#71 A WOMAN'S BRIEFS -- CROW FEATHERS
This note to you will be quite easy.
Yesterday I wrote a blog about a paper clip and some crow feathers. Any time I find a paperclip, as I did on a walk yesterday, it requires me to write something. So . . .
On that same walk, I came upon seven beautiful flight feathers scattered on a grassy hill. This saddened me. Obviously, these were crow feathers, and if you know me, you know that I admire crows. It had to be a hawk, or eagle, or owl that left only feathers.
Crows don’t like people messing with feathers or dead members of a murder, so I made sure none were around when I gathered the feathers..
Yesterday, I wrote about all this. I told you about crow feathers: ten flight feathers on the wings, twelve tail feathers, and numerous contour feathers making up that beautiful shiny body coat.
Did you know there are thousands of barbs, the hair-like part of the feather, (tens of thousands said one source), in one single primary feather? Each of those thousands of barbs is divided into little branches called barbules with tiny interlocking hooks to hold the whole thing together. And just look at that beautiful white fluff at the base of the rachis! If we take the time to notice things like this our blood pressure drops, our happiness rises, appreciation of natural things causes us to want to care for our world, and . . .
And wait a minute. At about that point of my blathering, I stopped myself and asked, “Wait. Is any part of a crow feather white? Nope. But I’m marveling over the beauty of the white fluff.
In that original blog, I had by this point written to you about the paperclip I found. I had spent a few paragraphs explaining the words “today” and “yesterday.” For some reason that information fit. I had shared a few paragraphs of a children’s story I’ve written about a buried land of bad manners inhabited by creatures with such names as Ronnie Rude Root. I had. . . then I stopped.
I took a better look at my collection of feathers. I did some research.
Did I see the tell-tale iridescent blue I should see on the left side of a crow’s feather? I did not. As I reexamined the feathers, I realized, these feathers are very large. This had to be a monster crow. And really, Pine, what predator would pluck out seven feathers before flying off with its prey?
It was hard for me to give up my treasured assumption, to think I could be wrong about these feathers. I began to doubt my feather assumptions (doubt is such a healthy thing). I took pictures and checked with Google, with Chat GPT, and a very educated birder friend.
Are these crow feathers?
They are not. The answer came from every quarter: Goose feathers they are.
Are you SURE these aren’t crow feathers? I so want them to be.
Goose feathers. Probably Canada goose.
“Geese, like all birds, shed their feathers periodically to replace worn or damaged ones, a process called molting. Canada geese, in particular, (and do we have a collect of Canada geese here at our ponds who come to this grassy hill to forage? We have)
Canada geese in particular undergo a ‘synchronous molt,’ shedding all their primary flight feathers at once, (oh no! I rightly identified primary flight feathers, only, wrongly assigned then to a crow) “making them unable to fly for a period. This molting typically occurs in the summer, from early June to late July, preparing them for migration.” Oh, like now, June.
Crow? No.
How hard is it to leave an opinion or belief for truth? How hard is it to let our minds be challenged or changed? Late last night I trashed the blog I had been writing. I’ll probably return the goose feathers to the hill. No dead crow after all. That’s good. I really like crows. I went to bed laughing and celebrating.
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