My little horse needed some attention, so I spent my little time with him.
Mister Buckles is a too-smart horse, and he is a much better horse than I am a horseman.
There are things I must provide, and one is supplemental insect control, for the insect population multiplies when the horses occupy the same area. I was a little late, and I always feel a flush of shame to see flies on his face.
Mister Buckles got a little round-pen work, initially not enough, as he chose to pick grass rather than join up. So a few more laps, and a little begging (I really didn't want to heat him up in the fast-warming sun) and it was carrots and Freedom 45 Spot-On. It goes on easily, provides full, rain proof coverage, and there is no spray blowing in the horse's eyes (or yours). And works for two weeks.
I turned Mister Buckles back out with Abra(cadabra), the Appaloosa mare, Briar, a buckskin gelding, and Llucy the llama, pasture police and protector of our small herd.
I drove north to Red Bridge, less than two miles away, on impulse.
I visited Red Bridge in 1955, when it was under construction. Looking from the height of the span, with the small creek meandering northwest far below, I lacked the prescience to envision any future for this massive structure.
I didn't trust my memory, and stopped at the first metal standard (where possible, wooden powerpoles were sunk into the ground; metal poles are anchored to concrete supports on the bridge proper) and checked: it was clean, dry.
I looked over the southeast side of the bridge and down on a gull, a white flash down around in the trees below. I thought "Okay, white gull, how many are there?"
Well, a lot. Here's a quote from David Sibley's Guide to Birds:
"Gull identification represents one of the most challenging and subjective puzzles in birding and should be approached with patient and methodical study. A casual or impatient study will not be rewarded." (Pg 208, Identification of Gulls)
Gee, thanks Dave. How about a little bone. This is not Puget Sound I'm exploring here. So I took a look at Cornell University's most awesome E-Bird (ebird.org) to apply the first rule of bird ID: if it's not supposed to be here, it probably isn't. And found the only gull or tern reported in Indiana in the first week of August, this or last year, is the Ring-billed Gull.
But it will remain a gull, in deference to Mr. Sibley, the Roger Tory Peterson for the next generations. (Admission: heretic I may be, but I don't use the Venerable Mr. Peterson's Guide because of ID rule #1: the occurrence maps are not on the description pages. It doesn't matter how closely your bird resembles the bird in the guide, if he's never been seen northeast of Winslow, Arizona, he's almost surely not on a wire in North Central Indiana.)
And it was on to the stanchion I recalled, and there, on the concrete anchor pad, was the detritus of the Osprey's noon meal yesterday. True to the appellation Fish Hawk, he (or she: no obvious distinction) had caught a panfish, probably a sunfish, keeper-sized for the meat fisherman.
Okay, that was all conjecture based on 3-4" of tail, but that's as good and true as observation gets.
I walked across the roadway to the southeast again hoping, from the elevation, to guess where he took the fish. Instead, I looked down on a dizzying flight of barn swallows, TNTC (Too Numerous To Count), swarming about over the Reservoir. Sweeping, soaring, diving, impossibly close passes, at dizzying speed, in a freeform impossible choreography that may have an ostensible purpose, but must be just fun, the very most fun, and any creature in the universe that could be doing this would be doing this.