Late April in The Netherlands

Today a visual extravaganza. I received these pictures a couple of months ago, makes one want to visit in the season of the bloom.

 Yes those are all tulips.

and more tulips

with the obligatory windmill

 My favorite, I like the sea of orange.

too much?

Did you know that after the spring bloom, all of the bulbs are taken out of the ground and vegetables are planted.

--
Thanks to Jan Marks for the forwarded photos

Morning Routine

I was up just after dawn this morning, not my usual rising time but when a large black critter decides he wants breakfast and you are the only one with an open bedroom door. Well let's just say I pulled on a few pieces of cotton clothing and fed the cat. Then I was standing at the porch door still blurry eyed when I noticed the hummingbird feeder was a block of ice, so I put on a few more layers of garments and switched out the frozen feeder for the warm one from the kitchen counter.

That's when I noticed.

We have been having some deep fog layers the last few nights. In the frozen morning that translates to every branch, leaf, needle and stalk being hoarfrosted in the early morning. Lovely, beautiful, enchanting - pick your adjective. But something else happens if the morning dawns with direct sunlight as it did this morning. The ice crystals get dislodged and fall towards the earth catching the sunlight in all their facets as they do.

First one or two small motes of sparkle drift down. Then as the sun hits the trees more and more twinkles, flashes and sparks fly. Finally I walked out among a nestle of scrub pines and stood in a tinkerbelle fall of fairy dust.

I would tell you fair readers that I then rushed to my keyboard to share with you this bit of magical winter wonder but I did instead go back to my warm bed for another hour or so of blissfully cozy sleep.

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photo credit: Cyndy's shot of last evenings alpine glow on Mt. Shasta

A Black Ballet

I don't know what it was that day perhaps the blustery wind or the off-and-on rain. The Bay was churned an eerie pale green. But it was the crows that told me it was an out-of-the-ordinary day. I often see the flights of blackbirds playing between my windows and the nearby Bay. As many as a score soaring together or several pairs sometimes a foursome then two couplets. I had thought for several weeks that they were perching on the roof just two floors above me, why else would they heighten their flight as they approached my view, most times they simply flew around my tower.

A strong gust of wind pummeled the window drawing my sight up from the screen; six perhaps seven crows were being blown towards me. They all kilted their wings at the same moment and arched up to be carried just a few feet above the roof, had they stayed in that turn they would almost immediately reappear high above my view, but they did not. They must have landed on the roof deck, today would be the day to check for their presence.

Still staring out to the Bay suddenly three black flashes swooped through my view, they had perch on the roof's edge and then leapt off into the strong updraft along the buildings face. They plummeted mere feet from my window and then soaring upward yards further away. Another pair did the same but pulled out of their fall almost immediately and were for a moment suspended six feet in front of my eyes.

A had a few moments to language my awe when the final bird glided out in a long, slow arch straight towards the west. This final flyer raises a ruckus with sharp, piercing caws that seem to draw the other crows up as they formed a flight of five, then eight, then many birds. Several blocks from my view, halfway to the Bay there stands one lone group of pines taller than all the rest, the flight wheeled around tight around those trees and did not come out on the other side. Clearly, it was intermission.

--
art: "Crows in Flight" by Ron Jones

Message in a Bloggle

I have been giving feedback to a friend about a new blog she is participating in. There are several contributors and right now while they are already adding content, they are also wrangling over the look and feel of the website as well as the explanatory text for potential visitors. My continuing comment to them has been: "Who is your audience?" after you answer that question then I ask: "Do you think you have reached them?"

Insider comments and ambiguous text at the beginning invariably means you lose some readers at the outset, which is fine if you really want only the insiders who "get it." The problem is too many cliches and everyone begins to feel like they are reading text without the secret decoder ring. Just because you know it and even consider it common knowledge doesn't make it so. 

Always, always, always be considerate of your audience otherwise you are writing to yourself and as I have told my agent many times: "I don't need to write the stories down for myself, I have already experienced them many times over. I will only take the energy to put them on paper if someone else might benefit from them."

So today a wee bit of un-decoded message from me today, all of it contained in the artwork at the top. Just enjoy the picture, all but one of you. I will say that I really miss the fall season, I am going to attempt to plan my wanderings better so that I may be in the midwest or northeast for as many falls as possible in the future. The colors, smells and temperament of the season just resonates with my soul. I really enjoy the Bay Area all year round but the fall simply lacks in birch, maple and oak.

--

art: Robin Rose

Year of the Tiger

We are in the waning months of the Chinese Year of the Tiger, which ends February 2, 2011. The tiger is the largest of the earth's felines, the biggest of the big cats can top 600 pounds. Of course, like any wonderous species they are endangered largely due to pouching in their natural habitats throughout Asia.

According to the World Wildlife Fund there are more tigers in captivity in the U.S. (5,000) than there are alive in the wild. Regulation of captive big cats is so lax that there is no official count of their numbers worldwide nor are they protected from the trade in animal parts that has devastated the wild population. 

But I don't want to sound like the last two minutes of every nature show. Tigers are gorgeous creatures, if you want to help them thrive -- Save the Tiger fund is a well respected organization.

By the way February 3, 2011 marks the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Rabbit.

White Bird and other things

One of my faithful readers is also an OCD nit, she likes to track any promises I make and hold me to them or as she says: "I only bug you to follow up on things I am interested in." Apparently one of those things comes from a post last April where I observed a bevy of white birds in my neighborhood. Actually they tend to flock three or four blocks west of here and each time I walked down there after spotting them, they had vanished. This weekend I got a 'white bird' reminder from my friend and avid reader, then this morning there was the brood flying around down the street.

I first watched them wheel about in the area the size of ten or twelve residential blocks, this seemed to me to be the same relative area they had covered when I first noticed them. Either they had taken the summer off or I just haven't been as avian observant lately. First there were five or six birds but soon the rest of the drove rose up to join them. About a dozen in all with at least two thirds of them white as snow. Finally about half of the skein lighted in that same evergreen tree and the others on a double span utility pole. The pole was clearly visible so I peered through my super binoculars and saw six birds (four white) very clearly but what were they? We must have our labels.

I tossed on the sneakers and headed out hoping to catch them. About a block from the house I saw them in flight again but they often liked to double back so I kept after them. Here I was a humanoid on foot chasing birds on wing, next week I chase down roadrunners in Arizona. Just as I was feeling a tad stupid, I came out from under a big olive tree and there was the utility pole with nine birds perched on it. Six were indeed pure white and one of the other ones was clearly a standard, everyday rat-with-wings pigeon (bottom row center in the picture above).

Seeking verification of this congregation, I asked the store clerk on the next corner about the birds, he looked at me like I had asked for live tarantula ala mode. The homeless guy saw me looking up at the multitude and told me they were -- "the birds of peace." This piece of information comes with neither citation or nor corroboration. 

I did a little net research when I got back, here is what I found:

The difference between doves and pigeons is mostly size. Doves are generally sleeker and smaller with pointed tails, while pigeons are larger and stockier with rounded tails. The common urban pigeon is also known as a "Rock Dove." The popular white dove releases at various celebrations are billed as "dove" releases, but ethical companies always use white homing pigeons, as they return home.

Ethical in that they do not release tamed doves into the wild to fend for themselves. Ethical, not so much, in that they can sell them over and over again, well Viva Capitalism! 

By the way, I was unable to use army, assembly, cloud, collection, colony, company, convoy, crowd, crush, drift, drove, gaggle, gathering, group, herd, host, legion, litter, mass, pack, progeny, rout, scores, throng and I would have liked to have worked in an exaltation of larks or an ostentation of peacocks.

Twenty-Six Hummers Humming

One of my harshest blog critics really enjoyed my last hummingbird post, so I felt justified in writing one more, if anything new happened. Well, here it is. Last evening just before dusk, when the major swarming goes on, I was sure there were more than seventeen hummers at the feeder (17 being the old record). Now they are difficult to count even when ten of them sit sipping on the nectar dispenser. But with a little spacial geometry I was fairly confident of a minimum count of twenty-one. I even called my friends the homeowners to boast of my new record bird count.

Shortly after the call, I was sure even more birdlets had come in but how to tell, my quantitative needs were beginning to overwhelm my qualitative delight at being three feet from this quiver of hummers. Then it struck me, there used to be two feeders hanging on the deck, so I could install a second hook the next day and maybe tomorrow night.... wait! and even better idea!!

I filled the second feeder, I had the sugary brew ready for a post-dusk refill anyway. Then I just slide the screen door half way open and stuck my hand and arm out with the feeder in my palm. It took about ten seconds for the first hungry hummer to check it out, once he landed on the far side of the feeder, the side away from the big white tree it was hanging on, the hummer gates opened and soon I had five, then six, the seven birds feeding from the feeder in the palm of my hand.

With both feeders having static birds and one fluttering queue for each I was able to count first twenty then twenty-two and finally twenty-six verified hummingbirds at one time. With the math done, I was able to simply wonder at the tiny birds landing nearly in my hand. It was then that one of them decided that feeding slots eight, nine and ten (where my arm connected to the wrist bone), well those feeding stations were open too. He landed on my thumb and hopped up to the feeder perch. Again, hummer see hummer do. One than more would land on parts of my wrist and hand and make their way to the perch.

Eventually one of the hummers landed on my forearm and sat there staring up at the big white tree. I wonder what was going through her bird brain? I know what was going through mine -- avian ecstasy.

My Life As A Perch

The hummers are now going through a full feeder (3 cups of water, 1 1/2 of sugar) every day, so this morning I was out filling up the sugary snack when one of the little fellows buzzed me. Now in the past I have had them drink out of the 4 cup glass container while I was pouring and many times I have gotten a chirpy lecture while I did the refill, but today was different. While I was up on the one-step to rehang the feeder, one brave bird came in to have a taste even before I had it rehung. He clearly emboldened the others because very quickly with my head six inches from the feeder there were six, then ten, then thirteen hummers all buzzing and slurping.

I figured they could care less about me, so I stayed in place and soon they were whirling around my head completely ignoring me. Not sure if you can imagine what that many buzzing wings sounds like but it is quite invigorating. For a few moments one of the queued hummers was so close to my ear that I was ever so lightly brushed by each rapid flap of her wings.

I was engrossed, fascinated and honored to be so close to the critters and then it happened. With a full baker dozen volleying for a place at the trough, there were always waiters. I have seen as many as eight settled on the rail drinking but there just isn't any more room. Generally four to six are actually drinking and another 3 or 4 are buzzing about waiting for a slot of open up. Sort of like the four o'clock change planes scramble at O'Hara.

Well there was one hummer hovering just at my right temple when he apparently decided he needed a rest but didn't want to retreat to the nearest pine tree. So he landed on the eyepiece of my glasses. A magical moment if there ever was one and he made sure I would be forever honored by his presence when he squirted some hummer guano on my shoulder as he flew off.

[Addendum]: I won't write another entire blog post on the hummers that would set off my more serious minded readers but I must add that this morning I was up around dawn to feed a demanding cat. I noticed that the hummers were out in full force and that the early morning sunlight shown directly on the nectar dispenser which meant in additional to just the sheer pleasure of watching and hearing the hummers, now there was an added light show as their wings picked up the early morning sunlight. I was watching fascinated when suddenly they exploded like a star going nova, the cat had jumped up on the deck. The entire charm of hummers had zipped up to a height of about 15 feet, forming a shell of birdlets. It took about a half a moment, for them to ID the cat as belonging and not a threat then they were back at the feeder. Interesting how "we" adapt, amazing what we take for granted.

Weed Again

The hummingbirds are swarming, the deer and raccoons make their daily visits. I got a clear dark sky view of the Venus, Mars, Jupiter conjunction the other night and the Perseids will be peaking in just a few nights. Add to that my friends have left on a two week vacation, taking the dog but leaving the cat and you can see why visiting Mt. Shasta this time of year is perfectly timed.

OK, technically I am in Weed, even more precisely I am visiting the Lake Shastina Golf Resort. The point is that I am not in Berkeley for a couple of weeks and will be periodically commenting on the set and setting of my travels (again).

Once again I have friends with the decency to invite me to visit them and then up after a brief visit they up and leave. So I have a nice big house with a view of the mountain, a big black affectionate cat, a sparkling hot tub plus heaps & gobs of peace and quiet. You can't get better friends than these. I may even stay around a few days when they return, just to be friendly.

I brought a small load of summer reading material, there is a year's worth of Discovery and National Geographic here to catch up on. Being a modern nest, I have a great wi-fi connection, dish television and their great music collection. I stopped at a roadside stand on the drive up, so I have fresh white peaches, dapple dandy pluots,  fantasia nectarines and a bottle of Amaretto for a never-ending crock of fruit salad.

The hummingbirds swarm around a feeder that is about five feet from where I write. At the moment about half a dozen are jockeying for landing rights at breakfast. I can go out on the deck and stand quietly and become part of the landscape. Aside from one or two agitated chirping in-my-face lectures, I am ignored and the feeding frenzy goes on. This happens late summer each year as the local population fattens up for the southern migration. During the spring and summer there are only two or three hummers around but now as many as a dozen live in the pine trees on the property and sip as much nectar as we provide from early morning until late twilight.

Speaking a nectar, a beaker of apricot velvet nectar awaits me, before I launch into some serious writing for the day.

San Francisco Salt

Those colorful waters pictured above can often be seen during final approach to the San Francisco and Oakland airports. They are salt ponds, part of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. The ponds actually produce salt for a wide range of commercial uses. The vibrant hues have to do with the aquatic life that thrives on the ever increasing salinity levels as the ponds dry and concentrate in the sun.

The refuge is over 30,000 acres of protected wetlands around the southern perimeter of San Francisco Bay. Millions of birds, over 250 species, use the area permanently or during migration. Included within the refuge are 9,000 acres operated by Cargill Salt. They use the Bay salt water and a vast network of drying/concentrating ponds to process salt naturally using solar energy to slowly leech the salt from the ocean water. In the process higher and higher concentrations of salinity are achieved in the evaporation ponds, this process gives rise to marine life in the form of brine shrimp and blue-green algae, which attract a wider range of marine birds than would not be attracted to the uniform concentration of naturally occurring ocean water. It is one of these algaes, Dunaliella, that changes to the brilliant red or vermillion color when the salt content of the water reaches high levels.

Eventually, the water is baked away by the sun and the salt and other minerals are harvested. Commercial uses include: road salt, home soft water conditioners and eventually after a final cleansing process -- table salt. If you have Diamond Crystal salt in your kitchen, this is where it comes from.

Cargill has an interesting virtual tour of the process on its website.

If you happen to live in the Bay Area or are in town for a conference, you can visit the Wildlife Refuge and tour the salt ponds.

One Farmer's Disaster is Many Beetle's Revenge

Did you know that bug splatter on your car's windshield is a treasure trove of genomic biodiversity? Yes indeed, the DNA left behind in the bugs splattered on your car's window glass can be used to estimate the diversity of insects in the region.

I just got home from Las Vegas, which meant a spent quite a few hours in the 'fruit basket of California' or as it is more commonly known -- the San Joaquin Valley. They grow lots of grapes there, mostly for raisins and the majority of asparagus consumed in the U.S. come from there. Also lemons, mandarins, pistachios, lots of almonds plus other citrus and vegetables. In some sections, however, the water from the California Aqueduct has been rationed or even cutoff because of a continuing drought.

This means that you see a lot of signs like this:

I am not going to debate the water issues in the West today but I would like to point out that as recently as five years ago, you could drive the length of the Central Valley of California and not have a single bug splatter on your windshield. Today both times I stopped for gas I had to use a bit of the olde elbow grease to scrape scores of splats off the glass. There are several lessons here: first is the issue of broad spectrum insecticides and what just a minor decline in their use has done for the insect population.

Then there is the not so obvious matter of my transit today ending the existence of several hundred sentient creatures. I would expound on those matters but I had a nine hour drive and what I truly need is some time with my back flat on the floor, followed by ice cream.

Talk among yourselves.

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splatter photo credit: John Chiembanchong

From Above the Treetops

I know I promised my new view on the world would not dominate my posts, but sometimes....


First, there is the weather. While I still await a summer of San Francisco fog, which will dramatically alter my eighth floor view; I am already entranced by the drama of storms sweeping or creeping across the Bay. Sometimes a sea level disturbance will force its way through the narrows of the Golden Gate and burst into the open Bay; other times the grey will slowly make views and cities and bridges disappear as a western storm front advances. Today the weather is fickle. Right now the port of Oakland to the south is bathed in sunlight, while the Bay out to the Golden Gate is shrouded in a slush of rain and mist. San Francisco is a dark pop-up silhouette ducking in and out of the overcast.


Or would that be undercast? What I have noticed in my first few weeks up in my aerie is that a lot happens below me. Not only does much of the weather hug the ground but rain storms that fall past you have more character than those that simply fall on you. In addition, there are the birds.


The "average" treetop between my perch and the Bay is about thirty feet high. Here and there a grandmother tree reaches up to double that height and there are a few massive pines off to the north that nearly reach my window height. But I am generally well above the treetops, which means most of the avian activity is below me. Quite a different view looking down rather than looking up.


I am not a 'birder' though I appreciate their unique view on nature. In 1980, I traveled to Antarctica and hung out for most of three weeks with the avid birders. They were the ones who were willing to hike further and stay out in the cold longer, so I absorbed some of their birding culture by osmosis. One thing I have noticed from my new view, the bird identifications books are not as helpful since most of their photos and drawings are from a ground perspective and birds do look very different from above and below. Image trying to identify your friends seeing them only from behind.


There is an interesting flock of mostly white birds that hang out about three blocks west of here. They seem to have a big spreading northern pine as their primary roost. I am going to trek down there the next time they flock. They might just be a kit, a flock or a flight of pigeons. They don't appear to be large enough to be sea gulls, there are a couple of possibilities in the tern family. More information to follow. Signing off from the Berkeley promontory.
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photo credit: birds.org

Gay Penguin Couple Adopts Egg

[Content Disclosure: 0% Poker, 89% Social Commentary, 54.8% Penguins]

Just in the form of personal disclosure, earlier in my life I had a great interest in penguins. I went to Antarctica in 1981 and for years I was an easy mark on birthdays and holidays for penguin gifts. A few old mugs and towels still have penguin images but I am much better now. But I do get forwarded penguin news from long-time friends and that is the source of this post. Back in '81 a scientist at one of the research stations took me on a tour of a penguin rookery and pointed out a number of homosexually bonded pairs, so this information was not new to me. What caught my eye was the final paragraph in this story.

It seems keepers at Germany's Bremerhaven zoo couldn't get two penguin parents to take care of their egg, so they're trying an experiment — they gave the egg to a gay male penguin couple.

The biological parents "always rolled the egg out of their nest, they kicked it out again and again," zoo veterinarian Joachim Schoene said.

Then they made the decision not to give it up on the egg and the potential penguin chick and instead try to give it two fathers. The experiment was a success. The two foster dads incubated the egg for 30 days until it hatched and continue to care for the newborn chick.

The male penguins, named Z and Vielpunkt, are one of three same-sex pairs of Humboldt penguins at the zoo. That means almost a third of the zoo's 20 penguins who have attempted to mate exhibit homosexual behaviour. Same-sex penguin pairs have also been observed at zoos in Japan and New York.

The behaviour is not considered unusual because homosexuality has been well documented in the animal kingdom. Scientific observation has shown that most sexual encounters between giraffes are homosexual. Male bottlenose dolphin calves often form homosexual bonds and exhibit bisexual behaviour when they're older. And female Japanese macaques, or snow monkeys, form monogamous relationships with each other that last from days to weeks. All of these behaviours have been observed in the wild and do not appear to have been influenced by a scarcity of available mates of the opposite sex.

A similar experiment was performed at New York City's Central Park Zoo in 2004. Two male chinstrap penguins named Roy and Silo incubated an egg together and raised the chick, called Tango.

A children's book written about the New York penguins called And Tango Makes Three has been the book with the most requests for removal from libraries in the United States over the past three years, according the American Library Association.