I'm sitting on my back deck reminiscing about the "Good Ol' Days", reminiscing has become a common occurrence for me. Seems that the older I get the less I like the changes I have lived through, embracing the world of today is difficult for me with all of the rampant technology, the woke generation, the me generation, the left, the right, so on and so on. So I often wind up looking backwards to a time long ago that only people my age can relate to.
I live in a small town that is steadily getting larger and becoming more fast paced, more crowded with traffic and people. The noise, at times can be overwhelming with firetrucks, ambulances and police cars racing buy, then there are the loud mufflers. Peace and tranquility are hard to find in todays world.
One of the things I like is to look out at what Kay and I have created for ourselves, her flowers are everywhere and their colors are beautiful. Birds are attracted to our yard, mainly because Kay feeds them but also because there are quite a few trees and places to build nest, in this I have helped by building at least a dozen birdhouses. Sitting here watching the birds and listening to their calls made me remember two birds I have not heard in many years.
When I was a young boy, I spent a lot of time on my grandfather's farm. He was a farmer of the old school, he plowed his fields walking behind a pair of mules, named Kit and Doc. He had cows, pigs and chickens all of which were tended to by hand. I followed him around just about everywhere he went.
I remember, back in the 1950's, the distractions were a lot less than they are now, you were more in tune with the surroundings, in particular, the birds. There were the loud Blue Jays, Mocking birds, Wrens, Cat birds and others, they all had a song to sing and all you had to do was listen but there was one that really stands out in my memory - the Bob White Quail.
The Bob White Quail is a small bird found only in the forest of the south, they had a very distinctive call, it was more of a whistling sound like no other. They were ground feeders and nested in the deep underbrush of the forest and raised a brood of six or more chicks. Once the chicks hatched mom and dad started their training and wherever mom and dad went so did the chicks. One of my best memories was walking down a shaded dirt lane with my grandpa. I looked up and not far ahead two adult Quails came out of the brush, one following the other, they in turn were quickly followed by six or eight freshly hatched chicks in a single file line behind the mom and dad.
Unfortunately, the little bird was considered a prized target by hunters, they were nearly hunted to extinction. Their savior turned out to be the hunters, their hunger for the bird caused them to create brooders who would raise the birds to be turned loose on large hunting clubs where they would be hunted. But the hardy little bird turned out to be quite the survivor, the speed with which they flew when they were flushed made them hard targets. Today there are many birds running wild in south Georgia having escaped the aim of the hunter, conservationist in most southern states are reintroducing the Bob White Quail in their states.
The other bird that I used to hear quite often is the Whippoorwill. When Linda and I moved closer to the lake in Mt. Juliet I could often hear the Whippoorwill late in the evening. I never saw one but they had a distinctive call that made them different from the other song birds. As far as I know they too were fond of the solitude afforded by the forest but the encroachment of people has destroyed much of their habitat.
The last time I can say that I heard the call of the Bob White Quail was the late 1950's or early 1960's. The last I heard of the Whippoorwill was in the mid 1970's. I'm not against progress, I'm not a tree hugger, I leave that up to someone else and hope that someday mankind will learn from his prior mistakes. The sound of their silence is yet another reason so many of us elderly people often look back on the "Good Ol' Days".
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