Of swallows, pelicans, harriers and eagles

Like the old ballad of the 1940s, "When the swal-lows come b-a-a-ck to Capis-tran-o," the swallows just as regularly come back to Muller Lane. You first see a few in early June flitting under the East Fork bridge after the spring runoff. Then they arrive by the hundreds, their small black bodies sweeping in waves along the river and over and under the bridge. They've come all the way from Central America to raise another generation in the mud nests under the bridge they left the year before.

In the bird books I've read, they're called cliff swallows because they used to build their mud nests along remote, rocky cliffs. But in recent times they've come to prefer nesting under concrete bridges spanning rivers and streams where their food supply of flying insects is abundant, as is mud for their nests.

When they're at their peak numbers, they're so many swallows flying up and over the East Fork bridge (the shorter West Fork bridge doesn't get as many) that you instinctively brake to avoid hitting them. But sometimes you can't slow quickly enough and in your rear-vision mirror you see a small black form lying on the road. As summer grows warmer, the hundreds dwindle to a few, and then, seemingly overnight, they've all left on their long journey south.

I've seen them come and go year after year, but if housing tracts spread west across Highway 395, the Nevada Department of Transportation will widen Muller's two lanes to accommodate the growing traffic and the East Fork and West Fork bridges will be replaced and widened. Maybe the swallows would eventually come back " maybe not.

The humble swallow is among the smallest birds you see along Muller Lane. The largest is the American white pelican. In flight, its black-tipped wings span up to 10 feet, a couple of feet more than the bald eagle's. Its pure white color and long, orange-colored beak make it highly visible, either flying overhead in V-shaped formations or floating serenely on quiet water.

If you see them here, they've likely flown all the way from their nesting colonies at Pyramid Lake looking for lakes with shallow-water fish, like Washoe, Topaz and Walker lakes. Sometimes a few will find a rest stop on a pond, flooded field, or slough in the Valley.

On several occasions, I've seen a half dozen floating upstream and downstream from the East Fork bridge. But they're shy birds and if homes are eventually built close to that stretch of the river, they'll go elsewhere.

Occasionally you'll see a harrier hawk flying low over Muller Lane toward an open field on one side or the other, or tilting and veering 2 or 3 feet above a field looking for rodents. They look a little like red-tails, but they're not as large, and their wings curve slightly above the horizontal.

On the other hand, you cannot mistake a bald eagle for what it is. They're not around most of the time, but when you see one you know its calving season. Southbound cars stop along Highway 395 to watch eagles on Settelmeyer ranch land tearing at the afterbirth of cows. But they come down in the fields along Muller Lane, too, and for the same reason. When they're on the ground, you have to look closely to see their distinctive white heads because their black bodies blend with newborn black calves. They sometimes get so stuffed they can barely fly to the tops of nearby fence posts.

When the early morning temperature is in the low 20s, and fields on both sides of Muller Lane are covered with snow (and you're driving slowly to keep from sliding off the road), you might see 30 or 40 black cows and heifers standing near a gate along a fence line looking toward a large hay shed west of the Muller ranch.

They're waiting for Nick Uhart to finish wrestling 80-pound hay bales onto the flatbed of his big Dodge pickup and drive it through the gate into their field to feed them. On one such morning, I turned off the road into the shed yard to say hello, and to watch him feed all those cattle waiting for him.

The bales in the shed were piled in stacks and Nick, having backed his truck up against the stacks, had hooked a dozen or more onto his flatbed and piled them against the back of the cab. Then he put down the hay hooks and waved a gloved hand at his two border collies waiting on the dirt floor behind the truck and they jumped onto the rear of the flatbed and scrambled to the top of the hay stacks where they lay down wagging their tails.

Nick slid into the cab and drove slowly out of the shed toward the black cattle watching for him, each of them branded with a U and the symbol of the heart beside the U, and each blowing puffs of steam. I got into my SUV and followed behind in his tire tracks. When they saw his truck they began crowding toward the gate and Nick got out of his cab and opened it, yelling at them to back away. Then he got back in his cab and headed in low gear into the field with the cows and heifers following behind. Never mind the open gate, they followed his truck.

As I stayed about 50 yards back, Nick stepped out of his slowly moving truck onto the running board and tied the steering wheel so that the truck wouldn't turn suddenly if a front wheel dropped into a low place in the field. Then he swung up onto the flatbed, cut the cords binding the rear hay bales and pushed them off the back of the flatbed. The cows and heifers closest to the moving truck stopped and began eating the spilled hay, while the others went around them and caught up to the truck to eat the hay still coming off the truck. When Nick got to the bales at the back of the cab, the border collies jumped down onto the truck bed and lay down.

With his truck still moving, Nick got back into the cab and turned in a wide arc back through the gate he'd come through, and after I'd driven through he closed it and drove back to the shed. In the middle of the snow-covered field we'd just left was a long line of black cows and heifers quietly eating enough hay to last them another 24 hours.

Nick feeds his cattle every morning in the winter until the snow is gone and new grass will sustain them. It's hard work, but he is from a line of ranchers; and the cows, calves and prize bulls he raises are his livelihood.

I could write more about the interesting things I've seen along Muller Lane but I think I've written enough to make my point that the ranching and wildlife that exist between Highway 395 and Foothill Road should be preserved, not lost under housing tract developments.

I understand, like the late Arnold Settelmeyer said, that a rancher should be able to do with his property what he wants to do. Arnold made that argument to the county 20 years ago when opposition developed to the Hollister family's plan to convert their ranch north of Genoa into 190 home sites and an 18-hole golf course.

The commission approved the Hollister application for a master plan amendment for Genoa Lakes, and the Valley is richer and better off for it.

But the Hollister case was different from the massive development plan the Park Cattle Co. recently proposed for the Minden-Gardnerville area. The Hollisters decided to quit the ranching business for personal reasons, while the Park Cattle Company's plan for 4,000 new homes was an attempt to control future development in the Valley and reap a fortune in doing so.

After much debate and vacillation, county commissioners eventually rejected the Park plan, but that doesn't mean it won't be revised and resubmitted, perhaps on a smaller scale and with the same argument that it would ultimately benefit the Valley. And the plan's rejection doesn't mean Park or other developers won't try to build more housing west of Highway 395.

Too often we become oblivious of the beauty all around us in this Valley, listening instead to the seductive argument repeated year after year, that more development will bring more wealth to the Valley and its residents. That's generally not what happens. Instead, we get more traffic, higher taxes and bigger government.

But if there is to be new residential development (and there inevitably will be), let it be slow and orderly; and please keep it east of Highway 395 and Muller lane.

- Ron Funk is a Genoa resident and former Genoa Town Board member.