Last week, Wednesday or Thursday I think, I was mowing the back acres. It's about four to five acres of grass with several large spanish moss adorned trees about thirty to forty feet high each. It's really quite beautiful, I think otc has posted some pictures of it at one time or another. One spot in particular has an open area of about an acre or so, surrounded by trees. As I was making a pass I happened to look up and saw a large bird gracefully flying from tree to tree. It stopped and perched atop the highest branches of one of the trees, swaying in the breeze caused by an approaching thunderstorm. It sat there for several minutes, just watching me mow. I thought that was curious.

I got a really good look at it, both perched and in flight. It was about the size of a hawk, whitish gray, with a raptor type beak. It was a beautiful bird. I recognized the flight patterns to be like a falcon or an osprey, I had seen plenty of the latter back north when I lived on a lake. I used those search parameters that evening after dinner to identify the mystery bird.

It was a Mississippi Kite.

I was pretty stoked about spotting a bird I hadn't seen before, or should I say, it spotted me. It flew from tree top to tree top for a while but always came back to the top of the same tree to keep an eye on me. Intently. Like it was as curious of me as I was of it.

After IDing it I started reading some links, most were warnings to stay away from their nests. Mississippi Kites can be quite aggressive when they are nesting. Then I watched this video:

After watching that I thought to myself, "I didn't see any of that behavior, it flew around a bit up high and then just sat on a branch on the tip top of a tree, studiously watching me". Maybe it was just sizing me up.

Anyway, I thought it was probably just a one-off thing and thought how lucky I was to see it and didn't think much more about the encounter after that.

Environmentalists protect and preserve nature, at least the ones that come from the tradition of conservation. And that's fine. But such a formulation of environmentalism does present a particular dilemma: what parts of nature should be protected and preserved? If we are really to understand which ones we'll want to protect and preserve, and which ones we won't, we'll have to examine, very closely, all of our social phenomena, something the conservationists haven't done.

This week I searched the bookcase and dusted off my copy of Nuclear War Survival Skills that I bought back in the 80s. Having turned 30 years old in 1984 and thinking I had lots of time ahead of me I ordered the book just in case the unthinkable happened. I was not about to slouch towards Bethlehem willingly, despite that rough beast whose hour may have come at last.

As I leafed through the pages a couple of random memories struck me, like a well placed critical mass of linear U-235 dominoes about to be toppled.