Spring?

Usually spring reaches Montana rather late in the year. Sometimes May qualifies, and usually June. Certainly not February. But this has been a strange winter, with more warm weather than anyone can remember. And I think its confusing the animals just a bit.

At a ranch, spring is a time for birthing (with the big animals) and for mating (with the small). Well, I soon learned the folly of that and this year I finagled the birthing to come in July and August (when the pastures and the barns WONT all be under water from the spring floods). But there is not much I can do about the small animals and their mating rituals. Usually that sort of thing just takes care of itself. At some point the geese all start renewing their bonds of matrimony (they often stick with one partner their whole lives), the ducks start pairing up (they change partners every year) and, well, the chickens breed year round so nothing unusual really happens there. This year we added turkeys and as a whole, the mating season for birds is active, loud and quite amusing. Its like a big, multi-week cocktail party and everybody has to go home with someone at the end of the night.

Of course, none of this should start until April or May. Out here we can easily have cold spells down to negative 30 in February and March can be almost as bad. If the pairing up starts too early, then the eggs, which quickly follow, are likely to freeze before they’re hatched. And normally the birds seem to know that. Except this year.

It started with the geese, of course, the trouble-makers of the bird world, and it quickly spread to everyone else. Now the turkeys are puffing out their feathers, dragging their wings in the snow, and strutting around in front of everything (I mean everything - one of them has been trying desperately to impress our truck, for instance). The young, unpaired geese are fighting and squabbling over mates as the older, stately pairs watch on indulgently. The peacocks are fanning their tail feathers in a brilliant display of blues, greens and purples. Even the Great Blue Heron who flies up our valley every spring to nest showed up here last week. Only the ducks, who are mostly trying to keep out of everybody’s way, seem to realize that its really a bit to early for so much fuss.

The problem is that its not just their timing that is screwy. If it were just that, I might write it off to them knowing something I don’t know and plan for an early spring. But its more than that. Their sense of species seems to be just a bit off too.

It started with the turkey flirting with the truck. Then, when he got no response there, he turned his attention to me. With one big Tom and two females, his normal courting behavior should be puffing out his feathers and dragging his wings on the ground, then strutting in front of his girls trying to impress them with everything he’s got. Well, he’s got the strutting, the puffing and the dragging down, but he seems to be aiming it just a little bit wrong. At this point, he mostly just follows me around all day, gobbling seductively in my direction, trying to show me what an impressive specimen he would be (something I already know, since I had his twin on my Thanksgiving table...). God forbid I kneel down on the ground to work on some fencing or dig something out of the snow. He never misses a chance to drag his 50 lb. body up into my lap to show me just how truly sexy a globby blue and red face can be, up close.

Then the geese started doing the same. Or rather, their version of it. One day one of the males actually cozied up to me, letting me stroke his neck and back while he rubbed his beak around my hands. At first I thought he was just being friendly - finally showing his appreciation for the endless work I do all winter to feed him every day. But it turned out he was trying to attract a mate. Now, every time I step outside the one of the female geese rushes to my side (its a different one each time - they take turns, it seems). For as long as I’m in the yard one of them is there, following glaringly at my back, driving me aggressively away from their men. I now know where the term “to goose someone” comes from. If the female believes I am getting too close to her men, she charges me and pellets me with a series of bites on my behind that have me running across the ranch, yelping as I try to get away. Occasionally I turn around and try to scold her (reasoning that I am the human, after all, surely I don’t have to be herded by a 30 lb. goose). At that point she generally leaps for the collar of my coat and hangs there, right next to my face, flapping her wings and screaming curses at my man-stealing ways.

The male peacocks so far don’t seem to have quite the attraction to me, I am pleased to say, but whether or not they have actually figured out who they are suppose to be attracted to, I am not sure. I’ve seen them strutting around, showing their feathers to chickens, turkeys and, occasionally, to a very unimpressed rabbit. They seem to leave the female peacocks alone (which suits them just fine, as far as I can tell). And the poor chickens pretty much just stay out of everybody’s way, though the roosters have occasionally tried their hand at the new specimens which suddenly seem to be fair game around them. I saw one rooster flirting with a goose this morning - something which he probably wont do again after two very large male geese saw him and grabbed him, one by the tail feathers and one by the head, and ran around in a circle with him screaming their furry and pulling out most of his feathers.

I keep telling myself that certainly all this activity is a sign - the great wisdom of nature coming through to tell the birds that spring is early this year and it is safe to begin their noble work of raising happy bird families on the ranch. But...yeah. I think I’ll wait to see just what he babies look like before I decide for sure.