I stepped out of a mist and I knew I am. I am what I am. And then I thought, ‘But what have I been before?’ And then I found that I had been in a mist, not knowing to differentiate myself from things; I was just one thing among many things.” ~ Carl Jung,…
Re-Capturing the Clapper Rail
The show Bird Note just posted an audio piece on California Clapper Rails in San Francisco Bay. Bird Note covers an eclectic array of bird stories, from behavioral questions to ecological issues. The stories are short audio bits with related blog posts and resources to flesh out the subject matter. As an adjunct to the Clapper…
Bird Verse: Eastern Gods
They are eastern gods — they meditate. (Yes they are.) “The Owls” by Charles Baudelaire (translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay) The owls that roost in the black yew Along one limb in solemn state, And with a red eye look you through, Are eastern gods; they meditate. No feather stirs on them, not one,…
The Origins of Avian Blue
I pulled a few of my Western Bluebird pics from the archives to illustrate the following excerpt. This month’s Smithsonian Magazine has a short piece entitled Why So Blue? by Helen Fields, which explores the natural magic behind bluebird blue: [Ornithologist Richard Prum] discovered that as a blue feather grows, something amazing happens. Inside each…
Seeking Justice for a Sea Otter: It’s a Small World
I received a notice tonight from Defenders of Wildlife, asking for help in finding the killer of a young sea otter. The female otter was found along Morro Strand in June of this year — slain illegally, with the post-mortem revealing a shot to her head. In seeking additional information on this case, I landed…
To Sleep & Dream
Not in the Shakespearean sense . . .
Not the Easter Bunny
Those ears serve this Black-tailed Jackrabbit well. A jack will usually hear you coming long before you see him. And he can regulate blood flow in these ears to adjust for external temperatures. The Black-tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) — any jackrabbit — is actually a hare, not a rabbit. This particular jackrabbit wasn’t keen on…
Shorebird Nation Rises Again
Ever since I picked up a telephoto lens and aimed it at my first non-human earthling, my seasons have morphed into migration schedules. Winter = Ducks. Spring= Babies. Fall (best time of all) = Shorebirds. I used to be an urban-girl-night-person — before I knew what I was. Autumn was: early darkness, early cocktails. Schlepping…
An American Bullfrog in Berkeley
I don’t usually ignore visual anomalies. They bring me to interesting things. On this Berkeley day, something seemed out of place — that nagging oddity in my periphery. I turned and looked closer in the mud. Sure enough, there was an unusual outline in the creek bed. As quickly as I noticed the frog, it…
Refracted Light, Arcs and Rainbows – Over SF
I’m not a big fan of Descartes. In spite of his genius and complexity, he held some mechanisticviews toward nature and non-human animals. But I’ll give him some love for this explanation of rainbowsI recently read at the UCAR website. He simplified the study of a rainbow to one rain droplet — and how light refracts…
