Time for Stripers?
It’s not weather, alone, that governs bird migration autumn and spring. It’s the amount of daylight in the sky. I’ve watched skeins of ducks and geese fly into the teeth of advancing cold fronts straight out of the north when the days lengthen in spring. In fact, I watched it happen last week on a trip to a family funeral in Nebraska. My three brothers and I were there to bury Dad. My brother Vernon and I drove with our wives straight north on Highway 81 out of Edmond into that southeastern corner of Nebraska often referred to as the Rainwater Basin, so low and waterlogged is the country there at this time of the year because of the winter’s melting snows. Roadsides in every direction were only recently opened, and three-foot snow drifts were piled high. Grandpa Harry Vollertsen had a dairy farm there that started our father’s life, and consequently our own. Ducks, geese, and sandhill cranes choked every available body of water, no matter the size, as far as you could see. If you...