I’m back in from the morning’s activities. My goodness! You would have not believed the difference a day can make.
Yesterday there were only two gobblers active, both well off the boundaries of the test area. This morning? Let me give you some stats:
1) The gobblers went active 50 minutes later this morning. That’s ten minutes sooner than would be predicted by assuming the time change had no effect.
2) Gobbling continued clear up to 2 hours after sunrise. Yesterday, we had a two gobs give a couple of quick gobbles right at sunrise, and then that was it.
3) At any given time in the morning there were 5 gobblers sounding off.
That’s a sizable difference any way you cut it. We’re still correlating the data, but you just can’t argue with success.
See, the way I see it, the situation is considerably different than what you have with deer in the Fall. With the gobblers, they wake up one morning and the sun ain’t up. They try to get back to sleep and there in the moonlight is that ugly-as-sin girlfriend next to him on the branch, and it makes him consider his sins and repent his life in earnest.
Now just as he’s finally come to grips with his sad lot and got himself rearranged on the branch, the rest of the woods starts to sound off. If you ask me, gobblers don’t pay much attention to Daylight Savings Time. I think they take it in stride. If you are a bird that can get his head wrapped around having a girlfriend that would make a buzzard look beautiful and sounds like fingernails on a blackboard when she gets amorous, a little thing like the time change ain’t gonna faze him in the least. No, I say it’s the other birds. You got the starlings and all the songbirds and the whole rest of the woods getting all fretful, because it’s now getting onto Eight O’Clock in the morning and the sun still hasn’t shown itself.
Note: The crows were particularly petty this morning. I don’t have any data on them, but something in their caws sounded rather peevish. You could tell something was up, however.
Then the owls go off. I can see where a gobbler might even be able to put up with all the racket from these overly-excitable tweety birds, but then you have that stinking barred owl start hooting and chuckling–it’s just too much. The gobbler finally gives in and lets out his first gobble out of ultimate frustration and starts to get on with his day.
I hate to tell Scooter this, because he’s all into correlating the data and removing co-variances and calculating statistical significances– the fancy scientific stuff. However, I’m letting you know right now what’s in my heart. I’m out there this morning, listening to those poor gobblers, and I could not help feeling sorry for them. Here it is, the time change, another winter is passed and there they are, still stuck on that branch with the same homely chick they hooked up with when they were just a jake. After a while, they all hopped down of their branches and started wandering around the woods, gobbling their heads off, resolved to find a new girlfriend that wasn’t quite as putrid. However, by 10 AM, every hen they had found had that same hairy blue head , and they gave up in disgust.
Me? I came back and my lovely briar rose, KYHillChick, met me at the way up to the house with her bright smile and news that breakfast was cooking and would soon be ready. The contrast was enough to make me weep, and I was moved to write this.
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