End of an Era

The darkness came quickly that year. For Ava and her kind, winter migration was a fact of life. It started with the constant twilight when the air chilled to the point where one’s breath could be seen. 

That’s when the food started getting scarce. Many of the small creatures Ava fed on went into hibernation during the winter. This left limited prey options for the crow sized carnivore. 

For Ava, the twilight was dangerous, and the darkness even more so. Were she to stay and lay her eggs in the Alaskan forests, her eggs would freeze and her with them. And if she didn’t kill her, then one of the larger, flightless theropods would devour her. 

The first morning of twilight, Ava woke up confused at the dimness in her nest. The spherical enclosure of woven vegetation was built to block the summer sun. Today however, the nest seemed much darker than usual. She gave a puzzled chirp before hopping out into the branches of her home tree.

Ava had made the winter migration six times before and each year it was the same. The dimming was so slow that she could hardly note a difference from one day to the next. She was always gone by the first snow.

The dimming wasn’t due to start for several weeks, yet the forest around her made it seem as if winter was just around the bend. 

Ava’s stomach grumbled and her mind turned towards food. The wrongness in the world would have to wait until her stomach was filled. She gave another chirp before taking flight in search of breakfast. 

The insects and lizards, it seemed, had already gone dormant but she soon spotted a shrew ambling between the ferns. Silently, the Avisaurid swooped down and caught the helpless mammal in her jaws. Her teeth severed its spine and it went limp with a squeal. Ava alighted in a nearby tree to eat her food.

While she ate, she surveyed the forest floor beneath her. A troodon, its attention attracted by the death squeal of Avas shrew, trotted into the clearing. It lifted its head and sniffed the air around before noticing Ava. The larger carnivore stared at her for a moment then turned and ran off in search of an easier catch.

When Ava was finished, she once more took to the air. This time she soared above the canopy and looked to the sky. Something was wrong. She could feel it.

Instinct prevailed and she turned towards the south. Early though it was, the migration had come.

This was her sixth such journey that she had taken. Every year, Ava and the others of her species would fly south to the Late Cretaceous Canadian wilderness. There, the winter weather was warmer and the food more plentiful. They’d lay their eggs and, when summer was dawning and the sun shone again in the arctic forests, they'd return with their young.

Her first migration was met with disaster. She’d been out hunting when a herd of Edmontosaurus stampeded through the forest. Her nest shook loose from the tree and her clutch was lost. 

Her second and third had been almost as bad. On the second, she’d lost her clutch in a flood that almost claimed her life as well. Of her third brood, only two hatchlings survived. The other three fell from the nest and were eaten by a hungry raptor.

Her following migrations were met with better luck and she raised two full clutches to maturity. With any luck, this year would be no different.

Ava flew all day and most of the night before arriving in her usual nesting area. Once there, she found an abandoned nest. The top of it had been torn off but it seemed in decent enough shape. Ava tucked her head under her wing and quickly fell asleep.

It was still dark when she awoke but a light to the easttold her it was just the sun rising. She stood up and set about preening her reddish brown plumage then stopped in her tracks. 

Her feathers had changed color. No… She opened and closed her eyes, unsure of what she was seeing. There was something on her feathers. She shook herself off and a fine grey dust made a cloud in the air around her before falling down to the bottom of the nest. 

She looked down. The nest, the tree she was in, the forest floor; everything was covered in the same dust. As with the day before, her hunger outweighed her confusion. Ava took to the air and swooped between the trees in search of food. 

It was a quiet morning. Nothing seemed to be moving and it was fifteen minutes before she could find a mouse for breakfast. She scarfed down the rodent then continued to fly around the forest. 

By noon, the woods through which she flew were darker than ever. With the limited sunlight, temperatures were dropping fast. Ava shivered. The rate at which the seasons were changing hadn’t allowed time for her winter plumage to come in. Maybe I haven’t gone far enough, She thought. And once more, she took off for the south.

Once above the trees, Ava found a flock of other Avisaurids heading in the same direction as her. She joined the flock, grateful to run into more of her kind. 

They’d been flying for several hours when it started to rain. At first it was just a light shower but within the half hour, fat drops of frigid rain were striking Ava’s wings and body and the winds made it difficult to stay on course. 

From within, she felt a pull to keep going. An instinctual drive to continue fleeing the harsh and early winter. But as her stiff and aching muscles protested, she finally broke off from the flock to seek shelter.

Once back among the trees, Ava started to search for a spot out of the rain. Her stomach growled but she no longer had the strength to hunt. Finally, as rain turned to snow, she found a hollow log. Cold and weary, she took shelter within it and tucked her head under her wing.

Temperatures fell and Ava slept for the last time.