The Elegance of Vultures

We had our first “up close and personal” meeting with a Turkey Vulture this weekend. She is a rescued bird who cannot be released into the wild and so is kept by our local wildlife rescue facility as an educational bird. We had a special shopping/fund-raising event at The Fat Finch over the weekend and the wildlife rescue folks brought several birds for our shoppers to see.

As is my custom when photographing portraits, I spent a little time getting to know her before hauling out my camera. (Knowing something about your subjects is critical if you are do them justice in a portrait.) Surprisingly, after watching her for a little while I realized that the word that kept arising in my mind to describe her was “elegant”.

Somehow most of us don’t associate vultures with elegance. But the grace with which she moves, the gentle brilliance of her eyes, and her centered calmness all add up to elegance. Think Cary Grant or Grace Kelly in feathers.

Of course, I’m not the first to note fine qualities in Turkey Vultures. Here is Edward Abbey,

Let us praise the noble turkey vulture: No one envies him; he harms nobody; and he contemplates our little world from a most serene and noble height.

And I shouldn’t have been at all surprised with her down-to-earth elegance. I’ve spent many happy hours in my life watching vultures soar on thermals high with hardly a feather stirring as they ride on outstretched wings. Elegantly.

But they are the eaters of death and I suppose that is why we don’t usually associate them with elegance. We have a New Yorker cartoon refrigerator magnet in the store that shows two vultures sitting on a tree talking to one another. One vulture says to the other, “Of course dead is important but taste matters too.”

And I must say that after meeting her I agree entirely with Abbey who, before dying, made arrangements to feed his death to the vultures. He wrote,

‎If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture–that is immortality enough for me.

Petrichor

Larry Glover

The southwest United States is burning up. According to my math the fires in West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado have burned more than 900,000 acres as of this afternoon. The relative humidity outside the room where I write this is three per cent. That’s right, three per cent. (3%)

It is so dry here that I saw a Great-tailed Grackle fly to one of our little circulating fountains yesterday and dip a dead lizard in the water before flying off to eat the lizard. Apparently, even the lizards are too dry to eat without moistening first. (Either that or the grackle was pretending to be a raccoon.) Our chickens stand around their water dishes panting between drinks. Our hummingbird visitors are barely active during the day, it’s so hot and dry.

To paraphrase the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, the prairies slice the big sky at evening and the smoke crusts the sight of the sunsets.

Smoke Encrusted Sunset

And that explains why I’ve been thinking today of a marvelous word: petrichor. (PET-ri-kuhr)It is a noun describing the wonderful smell of dry desert ground right after a rain. Coined by researchers I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas it combines “petro” (rock) with “ichor” (the fluid that flowed through the veins of the Greek gods.)The science holds that the rain releases oils from vegetation, resulting in the odor. The more romantic explanation is that the dry, sere, parched earth is rejoicing.

I don’t care; I just want to smell it again. So do the birds.

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Thanks to Larry Glover of Wild Resiliency for permission to use the photograph of the fire  burning in the Sangre de Cristo mountains outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Weather Bureau radar confirmed that the smoke plume in that photo was 27,000 feet above the surface or 34,000 feet above sea level.

A New Albatross for Midway

 

Short-tailed Albatross -Photo coutrtesy of Jlfutari at en.wikipedia

The New York Times reported a bit of good news this month. A Short-tailed Albatross was born on Midway Atoll. Midway, the atoll about half-way between San Francisco and Tokyo – and near where the Battle of Midway was fought during WWII – is now a wildlife refuge protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Midway is the home base for millions of Laysan Albatrosses, but very few Short-tailed Albatrosses.

 

That’s because Short-tailed Albatrosses were almost extirpated from the earth in the late 19^th century. People liked their feathers, you see, and hunters killed them in vast numbers to supply the market.

 

Midway Atoll in 1941 (U.S. Navy Photo)

They were not the famed “Gooney Birds” of Midway that caused so much trouble to airmen stationed on the Atoll during WWII. By the early 1930′s short-tails were known to breed on only one Japanese island and, by the end of the War, were thought to be extinct. However, a few hardy birds wisely spent WWII at sea, survived, and returned to the Japanese Island in 1949. Until this month, not one pair was known to have bred on Midway, despite the fact that millions of its cousins Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses do breed there.

 

Around the same time humans were mindlessly hunting the short-tail version into extinction, we also began laying the first undersea cable between North America and Asia. Some of that work was done by an American cable-laying consortium which set up an outpost on Midway. Its workers promptly brought many non-native species to the Island to “improve” it. They improved it with canaries, cats, dogs, deciduous trees of all kinds, and – best of all – cockroaches, termites, and centipedes. When we humans set about improving a place, we do the whole job, not just a part of it.

When this “improvement” of Midway was brought to President Theodore Roosevelt’s attention, he promptly sent twenty-one marines to Midway with orders to hold the atoll for the United States and stop the “improvement” before it killed all the birds. After almost a century of use as a Naval air station, the atoll became a national wildlife refuge in 1988 and is now safe for the albatrosses.

 

Improving Enewetak Atoll

 

It is fitting that the United States protects Midway and has now hosted a new short-tailed baby. Short-tails used to breed on another Pacific atoll, Enewetak. We touched off forty some odd nuclear bombs on that 2.5 square mile atoll where the Short-tailed albatross once bred. We took care to remove all the people, but I imagine a great many birds were turned into elementary particles during the time we used the atoll to conduct nuclear tests. We’ve improved it too. We scraped off as much radioactive soil as we could, buried in a big hole on the atoll, and covered with a huge concrete mound. People have returned but, if I were a bird, I’d be hesitant to believe that we’re through with our improvements. Besides, as you can see, the concrete bunker doesn’t leave many good nesting sites.

Enewetak Today ( DOE Photo)

So, welcome to a new citizen and may he or she have a long life soaring over northern Pacific waters, knowing it will have a home on Midway to come home to in a few years when it’s time to breed.

 

Backyard Ecology

WARNING: GROSSNESS ALERT – What follows could be considered gross by any rational human being. Feel free to skip this post and come back next week.

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We’ve never had a problem with seed falling to the ground from our bird feeders. Yes, the songbirds drop a lot of it but we have a few pigeons – and we don’t mind pigeons; in fact, we rather like them – and the dogs love to vacuüm the seed.  They eat a lot of the fallen seed, but they don’t actually digest much of it. Most of it comes out from the other end the next day. Still it is a means of collecting the spilled seed that compacts it and makes it easier to pick up.

But this week we discovered that the pigeons don’t want any seed to go to waste. Here is the photographic proof:

The Ecology of Efficiency

Yes. That is what you think it is. A photo of pigeons picking seed out of the dog poop. We warned you it was gross, but you have to admit: It’s efficient.

 

The New Store

We’ve got a new store.

Like the Blue Grouse – soon to be the Dusky Blue Grouse and the Sooty Blue Grouse – the Fat Finch is a short-distance migrant, so we only moved a short distance south of the old place. In fact, the new habitat is exactly one minute south of the old one. And on the other side of the street.

And we did move in late autumn, just like Blue Grouses, but unlike them, we have no intention of returning north next spring. We like the new habitat and intend on living there year round. No reason to expend precious resources and calories migrating when there is no need. We’re confident that we’ll find adequate food and shelter at the new store.

Assuming, of course, that our customers continue to enjoy shopping with us and find the things they need and want. Capitalism, for small businesses, is a competitive ecology and only the fit survive to pass along their genes. We know that our customers are at the top of the food chain and we treat them accordingly.

The new store is a bit smaller and much cozier, but we still carry a full range of birding supplies, gifts, cards, and books. And, if you’d like to know more about the Blue Grouse, we’ve put a comfortable chair right next to the bookcase and don’t mind a bit if you want to come by and read for a while.

You can eat too. There is a nice restaurant, The Calico Cafe,  thirty paces across the parking lot. And a secretive steak house too. We have yet to eat our way through the restaurant’s menu, but so far everything is good. (We always start a restaurant off with its green chile. After all, if it doesn’t have green chile on it, what good is it?)

Of course, the on-line store had no need to migrate so it remains where it has always been.

If you find yourself in New Mexico, come see us. You’ll like the new habitat. The address is 6855 Fourth St NW, Suite D, Los Ranchos, NM 87107 and the phone number remains the same, 505-898-8900.

 

 

 

 

The Aspen Wind

You’re walking along on a fine crisp autumn day, underneath a canopy of gold, rust, orange, yellow, and pale green aspen leaves, listening and looking for birds; mainly seeing and hearing only squirrels, when a cloud bank rolls in over the peaks. Suddenly, you understand why you’re not seeing many birds: They sense what is coming: The Aspen Wind.

Before

The Aspen Wind in the southwest United States usually arrives when the Jet Stream meanders down south for its first serious visit of the year, dragging a trough of low pressure with it. The pressure gradient grows and pretty soon the winds are high enough that they would make the national news if they were blowing anywhere else, but the Southwest is that part of the weather map that national broadcasters stand in front of to tell us about the weather everywhere else. They must think we are weatherless out here.

This week the Jet Stream brought us some healthy winds. One community nearby experienced a 91 mph gust of wind and several locations recorded gusts above 70 mph.

That was enough for the aspen leaves.

After

Now, they are all on the ground blessing it and us with that marvelous, indescribable odor of a forest floor covered in freshly fallen aspen leaves.

And all that is left of their autumnal glory is consigned to blessed memory and some photographs.

The Pencil

Harold Ross, the legendary founder and editor of the world’s best magazine, The New Yorker, was renown for his tightness when it came to office supplies and equipment. When E.B. White, probably the best writer at the world’s best magazine, was late with a piece, Ross sent him a note that said:

Mr. White:

If you get that story done, I’ll take steps to get you a new cushion for your chair.

H.W. Ross

Harold Ross in the Copyright-Expired Olden Times

On another occasion Ross bumped into Dorothy Parker, also a staff writer, at a restaurant and asked her why she wasn’t back in the office working. She responded, “Because someone was using the pencil.”

That’s been the problem here at The Fat Finch lately. Every time I sit down to write a post somebody else has the pencil.

Heedless, the wild world marched on without taking the slightness notice of the paucity of Fat Finch posts. Billions of birds migrated and are already on their winter feeding grounds. The southern hemisphere, now grabbing most of the sunlight falling on the planet, also has most of the birds. The Rocky Mountains are hunkered down, awaiting the first blast of winter, which is late this year. Most of the Aspens north of New Mexico have shed their leaves and stand naked now, awaiting cold north winds and the storms that the jet stream will soon blow their way. Rocky Mountain Aspen have had a good year. SAD, “Sudden Aspen Decline” seems to have slowed and fewer trees died this year. And we humans seem to have isolated the cause of SAD: drought and heat. And that’s not good news in the long run, the world keeps getting warmer and the southwestern United States keeps getting drier. Someone has even noted that the value of municipal bonds in the southwest may decline as worries about water supplies increase. Phoenix may have all the water rights it needs, but you can’t drink water rights.

It’s been raining in San Diego and that means the jet stream has finally begun its autumn meanderings above the earth and the Bermuda High is horsing around south of the Azores. Up in the Yukon the mainly birdless trees are thinking of Robert Service who wrote in his poem, “The Pines”:

We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak barbarian pines;

We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom;

We plume where the eagles soar;

The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar; . . .

Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision ranges free;

Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see;

A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery.

Sun moon and stars give answer: shall we not staunchly stand,

Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand,

Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land?

It is so cold and dark in the wintertime Yukon that even the air tries to escape, blowing southward in the autumn; helping the Yukon’s Peregrine Falcons on their way to Chile, 8,000 miles away. They make the trip in about sixty days, averaging between forty and sixty miles an hour. Bereft of falcons, the Yukon River will freeze now and not care at all what I have to say about it.

Our physical store is likewise migrating south this winter, relocating about a mile south of its current location. We’ll update you on that in a future post. But our virtual store will stay where it is. Seasons mean nothing in the world-wide-web. Weather is of no consequence there; only ones and zeroes matter.

And you’ve kept reading. Thank you. We’re hunkering down for winter too, so there will more time to write. Besides, I’ve got the pencil now.

I could use a new chair cushion though.

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The stories about H.W. Ross come from the October 4, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, in a brief piece announcing that the magazine will now be available as an application on the iPad.

The Phone Rings

 

From the Days Before Telephone Solicitors

 

The phone rings. A quick look at the caller ID indicates it is yet another worthy organization calling for money. It’s dinner time, we’re tired, we want to be alone. But, if we don’t answer, they’ll just keep calling and calling and calling, maybe for months. So we answer and, trying not to be rude, announce that we gave at the office, or that we gave last week, or that we’re not in the giving vein today. Lately we’ve taken to announcing that we make no contributions to any organization that doesn’t call on us personally. Of course, that may deliver a horde of fund-raisers to our door and they’ll be even harder to get rid of than the phone solicitors.

Off with their heads!

But, of course, we don’t mean that. These are people who spend their careers trying to keep wild places wild. Some ask for money to buy fragile parcels of land (eg. The Nature Conservancy); some to keep their lawyers in court fighting against the government bureaucrats and big corporate interests who don’t see the profit in wildness (eg. The NRDC); still others who prowl the halls of Congress and state legislatures ferreting out the latest schemes to take just a little more habitat away from animals who need it (The Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society); others who specialize in protecting specific habitats (Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited). Then come the people doing their best to protect the birds (The Audubon Society, The American Bird Conservancy) The list goes on and on and each of these organizations does good and important work and deserves our support.

But we don’t have enough money to donate to all of them, and they clearly share their mailing and telephone lists. Join just one or give to just one and you are condemned to a lifetime of the phone ringing during your dinner. Or your lunch. Or your nap. Or your blog reading. It’s like eternity; there is no escape.

It’s so tempting to shout into the phone, “You’ve reached the home of Senator and Mrs. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and we think global warming is a hoax! If you want money, call Al Gore.” Or, “Pigeons? We don’t need no stinking pigeons!” Or, “Hello, this is Richard III. I say, do you have a horse available? Otherwise this is a really bad time.”

 

Pukaskwa National Park, Canada

 

But we can’t do that. These are nice people, working in a good cause. They probably don’t even want to interrupt our dinner.

And the animals need wild places much more than we need an interruption-free dinner. So, we answer. Mostly. It’s a small price to pay for a Peregrine Falcon or a boreal forest or a wildlife refuge.

“The Round Robin” in the Gulf of Mexico

For the past several weeks Cornell University has had photographers, videographers, and sound technicians in Louisiana examining the impact of our oil spill on the bird life there. The results are posted at Cornell’s Round Robin blog, which is always on our blog list on the right.  It’s an excellent and brief introduction to what has happened so far.

The Gulf of Mexico Disaster

Comment about this recent NOAA/NASA photograph would be superfluous.  (Click for a larger version.)