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Palmville Rust Grouse: A Close Encounter

 

It was one of those,"Do you see what you're looking at?" episodes that I've started to think outloud about in my old age that helps me focus on what I'm really seeing versus what I'm looking for.


Okay, he was really, like ten feet away from me, not four feet. The telephoto lens on my camera might have compressed the distance in reality, I admit. BUT, he did eventually -- several eventual minutes -- squeeze by me about three inches from my boots: a close encounter.


David said, "I'll be darned! That's a Palmville Rust Grouse there! Pretty rare!"

    I had texted my wife that I was going for a stroll, meaning a meandering walk of no real destination or direction. I had thought to take the four-wheeler, but it was a nice evening and I didn't want to spoil its ambience driving something noisy. Besides, I wanted to move slowly; I wanted to pull a chip out of one of the nearby trail cameras and exchange it with a new one, as well as look for fresh bear tracks along a firebreak where I saw bear sign last year.

   I was thinking about an old friend of mine in California who used to send me some of the wildlife photos he took along the American River at Sacramento; he had a Canon digital camera and a gigantic telephoto lens. I was impressed how crisp and detailed his images appeared as though the birds were a mere arm length away when they were far distant.

  Where I walked on the bare soil firebreak was a water-filled depression with trees on either side. I had turned back around from taking a picture behind me, when my eyes refocused on an unusual object ahead of me, which at first I was unsure about, and then decidedly unsure about. It looks sort of like a grouse -- but it's orange. 

   It didn't fly away in a panic, not to say all grouse do. In fact many of them, just step aside and let you pass, acting rather confident that you don't see them; or at the very most they fly into a tree's lowest branches and sit still as stone holding their breath hoping you do that very thing. 

   We had a staring contest; our toes fairly clinched to our soft earth locations, hearts beating wildly -- well, I could only imagine his was because, obviously, he was all gussied up for love in a large flowing Rust Orange Victorian ball gown with a feathered bustle and ruffled collar. His love object clucked and chittered away in the trees and brush trying to coax him to her. Standing my ground, stock-still, I watched as he literally inched his way toward me, then past me Yes, 3-inches away from my boots, and disappeared in a brushpile presumably to relieve himself of  20-minutes of tension; I know I had to. It was like facing down a grizzly... I couldn't let him sense my fear.

Then I texted my wife with pics, "I'm still alive."

 





 

 

 

 

 

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