Beauty of Creation

Encountered Beauty: Nighthawks in a Dark Sky

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I have clear memories of a particular time of day in a town where I lived for two short periods of time, Northfield, Minnesota. In middle school, and then during college, I would frequently walk over the Water Street bridge spanning the Cannon River, by the old dam and historic Malt-O-Meal mill. On summer evenings and nights, I remember almost always hearing the distinctive nasal or buzzing be-zeet, be-zeet sound of birds calling to one another in the sky above. When I first observed them, I wondered what kind of birds these were, and about their surprising nocturnal behavior as compared with other birds more familiar to me. Based on the white patches on the underside of their wings, visible from the reflected glow of the lights in the town center below, I was able to identify them as Common Nighthawks, based on Roger Tory Peterson’s well-known book, Field Guide to the Birds.

Seeming to fly far above me, I was curious about their size, imagining them to be rather large. I then learned that their size and weight puts them somewhere between a common robin and a crow, suggesting that they do not fly as high as I had first imagined. Nighthawks are insect-eaters, which accounts for why they are so evident on summer nights, amidst the target rich environment of flying bugs swarming over city lights.

With their long wings, these birds engage in bat-like flapping as well as in gliding, and I remember them flying closely together as they went about their nocturnal feeding. The American Bird Conservancy website describes them in this way: “the Common Nighthawk’s erratic, acrobatic flight style gives the bird its folk name, ‘bullbat’.” Memorable in this regard is the way that they make occasional dives toward the ground. Some observers report that these dives cause the wind under their wings to make a booming or a whooshing sound, though I don’t remember hearing it.

I was intrigued to learn that, given their relative size, these birds will roost and nest on such apparently vulnerable locations as the ground, elevated tree limbs, ledges, and even gravel rooftops. Among things I appreciate about Nighthawks is how their mottled coloring, with blends of light and dark feathers, has adapted them well to survive in a variety of environments, and helps to protect them from predators like hawks and falcons. Of course, there are those incongruous white wing patches, which may be an evolutionary bow to some needs parallel to survival, both the attraction of a mate and the procreation of offspring.

The shape and size of Nighthawks’ comparatively long wings aid not only their feeding activity while flying, but also the extraordinarily long annual migration they make between their breeding grounds in North America to their winter habitats in South America. In fact, they are believed to have one of the longest migration patterns of all North American birds.

To me, Nighthawks are an unexpected kind of bird to find in a town center or in a city, given their dimensions and surprising willingness to live and reproduce in proximity to the commercial activity we associate with such areas. I am always delighted when I recognize their sounds above me on a summer evening, as I look up to see them wheeling about in the darkness, with their white wing patches flashing here and there.

In the natural world around us, with all its dynamic interrelationships, these amazing birds are our fellow creatures. In relation to them, as well as to other examples of what traditionally have been termed flora and fauna, we are called to engage in God-like stewardship. We all seem to have our favorite species in nature that we want to protect and care for. Needless to say, Nighthawks are high on my list.

 

The Nighthawk page from my grandfather’s copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds

 

The Beauty of a Homing Pigeon

A stunning Belgian racing pigeon, sold for $1.9 million

 

My title for this post may appear ironic or implausible. Yet, there is a long history of careful stewardship of homing pigeons by pigeon fliers and ‘fanciers.’ They breed beautiful, graceful, and powerful birds. Some racing birds are capable of flying a thousand miles, mysteriously finding their way back to their nests at speeds between 60 and 100 miles an hour! Most homing pigeons are not quite in that league.

I first became intrigued with the idea of having a small flock of homing pigeons when I was a Boy Scout in middle school, in Japan. A fellow troop member had a flock of some 20 to 30 birds. I went over to his house after school and watched him release them from his roof-edge loft. Then he would scatter bird seed on the roof and enter the loft, a signal to the birds that ‘dinner time’ had arrived.

Multicolored homing or racing pigeons in a Texas loft

His loft, as my later and smaller ground-level pigeon coop would be, was constructed of parts of old wooden shipping crates, then quite common in port cities like Yokohama. Those crates provided solid structural starting points, generally weather resistant, and adaptable to various pigeon loft configurations. What was left to be found was some mesh screen, some wood with which to fashion a simple door, and a set of dangling vertical rods (the formal name for which I have forgotten) which, resting against a wooden ledge, would allow the pigeons to return to the coop while passing through them, but not able to exit again.

A homing pigeon resembling one of the first in my small flock (note the leg band)

My first two birds, received from my friend, had distinct colorings different from common city pigeons. The female had a tan color and the male’s feathers were an overall charcoal gray and black. With them, I raised several more pigeons having beautiful darker brown feathers with white stripes. This was while the adult birds acclimated themselves to their new circumstances, and gained a new homing point for their flights. If I recall correctly, it takes at least a few months for this to happen.

It seems significant that the Gospels record the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus at his baptism, as being like a dove (a pigeon relative) rather than – as some might have imagined or hoped – like a falcon or an eagle. Doves and pigeons, the latter offered on the occasion of the infant Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, are symbols of peace, while avian raptors more often figure in war and or civil power-related imagery.

Over the couple of years I kept pigeons, I may have had as many as 8 or 10 in my small coop, some of which I purchased from local Japanese fanciers. I particularly prized the white birds, and saved up paper-route money to buy them. Once, I bought a beautiful one without having a proper transport case with me, and carried it home through the Yokohama streets. After my journey of a mile or two, almost near home, the pigeon in my hands and held in the proper way, suddenly startled me and flew off to its former home!

I never raced my pigeons, though that is a common hobby for those who raise homing pigeons. Transporting the pigeons by vehicle (in vented carry boxes) to an assigned location, they are then released at a particular time, and clocked regarding the speed of their return to their home lofts. How homing pigeons are able to do this is not yet fully understood, though it is thought to involve magnetoreception, a sensitivity to the Earth’s magnetic field.

My time with my pigeons came to both a happy and a sad end. I was examined and proud to receive the pigeon raising merit badge from the Boy Scouts.

And then one morning, some months after this, I went to check on my pigeons before school. I was devastated to find that a cat had gotten in during the night, and I had lost my beloved birds.

As you might imagine, from time to time I muse about having a small flock of these amazing and faithful birds once again.

The Beauty of an Appaloosa Horse

While composing a prior post on the beauty of a horse, I was reminded of a portion of the Pslams – “{The Lord’s} delight is not in the strength of the horse (PS 147:10).” Yet, God must surely delight in the beauty of a horse, a possibility that may have occurred to some of us during the recent Triple Crown racing season and / or through admiring Dega’s renditions of race horses. Perhaps the Lord especially delights in the breed of horses known as Appaloosa’s.

Traveling back and forth between Japan and my parents’ birth home area of Minneapolis, we met a family on one of the voyages across the Pacific who had a ranch in Montana. Among the many wonderful discoveries during multiple visits there was the beauty of the Appaloosa. A ‘spotted backside’ might not at all be desirable among humans and some other living beings, but in my view this common Appaloosa trait provides one of the most compelling amalgams of both solid color and random patterning that I know of in the animal world.

Most closely associated with the Nez Perce nation among indigenous American peoples, the breed initially suffered along with the decline of the community propagating its existence in the latter 19th century. Yet, despite that sad history, and perhaps because of its compelling beauty, the Appaloosa breed of horses has since thrived.

Our friends’ ranch had numerous Appaloosas, but three that I remember fondly, and for differing reasons. One, named Lonesome, a striking looking horse, had Thoroughbred blood lineage and was tall and slim, with a reputation for being occasionally arbitrary as was another more dramatically colored one named Blue. Leo, like Lonesome, was mostly spotted all over but, when first seen with his more compact and robust physique, could be identified as having an American Quarter Horse lineage.

My favorite, the one with whom I became most familiar, was Marble, a mare of not-readily-evident Appaloosa lineage, among which some are almost white and others appear almost black. Marble looked like a common brown Morgan horse, except for one distinctive detail – she had one blue eye, like one sees in some Australian shepherd dogs. Unlike the sometimes mercurial Lonesome, and the sometimes stubborn Leo, Marble would let me bridle her in the pasture, lead her into the stable next to the tack room, and saddle her without much difficulty.

An Appaloosa gelding, with a Morgan-coloring like “Marble” (note the slight brindle pattern)

The patterned coat commonly associated with Appaloosa horses may be an acquired taste, much like variegated plants among gardeners. I find horses of this background stunning to look at, and I especially appreciate how they have often been portrayed in Western art, such as in the paintings of Charles M. Russel (whose expressive Western-themed paintings I hope to feature in a future blog). It tells us something about the aesthetic sensibility of the Nez Perce that they they would have pursued breeding and cultivating the bloodline of these horses, not only for their utilitarian value but also for their sheer beauty.

The Delta Art of William Dunlap

Book cover of Dunlap’s 2006 retrospective art survey book

 

If Andrew Wyeth had migrated to the Delta region of Mississippi, some of his paintings may have turned out looking like those of William Dunlap. Folks not from the central deep South will usually associate that term, the ‘Delta,’ with the outflow of the great river south of New Orleans in several branched outlets. Yet, the term, the ‘Delta,’ in the mid and deep South refers to the region abutting the Mississippi River south of Memphis, bordered by Arkansas and Mississippi. Historically, and until the present, it has been characterized as one of the poorest regions of our nation and also known as the birthplace of the Blues, a fact which may not be coincidental. Lush with vegetation in a multitude of vibrant greens during the summer, the Delta has a stark beauty in the winter, especially where trees have been removed for farmland. Usually not cold enough for lasting snow, gray skies often complement the gray trunks and limbs of deciduous trees, as well as of cypresses in the swamps and by the river.

William Dunlap’s paintings, particularly the more recent ones, capture well the landscapes of this mostly rural part of ‘flyover’ America. As his artwork often depicts, the low-on-the-horizon winter sun pokes through bands of dark clouds, where in the evening a surprising warm glow can enliven an otherwise flat and bleak landscape. Dunlap lived in many places in the Old South while growing up, but the north central hill country of Mississippi, and Webster County, remained a homing point connected with his grandparents. Yet, I find his most evocative paintings are of the comparatively flat alluvial terrain on the east bank of ‘the American Nile’ south of Memphis.

Dunlap grew up feeling like he had lived in two eras of history, one being the late 19th century whose social legacy permeated the circumstances of his youth, and the other stemming from his having been born at the end of WWII, having come of age in the 1960’s. Images in many of his paintings reflect this paradoxical tension between old world cultural patterns and practices, and new world adventurous explorative freedom.

The dogs in his paintings reflect aspects of this dynamic. Dunlap’s grandfather bred and raised Walker hounds (most memorably represented in the top painting), which are often depicted as his central subjects within expansive landscapes. According to J. Richard Gruber, they are “used as a surrogate for man (and himself) in his works.” Here, in his choice of subject matter, we find another rural ‘old south’ in tension with an emerging new world. It is most markedly suggested in one of his paintings where he places a power plant cooling tower, releasing steam, behind a rural farmstead fronting an open field (not depicted).

This may help us appreciate the term Dunlap coined to describe his approach to painting, ‘hypothetical realism,’ a term which I think applies equally to the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. Remarkably, Dunlap basically taught himself to paint, and focussed his early work on Rembrandt and other ‘Old Masters,’ while also displaying the evident influence of modern masters such as Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. The effect of some of these more recent artists’ work can be seen in two of the paintings above, by the visual inclusion in the skyline of the regional names, Delta and Arkansas, in label-stylized fonts preferred by many Pop Art painters. Once again, we encounter a dynamic interplay between historically traditional approaches to representational painting and the 20th century reactionary revolt against them.

Dunlap is a truly gifted painter, both in terms of what he has been able to accomplish, but also in terms of his encompassing creative vision. Internet images, upon which I have relied here, only begin to suggest the expanse of his creative perspective.

 

 

For those who might want to see more of Dunlaps paintings, as well as learn more about him and them, I commend his coffee table book, Dunlap (which, through Amazon and or other sources may still be available, and which provides a much more accessible resource for appreciating the painter’s work:  (https://smile.amazon.com/Dunlap-William/dp/1578069041/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1YS7GNY6ZE2AS&keywords=dunlap+william+dunlap&qid=1654915393&s=books&sprefix=%2Cstripbooks%2C91&sr=1-5).