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Creative
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Non-fiction |
Essays From Seasons With Birds:Pages From A Birder's Diary: July 16thAnother Heaven and Another Earth Must Pass |
Non-fiction Samples:
Wildlife Watch on an Alaska Cruise
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To see sample pages from Wildlife Watch on an Alaska Cruise visit the Stray Feathers Press web site. |
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Excerpts from
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Pages From a Birder's Diary: July 16th
Others of their kind have fallen here and there around them. Some have come down fairly recently, their thickly barked trunks now serving as major highways through the tangled undergrowth. There are others that have been on the ground for many years, some almost unrecognizable under coverings of thick moss, and Salal and Red Huckleberry plants that have taken root along the length of the mouldering remains.
Occasionally I hear the ank, ank, ank of nuthatches, and the chickadees calling to each other, as they forage through the upper story. A Pileated Woodpecker gives his maniacal laugh from somewhere else in the forest, a voice big enough to hold its own in the serried ranks of the silent firs.
From a dense thicket off to my right comes another voice. High pitched, and deceptively loud, it's the song of a Winter Wren. I turn my head to see if I can locate him. In the middle of a bird census, I've been silent while I listened for birds in the forest. Guided by survey rules, I resist the temptation to "pish" this wren in for a closer look.
A Winter Wren has an amazing song. It bubbles and trills and rolls and warbles; there can be over a hundred individual notes in its seven- or eight-second run. It is loud enough to have come from a much larger bird; just the ticket for advertising one's prowess in sound-swallowing timber like this.
The song ends and I wait. Chip. Wait for it. Chip-chip. There it is, the classic two-note Winter Wren call. The first note sounds a lot like a Fox Sparrow, but the double note is pretty hard to mistake. The next call is closer. Salal leaves move. There it is, at the base of a big fir.
It flits to a huckleberry bush, growing out of an ancient nurse log directly in front of me. I don't want to spook it, but I have to blink. No problem. The wren is on the log now, moving towards me. It moves from moss to salal stem to dead twig to loose bark, changing perches perhaps once a second. I can hear the prrrt of its wings each time it moves. My eyes reach the end of their travel, and I have to turn my head. Still there.
These are tiny birds by any standard, but in a mature forest they seem minuscule. They are about the size of a wine cork, with a stubby little tail that is carried upright. The tail flicks regularly, and the little bird bobs its body, too, as it moves along.
The wren is now at my feet, probing here and there in the moss. It must have noticed something was different, because it is working its way up a gangly bit of salal. It stops to look at my knees, my belt, my binocular. It begins to chip again.
I stand as still as I can, but the bird knows I am here. It works its way, perch by perch, onto a dead fir sapling to my right, and now it's moving along one of the larger remaining branches, just about at eye level. Once again, my eye muscles are straining. Slowly, I turn my head. Face to face.
Winter Wrens are brown. Well, they're a little streaky, too, but mostly they're brown. But at arm's length, what strikes me is the warmth of the colours. The flanks are buff, and the upperparts warm chocolate, barred with a richer brown. The eyes are black, and they are highlighted bya buffy eyebrow lines. The plumage is soft, and this bird looks to be in fine shape.
He examines me from several perches, including a look over his shoulder as he clings to the trunk of a tree to my left. He blinks, and I blink. He calls, but less frequently now. I can't decide if I am being scolded or not. Whatever the case, this tiny mite is not too concerned.
It's amazing to me that this species has evolved in the niche it occupies. It would take 8,000 of them to match me in weight, and yet they are more at home in these deep forests than I am. They are found on three continents. Most birds are migratory, with some even making an annual round trip to Iceland. Here on the West Coast, they are resident, surviving such abuse as our fickle climate may visit upon them.
The Winter Wren is known to science as Troglodytes troglodytes. That, translated, means "Cave-dwelling Cave-dweller" - a double reference to its habit of seeking heavy cover. No wonder it is so at home in these woods.
The wren returns to the level of the log and continues on its way, and when it has retreated into the understorey again, I can relax and change position. The entire encounter has lasted perhaps three minutes, but in that time we had quite a little tete-a-tete, this Winter Wren and I.
I set off, slowly, further into this forest, past tall Douglas-firs, and across mossy logs. I stop again, to listen for birds and, behind me, his song is there, slicing the silence, claiming these woods as his own again.
Another Heaven and Another Earth Must Pass
The early ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, watched as the birds passed overhead. The flock increased in width, until it covered three miles of sky. And on the birds came, darkening the sky, a continuous, streaming river of birds, over three hundred miles from start to finish. Wilson estimated that there were over two billion birds in the flock.
They would gather in huge colonies in the hardwood forests of eastern North America. Millions of birds would occupy an area of several hundred square kilometers, with as many as a hundred nests in any tall tree. This was the Passenger Pigeon, probably the most abundant bird ever to live on the planet.
In the southeastern United States, a unique little parrot would gather with ten or twenty others of its kind in a tree cavity at night, to roost. By day, they would form larger flocks, flying erratically over the forests, and screaming and chattering constantly. The Carolina Parakeet lived further north than any other member of its family, and in huge numbers, too.
The native people harvested the young Passenger Pigeons that had fallen from the nest trees, and they found more than enough to satisfy their needs. The Europeans quickly learned to use this resource, too, but they soon began to employ much more efficient harvesting methods, as the pigeons became a commercial commodity. Using bait, and live birds as decoys, trappers netted the birds by the thousands. In one month, from one colony in Michigan, over 700,000 birds were shipped to market. As the railways expanded westward, the trappers could tap the colonies in new areas. Thousands of birds were used as targets in shooting galleries.
At restaurants in the east, diners raved about the succulent squabs. It was the fashion for women to wear elaborate hats, and the hats of many of the restaurant patrons were decorated with the bright green feathers of the Carolina Parakeet.
If the parakeets evaded the plumage hunters, they were shot by farmers, who destroyed the gregarious birds in huge numbers, because they damaged fruit and grain crops. The parakeets made the job brutally easy, because they would gather where one had fallen, so that entire flocks were ultimately destroyed. Many were also taken for the cage-bird trade.
Those birds that survived these depredations found that their habitats had been severely depleted, in the early rush to colonize new territories.
By 1880, several states had become alarmed by the decline of the Passenger Pigeon, but legislation to protect the birds was rarely enforced. By the end of the decade, the decline was almost complete, and the last bird was seen in the wild in 1900. A year later, the last specimen of a Carolina Parakeet was taken, and the last bird was seen in the wild in 1904.
Both species continued to exist in captivity. The parakeets, though, were inattentive parents, and not many young were successfully raised. Breeders had a little more success with the Passenger Pigeon, until the birds became too inbred, and produced infertile eggs.
On September 1st, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoological Park, a Passenger Pigeon named Martha died, and with her she took all the genetic wonder that was her species. A few short years after that, the same zoo mourned the death of another bird, the planet's last Carolina Parakeet.
While Europe has seen thousands of years of civilization, and countless wars, not one species of land bird is known to have become extinct. And here in North America, humans obliterated two of the most abundant in about a hundred years. Of all the extinctions for which humans can take credit, somehow these are the most senseless.
Every year, as August bears down on September, I think of those two birds, dying alone in the Cincinnati Zoo. And as I search for a way to comprehend the utter finality of their extinction, I hear the words of the early naturalist, William Beebe:
"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."
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When you are working at your computer, notice how much space it takes on your desk. The space it sits on is sometimes called its footprint, because it represents where it "stands", just as our footprints indicate where we stand.
Everything on the planet uses up some space to live. But it is not just the space taken by our two size eleven shoes. Its the space we use to grow food, to sleep, to go to school, and to have a cold drink in the mall on the weekend. When you think about it, it begins to add up.
When planners consider how to design better cities, they take into account the needs of all the citizens, and try to find space for everything. At the University of British Columbia, William Rees and a graduate student, Mathis Wackernagel, studied this problem, and then went even further. They wanted to devise a way to plan for the space needed for a community of people, which would not have a negative impact on the environment. They wondered how much space was required for each human to live, how much space was needed to allow for everything that an individual would need to exist. That would include living space, the space needed to grow food, forests to produce paper and to process carbon dioxide, highways to get to the mall, the land needed to dispose of garbage, and many more factors. They determined that they could calculate how much of our planet an individual needed in order to exist, how many of the Earth's resources were needed just to be here, and so they called this the "ecological footprint".
Rees and Wackernagel developed several ways of calculating the size of the ecological footprint for a country, or a community, or an individual. Using these models, it soon became clear that Canadians, on average, need about 7 or 8 hectares of land each to sustain their lifestyle. Compare this with the average Brazilian, who needs 2.6 hectares, or a Nigerian, whose ecological footprint is about 1.3 hectares. Our American neighbours lay claim, on average, to 12.2 hectares each.
The ecological footprint of our species has been calculated at 2.3 hectares for every human on the planet. It has also been calculated that the amount of biologically productive land (and ocean) which is available to support life is about 1.9 hectares per person. The shortfall is called the ecological deficit. And the shortfall means one of two things: Either we are using too many resources per person, or there are too many people. When we consider that as Canadians, each of us is using more than three times as much space as the average human on the planet, we come face to face with the matter of responsibility. If we also allow for the ecological footprints of the other 30 million species we share the planet with, we have to realize that our poor old planet is a mite overworked.
Does it sound like there's a real problem here? Yes, there is a problem, but there are also solutions. One hopeful sign is that the growth rate of the world's population is slowing down. The number of people who need to be supported by the resources of the planet is a critical factor in reaching sustainability. The following table sheds some light on the matter:
| Year |
Global Population |
| 1800 |
1 billion |
| 1900 |
1.7 billion |
| 2000 |
6.1 billion |
| Projections: | |
| 2100, at the same rate of growth as in 2001 |
22.2 billion |
| 2100, if each family has two children |
8.7 billion |
2100, if each family has one child |
1.4 billion |
By working to reduce population growth, by having fewer children, we can reduce our global ecological footprint.
Another solution is for those people whose ecological footprint is unsustainable (and that means almost all North Americans) to reduce their individual ecological footprints, by using fewer resources each, and by using recycled resources.
Think of all the things that increase the size of your ecological footprint. If you don't turn down your electric heaters at night, you are using more electricity, and that means more hydroelectric dams, flooding more river valleys.
If you only use one side of a piece of paper, you will need twice the area of forests to supply your paper needs.
If you buy imported tomatoes instead of locally grown tomatoes, you will be using more fuel for transportation, and creating more greenhouse gas in the process.
If you throw your pop cans in the garbage, then you will need more land for landfills, and more land to extract the bauxite for more aluminum to make new pop cans.
There is no single thing that will adequately reduce the size of our ecological footprint. But there are many things we can do that together will make a difference. We can use the six R's as a guide to help us.
We can all Reduce our consumption of resources simply by buying less. Sometimes, we can Refuse to accept packaging we don't need.We can also Reuse goods which are still serviceable, and Repair goods rather than throwing them away. When we're finished with things like beverage containers, we can Recycle them.
Did you go into the supermarket for a litre of milk? If you take the milk home without a grocery bag, you have saved precious resources. What if you purchased five items - too much to carry? You could use a grocery bag, or you could use your own cloth bag, or take last week's grocery bag back to the store, for this week's groceries.
What about the carrots you purchased? Did the store buy them from a local farmer, or did they travel hundreds of miles in a delivery truck? Did the farmer use pesticides or fertilizers that might contaminate the salmon stream next to him? Or did she grow them organically?
When you had to fly to Winnipeg for a meeting, did you take the time to visit your cousins, too? Or did you make a second trip, using even more jet fuel?
Last night for dessert you had a delicious apple pie, made from BC apples. Did you throw the peels and cores in the garbage, to use up space in the landfill? If you put them into the compost, you can save landfill space, and improve your gardens with natural compost.
Sometimes when we use something, and it has done its job, we think its life is over. But many of the things we use can have new lives, through recycling, which is one of the easiest ways to reduce our ecological footprint. Every time we recycle a pop can, for example, we reduce our consumption of raw materials, energy, and landfill space, and that reduces our ecological footprint. In British Columbia, Encorp Pacific is recycling millions of beverage containers every year, and we'll look more closely at how much that reduces our ecological footprint in the pages to follow.
Every species has an ecological footprint that provides everything it needs to live, to eat, and to raise young. The human population of the Earth has grown so dramatically in the last 100 years that our species is pushing many species out of their former habitats. The most vulnerable species are the ones which are rare, or have very specialized habitat needs, or which prefer to live in the same habitats that we humans choose.
This brings us to the sixth "R": Responsibility.
We are all part of a global community. We have a responsibility to live our lives so that other species can live their lives too. Every time we reduce our personal ecological footprint through recycling, for example, we also reduce the ecological footprint of our community, our country, and our planet. That gives endangered species a better chance to survive. So it really is important to take personal responsibility, and to make sure that we encourage our families and friends to do it too.
Mathis Wackernagel is currently Sustainability Program Director for Redefining Progress, a non-profit organization based in California. Much of the information in this section is based on material from this organization, whose website is very useful: www.rprogress.org and includes an ecological footprint calculator. A version of this calculator can be downloaded from www.concord.org, which offers other educational resources. Other ecological footprint calculators can be found at www.mec.ca (Mountain Equipment Coop) and at www.ecovoyageurs.com.
It is most common on Vancouver Island and in the southern part of the province, from sea level to about 2,100 meters in the interior, preferring coniferous and mixed deciduous-coniferous woodlands. Steller's Jays, like other members of the crow family, are opportunistic omnivores. This species is an important player in the dispersal of Garry Oak acorns, which it collects, and caches for future use. In the spring, jays will prey on the eggs and nestlings of other birds.
The Steller's Jay gives a variety of raucous calls and scolds, and is an accomplished mimic; it will often give the call of a Red-tailed Hawk when an interloper comes into its territory.
Steller's Jays are common visitors to forested parks, and will venture into suburban areas in some winters.
Peregrine Falcon
Falco peregrinus
Perhaps no other species is more closely associated with the devastating effects of the chemical pesticide DDT. Drastically reduced in numbers when the substance caused the destructive thinning of the shells of their eggs, the birds responded well to a recovery program. In British Columbia, the population fared better, and the Peale's Peregrine of the west coast was not thought to be in danger.
Peregrines, like other falcons, eat almost exclusively birds, which they hit in the air during spectacular dives called stoops. They nest on rocky cliffs, raising two to three young in most years. In south coastal British Columbia, the species is regularly seen during the winter. It is usually found in areas where there are large numbers of wintering waterfowl or shorebirds.
Marbled Murrelet
Brachyramphus marmoratus
In the fertile waters around Vancouver Island, a mottled brown seabird dives for small fish. At the end of the day, it laboriously lifts off the water, and flies, toward the shore. Finding its way to a creek mouth, it follows the valley upstream, dropping into the forest canopy many miles inland. Maneouvring between myriad massive trunks, and giant branches, it flies unerringly to a heavy limb, laden with moss. There, it lands, and gives the fish to its single, downy chick, over a hundred feet above the forest floor.
It is only in the last few years that the enigma of where the Marbled Murrelet nests has been solved. Its apparent dependence on mature forests for nesting places it squarely at odds with clearcut logging, and as a result it has been listed as vulnerable by the B.C. government.
Marbled Murrelets may be seen in many areas around Vancouver Island, and the Gulf of Georgia.