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Walking Home (1)
Sunday, May 9, 2010, 08:18 PM ( 1 view ) - Posted by Administrator
8 May 2010
I live in a neighborhood of walkers--some are out for exercise, some are walking dogs or children, others are just out for a stroll.
I’m walking a lot slower these days, but I’ve found I notice a lot more as I walk. The world looks radically different at different speeds. (I wonder if that is part of Einstein’s theory of relativity.)
I am rereading Edwin Way Teale’s Journey Into Summer and came across this encouraging passage in chapter two, “Walking Down a River.”
“…The way to become acquainted with an area intimately, to appreciate it best, is to walk over it. And the slower the walk the better. For a naturalist, the most productive pace is a snail’s pace. A large part of his walk is often spent standing still. A mile an hour may well be fast enough. For his goal is different from that of the pedestrian. It is not how far he goes that counts; it is not how fast he goes; it is how much he sees.”
The spirit of Teale’s passage is so antithetical to the “spirit of the outdoors” portrayed today in the media, even in so-called nature magazines. The emphasis—and it isn’t new, just more dominant—is on extreme activities in the outdoors: how far can a person go in how little time while using how many electronic devices.
Teale goes on to say, “To one observer a thing means so much; to another the same thing means almost nothing. As the poet William Blake wrote in one of his letters: ‘The Tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way.’”
One thing I’ve seen recently, that I would not have seen at a faster pace is walking honeybees. Last week, the last of the lemon flowers dried up and the bees have forsaken it. But before they did, I observed in the late afternoon, on two separate days, honeybees walking “home” from the lemon tree.
I had been watching the bees take off from the tree and head south down a narrow passage between the garage and the house—flying off to their hive somewhere else in the neighborhood. I have a bench that I sit on against the garage wall because it catches the late sun just right and I can feel the sun warm my body and soul once more before it sets. The bees would fly past me and zip up and over the fence.
On two consecutive days, I saw two honeybees walk down the sidewalk in front of me, walking the route that the other bees had flown. As I observed them, I saw that they took the same route: down the sidewalk, on to the garden path, and then right into the grass where they disappeared.
I don’t use any pesticides, but the bees could have been suffering from pesticide poisoning from a neighbor’s tree, or they could have been suffering from mites or some other bee disease. But the interesting thing to me is that they were walking the flying route home. Somehow, they had retained enough memory of the homing communication, that even in the last stage of life, unable to fly, they were moving home.
I can’t imagine that they made it. I feel certain their lives ended somewhere in the grass jungle of my lawn, but they were giving it a try.
Those honey bees may be a good symbol for a lot of us these days. Poisoned by one of the many diseases of modern life, we can no longer fly for home. But retaining some memory of the idea of home, we limp along toward it somewhere, trying, vainly, to find the place called home before we die.
Next year, as I eat the lemons they pollinated, I will remember those bees.
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Nesting Strategies (0)
Friday, April 23, 2010, 08:09 PM ( 1 view ) - Posted by Administrator
23 April 2010
The house sparrows nesting in the neighbor’s tile roof have finished this round of nest building and settled into, quieter, probably incubationary duties. This week, their nest building antics afforded me two new observations about their behavior and raised several questions.
Earlier in the week, a hailstorm rolled up the valley with lightning that knocked out power, pelting rain and hail up to the size of a quarter. A mourning dove had built a nest in the plum tree just outside my kitchen window and chose to ride out the storm in the nest—sitting stoically for hours, pelted and rocked by the elements—even though there was no egg in the nest. That evening she abandoned the nest and did not return the next day.
The next day, a house sparrow couple flew into the plum tree and began to look over the mourning dove nest. They seemed very cautious, not approaching it directly, but hopping from branch to branch, drawing gradually closer. Then, with the male standing guard on a branch about a foot away and above the nest, the female house sparrow hopped into the nest and began rummaging through it—obviously looking for building materials. She found some pine needles to her liking, so she flew off with them, leaving the male in the tree perched on guard.
After a few minutes, the female sparrow returned and rummaged some more, found another item and flew away. This continued for about an hour—the female deconstructing the nest and the male hopping about to various on-guard locations.
It was certainly a very logical action. I have read of birds using other birds’ nests for building materials although I had never seen it with my own eyes.
The question their behavior raises has to do with their consciousness of doing something “wrong.” They obviously knew they were taking something that did not “belong” to them and they knew they could get in trouble for it. From whom? A mourning dove? I don’t think I have ever seen a mourning dove fight a sparrow. I would bet on the sparrow!
Can it be that house sparrows have clear social mores of right and wrong that carry over between species, rules that apply foremost to their own social group? That observation seemed to indicate a general application of a species specific social code.
The second house sparrow observation happened a day after the dismantling of the mourning dove nest. Apparently the major nest construction was finished and now the final touches were being added. Several males and females busied themselves at a patch of brass buttons growing between the bricks on my driveway. This non-native wildflower (cotula australis) has soft fern-like leaves and small, round rayless flowers. The sparrows were breaking off leafy stems with flower heads on them and flying them up into the nesting sites in the tile roof.
That new observation also leads to a question: are the leaves providing something in addition to a soft nesting cushion? Could the plant have a medicinal or pesticide quality? The leaves and flowers do have a strong, chamomile-like scent when crushed.
I may never know, but the birds sure seemed pleased with their find. They are such successful breeders, they must be doing something right.
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Serious Business of Spring (0)
Thursday, April 15, 2010, 11:07 AM - Posted by Administrator
15 April 2010
The serious business of spring is upon us.
The honey bees have found the dwarf Meyer lemon and enthusiastically claimed it as their own yesterday when the noon sun hit it full. I wonder where their nest can be here in the middle of the city.
Thoreau describes in his journal how he and some friends rigged a trap for the honeybees they observed. They put different colored powders on the bee’s back and released them to observe where they went and when they returned, trying to find their hives.
I won’t do that. I assume their hive or nest must be in a cavity in one of the large trees of the neighborhood. Today, I think I will watch them and see which way they fly after leaving the lemon tree.
The yellow-rumped warblers love the bare limbs of the Chinese pistache along the street. They hop along the bare, yellow, lichened limbs off and on all day, pecking at something. Do they eat the lichen? Are there insects, ants, there that they eat?
The house sparrows, usually so social and cooperative, had a big tiff yesterday. One of their group members must have violated some sparrow code. The others drove it to the ground on my driveway, in front of the garage, and with great noise and clamor, proceeded to fuss and peck about at the codebreaker. After a minute, they noisily flew off together, with the offending bird, up to a yew tree by their tile roof nesting sites. There they fussed for a while, gradually quieting themselves. Then they all returned to their sparrow work. I wonder if the offending bird had displayed the appropriate signals of submission, apologized, made restoration, or what.
Is it inappropriate to speak of bird behavior in general? I think it may be. Each bird tribe has its own code of behavior and social structure, but even that is not automatic. Individuals can break the behavioral codes and mores of the tribe. Bird iconoclasts. Bird individualists. Bird mavericks. Bird artists?
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Winter Storm Warning (0)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 12:17 PM - Posted by Administrator
12 April 2010
On Saturday, a high white layer of clouds swept over the clear blue sky of Friday, followed by a massive surge of rain and wind that brought one to two feet of snow to the mountains.
Until Saturday, I had heard the hermit thrush beginning to sing and chirp around the garden, but on Saturday he disappeared and I have not heard or seen him since then.
I often wonder how birds ride out storms and weather extremes. I know sometimes they don’t. When I was a boy I witnessed a massive warbler kill along the Florida west coast, a severe cold wave hit during the fall migration and dead warblers lay everywhere on the ground, birds I had never seen before, striking in their exotic colors.
I assume it was time for the hermit thrush to migrate. If the books are correct, he had to migrate up to Canada or the Northwest US.
Also missing after the storm were the orange-crowned warblers who had frequented my hummingbird feeder all winter. They are regulars, too, returning year after year. This storm seemed to be a sign to them also that it was time to move on.
The migrants seem to have inner sense, perhaps keyed to barometric pressure and light, of when it is the specific day to wing their way to their summer home. I’ve read that birds seem to know by barometric pressure when storms are approaching.
Today’s windy blue sky has turned into clouds and thunderstorms. All the birds are hidden away now, except for the mourning doves. The doves are still cooing, walking, and trying to mate. One still sits in her nest in the plum tree, bouncing in the wind.
It would be so helpful to have that inner sense of the birds that know the day to move on. We have community emergency weather alerts broadcast on television and radio. What I need is an internal emergency alert system that will alert me to dangerous conditions in my body and spirit. Perhaps there is one in place already and I need to be more mindful of it.
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An Essential of Naturewriting (0)
Saturday, April 3, 2010, 10:26 AM - Posted by Administrator
3 April 2010
When Thoreau wrote in his journal, he did not just record details and facts—observations. He reflected and connected his observations to life—his inner life and philosophy and the life of other people he observed around him, both specific individuals and humanity in general.
It is precisely that characteristic that distinguishes naturewriting from other genres. Some people disparage naturewriting as not being scientific. It can be profoundly scientific, but it to be naturewriting, it must include that element of synthesis and connection with philosophy of life. Naturewriting can be simple science—basing itself, for example, on the most basic observations of the common life forms found in an urban patio garden—but it must include reflection on how those observations affect the human spirit.
For, after all, in the midst of all, we humans are nature, too, and a true ecology of humanity encompasses our quest for personal meaning in the midst of our fellow creatures. We are nature and we are writing.
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