Stephen Maier
22 October 2009
Tonight I visited the West Clark Woods with a classmate at 6:45 p.m. It was about 60°F and the wind was soft and cooling. The weather created the perfect atmosphere for a night visit. As we approached the entrance to my site, I imagined nocturnal birds sitting in the treetops spying on small rodents scurrying in the brush on the ground. Only equipped with a small flashlight and a cell phone for protection, I envisioned us creeping around the forest until we were startled by some large animal. We would freeze in a moment of role reversal between man and nature. We were the “deer in headlights” stopped in front of a giant buck. The scenes I pictured were fantastic, but unfortunately they remained a fantasy.
As we were about to enter the woods, I stopped dead in my tracks. I was startled and even grew timid. I asked Nathaniel to shine his flashlight into the tree about fifteen yards from us. Something caught my eye, something that had not been there last week or in the weeks prior. Nathaniel moved the light to where I was pointing and we both gasped. Perched on a branch protruding from the tree line was an eerie bird. It reminded me of the vultures from The Jungle Book, however, far more malevolent than the oblivious birds in the children’s movie. It appeared to be approximately 18 inches tall with a long beak that extended about 4-6 inches away from its face. The bird exhibited a gray color, which may have been skewed since we were viewing it in the darkness. It was resting on one long, slender leg looking off into the distance towards the Clark Art Institute. It looked like a relative of the crane, stork, or heron.
Earlier in the semester, when the class gathered to watch birds, we were fortunate enough to spot a great blue heron on the far edge of Eph’s pond. The bird we saw this evening was very similar in silhouette, but slightly smaller to the heron. Clearly they were different colors, but they were also different in demeanor. The heron appeared harmless relaxing in the water enjoying the sunrise; but this bird seemed ominous. It appeared to be on the prowl waiting to attack its next victim. I didn’t move and I didn’t hear Nathaniel move either. I was contemplating my next move, not sure of where to go. If this bird was terrifying me, what would I do if I were to see coyotes or bears or moose? This thought helped me to muster up some courage and enter the woods. However, the image of that bird in the tree didn’t escape my mind.
We found our way to the zero point of my site and briefly surveyed the area around us. The darkness hindered our vision and disabled us from making any observations. So we decided to move to a convenient resting location where we could record the sounds of the woods. Last week, the most action I encountered was in a small hemlock grove that I reached via a barely noticeable path overgrown with thickets and thorns. Therefore, I thought the forest sounds would be represented and amplified best in this location tonight.
The noises there did not prove to be as promising as I had hoped. I closed my eyes allowing my sense of hearing to compensate for my lack of vision, but the animals I assumed to be in nature were inaudible. I heard cars and trucks traveling through the Route 2/Route 7 rotary, leaves rustling on the ground, arbitrary leaves, needles, seeds, and nuts falling from the trees above, and some human voices, which I assume were emanating from the Williamstown Public Library based on from where the sound was resonating. I heard some scampering of small animals through the leaves and a ten second segment of steady calling which sounded like a frog. This was the only evidence of the animals I had assumed were omnipresent in the West Clark Woods.
These sounds were incredibly difficult to locate, for the wind was gusting with high intensity in the woods. I would estimate the wind speed to have been about 8-10 mph at times, highly obstructing our listening capabilities. In the sound recording,nothing is audible save the wind. I intend to return another evening to try my luck again with the animals at night for tonight was relatively unimpressive.