Laughing gulls - how gull-ible do you think I am?

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Oh, come on! First you are telling me that there are whistling ducks, and now you’d like me to believe in laughing gulls. I wasn’t born yesterday.

Well, have a look and listen to this. Maybe the joke is on you because these birds are clearly laughing out loud about something. Or, maybe the key word here is loud. They need to be heard above the sometimes raucous and noisy environments that they frequent. Think crashing surf, voluable birds, crowds of beach goers. Maybe they use their loud “laughter” to defend territory for nesting or foraging, to create social cohesion within their large “laughing” communities, and to warn of predators and other hazards.

By the way, laughing gulls are not seagulls. That is because there is no such thing as a seagull. There are many gull species, at least 28 in North America and many more worldwide. There are herring gulls, California gulls, ring-billed gulls, Iceland gulls, glaucous gulls, lesser black-backed gulls, great black-backed gulls, and more, including laughing gulls. But there are no seagulls.

Laughing gulls aquire their striking black hood during nesting season and shed it in the winter. They often nest in huge colonies with as many as 14,000 pairs (just imagine the laughter). Laughing gulls are found along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of North America as well as in the Carribean and South America. Pairs of laughing gulls nest cooperatively with both male and female building the nest and incubating the eggs. They are opportunistic omnivores (willing to eat anything) and kleptoparasites (snatching food from unsuspecting animals such as literally out of the mouths of pelicans and the hands of humans). Usually, groups of laughing gulls (or any kind of gull) are referred to as flocks or colonies, but they are also called squabbles, which seems more metaphorically apt.

Laughing gulls may not actually be laughing, but their calls sound like laughter. Who doesn’t find laughter contagious and conducive to a brighter outlook on a rainy day or during dark times? Made me think of this 1974 classic by Neil Sedaka.

If it whistles like a duck...

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I have a very loud whistle using two fingers against the underside of my tongue. I learned this by practicing while delivering morning newspapers (Peoria Journal Star) from my bicycle at age 12. Mind you, it was between 4 and 5 AM. So when I mastered the whistle, I am now not certain how happy my customers were to have their arriving newspaper heralded in this manner. Nevertheless, it has been a useful skill on many occasions since. But if it whistles like a duck…

It must be a whistling duck, a black-bellied whistling duck in this case. I don’t think young whistling ducklings need to practice to acquire this ability. However, knowing the contorsions of my tongue, lips, and fingers required for me to learn to whistle, it’s hard to picture mastery of this skill with a large flat duck bill instead of lips. Quacking seems easier. But have a listen (and a look). By the way, if it quacks it is probably a duck, and most likely a female duck since male ducks don’t quack.

Black-bellied whistling ducks are found in central South America as well as Central America and coastal Mexico. In the US they are most likely to reside on the gulf coast of Florida. However, their range has been steadily moving northward with a lone whistler turning up in Wisconsin recently. They have also been known as tree ducks because of their ability to roost and nest in trees (not unlike wood ducks). Whistling ducks actually look more like geese with their long necks and legs and resemble them in their sexual dimorphism (males and females look alike) and their long-term pair relationships.

Pink beaks and pink legs give these (male and female) ducks a playful, if not somewhat gaudy, appearance as if wearing hot pink tights and coral lipstick. Pretty suitable since they prefer to forage at night and maybe take in the local club scene before roosting all day. They tend to hang in large and noisy flocks (all that whistling).

I couldn’t find a poem about whistling ducks, but here’s a sweet prose poem about another long-term pairing by Mary Oliver that will do.

"The Whistler," by Mary Oliver

All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean that for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds warbled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

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Twerking like an egret

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What? No, I don’t twerk, at least not intentionally, but yes, I know what twerking is. You’ll have to watch these short videos and decide for yourselves if Reddish Egrets twerk while fishing. Really, watch them. Reddish Egret Fishing Dance and more.

I have written here about egrets (No r-egrets blog post June 28, 2021) and other herons (Do bees have knees blog post July 20, 2020 and Koi… blog post Sept. 19, 2023), but until last month’s trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast, I had never met a Reddish Egret. When I did, I was struck by their intoxicating beauty and by the impression that this particular egret was, well, intoxicated. Now I know, as you do, that they were merely fishing or twerking while fishing.

Reddish Egrets hunt for small fish and crustaceans by literally dancing through shallow water to stir them up. Even more, they use their large wings to shade the water, which lures their prey into the “safety” of a shaded spot while cutting the sun’s glare to make the hapless creatures easier to spot. They sometimes spread their wings entirely over their heads to create an umbrella-like enclosure called “canopy feeding.”

Of North America's ten heron and egret species, the Reddish Egret is the rarest, with fewer than 2000 breeding pairs, mainly spread around the Gulf coastlines of Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. During the heyday of 19th-century plume hunting, the species was nearly eliminated.

While over 80% of Reddish Egrets are, in fact, reddish, there is also a white variant that resembles a Snowy Egret. Reddish Egrets are generally non-migratory, but a few may fly south to Central America and the Caribbean to nest.

Though Reddish Egrets are not found in Norway, the Norwegians have adopted a more apt name for them - Dansehegre, or dancing egret. Or maybe it should be Twerkhegre?

One good tern deserves another...

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Said the mother Tern to her baby Tern

“Would you like a brother?”

Said the baby Tern to the mother Tern,

“Yes, one good Tern deserves another.”

The Tern by Spike Milligan

Larger Royal Tern flanked by a Sandwich Tern

We just returned from a short family trip to Anna Maria Island, Florida, near Bradenton, which lies at sea level as the westernmost part of Manatee County. During our first day, torrential rain storms spawned a tornado a few miles to the north and left Anna Marie Island nearly adrift. Public health officials went door to door to warn residents to “stay safe” and maybe consider leaving. At the same time, there was a lot of new construction, and existing modest houses like our rental were on sale for millions of dollars. The following days were sunny, and, I imagine, the encroaching Gulf of Mexico was forgotten.

The houses on this lovely island have nowhere to go, but the abundant shorebirds will always find a new shoreline on which to nest and forage - one hopes. I found the legions of terns arrayed for battle on the expansive white beaches particularly endearing. Royal Terns were the most prevalent but always mixed with Sandwich Terns and the occasional Laughing Gull (laughing, no doubt, at the big-brained humans’ belief in the permanence of things).

Battalion of terns

Royal Terns are the second largest among the 45 species of terns worldwide and noticeably larger than their Sandwich Tern brethren. Both species stick to saltwater shores, hunting for fish and crustaceans while cruising 30 feet above the water. Spotting tiny prey from this altitude, they peel off and dive-bomb the surface at blistering speed. These hardy aerialists live as long as 30 years. Those on the Gulf Coasts stay put all year long, while those found further north may migrate southward in winter months.

Royal Tern

Sandwich Tern

Diving Sandwich Tern

Speaking of terns and migration, the Arctic Tern occupies the royal throne among all birds. Arctic Terns nest during summer in circumpolar regions of the northern hemisphere and then fly up to 12,000 miles to winter near the edges of the Antarctic continent. That’s a 24,000-mile round trip every year for up to 30 years. Do the math - that’s a lot of frequent flyer miles! Consider reading Migration by Charlotte McConaghy, in which an imagined last breeding colony of Arctic Terns plays a central role.

Tern by Sudesh Mishra

I turn a page and a bird dives.
The bay is blue and nameless.
It comes up, rows air.
I turn a page and a bird dives.
I lose count of the pages
And the diving bird and the bay
—Blue and nameless.
I turn a page and a bird dives,
It comes up, rows air.
The bay is blue and nameless.

The Thoth of the Matter and the Great Ibis Debate

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American White Ibis

American white ibis, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Rosetta Stone, the British Ornithological Union - what might these have in common, you ask? All of them were station stops on a recent trip down that rabbit hole called the Internet. With plans to travel to the Gulf Coast of Florida in a few days, I was thinking about some of the birds I have seen there in the past, in particular, the oddly endearing American White Ibis, and wondering about the sacred nature of the ibis to the ancient Egyptians. Searching “ibis” led me unexpectedly to the British Ornithological Union because its monthly publication is called Ibis, with a picture of the African Sacred Ibis gracing its cover since 1859.

But no ibis species exist naturally in Great Britain. What does exist there at the British Museum among the plundered artifacts of British colonial disregard are some mummified remains of the African Sacred Ibis and the Rosetta Stone. In 1798, Napoleon led 30,000 French soldiers on an expedition of colonialization to Egypt and Syria, with conquests of Malta and Crete along the way. The leaders of the young French Republic wanted to block British trade with India and get the annoyingly ambitious young General Bonaparte out of their hair. In addition to soldiers and sailors, Napoleon’s entourage included a multidisciplinary band of intellectuals who, among other things, discovered thousands of mummified ibises and what became known as the Rosetta Stone after the town where it was found. While Napoleon was militarily successful on land, the French fleet was defeated by the British Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson, marking the failure of the entire French enterprise. As a result, many of the spoils intended for Paris went to London instead, including the Rosetta Stone and some of the mummified ibises.

The Rosetta Stone, you may recall, launched the field of Egyptology. It contains the text of a 196 BCE decree by King Ptolemy V announcing a massive tax cut and other populist perks. Importantly, the entire text of the decree is written (in stone, haha) in two languages and three versions - ancient Egyptian in both hieroglyphic symbols and a more phonetic Dometic script and ancient Greek script. Eventually, the three versions were translated and cross-referenced, providing a foundational hieroglyphic dictionary and allowing the secrets of ancient Egyptian tombs and monuments to be revealed.

African Sacrd Ibis

But what about all of those mummified ibises? Ancient Egyptians revered the Sacred Ibises as earthly manifestations of the god Thoth, the god of wisdom, knowledge, reason, and (strangely) magic, and also as capable of warding off deadly but imaginary flying serpents. Unfortunately for the ibises, this reverence was expressed by killing and mummifying the birds, a fate experienced by literally millions of ibises. This practice was so widespread that ibis farms were created to breed the birds for sacrifice and mummification. (Clearly, the ancient origin of the modern turkey farm). And the early 19th century scientific study of the Sacred Ibis remains led to The Great Ibis Debate, an argument for the fixity of species stalling early theories of evolution fifty years before Charles Darwin but not stalling the sacred bird’s enshrinement on the cover of the magazine of the newly formed British Ornithological Union.

Glossy Ibis

With their origins in sub-Saharan Africa, ibises eventually found their way into Europe, first to zoos and then into the wild. Worldwide, there are 29 species of ibis in 12 genera (TIL the plural of genus is genera). I don’t know how my Floridian American White Ibis or its Glossy Ibis cousin is related to its sacred African version, but one might think it is as revered in Florida as in ancient Egypt. Groups of ibises wander everywhere in central and southern Florida and, unlike most birds, seem fearless of the humans (and cars, buses, and trucks) around them. However, this short poem sadly portrays the consequences of their proximity to the human presence.

White Ibis with Plastic Bag by Alison Cassidy

I was pushing the laden trolley

when I saw him – flying low
with long outstretched wings
and something blue
like a parachute
trailing behind.

A white ibis!

He dropped out of the air
close to me
and staggered
drunkenly
into the Safeway loading bay.

I crawled after him on hands and knees.

He was utterly helpless
helpless and ridiculous
wearing that silly plastic bag
like a necklace.

A moment of hesitation
– as I perused the long curved bill –
then I lunged quickly
and held the bird tight
(Mum used to keep chooks)

His trembling body felt warm
and fragile beneath my hands
and his beak wasn’t sharp at all –
but rubbery when he pecked me.
It didn’t hurt a bit.

I removed the bag
and the bird flew away
leaving me strangely elated.

Koi...

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The black water quivers
Birthing reds, whites and silvers
A breathing painting*

For 20 years our backyard has included a small koi pond, first at our in-town house in Concord and, since 2014, at our home on the city’s western outskirts near Turkey Pond. I won’t call them pets, and we don’t name the fish, but they mesmerize and enchant as if the 7 or 8 of them were a single shimmering, “breathing painting.” A lovely waterfall aerates the water so the fish can breathe, and the pond is home to some delightful water flowers and always at least one humongous bullfrog. For the past seven years or so, all of the fish have survived the New Hampshire winter, albeit softened by climate change, living under a large flat rock below the frozen surface of the pond. In winter, the waterfall is “turned off” and a small bubbler provides aeration and ensures a small unfrozen area where oxygen can reach the water.

But all nature consists of predators and prey to enforce a delicate balance and drive evolutionary improvements. Our koi feed constantly off of the algae coating the rocks in the pond, and the bullfrog snares insects and the occasional small songbird with his darting tongue and incredibly wide-hinged mouth while avoiding the milk snake lurking in the weeds. I suppose the pond’s proximity to our house and our coming and going in the yard and gardens prevented the koi from becoming prey. Or so we assumed.

Two weeks ago while gazing out our upstairs bedroom window at a sunny late summer morning, Seddon was startled by a creature with a six-foot wing span swooping off of our roof to alight beside the pond. Something fire breathing and horrific out of childhood fairy tales? No, but just as dreadful for the koi - a large four-foot tall great blue heron. That day and the next we or the dogs chased it off multiple times - once from his perch atop a patio umbrella just outside our kitchen window - a startling vision before your morning coffee. And then it was gone leaving the pond empty of the eight fish that had made it home for many years.

The pond at our previous house was discovered by the resident heron from the small lake at nearby White Park. After the loss of several fish, I installed a motion-activated sprinkler and a heron decoy, which seemed to dissuade the heron’s poaching our koi. Thinking all of our fish were gone, I installed the sprinkler and decoy system and purchased two new koi. Within an hour six of our original fish emerged from under the rock and joined the two newcomers apparently feeling safe once more.

No heron until yesterday when I glanced out at the pond and, standing next to the decoy and almost as still, was our predator. I tried multiple times to photograph it in the pond, but since all nature is both prey and predator, the heron took off the instant that I stepped outside. But on the last occasion it circled the yard several times and landed in defiance at the top of an 80 foot maple tree from which it had a heron’s eye view of our yard and pond. Fortunately, the same eight koi have still survived and swim eagerly to me when I appear with a handful of food at the pond’s edge.

Nearly all great blue herons leave New England for warmer weather between late July and late September, so maybe we’ll have a respite until war resumes in the spring. Or, maybe like the deer ticks, the herons will decide that New Hampshire is no longer so cold in winter.

You can find an earlier blog about herons here: Do bees have knees? — Carl Cooley Photo

And from my dear friend Mark: https://youtu.be/kiBSwlSLNJ8?si=YYPQMePriFHEKvdm

*Dream Dump - unnamed poet at allpoetry

Single parenting is for the birds...

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Not really, since over 80% of bird species share parenting duties equally between the male and female parent. Bluebirds are no exception. And males and females seek out mates more likely to share these responsibilities, which in many species can be determined by the intensity or distinctiveness of markings - so the bluer bluebird gets the guy (or gal). And shared parenting yields better results fostering species survival.

I’ve been watching this pair at one of our bird houses since they arrived a month ago. Most bluebirds mate for life and up to 50% return to the same nesting spot each year, so I imagine they are the same couple as last year or even the pair I wrote about here in 2020. Divorces occur much less frequently than with humans and usually only because of repeated nesting failures or when females try to nest with more than one male. Our pair seems so familiar and comfortable with each other that they could not possibly have just met.

Given that bluebirds mate for life, it is interesting that when nesting is complete and the babies have fledged, the parents no longer hang out together. In our area from which they will migrate in the fall, they will do so separately only to return to our yard next spring and rediscover each other. Perhaps absence also makes the bluebird heart grow fonder. Their juvenile offspring, on the other hand, will migrate together joining large flocks heading to the southeast.

What Gorgeous Thing by Mary Oliver

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

Was it Jimi Hendrix in Woolsey Hall or...

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Yellow-rumped Warbler

Eric Clapton and the Cream at the Fillmore East? I don’t know when my ears became destined to lose the high notes. But they definitely have, and more so as I get older. So, no wonder that each spring I give hearing aids another try - 100 days, no risk. Because late April and Early May brings the annual spring migration of warblers through New Hampshire. Warblers don’t just warble, they do so at the highest of pitches. And because they are tiny and often prefer to flit about in the tops of tall trees, spotting them is almost impossible without hearing them first. This year’s trial set of hearing aids will arrive next week - I can’t wait. Maybe I’ll decide to keep them this time!

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Luckily for me, though, I happened to gaze up into the tops of two 80 foot beech trees last week and caught the rustling of small branches followed by a dark, tiny form shooting out a few feet from the treetop and then back among the leaves. Needless to say, I didn’t hear a thing, but surely a sound was there too. It was a yellow-rumped warbler and then a second one. Scanning the two trees with binoculars, I also spotted a little yellow ball and then a round grey one barely larger than a hummingbird (but neckless and much fatter) - a yellow warbler and a ruby-crowned kinglet. Two of my favorite spring warblers and a first sighting for me of a kinglet (which is not a warbler).

Yellow Warbler

Spring has brought these three little birds long distances, especially the yellow warbler. All of them breed in the northern US and Canada in the summer. The kinglet makes a relatively short winter migration to the southern and southwestern US and Mexico, while the wee yellow warbler may fly all of the way to Costa Rica or northern South America crossing the widest part of the Gulf of Mexico in a single flight. The yellow-rumped warbler lands somewhere in between in Mexico or northern Central America, but may not even leave New England in the winter so is sometimes referred to as a winter warbler (say that fast five times).

These three lovely birds are not considered endangered, but due to climate change their migration ranges are definitely shifting northwards. While this does not pose immediate problems for them, it eventually will begin to affect their habitats and, therefore, their food supplies.

Aroused male Ruby-crowned Kinglet

By now you may be asking, “what ruby crown?” The bird in my photo may be a female as only the males have a red crest. Or, a male, since the males only display their red crest when aroused - either by a member of the opposite sex or by a threat to their territory. Here’s a photo (not of mine) of an aroused male.

Turn up your hearing aids, here are some sample songs. Yellow warbler, Yellow-rumped warbler, and Ruby-crowned kinglet.

Jim Harrison is one of my favorite authors. His little poem about yellow-warblers appeared in his last book of poetry, Dead Man’s Float.

Warbler

This year we have two gorgeous
yellow warblers nesting in the honeysuckle bush.
The other day I stuck my head in the bush.
The nestlings weigh one-twentieth of an ounce,
about the size of a honeybee. We stared at
each other, startled by our existence.
In a month or so, when they reach the size
of bumblebees they’ll fly to Costa Rica without a map.

“Warbler” by Jim Harrison from Dead Man’s Float. © Copper Canyon Press, 2016.











Advice to Songbirds - Look Sharp, Be Sharp

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Around Thanksgiving I put up our bird feeders for the winter hoping the bears had gone to bed. So we are once again treated to myriad species of songbirds in large numbers - consuming over 20 pounds of seeds in under 2 weeks. A few days ago while drinking my early morning coffee by the window and watching this colorful daily feeding frenzy, I noticed what I thought at first was a mourning dove in the red maple 20 feet from the feeders. It was ruffled looking as if it had just bathed in the koi pond and was drying out in the morning sun. But suddenly all of the feeders were empty, and I knew something was up.

I grabbed my camera and went out for a closer look around. The somewhat larger than normal “mourning dove” was still perched in the red maple preening itself and oblivious to whatever had panicked the other birds. Then I realized that I had mistaken the predator for its prey. This was not a mourning dove, but a small hawk. Now I could see the bright yellow eyes (clearly a juvenile since adult hawks have orange eyes), the threatening beak, and the lethal-looking talons.

This was a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk, or sharpie, as it is known among birders more experienced than I. The smallest hawk found in North America, a sharpie is difficult to distinguish from its almost twin, the Coopers hawk. In fact, amateur that I am, I had to post a photo of this fellow on the Bird Watchers of New Hampshire Facebook page for help distinguishing it from a Cooper’s hawk.

Sharp-shinned hawks get their name from their skinny legs (Coopers have fat legs - but don’t tell them that). They are smaller than Coopers, but that’s no help to me unless they were willing to stand side by side. And female sharpies are 30% larger than males so nearly the size of a male Coopers hawk. (Unlike most other classes of birds, male raptors and owls are quite a bit smaller than their female counterparts, so that domestic disputes are settled in a matriarchal manner.)

Sharpies belong to the genus accipiter along with Coopers hawks and the much larger and more rare northern goshawks. They have shorter wings and longer tails than other raptors allowing them extreme maneuverability and acceleration. Accipiters process visual information twice as fast as humans (one of our movies at 30 frames a second would look like a slideshow to a sharpie) so they can glide among trees under the forest canopy at 30 miles an hour to pounce upon careless or luckless songbirds in flight.

Most likely my sharp-shinned hawk was just passing through on its way to wintering in Florida or the Caribbean. But then, perhaps migration season has passed, and he will be hanging around keeping a sharp eye on our feeders all winter - thus my advice to the songbirds to look sharp and be sharp.

Maybe you’d like to write a poem about sharp-shinned hawks, because I couldn’t find one to add here. But, here’s the opening of one by William Henry Davies that seems to apply.

The Hawk by William Henry Davies

Thou dost not fly, thou art not perched,
The air is all around:
What is it that can keep thee set,
From falling to the ground?
The concentration of thy mind
Supports thee in the air;
As thou dost watch the small young birds,
With such a deadly care.

If you’re interested, here is my July 2020 blog about hawks.

You need a bath..

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A forest bath, that is. No need for a tub or soap and towel. You won’t even need much of a forest - a city park or even a single tree will do - though immersion helps.

For one recent forest bath, we joined a pleasant walk on the campus of the New Hampshire State House to be introduced to about a dozen trees that populate that space. All are venerable and some are vulnerable, many have histories as long as that of this “oldest of state houses in continuous use.” Several trees are “state champions” for their species, meaning that they are the largest of that species in several dimensions. Like beauty contestants, trees can be town, county, state, and even national champions. How is this decided? If you must know, Trunk Circumference (inches) + Height (feet) + ¼ Average Crown Spread (feet) = Total Points. A tree must be re-measured at least every 10 years to maintain its champion status with circumference measurement taken at 4 ½ feet above the ground on the uphill side. Do you remember how to measure the height of a tree?

That being in nature, particularly in a mindful way, benefits health and well-being seems so intuitively obvious as not needing science for confirmation. Nevertheless, Japan in the 1980s “invented” a physiological and psychological exercise called shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing” or “taking in the forest atmosphere”) and set about proving its benefits through scientific study. And South Korea accommodates tourists at its National Center for Forest Therapy. Needless to say, forest bathing and forest therapy have caught on in the United States to the extent that the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs now lists 556 certified therapists. One of these therapists will present a free webinar for our own New Hampshire Healthcare Workers for Climate Action on December 6, 2022 titled “Nature Connected Wellness - An Introduction to Forest Bathing for Healthcare Workers.” Click on the link to register; you don’t need to be a healthcare worker to attend.

You may have noticed that there is no talk of birds in this blog. The birds already know the message and its meaning. It’s about the habitat that we share with them, the habitat that is not only for bathing, but for protecting, preserving, and admiring as it is as threatened as the birds by the human forces on our planet. Trees and their forest communities are literally the sources of the air we breathe. In simple terms, trees and greenspace near us prolong and enrich our lives.

Finally, in case you’d like a good read while you're taking a regular wet bath or sitting under a tree, I recommend The Nature Fix by Florence Williams. And as for poetry, anything by John Muir would work, but I think Mary Oliver does it best.

 

When I Am Among The Trees by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

The Summer Day

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House wren in a nearby house

This summer day, last Tuesday, was the first day of summer, though I call it the first day of winter as I sadly note that daylight wanes. The day before Tuesday, I sat on our porch and listened to the birds - the loud, proud cardinals, the melodic robins, and the chatty catbirds…and the persistent and pleasant house wrens that have taken up residence in the various wren houses around our yard. The wren as you may recall if you read my entry here of January 25, 2021, is the king of birds or at least to the Greeks and the Celts and the brothers Grimm in The Willow Wren and the Bear. In that story, the bear, the wolf, and the fox are defeated by King Wren through some tricky stinging of the fox by the wren’s ally, the wasp.

But not so on Tuesday, this summer day, this first day of summer. Wren families are well into nesting and incubating in the row of wren houses at the rear edge of our property. Even the house recently vacated by the blue birds has a wren family in residence. I don’t know in what stage of family life these wrens found themselves on Tuesday morning, because I generally keep clear and watch from a distance.

As I sat at my usual coffee perch on our porch, our two small dogs suddenly went wild and shot through their doggie door into the backyard. This was not the usual mild clamor when a squirrel or a turkey turns up. It was loud, intense barking marking the intrusion of something large. Soon, sweet, timid Lucy was back by my side shivering in fear while her brave older (12 pound) brother, Frankie, continued his tirade.

Inspecting the remains of the wren house - note the two blue tags in the bear’s ears

When I stepped out to look for the intruder, I found a large black bear standing over the remains of one of our wren houses. He or she then strode across the rear edge of our yard. He ignored Frankie and the chicken coop and beehives both of which are protected by electric fencing, and walked away into the field behind our yard. Everything’s a metaphor for something, I guess, so I was reminded of Russia (the bear) and Ukraine (the wren), but from the precious precarious safety of our porch.

When I later looked more closely at the photos I had managed to capture, I noticed that the bear had a blue tag in each of her/his ears. That meant that at some point someone had anesthetized and tagged this bear. A call to NH Fish and Game revealed that 1) “we don’t use blue tags generally” and 2) the Massachusetts Wildlife Division of Fisheries and Wildlife does use blue tags and puts one in each ear of yearling bears as part of a four decades-long study of female bears’ numbers and movements. This wren-eating beast was a flatlander having found his/her way to Concord NH. I don’t suppose it matters to the poor wren family where the invading terror had come from, but I thought Mass Wildlife might want to know. So far they have not returned my call.

Besides the Grimms’ fairy tale highlighted earlier, I chose to add this lovely poem by Mary Oliver and thought the swan could as easily be the wren:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

The Great Salt Lick...

in

Winter has passed, and it’s time for me to crawl out of my cave to see what I might have to say. One of our beehives, the Russians, survived, but the Italians did not. So I have installed a new colony of Italian-Carniolan hybrids that are supposed to be hardier in winter. We’ll see. The spring warblers are moving north, and the summer residents - wrens, robins, cardinals, catbirds, cedar waxwings, blackbirds, hawks, hummingbirds, and orioles, to name a few, have settled in - nesting and filling our birdhouses. We are letting our vegetable garden rest this summer and growing a cover crop of Daikon radishes after correcting the soil according to extension service advice. Pretty idyllic time of year…if it weren’t for the ticks.

But what has really awakened me since my entry last November was a newspaper article that came my way today that led with the fact that the Great Salt Lake has shrunk by two-thirds due to climate change and population growth. The 1000 square mile Lesser Salt Lake is now surrounded by a 2000 square mile salt lick - except it isn’t just table salt. There are other minerals lying in the exposed dust many of which are toxic, like arsenic in large quantities, and blowing into the growing metropolis that includes Salt Lake City.

Pair of sandhill cranes in western Minnesota - they are among the many species that rely on the Great Salt Lake during their migration

The Great Salt Lake has become the coal mine for 10 million canaries - the migrating birds that stop over to feed on brine shrimp in the salty waters. However, as the salt content of the water increases, the algae that are the shrimp’s primary food will die out. As soon as this summer! There will be 10 million hungry, angry birds. We can only hope they find another place to fuel up.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that the climate-change skeptics among the ranchers and entrepreneurs in the region have come to realize that they are facing down an economic catastrophe - for crops, tourism, population growth, and economic development - brought to them by climate change that they can no longer deny. They will start by raising the price of water to deter overuse, but that is not going to solve the problem of a lake that is drying up.

While climate change is not yet “in the face” of my neighbors here in New Hampshire (if they ignore the ticks or stay inside), it is very much present in many parts of the country and the world - and not any longer a threat for some far off, future time.

I wasn’t really sleeping in a cave all winter. I have devoted time and energy to a new organization aimed at educating and activating my fellow health care workers toward talking about the existing health care threats of climate change and incorporating these conversations into the care of their patients and their communities. Have a look at what we are up to here. New Hampshire Healthcare Workers for Climate Action. And join us or some other grassroots organization like us. It’s too late to save the Great Salt Lake, but maybe you share my concerns about the birds…and my grandchild and yours.

Ode to Hope

in

Baltimore oriole

November 1st and still no real frost in central New Hampshire where I have lived for 45 years. In those early years here in the 1970s, gardeners were warned to expect a first frost by September 15, and there was natural snow on the upper slopes of Mount Sunapee by mid-October. But today it is sunny and almost 60 degrees. Our bees are still buzzing the bright red roses that continue to bloom and fresh herbs are still available outside our kitchen. I am sure that the bears are still roaming about hoping that I’ll put out my birdfeeders as I used to do on November 1st, but I know better now.

Bobolink

Most birds like most humans adapt well to change - within limits. In our region, we have birds that migrate south for the winter, others that migrate into our region after breeding further north, and some that just hang around. But the outer boundaries of migration for many birds are changing as the climate changes and habitats or food supplies shift to the north or to higher altitudes. And for some bird species the limits of adaptation will be exceeded without any mitigation of current warming trends and the effects those trends are already causing.

In New Hampshire assuming that the current rate of warming continues through the century, 112 species of winter and summer birds are at high or moderate risk of disappearing from our state. Most will have simply shifted their habitat range to the north, but some will fail to find supportive habitats and fade towards extinction. Even the purple finch, our state bird, may need to move far into the Canadian tundra. The photos in today’s blog are a few New Hampshire birds considered vulnerable in this way, and you can find this information for your state or province at this link.

Northern flicker

Only about 7% of Americans are completely dismissive of climate science and the changes that it has been predicting for over 100 years. They are probably all unreachable. The other 93% have reactions ranging from doubt to genuine alarm. All of them are reachable. In a 2018 TED talk, Katherine Hayhoe, who calls herself an evangelical Christian climate scientist, said that the most important thing that we can do about climate change is to talk about it every day.

But, as Greta Thunberg has said about talk, “Blah, blah, blah.” Because the other necessary ingredient is hope - not hope as wishful thinking, but hope as a practice like yoga or mindfulness, hope that fuels action. Jane Goodall has recently published a new book titled The Book of Hope in which through a series of conversations she outlines the reasons for her own hopefulness about the survival of the planet and its biodiversity. I believe that we each have to take action - in our personal lives but also in our communities, with our communities.

Ode to Hope by Pablo Neruda

Oceanic dawn
at the center
of my life.
Waves like grapes,
the sky's solitude,
you fill me
and flood
the complete sea,
the undimished sky,
tempo
and space,
seafoam's white
battalions,
the orange earth,
the sun's
fiery waist
in agony,
so many
gifts and talents,
birds soaring into their dreams,
and the sea, the sea,
suspended
aroma,
chorus of rich, resonant salt,
and meanwhile,
we men,
touch the water,
struggling and hoping,
we touch the sea
hoping.

And the waves tell the firm coast;
"Everything will be fulfilled"

Aimless Love

in

I can’t say that I have been too busy to blog since March 28 (Ice Out).  Busy isn’t really part of my vocabulary any longer, but neither have I been a troglodyte (speaking of vocabulary). Troglodyte is not usually a complimentary descriptor for humans - meaning one who lives in a cave, is out of touch with reality, and maybe even brutish.  After a year (no ordinary year!) and nearly 50 blog posts, I have simply been resting in a narrative and photographic sense, waiting for inspiration.  Well, to quote Billy Collins, “this morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren.”  A house wren.  So, here we go…

By odd linguistic coincidence, house wrens are known in the world of scientific nomenclature as Troglodytes aedon - a hefty name tag for such a tiny and, depending on whether you anthropomorphize bird behavior, not brutish songbird!  In this case, troglodyte pertains to living and foraging for food in small cave-like spaces.  You can read about the aedon part yourselves.  Suffice it to say that it involves one or possibly two long and complicated Greek myths with lots

HouseWren-2.jpg
HouseWren.jpg

of jealousy, revenge, and general celestial tomfoolery in which Aedon is eventually turned into a nightingale and most of her family into other avian creatures.

Possibly the nightingale song is the source of the choice of aedon for the house wren’s species name.  Because part of what captured my “aimless love” this morning was the effervescent, lilting, and repetitive song of this little bird - not really loud, but nevertheless audible everywhere.  The hours wrens are singing constantly in our yard, usually from atop one of the little houses along the rear boundary.  This happy chorus is a nesting celebration and maybe a warning to possible intruders.  The songs will completely disappear when nesting is over.

House wrens may have the largest range of any songbird in the Western Hemisphere.  They are found from central Canada to the southern tip of South America.  Here in northern New England, wrens return in late April from winter sojourns in the southern United States and Mexico.

I don’t believe in the notion of “bad” birds though there are some birds whose behaviors some humans find disreputable. (See my previous blog on bad birds).  House wrens are sometimes characterized in this way because of the feisty protective actions of male house wrens and, more seriously, because house wrens may disrupt the nesting and even kill the nestlings of blue birds, swallows, chickadees, and other “good” birds.

Here’s the rest of Billy Collin’s poem recited by the poet.  It’s not really about wrens, but about the abundant and undemanding beauty around us in which my house wren simply resides. (Not to be confused with, but similar in sentiment to, John Prine’s song of the same name).

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