Date: 1/6/25 6:06 am From: Joseph Neal <0000078cbd583d7c-dmarc-request...> Subject: polar vortex in NWA City
Woke up this morning in Northwest Arkansas City with arrival of polar vortex.Ultra-cold air that usually spins around the North Pole has escaped, south. Made it to Fayetteville. I got a call late yesterday from my friend Harvey Payne who was in Osage County, OK, driving across Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, when vortex with snow blew in across Osage Hills, coating the prairie grasses with flocks of Lapland Longspurs. Maybe we have them this morning, too. HOPE.
I wanted to share some January 3, 2025, conversation from near where Harvey called. A bunch of us from NWA City were in Foreman’s House, on Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, in ancient Osage Hills north of Pawhuska -- and inside Osage Nation where Bison are out and about on big native grass ranges – in Foreman’s House tonight before the big count -- a lot of talk about hawks to be seen on Christmas Bird Count. Conversation about hawk species photographed and maybe will be needed to pass onto CBC Compiler Don Wolfe of Sutton Center in Bartlesville. Back-and-forth technical discussion between Mitchell Pruitt and Kenny Younger.
In reviewing all on Kenny’s laptop – and with high frame rates (30 images/second) so video-like -- I am reminded what we are talking about in the functioning of the southeastern portions of the Great Plains, in particular, the Osage Hills and also in particular, how Rough-legged Hawks, Harlan’s Hawks, Krider’s Hawks fit in with restoring a Bison herd on Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, restoration of Osage Nation, cowboys, ranching, oil & gas production, and the ongoing and dazzling rush of American experience -- and maybe restoring all of us and some dignity about how we fit into a vast landscape not made just for our benefit -- Answers must all be out there, in vast arc of a prairie sky, brilliant winter sun, brilliant blue, pouring through pinkish tail feathers of a Krider’s Hawk or the rich wavy play of black and red in the tail of a Harlan’s Hawk subadult -- All fresh on the wing from say, Alaska and the Arctic -- That’s what it’s all about.
Some of this, maybe 75%, is relevant to the remaining former prairies in NWA City. Worth considering anyway.
The photos, the frame rate, the fascination with the subspecies and the northern Great Plains come to this Bison restoration landscape, Tallgrass Prairie Preserve -- Emotion surge to count the birds – Smack middle of all that data, all that brilliance of which we are sometimes so very capable -- I am reminded at last by a line from a John Prine song -- Ain’t it strange how an old broken bottle looks sometimes so much like a diamond ring.
