Rocky Mountain High

A panorama from 11,000 feet in the Rockies. We're visiting friends for a few days. click to enlarge.

Pete Dunneans

            Pete Dunne is an author who has written prolifically on birds; both as books and as columns in various birding periodicals. What I find special about Dunne is his droll sense of humor, which makes his writing both fun and informative. He has a way of capturing the essence of a species of bird in a manner that is both charming and memorable. His witty caricatures of a bird have a way of sticking in my mind, so that whenever I subsequently see or hear it, I cannot help but recall one of Dunne’s clever one-liners. It helps me remember some facts about the bird, but it sometimes also creates an image in my head that I can’t shake.

            For instance, Dunne has a delightful description of the mourning dove: as a “teardrop with a tail,” or a “pear on a stick.” And that’s exactly how they look! But he also describes them as having a head that is “small—almost ridiculously so.” As a result, I cannot look at a dove without thinking that it’s tiny head causes it to be a singularly stupid bird.

            Then there is his caricature of the hairy woodpecker as a “big-billed street brawler of a woodpecker, that would have no trouble peering over a beer mug.” See if that doesn’t stick in your head!

            Dunne describes the American robin as a bird with a haughty demeanor, whose flight appears as though it is “struggling somewhat from either towing a load…or perhaps running out of gas (and the engine is sputtering on fumes).” Or the American crow, which has a shaggy, “paunchy look” and that walks “with a strut or a sailor’s gait.” The crow’s raucous demeanor causes it to be “obsessed with driving away hawks and letting the world know the location of every roosting great horned owl.”

            Back to some amusing appearances: the blue jay is a “curiously-shaped bird that looks like it was assembled from leftover parts.” The Whippoorwill “looks like something took a bite out of it.” The Eastern bluebird in silhouette “looks like Winston Churchill leaning on a cane. Really!”

            Or some descriptions of odd behaviors: a flock of American goldfinches swirl around, the birds “shifting locations constantly, so that it seems more an exercise in quantum mechanics than a flock.” Or the blue jay again, who loves “mobbing actions, whether directed towards hawks, owls, cats, snakes, foxes, humans… and sometimes nothing at all!” I have several times been attracted by a noisy flock of jays that incessantly carry on—but whose target I’m unable to identify.

            One of my favorite birds to watch is the Carolina wren, who sings loudly and merrily, and perkily hops everywhere. Dunne describes this wren as a “portly, potbellied, humpbacked, medium-sized wren that moves in jerky hops from the overturned flowerpot to the creeping ivy to the top of the fence to the trunk of a tree to the suet feeder to the inside of the shed with the door ajar.” Just change the locations to objects in our yard and that’s exactly what the wren does! In fact, we have discovered Carolina wren nests in three different outbuildings—even one whose door was not left ajar, but the bird still found a way to sneak in!

Finally, a few more appearances that I cannot shake from my mind, whenever I spot one of these birds: the barred owl “looks like it’s wearing a shabby, stain-streaked coat with a closed fur collar.” Or the screech owl whose “expression ranges from oriental inscrutable (when sleepy and eyes are drawn down to slits) to really ticked off (such as when someone imitates its call).” Or the turkey vulture, whose profile gives “the bird a dejected brooding look. It seems clumsy, almost oafish, on the ground.”

            I have much fun reading Dunne and always look forward to one of his droll descriptions. But as I wrote earlier, he has at times imprinted his witticisms in my mind. I can’t help but imagine a cane-leaning Winston Churchill when I spot a blue bird or think about what leftover parts that blue jay was assembled from.

 

Faint Flowers

During my wanderings through the surrounding woods over the years, I usually carry a camera with me, to take advantage of the varied displays that Mother Nature provides. Not only do I get some memorable photos, but the experience can lead to a fascinating lesson on yet another aspect of the natural world. I often get intrigued enough about something I see and photograph to go back home and do some explorations on the internet and learn some things I never knew existed.

The example I have in mind at the moment is the discovery today of the name of what I thought was a mushroom but turns out to be an albino flowering plant. I discovered this curiosity a few years ago, during a rainy spring, when mushrooms were popping up everywhere. (See photo below.) This guy had a very different appearance—more like a flower than a mushroom. Rather than a stalk topped by a button or a flared bonnet, as mushrooms typically appear, these had pure white bell-like blossoms. Since they were sprouting up through a layer of wet leaves like the mushrooms surrounding them, I assumed they must be a mushroom. Wrong. It’s a plant.

I tried identifying the thing in my mushroom field guide, with no success. (Well, the book is about mushrooms, not flowers.) I had no idea what it really was, so was stumped. I couldn’t Google it by doing a search on the words “White, stalky, mushroomy thing.” Sometime after that I was watching a video outtake of Walt Disney’s 1940 movie “Fantasia” and saw this little white thing, during a scene in the forest. There it was! But since Walt never labeled his shrooms or plants, I remained stumped.

Over the last few years the photos of this albino thing sat in the bowels of my computer—seemingly destined to remain a mystery. Perseverance sometimes pays off, however. While reading a recent Washington Post comics section, the “Mark Trail” comic strip finally offered me a solution: it’s the Indian pipe plant! Its scientific name (thanks to Wikipedia) is Monotropa uniflora—the uniflora part indicating that each stem bears a single flower. It’s also called the “ghost plant” and the “corpse plant.” (Yuck!) 

So, it’s a plant and not a mushroom! Then how come it’s white? Don’t plants have to be green? Green chlorophyll is what allows a plant to transform the sun’s radiant energy into sugar for their food.

Well, yes, a plant does require the action of chlorophyll for its nutrients, but in the case of the Indian pipe plant it does so secondarily… or, more appropriately, “tertiarily.” The Indian pipe gets its nutrients from its surrounding mushroom pals—it literally is a parasite, feeding off the mushrooms that grow in a symbiotic fashion with tree roots. 

The mushroom itself (actually the underground mycelium part of it) acquires its carbohydrates (its sugars) from the tree’s photosynthesis work (all food starts with photosynthesis!). In return, the mushroom provides the tree roots with much-needed phosphorous, a nutrient that it cannot absorb on its own. The Indian pipe—not a part of this nutrient symbiotic exchange—also enjoys the carbs that the tree makes, by parasitizing the mushroom (by stealing some of the mushroom’s food). So what does the pipe plant offer in return? I don’t know. Maybe that’s next month’s research task. Maybe its dead body (remember it’s also called the corpse plant) feeds nutrients back to the tree? There’s gotta be a reason… there’s no free lunch, after all.

This is a wonderful example of a mutually beneficial underground society. It’s a fascinating example of the marvelous, complex, intertwined web that nature has created. So why is the plant called the Indian pipe? It seems to bear a resemblance to the Native American peace pipe, according to the authoritative “Mark Trail.”

Black Trumpet Mushroom

About three inches tall... and delicious!

Oh, Wow!

            Despite many decades of study by both philosophers and scientists, a good description of consciousness remains an elusive thing. The dictionary defines it as “the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.” That can mean different things to different folks. Consciousness is typically considered to be something that is associated with—if not contained within—the brain. Consciousness, by definition, is a subjective thing—so it’s bound to fall into a zone claimed by both philosophers and scientists, and because they approach the study of the world so contrastingly, they are bound to disagree and argue about what it is.

            So consciousness is a slippery subject, and it will probably remain so for some time. Many articles and books have been written on the topic, but a consensus is still lacking. I recently purchased a book by Daniel Dennett, published a couple of decades ago, audaciously titled Consciousness Explained. It is a 500-page tome that I have yet to summon the courage to begin reading. Maybe soon. The fact that I have not read any science articles that point to Dennett’s book as the definitive explanation of consciousness suggests that it’s still not a closed subject.

            Every now and then a scientific study is published that adds a fascinating facet to consciousness—something that might not fully decode the mystery, but can shed a little more light on it. A recent study published by researchers at the University of Michigan brings us a novel aspect of consciousness. When the brains of lab rats were wired to measure their electrical activity and their deaths were then induced by cardiac arrest, the researchers measured a burst of electrical power in the gamma band. (Don’t try this experiment at home on people!) Gamma band brain oscillations have been considered to be an indication of consciousness in the human brain.

            Rats are used in laboratory tests because their physiology is similar to humans. So this study presents the tantalizing possibility that, at the moment of death, the human brain may experience an explosion of consciousness. There is as yet no real evidence that rats experience consciousness in the same way we do, but these experimental results are fascinating.

            Some researchers think that the strong psychic incidents reported by people who come close to death and survive (those having near-death experiences, or NDEs) may be related to this sudden burst of consciousness. Other researchers are beginning to shed light on the meaning of NDEs—that the commonly-experienced lights, tunnels, and out of body sensations, can be explained by the specific kinds of electrical brain activity that occur, as one’s body begins to shut down.

            This field of research is yielding some fascinating results. I like the idea that our brain engages one grand last hurrah—sending us out with a bang. And I’m wondering if something like this might have happened to Steve Jobs—the creative genius of Apple Computers—who, at the moment of death reportedly exclaimed, “Oh, wow!”

Wonderful Web—Part 2

Once the web is completed, the builder will settle in to waiting—one leg lazily draped across a thread, so when an insect splats up against the web and tries to struggle free, the vibrations will alert the spider to charge out and secure dinner. The type of web that we humans are most familiar with are called spiral orb webs—simply gorgeous creations, made by (guess what?) orb spiders. Other kinds of spiders spin what are called tangled, funnel, tubular, and sheet webs. (See photos, previous posting.)

I contentedly gazed at this spider as it wove its miracle. I could see it zip in and out, building the radials after the anchors were strong, and then it moved in ever-widening circles, as it added the spirals. As long as this web stays in use, we call it a web. When (and if) it becomes abandoned and collects dust, we call it a cobweb. I wonder what names the spider uses.

I am very grateful for spiders building their webs around here and snacking on insects. The populations of other insectivores—bats and songbirds—are dwindling, so we value every spider’s contribution to check insect overpopulation. 

In mid-to-late summer I run into many spider webs during my walks through the woods. It’s rather irritating to be enjoying a hike and suddenly feel the threads of a web wrap around my face, stick in my beard, or slither along my arms. The sticky threads cling stubbornly to me and the strong anchor threads almost threaten to trap me. In self-defense, I have taken to carrying a small branch with many twigs splayed out at its end. As I walk along, I wave the branch ahead of me, to intercept the webs before my nose does—looking like a defrocked, bearded priest, blessing the forest as I wander. I almost wish I knew a few words of Latin to utter, to add to the image.

I regret destroying the efforts of a spider’s web work. I wish there was a way I could see the webs coming, so I could detour around them, but, unless it is caught in sunlight, the web is essentially invisible to me, as well as to insects. (Interestingly, birds, who can see in the ultraviolet portion of the light spectrum, can see the web and avoid flying through it—to both the bird’s and spider’s advantage. That’s to the bird’s benefit, because I don’t think they can pull out a handkerchief and wipe off the web threads, as I do.) Maybe I could invent an ultraviolet spider-web spotting device that I could don for my walks, to keep me from destroying those hard-earned webs.