The Urban Pantheist

The JN "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge is a protected estuary on the barrier island of Sanibel on the gulf coast of south Florida. It's something of a birder's mecca, with wide mud flats allowing for amazing visibility, and a resource-rich habitat attracting a variety of birds, including tropical migrants. It is named for the man who did much of the work to get the land protected.

Ding Darling was an editorial cartoonist and conservationist. He was often very critical of the policies of then president Franklin D Roosevelt in his cartoons. FDR was aware of him, and eventually asked him to be the first head of the agency that became the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Often on this visit to Southwest Florida I was struck by how hard the conservation fight seemed to be here. And yet the beauty and biodiversity are so omnipresent you would expect people would be clamoring to protect it. It's a shame the state wasn't discovered by westerners 500 years later than it was.

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Here's an interesting product that claims to mimic lichen and spiderweb, two known preferred nesting materials for hummingbirds. I recommend having google set to moderate safesearch before looking for the product name.

I would be derelict in my duties if I did not pass on the Boston Birders' report of two Barred Owls in downtown Boston. One is in the Public Garden, not too surprising since this park is fairly large and is full of the kind of big old trees that big owls like. The other, however, has staked out a callery pear tree at tourism ground zero: Quincy Market. If you are in town, you should probably go check it out.

This has been a typical New England week in March, with a major snowstorm at one end of it, and a set of perfect springtime days at the end. Reading my friends' list, it seems as the great lakes cities are experiencing something similar. I started the Muddy River photo project, which has had the wonderful consequence of forcing me to find beauty in a landscape I see everyday, covered with a substance (snow) which I have come to hate.

Yesterday I saw my first grackle of the year. It had squeezed its way through the gap in a cage door to help itself to the amenities of a duck exhibit. I forgot to mention that on my last trip to Connecticut (Feb 15th, my mom's birthday) I saw a turkey vulture over the highway. It won't be long until they are year-round in southern New England, and I fully expect black vultures to become common visitors to our area.

The buffleheads and mergansers on the Muddy weren't there yesterday evening, I suspect because other bodies of water have melted through. Leverett Pond looks to have opened up quite a bit. Jamaica Pond is still covered with water on top of slush on top of ice. Dangerous swimming there right now.

Other highlights this week: I flushed out a Cooper's hawk from a bush and was amazed at the speed of its flight. That field marking alone makes it impossible to confuse with a red-tail. Tracking after this storm showed no foxes or coyotes, unlike last time. Hundreds and hundreds of cottontails, some voles (one sick individual which I caught and euthanized) and the usual trails of rats and mice. I'm looking forward to seeing the spring birds again. I haven't seen a junco in a while (but I know they're still out there) and I haven't seen a red-wing blackbird yet (but other Bostonians have reported them).

The moderator of the Boston Birds Google group posted an encounter he had with Homeland Security:
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While flipping through a field guide this morning (NERD!) I discovered that I have made a reporting error! At some point, I said that the boat-tailed grackle (Quiscalus major a big black bird that makes a wonderful cacophany of metallic noises) was the most common urban bird we saw in Las Vegas. Oops! That bird isn't known to occur in Las Vegas, so either we made a fascinating discovery, or an error. We weren't looking closely enough to make a discovery.

The real most common urban bird of Las Vegas is the great-tailed grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus, a different species of big black bird that makes a wonderful cacophany of metallic noises). Honestly, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of difference between these two. Fortunately, there is very little overlap in their ranges in North America. I saw the boat-tailed in Jacksonville, Florida, and the great-tailed in Las Vegas.

In Las Vegas, I was in my brother's residential neighborhood, in my wedding suit, getting ready to test ride my brother's bike, when I said "which one of your neighbor's has a parrot?" The parrot-like calls (in intensity, really, more than tone) were male great-tailed grackles.

Now I'm planning on maybe checking out the black birds down on the Riverway. I'd assumed they were common grackles (Quiscalus quiscula, medium sized black birds that make a wonderful cacophany of metallic noises), but upon browsing the field guide (NERD!) it seems like they may be rusty blackbirds! (Euphagus carolinus)