Cacophonous Cawers

A bird we hear more often than we see around here is the crow—more specifically, the American crow. You hear them frequently, because their call is loud and raucous and they’re likely to gather in a flock and engage in a bellowing tournament, as if to see which one of them can outshout the others. They are a funny bunch to listen to, as they get inventive and even a little silly, while engaging in their spontaneous spoutings.

The crow is a solid, big bird. It’s twice the size of a cardinal but outweighs it by a factor of 10. It takes some 40 chickadees to balance the weight of one crow! A crow is simultaneously ugly and beautiful. I guess maybe that dual feeling may be caused by its unsavory reputation, but when you see one close, you can’t help but admire the stark beauty of that absolute blackness. And it isn’t really utterly black, but has a gorgeous metallic sheen to it.

Crows have earned a repugnant reputation from gardeners—although we’ve never had one raid our tender veggie shoots, so we still like them. They are carrion eaters. On our back roads you’ll often see a crow lift into the air from the carcass of a squirrel, as you approach them around a curve. They also forage for garbage and are often plentiful around urban trashy areas. They walk with a strut, sort of a sailor’s swagger—looking cockier than a rooster. So they are not the cutest bird around, nor are their habits attractive.

Crows are one of our brainiest birds. They study other birds to gain an advantage (they love to steal food), they learn admirably well, and are excellent tool manipulators. They engage in complex social activities—one of the more noticeable being the aforementioned cacophonous chorus. Their flight is not the dipsy-doodle, undulating flight of smaller birds. They fly straight and strong—hence the expression “as the crow flies.”

But there also are times when the crow exhibits some amazing aerial acrobatics: when they’re going after a hawk. I recently glanced up to see a hawk perched in a nearby tree. I think a “caw” had caught my attention. Four crows were circling the larger predator and one dove straight at the hawk, who had to leap from its limb, lest that crow’s heavy bill impale it. Once in the air, all four crows aimed for the hawk. Even though it was twice the size of its harassers, the hawk fled down the creek with one crow literally on its tail, threatening to pull out one of its feathers.

Turn about is fair play, however, since I’ve also watched a handful of small songbirds (easily outweighed by one crow) close ranks and chase off the bigger black bird.

Each day I gain a little more appreciation for how some naturalists have made bird lore their life’s avocation. Many are the times that I’ve been stopped in my tracks by the arresting sight or sound of a bird. They are endlessly fascinating.

Spring Colors

Fibber Meter

In 2007 researchers in the Miniature Electronics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented a tiny device that is a very accurate lie detector. It senses both skin temperature and moisture level and then radios the data to a receiver, which analyzes the readings. It’s been shown in tests to have a 90% accuracy of discerning if the wearer is telling the truth or not. This device, known as FALSE (Factual Analyzer for Lies and Suspicious Emanations), can be disguised as an American flag pin and attached to the lapel of a suit.

The Psychology Department at Harvard then took up the research and conducted a one-year experiment, in which they implanted the FALSE sensor on several hundred unsuspecting subjects and monitored the number of lies they uttered. It was a double-blind experiment, in which those who attached the devices (they hired retired CIA agents) were kept incommunicado with those who recorded and analyzed the lie data.

Each subject was tracked for one week and the results were expressed as the average number of lies told each day. Here is a brief summary of the preliminary findings, as a function of the profession of the wearer of the FALSE sensor, in order of decreasing number of lies per day:

· Fox News broadcasters and radio talk show hosts: 100 (while on the air) and 30 (at other times)
· Lawyers: 75 (while in court) and 35 (at other times)
· Politicians: 60 (at all times)
· Bankers and corporate executives: 55
· Advertising agency personnel: 50
· Newspaper editors: 30
· Medical profession: doctors 15 and nurses 7
· The Shenandoah Hermit: 1

These are initial findings of an ongoing study. The research will continue, as other professions are being evaluated (some surprising findings about teachers and preachers have been leaked, showing some of them to score as high as 20). The scientists are also attempting to refine the results, to determine if the test subjects actually believed their lies, or were truly deceitful. (We all know which, in the case of politicians.) Stay tuned for the release of Phase 2 results, next month.

Down the Throat of the Iris

Sparse Space

If you go outside on a clear night in the country, you can see as many as 3000 stars with the naked eye. The sky seems filled with stars. Look at a photo of a distant galaxy taken by the orbiting Hubble Telescope and you see millions of stars and maybe several distant background galaxies. Space seems so full of planets, stars, and galaxies; and yet it’s vastly empty.

It’s hard to wrap your head around just how sparse space is, or just how far it is between the heavenly bodies we see out there. I’ve often tried to grasp the profound emptiness of it all, or to comprehend just how isolated our little planet is in this cosmic void, but it’s a very big stretch of imagination.

So here’s a way to get a feel for the barrenness of space—putting it in terms of distances we can more easily get a feel for. Let’s look first at our solar system. Our sun dominates it; over 99% of the mass of our solar system resides in the sun. Eight planets, a few proto planets (Pluto was recently designated as one of them), and countless asteroids… all orbit our sun.

To reduce our solar system to a more understandable scale, imagine the sun to be the size of a basketball. Place it on the goal line of a football field. To that scale, our Earth is the size of a fat grape seed, out at the 10-yard line… a wee grape seed revolving out there about 30 feet away. Mars is half that grape seed size, sitting out on the 15-yard line. Jupiter is the size of a walnut at midfield… a walnut out there 150 feet away! Let’s round out our solar system: Pluto is a tiny dot out there about 3 ½ football fields away. Thus, to this scale (the sun the size of a basketball), our solar system has a diameter of about seven football fields.

To consider celestial bodies beyond our solar system, we need to make the scale even smaller. Collapse those seven football fields down to a basketball, and then place that basketball-size solar system on the goal line again. Where’s the nearest star, Alpha Centauri? It’s five miles away. Nothing of any substance exists around our basketball-sized solar system, until you get out there five miles. That’s a pretty empty “local” stellar neighborhood!

Our solar system sits out near the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy. So again, to this second scale, the center of our galaxy is 4000 miles away. That’s about the distance from Washington, D.C. to the Amazon. Let’s go one more: the nearest galaxy to us is Andromeda. By this scale, that closest galaxy (to our basketball-size solar system) is 360,000 miles away—or half again the distance to the moon. Pretty sparse territory.

One often hears talk about humans soon traveling by space ship to the stars. On old Star Trek episodes you can watch the USS Enterprise zip from one star system to another in a few hours. The reality of it is that these distances are far greater than we can imagine. Planet Earth is like a vanishingly small speck of dust on a vast ocean. Even though the universe has uncountable stars and planets, we’re pretty much alone. Maybe we’d better think of taking better care of our home—it is all we’ve got for the foreseeable future, until the far distant day when we just might span those incredible distances.

May Apple Flock

From Flocking to Fighting

One of the joys of spring is watching and listening for the return of migrating birds. Those first calls of the phoebe, the robin, the wood thrush, or the indigo bunting are sure to bring wide smiles to our faces and an excited, “Did you hear that!?” All’s right with our little vernal world when we know that our winged travelers have come back for the season.

But there’s another fascinating spring event that I like to observe: the year-round resident birds, as they morph from close-knit feeding buddies in a flock, to sparring rivals, who enter into courting rituals.

Throughout the winter we have chickadees, titmice, and goldfinches flocking at the feeder—maybe a dozen or more of each species. To my untrained eye years ago, they all seemed to be close-knit friends, but that was a bit of anthropomorphizing on my part. Birds rarely are friendly with one another—tolerant is a better word for it (at best). In fact, they most always aggressively establish a pecking order that determines who dominates. At the feeder, sweet little chickadees are the most submissive and intimidated. Titmice pick on them, while they in turn are subservient to finches and nuthatches. Small woodpeckers come next, topped off by the cardinals.

But there’s also a harder-to-distinguish pecking order that gets established within each species. It’s more difficult to follow, because I’m as yet unable to tell one titmouse from another. Thus I can detect a hierarchy process going on, but do not know which bird is boss, or if he stays boss for long.

Despite the pecking order dynamics, however, during the winter the birds flock together in a decently non-combative manner around the feeder. Come spring, though, inner mating urges begin to control their behavior. It’s combat time. Winter’s proximity gives way to spring’s territorial jousting. The birds begin to call incessantly, in order to establish their mating and breeding turf. It’s fun to watch their antics, as they begin to challenge each other for the nicest patch of ground. They dive, feint, chase, squabble, show off, sing vociferously, and just as quickly stop and perch next to one another, as if a truce was suddenly called.

I’ve read that the dominant male of each species (the one in command at the winter feeder) gets the first pick of breeding territory. Around here that means the clearing, as it’ll have the highest population of insects during the summer. Maybe someday I’ll learn how to trap and band birds, so I can identify individuals. Then I can verify if Dominant Tom Titmouse at the feeder is the same guy whose mate now reigns in the nesting box in the back yard, or if Submissive Sam managed to outwit Tom or sing better than he did, and get the prime location.

Miniature Rhododendron (Another kind of overshoot)

Spring Overshoot

Every second or third spring we get a serious case of temperature overshoot. Week after frigid week creeps by in February and March, when we crave warm weather—much as kids impatiently wait for Santa to drop by with his load of goodies. Then in late March or early April, those warmer days finally arrive and we revel in their luxury. But even before we get a chance to enjoy the pleasantness, the temperature slides on up past cordial to somewhere near tropical. From chilly 50s to pleasant 70s, then on into the nasty 90s.

It’s not fair! We’ve far too quickly morphed from shivering to sweltering. A couple of brief days of delight get sandwiched between two disagreeable extremes. Besides it being unfair, the body can’t adjust that quickly. Come July, I can endure 94 degrees pretty decently. But the 94 we had today… in early April?? Whoa!

But the problem with spring’s overshoot goes far beyond our physical uncomfortableness. It even goes beyond the sadness of watching flowers wilt and die well before their time. (In cooler weather, they’d last a couple of weeks, not a measly two days.) The hardest part is watching all the fruit trees pop into bloom one afternoon—knowing that a night of killing frost is surely coming. We can pretty well count on a 26-degree night in the next few days, when all those vulnerable blossoms will get zapped by Jack Frost, die, and turn a ghastly brown the next day. It seems so unnecessary. Why must the weather make these wild swings? Why does it so sneakily lure the buds open, only to kill them the next day?

Mother Nature can seem cruel, but it’s mostly our perception that reads motives into natural events. A gorgeous sunset does not intend to please us. A drought is not our punishment. An earthquake has no malevolence in it. It just is. Our suffering is caused more by doing things like building houses in a flood plain or planting a delicate cherry tree that is susceptible to frost.

Oh well, so we lose a cherry or peach or pear crop every two or three years. But those other years… oh, how sweet their fruit is! Besides, we planted a backup years ago: strawberries. They’re smart enough to blossom later, when all the frosts have passed.

Titmouse Chowing Down on Suet Cake

The Firsts

It is early spring—such a glorious time. Anyone who is in close touch with the natural world (in temperate climates, at least) gets excited as spring comes in. The thrill emanates from deep within our beings. Entrenched in our DNA are countless times that our ancestors successfully negotiated nasty winters, to celebrate the return of life. Hallelujah! Once again we’ve survived the trials of winter and now we greet the New Year.

Many naturalists have expressed the sentiment that our calendar ought to commence with spring. That’s Mother Nature’s inauguration of the year—not that dark, bleak time surrounding the winter solstice that we choose.

What makes spring so exciting, I think, is the string of “firsts” one encounters. The first opening bud on a tree. The first tiny blossom hunkering down close to the ground. The first phoebe call. The first T-shirt warm day. The first tentatively fluttering butterfly. And what adds to the level of excitement is the long wait one endures during those last trying days of winter—day after day of cheerlessness, as you press your metaphorical nose to the window, surveying the monochrome world, wondering if color and life might (please!) come today.

And what adds to our excitement is the knowledge of all the future firsts that these heralds of the New Year signal. We know that soon we’ll taste that first strawberry, pick the first lettuce, and savor that first tender sprig of asparagus. The garden will morph from graveyard to nursery in a few short weeks.

Spring’s pace is difficult to keep up with. One’s emotions become overwhelmed, as all the firsts are encountered so swiftly. I try to allow the mind’s adrenalin to flow freely, however, knowing that this spring fever will pass equally quickly. I don’t want to stand still a minute, lest I miss so much!

Soon the firsts will be behind us. In some cases we will become accustomed to the routine; even becoming slightly jaded by all the seconds, thirds, fourths, and so on. That may be so, but when the abundance comes, I will then be in awe of the fecundity of a meadow of daffodils or a tree full of apples. Bring that abundance on! I will look forward to reveling in the cornucopia of August.

Black Racer (Eats more mice than the cat)