permit takeoff from the water with out drag. Voila, we’ve created a belted kingfisher. Or a tern. Or, if the chicken catches fish in its talons as a substitute of its invoice, we’ve created an osprey.
Many different subject marks on birds transform practical. Cardinals, jays and titmice have crests which can be greater than decorative. They use them to speak with one another.
Crimson-winged blackbirds use their crimson patches to sign aggression and territorial protection. The crown on a ruby-crowned kinglet or golden-crowned kinglet is normally exhausting to see, until the chicken is agitated. Then it pops up in a blaze of offended shade. Ovenbirds have comparable orange crowns, however hardly ever elevate them besides to defend their nesting territories from different male ovenbirds.
Each chicken is assembled from simply the fitting spare components wanted to eat, prey and love.
Erik Stevenson was fouled making a 3-pointer and completed the four-point play with 3.5 seconds left to lift the Capital City Go-Go to a 96-93 win over the Maine Celtics on Sunday at the Portland Expo.
Stevenson finished with 36 points for Capital City. Ruben Nembhard Jr. added 13 points. 14 rebounds and seven assists, while Michael Foster Jr. had 14 points.
Ron Harper Jr. had 21 points and six rebounds for the Celtics. JD Davison added 11 points and 10 assists, while Baylor Scheierman finished with 16 points and six rebounds. Drew Peterson scored 18 for Maine.
This story was originally published in December 2022.
Jerry Galusha and his best friend, Doug Cooke, share a friendship that dates back to 1984, when they were living in Rangeley and were introduced by mutual friends.
Over the years, they have often gone fishing or deer hunting, activities they both have enjoyed immensely.
“The relationship that we have is just unbelievable,” Galusha said. “We’ve had some really amazing adventures.”
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This fall, Galusha was confronted with a heart-wrenching task. He would take Cooke into the woods, one last time, in search of a big buck.
The difference was that this time they would not be walking the tote roads and trails together. Instead, Galusha would be carrying Cooke’s cremains in his backpack.
Cooke died on Sept. 5 at age 61 after a long struggle with renal failure. Galusha said after 40 years of dialysis or living with a transplanted kidney, Cooke opted to cease treatment and enter hospice care when his third transplant failed.
Doctors had originally told Cooke he would be lucky to celebrate his 30th birthday. Thus, he tried all his life to avoid getting too emotionally attached to people. He seldom asked anyone for favors.
Cooke and Galusha hadn’t seen each other much in recent years as Galusha focused on raising a family. But in late August, Cooke left a voicemail for Galusha explaining that he planned to enter hospice care.
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Cooke told Galusha he didn’t need to do anything, but wanted him to know. He did not want to become a burden to anyone else.
“His body was telling him that he’s had enough,” Galusha said. “He couldn’t golf. He couldn’t play his guitar. He hadn’t been hunting in years.”
Galusha couldn’t let it end like that. In spite of Cooke’s reluctance to have his old friend see him in such poor health, he went to visit him.
But as Cooke faced his own mortality, he asked one favor of Galusha.
“He said, ‘Promise me one thing, could you please, just one time, take me in to Upper Dam to go fishing before you dump my ashes?’” Galusha said.
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The dam separates Mooselookmeguntic (Cupsuptic) Lake and Richardson Lake north of Rangeley. It was a favorite spot of theirs, one Cooke introduced to Galusha, who grew up in New York.
“He really loved the wilderness and Rangeley,” Galusha said of Cooke, who was a Vermont native.
Galusha immediately said yes but, knowing how much Cooke also enjoyed hunting, he didn’t feel as though the fishing trip was enough to adequately honor his friend.
“I said, I’m going to take you for the whole deer season, every time I go,” Galusha said. “He looked at me and started crying and said, ‘That would be so awesome.’
“It was hard. We cried and hugged each other,” he said.
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When Galusha went deer hunting near his home in Rangeley during the third week of November — a week the two buddies often spent together over the years — he tried his best to make it like old times.
Galusha spared no effort. He carried the cardboard urn containing Cooke’s cremains inside a camouflage can, which was wrapped with a photo showing Cooke posing with a nice buck he had harvested many years earlier.
He also packed Cooke’s blaze orange hat and vest, along with his grunt tube, compass, doe bleat can, deer scents and a set of rattling antlers.
Galusha chronicled the events of each hunting day by posting to Cooke’s Facebook page, complete with observations, recollections and photos.
Lots of deer were seen and there was one encounter with a buck, but after missing initially, Galusha refused to take a bad shot as the deer was partially obscured by undergrowth.
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“I just did what Doug would have done. He’s not going to shoot and I wasn’t going to shoot,” Galusha said.
He spoke reverently about Cooke’s resilience through the years in the face of his constant battle with health problems, which included not only kidney failure, dialysis and transplants, but four hip replacements and, eventually, a heart attack.
The arrival of muzzleloader season provided one more week to hunt. On Friday, Dec. 2, Galusha walked more than 3 miles along a gated road to an area where he had seen deer a week earlier.
That got him off the beaten track, away from other potential hunters, something Cooke would have appreciated.
“He wasn’t afraid to go do stuff,” Galusha said. “It might take us a little bit longer, but he didn’t care.”
Galusha, who still often refers to Cooke in the present tense, said he vocalized some of his reflections while in the woods. He saw eagles, which he thought might be Cooke keeping an eye on him.
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“I talked to him a lot,” Galusha said, who also enjoyed telling the handful of hunters he encountered that he was not out alone, rather with his friend.
He then explained the story of his promise to Cooke and reverently removed the urn from his pack to show them.
When Galusha finally saw the buck, it wasn’t quite close enough. He uses one of Cooke’s favorite tactics to coax the deer closer.
Galusha tried the grunt tube, and then the doe bleat can, but the deer didn’t seem to hear it. Then, he blew harder on the grunt tube and finally got the buck’s attention.
“I irked one right in, that’s what Doug would say,” said Galusha, recalling Cooke’s affection for using the alternating calls.
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The spikehorn turned and walked directly at Galusha, who shot it.
“I cried,” he said of the moment, recalling that Cooke had been there when he shot his first antlered deer, also a spikehorn.
During the long drag back to his truck, Galusha had plenty of time to think about how much Cooke would have enjoyed the hunt — and watching him make the drag.
At one point, a crew of loggers had approached.
“I was pointing to the sky saying, ‘We got it done,’ shaking my hand,” Galusha said. “A guy came up behind me and said, ‘You all set?’ and I’m like, yup.”
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Cooke and Galusha had lived together for 10 years at one point, but they also had gone long periods without talking with each other. Even so, whenever they were reunited it was as if they had never been apart.
The last few visits were difficult. Cooke’s health was failing, but Galusha just wanted to be there for his buddy.
“It was emotional,” said Galusha, who was present when Cooke died. “I held his hand to his last breath.”
Next spring, hopefully when the fish are biting and the bugs aren’t, Galusha will grant Cooke — who he described as a fabulous fisherman — his final wish by taking him fishing at Upper Dam, just like they used to do.
“I’m thinking maybe around his birthday [July 19]. It might be sooner, depending on how buggy it is,” said Galusha, who expects to make more than one excursion with Cooke.
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Galusha said he will know when it’s time to say goodbye.
“I really don’t want to let him go, but I promised him I would, so I will,” he said.