The Urban Naturalist

Recycling wars

Lichen, one of nature's recyclers. The Urban Naturalist photo
 
A story in my local newspaper this morning described the conflict one of the area's smaller communities is having over recycling.

Amazing. In 2011, we still have whole communities that haven't yet decided whether recycling waste -- as nature always has done -- is "worth" it. The city is considering a voluntary recycling plan that would charge those who want to do it $2 to $3 more a month to cover the costs of the program. Those who don't want to recycle wouldn't have to pay the extra fee. As one recycle-supporting resident told city officials, recycling is a personal choice, and she didn't mind paying more.

How pitiful that this woman had to pander to the ignorance of a few in order to get her city to do the right thing -- and is having to pay more to do what's right in the process.  Cities have it all backwards. Recycling should be mandatory, and those who don't want to do it ought to be the ones paying more.  The true costs of our landfills encompasses more than trucks and people whose job it is to turn the stuff over.  Trashing our only planet will cost future generations much more than $3 a month.

One of the residents who is against having to recycle said his family "doesn't produce enough" to recycle. Really? Where does this guy buy stuff? I buy mostly fresh produce-type food, and one week's worth of packaging from the grocery store is enough to fill our indoor recycling bin twice.  Our recycling trash can goes to the curb twice as often as our garbage can.

When and how did we become so ecologically illiterate as a society? Step back and consider that nature has thousands of detrivores -- animals and other organisms whose job it is to eat dead and decaying stuff -- and it is plain to see that recycling waste back into the system is not simply a part of life. It is what allows us to make new life.

Recycling isn't a choice. It what nature intended. Those who don't do it, end up paying one way or another.

A day for Earth

Photo by The Urban Naturalist

It's Earth Day.  Take some time to marvel at Nature's wonders.

From boots to the ballet

The princesses have abducted Dora. 

While thumbing through a Target insert this past Sunday, I spotted a Dora the Explorer doll, only it wasn't really Dora. This chick had Dora's face, but she also had a teeny waist, longer hair and was decked out in a pink tutu unsuitable for exploring much of anything beyond the plastic barre that Dora apparently has traded for her backpack.

Oh, the shame.  Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against ballet. I spent 10 years of my youth dancing. It was a period in my life that also saw me learn to ride a bicycle, and a time when I also was likely to be climbing trees in Mr. Hatley's apple orchard or poking around it the creek near the junior high school.  Just because I went to ballet class once a week and donned a puffy tulle skirt a few times a year didn't sap my sense of adventure or yearning to get dirty.

It also was a time when you could actually buy a toy that wasn't attached to a movie or television show.  Certainly, toys were still marketed heavily and branded in certain ways. And some were attached to the movies and shows of my youth (I recall insisting on my mother buying me a dress sported by Buffy on the television show "Family Affair").  But I saw about a third of the television advertisements and shows in those days as children are exposed to now.  I wasn't innundated with brands in five different types of media.  We only had a couple to deal with.

So whennadventurous Dora the Explorer becomes a Dora who opts instead to stay inside where she and her pink tutu won't get mussed, it likely will have an effect on how little girls view the whole getting outside and exploring thing. 

In this age of the media princess army, it doesn't take much to turn little girls away from worms and mud and tree-climbing to get a better view of a bird nest -- curiosities and activities that help build scientists and problem-solvers.  I have seen many young girls who, by the time they are in fourth grade, worry more about getting their shoes dirty and hair messed up than they do about getting something  cool out of the soil to put under the microscope. It is depressing.

A female coworker and I noticed earlier this year that we had both developed a habit of dressing nicer -- sometimes in "girl clothes" complete with skirts and cute socks with our trail shoes or boots -- when we taught groups of children in third or fourth grade or higher.  Younger children just see us as the grownups who tell them waht to do. But these older girls are watching. And we want to show them that girls can still look like girls while they are bumping around outside getting a little dirty and exploring nature. It works. The girls who come on field trips wearing sparkly ballet flats warm up to us when we at least look as if we understand them.

But Dora has tossed in a new wrinkle. I just don't know that either my coworker or I could pull off the pink tutu gig while plucking tadpoles from the pond.

Caught in the cycle

  Photo by Doug Murray

See the smiley face in the mountain above?  Look hard. This fellow has a little bit of a nose, too.  The mountain is Ben Lomond, and it keeps watch over my city from the north.

Last week, while pedaling home from work, a new coworker said his landlady told him that when the smiley face on Ben Lomond disappears, it is time to plant your garden. He had no idea what she was talking about, so we stopped riding and I pointed it out.  And until he mentioned what she'd said, I had totally forgotten the old local lore about how the disappearance of Ben Lomond's face meant the snow had melted enough, and it likely would not snow or freeze again until the fall.

Our city about 82,200 people isn't exactly a small town. We're surrounded by cities to the north and south of us, and if it weren't for mountains on the east and a big salty lake to the west, those areas would be packed with people too.

But we still manage to recognize nature's cycles as a backdrop for our bustling lives.  Think about it. What do you do in spring? Fall? We all have our little rituals set to the pace of nature's cycles.

Last weekend, I attended a party a friend gave for her daughter, who had just started her moons.  They called it a "Becoming party" because the young girl was  embarking on womanhood.  It was a grand occasion and something quite out of the ordinary compared to how modern western society views this big event in a girl's life.

Indigenous cultures considered a girl's moving into womanhood a rite of passage that bore celebrating. A woman was considered her most powerful spiritually when she exhibited the process that allowed her to bring new life into the mortal world. It wasn't seen as icky or something to hide or be ashamed of.  It was just another of nature's cycles, and it was recognized and respected as such.

Which of nature's cycles speaks to you? The return of birds to your window feeder? Being able to sleep in a little longer in the morning because you don't have to scrape the windshield?  Having a couple of extra hours of daylight to enjoy your garden or a walk or bike ride after work?

We may be urban dwellers, but all we are aware of nature's cycles, even if we only acknowledge them long enough to know when to plant the tomatoes.

    Monument Valley, watercolor, Susan Snyder

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 I turned 50, was awarded my master's degree and lost my mother - all within a three-day period in February. It was the best and worst weekend of my life.

Still, upon reading the above poem that a friend sent to me when I returned from my mother's memorial, I found solace by remembering to "rest in the grace of the world."  Being 50 and healthy is a gift.  Having the opportunity to reinvent oneself and get an education is another bonus.

And my mother dying? Well, that's still tough.  But she was almost 86, and as I tell students at our nature center, everything dies in time and recharges the energy that sustains all life on our planet.  Thinking in those terms, my mother's light is brighter than it ever was.  And she is free.

How many times do we walk out of our front doors, these days, take a deep breath and find grace in the privilege of just being in this world?  For many of us, the answer would be rarely.  We rise to the beeps and twitters of our electronic thingamawhatses, pull on some clothes, jam down some breakfast, grab the coffee cup and thrust ourselves out into the world for another day of "productivity."

It's the way of the urban human. But does it have to be that way?  I decided it doesn't. Three milestones in as many days call for a true celebration of all that I can have with this one life I am afforded.  So I took up my nature journal again in earnest and have decided that spending a little time outside every day embracing the "grace of the world" is more important than, well, just about anything other than eating or sleeping.

And I probably could do a little less eating.

Spring Dance

 Photo by Doug Murray

The Greater Sage Grouse above is all gussied up for his annual spring dance, which we got to observe this week at a local "lek," the term for a mating dance arena used by the males of some animal species.  Leks are generally associated with the mating rituals of birds, but some bats, insects and fish also use them. The females hang around and watch as the males prance and call, trying to impress the ladies.

In Northern Utah, lek-watchers head out in the spring to see the Greater Sage Grouse.  Lek-lookers in other areas of the country might watch Prairie Chickens or Ruffed Grouse or similar ground-type game birds. Check with your local Audubon Society or state wildlife office to find out who likes to lek and where to find them.

Although I consider myself a relatively avid birder, I'd never seen a lek in action.  As it turns out, a successful lek trip takes two things in greeat quantities: coffee and patience.  We arrived at our chosen sage grouse lek at about 6 a.m., following a 50-minute drive. (This activity is not for those who don't like to rise early.)

This lek was close to the road -- in fact, at the peak prancing, the grouse were all over the road -- so we parked the car alongside a fence in a roadside pullout and waited with the engine and lights off and the windows rolled down. 

After about 40 minutes we saw the shadowy figures of birds scuttling into position in the meadow just beyond the fence. After about 15 minutes, the field was covered with more than 100 grouse, about a third of which were males puffing out the enormous air sacs on their chests, making noises that sounded like hoots followed by a thumping sound -- al the while prancing forward or in circles 8 or 10 steps, then pausing to waggle their pointed fan-shaped tails. It looked like downtown Ogden on Saturday night.

 The display went on for a little more than an hour and started breaking up just as the morninglight took hold. Apparently, grouse prefer to do their business under cover of darkness. They're not shy. They're just easy prey for golden eagles or hawks in broad daylight.

It was an eerie, primal experience happening in a region that is Utah's most populated and urban. And it's a cool way to spend an early morning.  You won't even be late for work.

 

Back with a new look and new attitude

    City dweller on a leaf

hi-a-tus: noun  2. a : an interruption in time or continuity : break; especially : a period when something (as a program or activity) is suspended or interrupted <after a 5-year hiatus from writing>

Yep, I've been on one of those -- a hiatus.  The old Nature's Call blog sat idle for most of the past 18 months while I finished my master's degree in Ecological Teaching & Learning at Lesley University, Cambridge, Mass. The program has left me with an even stronger belief that it is way beyond time to create an ecologically literate citizenry, and it has brought me new knowledge and skills to share in pursuing this endeavor.

For example, I have re-discovered that I can draw, and also that most people can, if they take the time to sit and look -- really look -- at their subject. But that is fodder for a later post.  Today, I launch the new name for this blog project:  The Urban Naturalist.

Who or what is an urban naturalist?  Well, I think we all should be.  The Population Reference Bureau (prb.org) says that in 2008, 50 percent of the world's population lived in cities. That figure takes into account all countries, economically developed and not. The percentage of people living in cities rises to 74 percent when considering only people living in developed countries ( a term we will explore here at some future date).

Certainly, there are people in our country who work to live completely off the grid, but most of us rely on items that come from cities -- some of them cities halfway around the globe from us. Even people who live in seemingly rural areas and fancy themselves to be "country" folks depend on urban areas for goods and services (like medical care and schools).

Urban areas aren't the enemy. They are us. And that's OK -- natural, even. Naturalists study ecosystems, and urban areas are ecosystems too.

When we think of studying ecology, we think of birdies and bugs and flowers.  But people also are included in ecosystems, as are the communities they build.  The word "ecology" means the study ("ology') of home ("ecos").  So if you are a human living in the United States, and you want to be a naturalist who studies the ecology of your place, you're going to be an urban naturalist studying an urban ecology.

So let's move forward from this new definition of my blog and ourselves.  Let us learn to see the ecosystems that sustain us and explore how healthy ecosystems work.  Only then can we truly assess our relationship with the non-human aspects of our environment.  It is time to leave the Industrial Age of our past and look toward the Ecological Age that is our future.

In the eye of the beholder

(Photo by Doug Murray)

    Headed up to the local java haunt this morning for a cup of coffee and some friendly chat among friends who gather there.

    A few minutes into my visit, one of the regulars said, "Hey, you're the one who works at that nature center, right? Let me ask you something: Why do the magpies chase and kill the little songbirds in my back yard? They gang up on them."

    He was sincerely upset about the fact that these stunning black-white-navy birds appeared to be hard-core killers, preying gangland-style upon little birds such as the finch pictured above at one of our feeders. I listened as he went on passionately about how these treacherous magpies congregated in great groups in the trees around his home and didn't eat their kill right away.

   

(Photo from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

    After asking me a second time why these vicious magpies attacked other birds for seemingly no reason, the guy finally waited for an answer. Now, I haven't studied magpies exclusively, but I have been doing a lot of research lately on ravens and the Corvidae family to which ravens, crows, jays and magpies belong ("corvids").

    While each species has its peculiarities, some things are similar, such as the fact that all are omnivores. That means they eat a combination of plants and animals. For magpies, this means a lot of insects and seeds, along with eggs and fledglings of other bird species and the occasional small mammal or songbird.

    This information did little to satisfy my fellow coffee-drinker. "They're mean," he said in a tone that implied the conversation was over. But I didn't let it die. Corvids, I said, are among the smartest creatures on Earth -- smarter, some experts have said, than even the great apes. They can figure out problems and create tools. It is how they manage to fulfill their wide dietary requirements and thrive on every continent in the world.

    Magpies have even been recorded having "funerals" for fallen members of their species.  A magpie that spots one of its own dead calls to others, and soon a mass of them are in the trees overhead squawking as a few members of the group walk slowly around the dead bird. Probably, the ritual is one in which the birds are trying to figure out what danger lurks nearby and warn other magpies of the threat. It illustrates that these birds have a complex communication system.

    Still, people love to hate magpies. Less than 100 years ago, local governments offered bounties for dead magpies. In a 2005 interview with the show "Life on Earth," Kevin McGowan, of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said that the hatred of magpies, ravens and crows likely dates back to early western Europe. The region is devoid of native vulture species, so corvids were the birds that ate carrion (the carcasses of dead animals). As a result, they were associated with death and disease, even though all they were doing was cleaning up after such things.

    In North American indigenous societies, corvids -- especially ravens -- have long been revered for their resourcefulness and intelligence. Ravens, in fact, figure prominently in many of these cultures' creation stories.

    Humans are funny when it comes to predators. Mention the term at your next dinner party, and people will think you're talking about a military weapon or a sicko who preys upon children. Both are human-centric meanings that add evil intent.

But for most of nature's predators, preying on other animals is a matter of food. The only intention is a full belly. Because of our culture's knee-jerk aversion to the idea that animals eat other animals, that is one of the most difficult lessons I have to teach children. It typically occurs when we are walking past the cage of one of our center's resident raptors just as the bird is pulling the head off of a dead quail, mouse or rabbit. I remind children that without the gifts these smaller animals have provided with their lives, the eagle or hawk in front of them would starve to death.

    A robin is a predator, as it eats earthworms. The American kestrel, our smallest falcon, is a predator that eats grasshoppers. No one weeps for the worms or the grasshoppers.  But we despise the polar bear for eating a baby seal or the mountain lion for taking a fawn. Many of us seem to be inclined to determine what animals should live based on whether we think they are pretty or cute. That is a perilous path to follow. Biodiversity requires all of Earth's creatures, pretty or not.

       My coffee colleague remained unwavering in his loathing of the magpies, even after learning that the birds may have been caching their kills for later -- a behavior they use when food is plentiful. He doesn't mind that the magpies need to eat. He just doesn't want them killing stuff where he can see it.  "It's mean," he said, projecting human emotions and ethics onto a bird that lives by different rules.

    I didn't have the heart to tell him that he'd be better off with a video than a bird feeder. When we choose to feed wildlife in our yards, we choose -- knowingly or not - to witness all that their lives encompass.

For the "Life on Earth" show about magpies, check out:

http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=05-P13-00021&segmentID=7

What's your hook?

  (Long-eared owl, Asio otus, spotted Jan. 1, 2010, at Antelope Island State Park)

We spotted this sleepyhead during one of the National Audubon Society's annual Christmas Bird Counts. He was among six long-eared owls found roosting in a tree along the edge of Utah's Great Salt Lake. Bill Fenimore, author, one of the West's premier birders and owner of Wild Bird Center of Layton, said long-eared owls are among those who roost in colonies in winter.

It was an amazing find. To get an idea of just how well these guys blend in, check out the "Reader Photos" album for a shot of two more long-eared owls, one of which is barely discernible.

Audubon's Christmas counts occur among local Audubon groups nationwide from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5. It is more than a tradition. It is citizen science at its best. These counts have been going on for 110 years, and are, as Fenimore notes, "the oldest continuous count of of any kind."

The first year was what people called a "side hunt." Basically, hunters went out on Christmas Day and accumulated "the biggest pile of fur and feathers" that they could, Fenimore said.

Not exactly the activity we engage in today, where teams of birders divide their regions into areas and count the number of each species they find. We are up with (actually, before) the sun and count for eight hours or more, depending on the size of the area, the number of counters, the weather and terrain. John Bellmon, another of the region's premier birders and a founder of the Wasatch Audubon Society, started the Ogden-area Christmas Bird Count 30 years ago.

As we milled about in the parking lot at the edge of the causeway that leads out to Antelope Island, I told Fenimore of our recent trip to Florida and the fact that I'd spotted a green heron -- my first.

"The green heron was my hook bird," Fenimore said. "What's your hook bird?"

A "hook bird," as the name suggests, is the one that is attributed for getting someone hooked on birding.

And I am not sure I have one.

Maybe it is the rough-legged hawk, a magnificent winter visitor in the Intermountain West that, when viewed as it soars overhead, has black wing spots and dark belly band that look like a flying smiley face.

Maybe it is the sandhill crane, which I first saw some 20 years ago congregating in huge flocks as I pedaled my bicycle past fallow strawberry fields in central Florida on Saturday mornings. Maybe it should be the western meadowlark -- my "bike-ride bird" -- whose melodious has call provided the soundtrack for every bicycle ride I have loved out West.

Maybe it is the Clark's Nutcracker, which I first identified on my own as I hiked up Deep Canyon in Utah's Wellsville Mountains some 10 years ago. The hike led to an 8,000-foot ridge with a near-360-degree view of Cache and Box Elder counties. Following the trail farther along the ridge line brought me to the spot where bird counters for HawkWatch International counted migrating raptors birds each fall.

Maybe it was the golden eagle I identified while sitting atop that ridge with HawkWatch.

More likely, however, it is some long-forgotten common bird such as a house sparrow or American robin that greeted me each day in the back yard when I was a child. For many of us, the relationships we hold with nature have evolved over time and, most likely, include many hooks. Crawdads, the apple trees in my front yard, the lilac and forsythia bushes in back and the wild strawberries and raspberries that my best pal Julie Frizzell and I picked as children in central Indiana are among my "hooks."

If you are inclined to make New Year's resolutions, then resolve to find at least one hook this year. If you have children in your life, make sure they come along. An adult who appreciates, understands, spends time with, and advocates on behalf of, nature starts with a child who collects hooks -- lightning bugs, rocks, perfect poking sticks, seashells, lists of bugs and birds.

Once you're hooked, you're hooked. My bird list is nearing 300, and there is a collection of rocks in a saucer in the living room and seashells gathering dust in the bathroom.

An unlikely gift

  Green anole lizard (Anolis carolinesis) Photo by Doug Murray

We spotted this little fellow during a Christmas day stroll through the 128-acre Oakland Nature Preserve, in the town of Oakland, Fla.

Our guide was my sister-in-law Sally, who has lived much of her life in or around Winter Garden, the next town over. Sally's grandfather was Winter Garden's first barber, so her family goes back a ways in the area.

We made our way down the preserve's raised boardwalk, which traverses a marshy, thickly wooded section of Lake Apopka's southern shore. The lake has long been considered "dead," as decades of runoff from the surrounding agribusiness flushed the lake with pesticides and fertilizers, creating an algae bloom killed off many of the fish and native plants. 

Work started during the 1990s has restored the lake to some of its former glory, bringing back the native plant and fish species, along with the amazing variety of birds that feed upon them. The Oakland Nature Preserve has done an admirable job of restoring native flora and fauna to its acreage and conduct community classes and school field trips. (Check it out at www.oaklandnaturepreserve.org)

A light misty rain fell all around us as we walked through the canopy -- lush even in December -- and listened to the birds and the stories Sally related about the plants she remembered from her youth.

For example the lantana, a shrub dotted wit round reddish-orange blossoms with bright yellow centers, once was so widespread that Sally's grandmother treated it as a pesky weed. People worked hard to eradicate lantana back in the day, Sally recalled. Now, she said, they are a staple in garden stores, and people buy them.

Isn't it funny how we figure that if we didn't plant something in our yard it doesn't belong there? Seems it would be a lot less work to just allow and enjoy the plants that are native to a place.

Being a child of the dry desert West, Doug lagged behind us a bit taking it all in and hoping to see his first alligator. As a result, he was the one to spot the green anole and remarked on its brilliant green. He raised his camera, but the little guy scurried off before he could get a shot (or so we thought).

"The green lizards are native but you hardly ever see them," Sally said. It's true that predation by the many introduced species of lizards have taken a toll on the green anole population. Doug snapped a photo of the little brown lizard pictured above that had popped into the green one's place.

As it turns out, however, the lizard in the photo probably is the same green one Doug originally saw. The Anolis carolinesis has a chameleon-like quality in that it turns brown when it is stressed or cold. Given the 60-degree temperatures and the three large humans crowding around to see, this lizard probably felt a bit of both.

Amazing stuff and the kind of Christmas gift that comes without a bow.