Sitting by a pond, with the rush of traffic incessant,
red-winged blackbirds buzz and cluck their private worries
into social chatter.
Sun burning alternates with wind
that unsettles the surface of the pond
making eddies of worries that break up the reflection
of peaceful willows caught in a moment
between waking and full summer glory.
I suppose their pause is an illusion
busy factories working inside a still exterior.
Blackbirds posture and call.
Tree swallows dash about in aerial acrobatics.
I want to be more like the willow trees
smooth exterior but deep inner workings
yet I fear I more resemble the water
agitated into a thousand superficial movements.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Some April flowers
Clumps of tiny violets are scattered in the lawn and leaf litter.
Trilliums opening just in time for a little burst of winter temperatures (and precipitation).
Mayapples unfurl like umbrellas to shade the forest floor.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Cycles
Shrubs and trees explode in color. Forest flowers open to the unrestrained sun even as leaves emerge from tight buds to eventually shade out the forest floor. Everything is so familiar to me despite the three seasons we’ve been through since then. The script is the same even when the players differ.
That’s true in broad strokes. Late snow cover, early warm days – you can ignore climate change and still the stresses on living things are always at least subtly different this year from last year. Our feelings on the climate are skewed by the present, but trends can involve decades and more. So-called hundred year floods influence real locations of nutrients and plants. Our understanding is limited by the time frames individuals operate on, and since we may not experience rare events multiple times in our lifetime (or our working adult life) we’re often surprised by happenings that are frequent on a geologic time scale.
Crucial events often happen quickly, rarely, and in random places. Predation is like that. So many adaptations are meant to avoid predation, yet actually observing one animal killing another can take a lot of work and luck. Especially with larger carnivores which need to eat less often than a phoebe catching bugs out of the air. The only evidence left may be tufts of bloody fur, clumps of plucked feathers, or unpalatable dragonfly wings as delicate as gossamer.
The world around us is shaped by unseen events and the long-term action of natural laws. History echoes in DNA, dramas played out over eons. Species dance together, for example flowers and their pollinators. Sometimes both groups mutually benefit from their interactions and sometimes one group tries to gain unfair advantages. Other dances are purely antagonistic, like when plants develop defenses to ward off herbivores. Even here competition can become cooperation, as when the toxin caffeine causes humans to spread coffee plants across the tropics.
The history explaining why a community lives in a specific area is also grand compilation of individual stories. Skunk cabbage seeds are swept along by streams, aspen seeds on the wind. Shakespeare enthusiasts import European starlings which now flourish in our fields and cities. Ants carry trillium seeds along through the forest. The world around us has always been in flux, just sometimes in more extreme ways than others.
That’s true in broad strokes. Late snow cover, early warm days – you can ignore climate change and still the stresses on living things are always at least subtly different this year from last year. Our feelings on the climate are skewed by the present, but trends can involve decades and more. So-called hundred year floods influence real locations of nutrients and plants. Our understanding is limited by the time frames individuals operate on, and since we may not experience rare events multiple times in our lifetime (or our working adult life) we’re often surprised by happenings that are frequent on a geologic time scale.
Crucial events often happen quickly, rarely, and in random places. Predation is like that. So many adaptations are meant to avoid predation, yet actually observing one animal killing another can take a lot of work and luck. Especially with larger carnivores which need to eat less often than a phoebe catching bugs out of the air. The only evidence left may be tufts of bloody fur, clumps of plucked feathers, or unpalatable dragonfly wings as delicate as gossamer.
The world around us is shaped by unseen events and the long-term action of natural laws. History echoes in DNA, dramas played out over eons. Species dance together, for example flowers and their pollinators. Sometimes both groups mutually benefit from their interactions and sometimes one group tries to gain unfair advantages. Other dances are purely antagonistic, like when plants develop defenses to ward off herbivores. Even here competition can become cooperation, as when the toxin caffeine causes humans to spread coffee plants across the tropics.
The history explaining why a community lives in a specific area is also grand compilation of individual stories. Skunk cabbage seeds are swept along by streams, aspen seeds on the wind. Shakespeare enthusiasts import European starlings which now flourish in our fields and cities. Ants carry trillium seeds along through the forest. The world around us has always been in flux, just sometimes in more extreme ways than others.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Watching
Spring wildflowers in the forest hide in plain sight. I only recently started to notice the pale hepaticas among the ubiquitous mud and leaf litter. Fortunately the bumblebee that whizzed by me this morning is not working with the same color spectrum that we see. Insects are the desired audience for these flowers, but the single trout-lily leaves popping up everywhere have no need to attract attention. They leave that drama to their older or just healthier compatriots.
The pleasure of spring flowers strewn like tiny gems across the landscape is worth a closer look, but birds make it easier to watch them this time of year. Males of different songbird (not a technical term) species are walking that fine line between advertising their presence and avoiding predators. Many dress in eye-catching plumage, or at least spiff up their non-breeding plumage so that, for example, male robins sport a darker head and breast. There are always variations – eastern phoebes are little gray and off-white birds that don’t even bother differentiating the plumage of males and females. However they make up for it with their insistent singing of their own name: “Feebee!” This is another way songbirds draw our eyes, by singing species-specific songs from relatively conspicuous perches. I say relative because finding a flycatcher that is about the size of a cell phone in a mess of branches or bramble is not always an easy task.
We’re not the intended audience here either, and sometimes we can be ignored when too males are locked in showy combat. Recently I was able to walk close to two red-winged blackbirds that were going at each other with noisy wing beats. They tumbled about some cattails then spilled out onto the foot path where they irritated a robin so much that he joined in the fight and chased them off.
Most of this is drama, not violence. Individuals bluff and test each other to determine who has control of what resources. Eventually both the singing and the fighting will calm down as neighbors settle in and mostly ignore each other. Until then, there’s plenty for us to observe. Most of our warblers haven’t even arrived yet – not to mention all the trout lilies, trilliums, mayapples, and other flowers I’m looking forward to seeing soon.
The pleasure of spring flowers strewn like tiny gems across the landscape is worth a closer look, but birds make it easier to watch them this time of year. Males of different songbird (not a technical term) species are walking that fine line between advertising their presence and avoiding predators. Many dress in eye-catching plumage, or at least spiff up their non-breeding plumage so that, for example, male robins sport a darker head and breast. There are always variations – eastern phoebes are little gray and off-white birds that don’t even bother differentiating the plumage of males and females. However they make up for it with their insistent singing of their own name: “Feebee!” This is another way songbirds draw our eyes, by singing species-specific songs from relatively conspicuous perches. I say relative because finding a flycatcher that is about the size of a cell phone in a mess of branches or bramble is not always an easy task.
We’re not the intended audience here either, and sometimes we can be ignored when too males are locked in showy combat. Recently I was able to walk close to two red-winged blackbirds that were going at each other with noisy wing beats. They tumbled about some cattails then spilled out onto the foot path where they irritated a robin so much that he joined in the fight and chased them off.
Most of this is drama, not violence. Individuals bluff and test each other to determine who has control of what resources. Eventually both the singing and the fighting will calm down as neighbors settle in and mostly ignore each other. Until then, there’s plenty for us to observe. Most of our warblers haven’t even arrived yet – not to mention all the trout lilies, trilliums, mayapples, and other flowers I’m looking forward to seeing soon.
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