This is the text of Leopold's essay "The Choral Copse" paired with beautiful images. The presentation can be used as a backdrop to help illustrate public readings of the essay.
Apidays New York 2024 - The Good, the Bad and the Governed by David O'Neill, ...
The Choral Copse
1. On this SlideShare page, you will find several Power Point presentations, one for each
of the most popular essays to read aloud from A Sand County Almanac at Aldo Leopold
Weekend events. Each presentation has the essay text right on the slides, paired with
beautiful images that help add a visual element to public readings. Dave Winefske (Aldo
Leopold Weekend event planner from Argyle, Wisconsin) gets credit for putting these
together. Thanks Dave!
A note on images within the presentations: we have only received permission to use
these images within these presentations, as part of this event. You will see a photo credit
slide as the last image in every presentation. Please be sure to show that slide to your
audience at least once, and if you don't mind leaving it up to show at the end of each
essay, that is best. Also please note that we do not have permission to use these images
outside of Aldo Leopold Weekend reading event presentations. For example, the images
that come from the Aldo Leopold Foundation archive are not “public domain,” yet we see
unauthorized uses of them all the time on the internet. So, hopefully that’s enough said
on this topic—if you have any questions, just let us know. mail@aldoleopold.org
If you download these presentations to use in your event, feel free to delete this intro
slide before showing to your audience.
4. By September, the day
breaks with little help
from birds. A song
sparrow may give a
single half-hearted song,
a woodcock may twitter
overhead en route to his
daytime thicket,
5. a barred owl may
terminate the night's
argument with one last
wavering call, but few
other birds have
anything to say or sing
about.
6. It is on some, but not all, of these misty autumn daybreaks
that one may hear the chorus of the quail.
7. The silence is suddenly broken by a dozen contralto voices, no longer able
to restrain their praise of the day to come. After a brief minute or two, the
music closes as suddenly as it began.
8. There is a peculiar virtue in the music of elusive birds. Songsters that
sing from top-most boughs are easily seen and as easily forgotten; they
have the mediocrity, of the obvious.
9. What one remembers is the invisible hermit thrush pouring silver chords
from impenetrable shadows; the soaring crane trumpeting from behind a
cloud;
12. No naturalist has even
seen the choral act, for
the covey is still on its
invisible roost in the
grass, and any attempt
to approach
automatically induces
silence.
13. In June it is completely predictable that the robin will give
voice when the light intensity reaches 0.01 candle power,
and that the bedlam of other singers will follow in
predictable sequence.
14. In autumn, on the other hand, the robin is silent and it is quite
unpredictable whether the covey-chorus will occur at all.
15. The disappointment I feel on these mornings of silence perhaps shows
that things hoped for have a higher value than things assured. The hope
of hearing quail is worth half a dozen risings-in-the-dark.
16. My farm always has one or more coveys in autumn, but the daybreak
chorus is usually distant.
17. I think this is because the coveys prefer to roost as far as possible from the
dog, whose interest in quail is even more ardent than my own.
18. One October dawn, however, as I sat sipping coffee
by the outdoor fire, a chorus burst into song hardly
a stone's throwaway.
19. They had roosted under a white-pine copse, possibly to stay dry
during the heavy dews.
20. We felt honored by this daybreak hymn sung almost at our doorstep.
21. Somehow the blue autumnal needles on those pines
became thenceforth bluer, and the red carpet of dewberry
under those pines became even redder.
22. Photo Credits
•Historic photographs: Aldo Leopold Foundation archives
•A Sand County Almanac photographs by Michael Sewell
•David Wisnefske, Sugar River Valley Pheasants Forever, Wisconsin Environmental Education Board, Wisconsin
Environmental Education Foundation, Argyle Land Ethic Academy (ALEA)
•UW Stevens Point Freckmann Herbarium, R. Freckmann, V.Kline, E. Judziewicz, K. Kohout, D. Lee, K Sytma, R.
Kowal, P. Drobot, D. Woodland, A. Meeks, R. Bierman
•Curt Meine, (Aldo Leopold Biographer)
•Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Environmental Education for Kids (EEK)
•Hays Cummins, Miami of Ohio University
•Leopold Education Project, Ed Pembleton
•Bird Pictures by Bill Schmoker
•Pheasants Forever, Roger Hill
•Ruffed Grouse Society
•US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Forest Service
•Eric Engbretson
•James Kurz
•Owen Gromme Collection
•John White & Douglas Cooper
•National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
•Ohio State University Extension, Buckeye Yard and Garden Online
•New Jersey University, John Muir Society, Artchive.com, and Labor Law Talk
