Today was surprisingly warm and sunny. This afternoon's group had cancelled because they 'couldn't find drivers', whatever.This seemed the ideal afternoon for plotting out our walk for when the TV guy comes to film it on the fifth of November.
We went to the ditch. It now looked rather like a river, the little platform that Alex and I had planted there was completely submerged, there were now trees apparently growing out of the water.
We left the ditch and started down the bog-forest trail. We looked up into the clear, blue sky and high above us were a couple of black specks, something about them made us think they were hawks.
We went a little further and found what seemed to be a trail leading off the trail. I suggested we go and check it out and Alex agreed. We got so far, and then the way became less clear, so we stopped and looked at the sky again. The sky was full of gulls, but as we watched, two black shapes appeared, and as they soared and glided, we could clearly see that it was two eagles, flying quite low.Try as I might, I couldn't get a picture, but we stood and gazed. I thought if we made our way back to the main trail, I might get a chance to snap them, but that wasn't what happened.
Almost back at the trail, we found a plastic box.
'It looks like someone's lunchbox,' said Alex, and it did, but it also looked full of stuff. We gingerly retrieved it and opened it. There was a selection of items in it, and a notebook, a log, a number of people had signed it going back to 2003.
'I know what this is,' said Alex, 'it's a geocache box. People hide them and other people find them. '
We wrote in the notebook that the Park Rangers had found it on the 23rd of October 2007, replaced it and moved on.
As we came to a corner where there is a beautiful hemlock tree, we heard the sound of birds screeching.'That's the sound of eagles,' I said, 'but they sound so close.'
Then two eagles arose from the forest, the most magnificent birds I have ever seen. In spite of there being a stuffed juvenile in the Nature House, I had no idea how enormous they were. They chased around for a few minutes, always appearing through the trees so that I was still unable to get a picture.
It was the most spellbinding encounter to date, we were awed.
7 comments:
Oh mate! That is amazing!
I can't wait to tell Random Rob, he'll love that.
I wish I had Random Rob's bird identifying gift, being able to know which one's which by their song would come in very handy in my job.
Random Rob is too spooky!
Needs burning at a stake!
He must be in his element right now then !
Mmm.. Something like that!
I have a few friends who are avid geocachers...don't go anywhere without making a game of it and either leaving a cache or finding one (or both!). Visit http://rosulek.powersurge.net/geocaching.html
I participated in a study of earth caching curriculum with my students a year ago. I enjoyed learning about that, too. http://www.earthcache.org/ The fun introduction to GPS kept the students interested.
I think it's just astonishing that something like this has been going on for years and I had absolutely no idea about it. Normally, you know about things that go on, you just think, nah, not for me, or, sheesh, what weirdos, but this - who knew? (well obviously you Dawn and whole swathes of other ppl, but not moi!)
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