By Janice Daugharty
Yesterday I spied a vee of Sandhill Cranes tacking northward, squawking good-bye in the fair blue sky over our mini-plantation known as Cow Creek. Red birds, like gaudy bows, glowed in the evening sun in my reviving rose garden. A lone robin, left behind when its family took to their annual spring flight, stepped and pecked in the dry grass and leaves of our back yard. I figure maybe he’s one of the cold, old ones, who couldn’t make the trip, so was mercifully left to languish in the insulating heat of our coming summertime.
This past fall, nets of redwing blackbirds with their off-key chittering swooped down on the live oaks, wing-beats gusting acorns like hail on our rooftop. They lit in the bare branches of the wintering pecan trees behind our house, stuck like withering black fruit, and when they flew their wind sent a scattering of pecans for Thanksgiving pies. Winging over the open corn field, a hundred-strong, they wheeled in unison, flashing a neon shield crimson as the setting sun.
It’s been a good bird season here in South Georgia: doves streaming in droves over the mowed corn field behind our old farm house, their wings squeaking like rusty door hinges. During dove shoots I would sit on my screened porch and watch shotgun barrels glinting in the winter light from the spaced placement of men invited to our shoots. They call out to each other by name—“Shoot!” Only the best, brightest and politest were invited—don’t level your gun at the hunter across the field from you, like you-know-who. Do, and you are out of the game forever.
Some might call it illegal baiting but my husband and I call it feeding. All last fall and winter we put out cracked corn, bird seeds and peanuts for our guests, the migratory birds. Plenty of fresh water, what with three farm ponds and a humble creek turning through the pine and hard woods of our homeplace. Along Cow Creek we sowed kernels of corn like gold nuggets in the sandy shallows of the tea-tinted stream for the ducks. They never cease to make our hearts quicken when we happen up and they explode from the creek and shoot like fireworks in the overhangs of ancient tupelos and cypresses. I love watching them fly, straight arrows, at dusk, going to roost along the banks of the nearby Alapaha River.
In case you think we shoot only for sport, let me assure you that we eat the birds we kill. We feast on grilled dove, dove and rice (purlow); we like our ducks stuffed and roasted slow, till succulent and tender. We like eating around a blazing campfire at our pond house with good company, beer and wine. There is always a backdrop of frogs chirruping in the dark beyond the circle of firelight. Now and then an owl lets loose with a single-noted whoo. A deer blows, off in the deep woods, followed by the screams of coyotes, reminding us that every living thing feeds off other living things. That’s life. So live it while you can.
Well, that’s what we used to do.
Because of the recent Avian Flu scare, next year Cow Creek will be a no-fly zone. We’ll be shooting to scare the birds away. No more trying to attract them, no welcoming parties of corn, bird seeds and peanuts. I’m hoping the migratory birds will stay where they belong, or by-pass us, I’m hoping they will have forgotten our Southern hospitality.