Silver City Wildlife

Silver City, Nevada – Sometimes after returning to McCormick House from a long day in Reno or some other city, I’m startled by Silver City’s quiet. The town is blessed with a beautiful lack of noise. During the day there’s often nothing but the occasional cry of a red tailed hawk, and at night, only the sound of the great horned owl who favors a tree near the house as a hunting perch.

I grew up in Midwest, and after nearly three decades in Silver City, I’ve never stopped being awed and delighted by the wildlife that the town’s quiet hills contain.

For instance, each October there’s a slow moving westerly migration of tarantulas through town. Over the years a few have crept through the house on their Autumn journey, and I gently return them outdoors, hoping they don’t fall victim to tarantula hawks. The big wasps are common here – they prey on tarantulas and have one of the most painful stings of any insect in the world.

Many of my other outdoor neighbors have wandered inside as well over the decades. I’ve found scorpions and black widows in my shoes, Western fence lizards under the bed, and lovely hummingbird moths buzzing around the chandeliers. It’s all part of the challenge and beauty of rural Nevada living.

The town is full of Gambel's Quails that sometimes break out into comical hooting and hollering at some real or imagined danger. And wild horses have peered in the windows of McCormick House, startling and running away when they saw movement inside. I love seeing mares napping under the neighbor’s fruit trees with their newborn foals.

Bright-eyed scrub jays come to beg for treats, no matter which human is staying at McCormick House (the housing for visiting artists with the Resident Artist Program in Silver City). New Zealand-born photographer Frances Melhop photographed them at the bird bath, and London-based artist Claire Scully sketched them as they eyed her expectantly from the deck railing. Conversation artists from Oakland (marksearch.org) appeased them with offerings of suet.

This Fall while I was giving a fresh coat of paint to the south side of McCormick House, a Cooper’s Hawk swooped by, just inches from my face, burdened with the weight of a freshly killed rabbit. It made it to a nearby tree to enjoy its meal, and I continued painting once my heart stopped pounding.

Hiking the hills surrounding Silver City includes sightings of shy rattlesnakes, the occasional golden eagle, turkey vulture or deer, and enormous jackrabbits. I’ve even spotted mountain lion tracks a few times.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet David Lee captured the almost spiritual joy that being in the town’s quiet outback inspires when he wrote about a 2016 Fall hike above Silver City. He wrote that he saw “three jackrabbits almost within spitting distance of me, staring at me, all, and I could hear them wondering Who and what in the world is this? and two hawks directly overhead screeing, and I came back and then walked away, down, and the jackrabbits did not move, and the hawks, for a short way, lead the way, singing. Glory."