November 16, 2003 - Snow geese were returning to the Gray Lodge California State refuge during the mid-morning flight from the feeding fields, and the sky was a perfect snowstorm of thrashing wings as they descended from celestial heights. The sky-chatter was a roar of goose talk, and I leaned back against my car-hood to stare upward and absorb that wild flurry we see for only one season per year. It is the most resounding call of the wild you can hear, and one of the most stupendous spectacles in the out-of-doors...right in the middle of our Feather River marsh community.

Even with binoculars, it’s difficult to pick out any one part of such a wide-spread wonder, but I focused on one trio–two adults and a smudgy juvenile–and I imagined that maybe the youngster was their progeny from the Arctic nesting grounds as they stuck together and drifted down for a landing. Of course, a nest closer to a dozen eggs had originally been tended, so it was a mystery about the rest of their brood. Had they succumbed to predators on the tundra, or fallen to a shotgun blast? Left home? Only they knew, and they weren’t talking, at least in English.

I mused that the pair of snow geese had made the long journey north, fulfilled their parental duties, and returned south, individual accomplishments in their pact with life. What a feat in staying in their family unit amid the apparent confusion of half a million birds. Each bird was a self-functioning unit even though the milling mass looked like one organism. Each bird had made a choice of mate, migration, nest site, food gathering–all individual acts coupled into the social union of the flock...individual accomplishments in a social matrix.

It seems all life on earth has an individual function though "hitched together with everything in the universe," as John Muir said. It is as if each species and individual has been given a special assignment even though they don’t know it, dedicated to fulfilling those expectations of perpetuation of the species and being a unit in the web of life.

I looked around the marsh and could see individual birds interacting with the refuge habitat, some sailing in solitary swoops like the Northern Harrier Hawk, and some being reclusive like the Bittern and the shy Great Blue Heron, while most of the Gray Lodge participants gathered in small groups to ply their way of life. You can be with a clan, but you make that final thrust of the mouth for food all by yourself...bird or man. You see those birds of a feather–spoonbill ducks, gadwalls, widgeons, pintails, mallards, and coots hanging around together in their groups, almost as if fearing to be alone in the dangers of the world. It is interesting, too, how the sandhill cranes hang together in winter flocks, such as the group seen at Gray Lodge during the November Elderhostel bus tour I helped guide, or the 30 or 40 I saw at the Book Farm near Chico where they prowled around the fields together, even turning over cow patties to find mice and insects. Would they be better off hunting alone?

Perhaps there is some protection in shared lookouts and avian camaraderie for the less defensive birds. Shorebirds are prone to feed and fly in flocks, especially the willets and sanderlings, but along the Feather River, you find the more solitary spotted sandpipers seemingly content in isolation, and the American dipper is conspicuously alone in the mountain rapids.

Winter is also a flocking time for blackbirds. It seems instilled in their systems to bunch up after the nesting season. Crows are like that, as are the quail, and the bushtits, turkey, and crowned sparrows. Those imports, the English sparrows and starlings, also cluster together throughout the year, nesting in communities, as if braced against a foreign world. It is really amazing why some species flock together, and others tend to extend their individualism throughout the winter, scouring out a lonely living like the rock wren or the red-breasted sapsucker or flicker, and especially birds of prey such as the redtail hawks that soar in their solitary sorties, or the black-shouldered kite that hovers over the fields.

The great egrets you see standing around the marshes or out in the fields–or perched on branches–seem to be solitary individuals, but those wading birds also gather in the springtime trees for the nesting rendezvous. Along the Feather River, they gather in cottonwood trees near the Afterbay Outlet, and there is a Gray Lodge Wildlife Area rookery, as well as a colony in an oak tree half way between Oroville and Marysville! It is so bizarre that wading birds like the egrets and herons do their nest-building in trees and bunch together, well, like birds of a feather.

Those egret individuals also gather at the Lake Merritt rookery in the middle of Oakland, California! The great and snowy egrets started nesting on the man-made islands in 1972 after trees planted in 1953 had grown. Even though the surrounding city is humming with activity, and the shoreline paths are rampant with joggers and dogs, the egrets gather in the introduced eucalyptus, casurina, willow, and bottlebrush every spring to forge a home base. Except for runs of smelt, the lake is inadequate to support a couple hundred egrets–and cormorants that have invaded the trees in recent years to build on the egret’s stick piles–and the birds have to commute over the city to the bay for food. They return to regurgitate fishy stuff to the youngsters.

You see the jackrabbit bounding through the meadow and you know that an individual accomplishment has been achieved in merely avoiding the coyote and staying alive. The hawk and fox are out there too, waiting for a chance to swoop in and pluck a nice dinner. No wonder the rabbit has long ears for detection of trouble and strong legs used to bound away from danger. Its life and accomplishments depend on it. But sometime this winter a pair will combine forces, and next spring produce an outstanding individual accomplishment from two separate entities conceiving a new rabbit life.

There is an individual accomplishment hanging on a boulder along the river. It is the chrysalis of the pipevine swallowtail butterfly. An egg had hatched last spring and a black and red-spotted larvae had crawled forth to feed on the pipevine leaves. Finally, a time came when that larvae had crawled up the embankment to the boulder and transferred its wormy substance into the confines of that coffin. The tough casing is adhered to the rock by strong threads that will sustain that pack of life through the rigors of winter until a joyous butterfly resurrection emerges next spring! What greater wonder can be found? All accomplished without any visible direction, merely following the dictum of its life imprint to fulfill its destiny. John Burroughs called it "knowing without knowing they know," but we wonder about the genius behind the creation. Somehow there was an individual accomplishment of extraordinary power. "Some call it evolution, and others call it God."