For a variety of reasons my birding and nature adventures have not been centered on Nelson Lake the last few weeks. Hence the “hole” in posts the last two weekends. Of course that is a bit ironic considering the first 14 days in May are some of the peak activity weeks for birds, wildlife and plant growth in the preserve.
I’ll beg off by stating that last weekend was the Spring Bird Count. My assigned territory was the Great Western Prairie Path west of St. Charles. I rode the mountain bike out to Virgil and back from St. Charles and saw 84 species. The whole venture took six hours. And it was windy. And I was exhausted.
Plus I’m not necessarily a big fan of going out on weekends birding. I’m too social and wind up petting the dogs I meet and talking with other birders.
So it was Monday morning early for me this week. 5:30 a.m. to be precise. There’s just one problem with getting up so early. Some of the birds aren’t even up. The faithful Warbling Vireos were singing in the trees. Chimney swifts were plying the air high above the north end of the marsh. But there were very few warblers singing, as might be expected the third week in May. The temperature was 39 degrees. That might have had something to do with it. I also wondered what kind of intrepid insects those chimney swifts were eating? Or were they just warming up their little cigar-sized bodies by flying around in the rays of the morning sun?
The yellowthroats were singing, of course. Warbling vireos and yellowthroats are always singing. It's what they do. Hot or cold. Early or late. Those two species will sing through almost any weather condition or time of day.
Probably they’ll keep on singing right through Armageddon itself, which may arrive sooner than we think if the television program I watched last night proves prophetic. The show documented the possibility that a black hole in outer space might someday “burp” out deadly gamma rays in the direction of earth. In case you did not know, this would be a bad thing for Planet Earth as we know it. The only good news is that it would also kill the Creeping Charlie and dandelions in your lawn, if you care about such things.
But at least that’s a non-partisan way to go. No arguments over faith or politics, but especially no "I told you so's" from the religious zealots who threaten us with extinction every 50 years or so. Instead, we'd be taken by surprise by a well-aimed supermass of dark energy pulsing forth to wipe out the ozone layer and convert us all into carbon matchsticks. Peace in the valley, for sure.
I think these thoughts because the human race keeps having arguments about how to treat the earth. The question itself is absurd! Do you know how far it is to the next inhabitable planet? We don’t even know where the hell that might be, yet we’re jumping up and down because we probably found ice on Mars? You can’t live on ice alone. I already know that. I was a bachelor once.
It will be centuries, probablly even millennia before we figure out how to travel fast or far enough to move off planet earth. We should not count on traveling to Alderon (or whatever fantasy planet you choose) for our next vacation spot. Besides, the last thing we need is any more reasons or excuses to junk this place up. There are floating rafts of plastic the size of Rhode Island bobbing around the Pacific Ocean, and you want to argue mankind can do nothing to harm the planet?
The famous philosophical argument about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin is not nearly so interesting as how many people can possibly fit on a finite planet. And how do you propose to feed them? What are the limits? We're at 6 billion now. What's the goal? 10 billion? 20 billion? 30 billion? Does the population have to match the global economic deficit before we realize we're going into the hole on this issue?
So the politics over the importance of earth’s preservation are patently absurd. Yet we wake up everyday to stories about people arguing whether protecting the ozone layer and reducing manmade global warming is too much trouble and requires too much money?
There is nothing so cynical as the idea that mankind can do nothing to harm the earth. Yet that's one of the principle ideological arguments against the theory of manmade global warming. Again: It is absurd when you consider our real position in the universe. We're a band of tiny, basically helpless living things with no place else to go in the universe except earth for material sustenance.
It is a sickness to suggest that pursuing spiritual rewards (life after death) is the more important priority than preserving life here on earth. If you believe in a creator, our first responsibility is to creation, out of respect for God.
If you believe in a creator, how can you not respect creation? I propose that God treats people who disrespect the earth like a fisherman who snag hooks a bottom feeder by accident. He throws them back for another try at comprehending the concept. God says: "Go evolve into a trout. Learn to occupy a nicer stream. Grow wise from your experience." And don't brag that you've "seen God" just because you glanced up at the Holy One as He threw you back. That doesn't count as enlightenment.
I'm writing about Nelson Lake Marsh from a global perspective, can you tell? Because the abundance May and an encounter with deer at dawn demand it.
I used to consider myself a partly militant environmentalist. Then I stared at the moon one day (it was at 1/4 illumination this morning) and realized that it sits about about 265,000 miles from earth, devoid of life and oxygen. That's the closest thing we have to another place to live in this universe. I quit watching "space movies" because there is no greater lie than the concept that we will soon be capable of flying around this giant soap opera of a universe at hyperspeed. That's a cruel joke.
Instead, I take a look around at the abundance of life in places like Nelson Lake Marsh and say to myself, “Self, It is perfectly right and just to protect these places.” No exceptions.
That’s not militancy. That’s common sense. The people arguing against this reasoning do not seem to be grasping the seemingly contradictory (but still true) notion that while the abundance of earth is apparently infinite, the position of our planet in the universe is absolutely finite. There is no other earth. In the words of the Eagles rock band, "There are no more new frontiers...we have got to make it here..."
That is why I’ve grown out of thinking of some species of wildlife as “common” and therefore potentially boring. When West Nile Virus hit the bird populations a few years ago we got a glimpse of how fragile wildlife populations can be when threatened by natural and unnatural circumstance. Native bird populations plummeted. I found one white breasted nuthatch helpless and quivering at the base of an ancient oak. It did not have long to live, victimized by the bite of a mosquito. Crows, blue jays and many other seemingly hardy species all but disappeared in some areas. Interestingly, catbirds seemed to have preternatural resistance to the virus, with blood concentrations of the virus that were "off the scale." Maybe that's why they sound so smug. They're sitting in the biological catbird seat.
But I do not take any species for granted, any more. Even deer. We hate what they do to our suburban gardens. But they are just doing what deer have done for eons; eating their way through the forest. They are creatures of habit (hence the presence of “deerpaths,” which in some areas have turned into roads for human traffic) and they are opportunistic. I have seen Mule deer in Glacier National Park nip off and eat the bright white heads of beargrass, a protected species of plant. Tough luck: Deer have a right to eat.
I’ve even seen a deer eat a bird right out of a mist net. Nature makes no apologies for these things. Abundance rolls through the food chain. In our area deer have become something of a “pest,” supposedly, eating precious woodland flowers as well as the garden variety. We cull them and shoot them and a few (sometimes many) die of starvation when populations get too high. Disease takes them out, too. Sooner or later, nature corrects these imbalances.
But when I encounter deer in the quiet light of dawn, I only think of how wondrous they used to seem to me. As a child I chased herds of them through the hilly woods of Pennsylvania. They disappeared like spirits into the forest. Deer were magical, strange and elusive.
It is so hard to keep our sense of wonder. Politics and prejudice toward nature in its many forms is rampant. These prejudices fill our heads with all kinds of absurd crap. I submit to you for comparison the image of two deer at dawn, framed in glory of mist and sunlight, and the image of the deer as skeleton. Both play a role. It is not entirely ours to judge.
That does not mean we do not need good management practices. Human beings play an important balancing role in nature as well. We have for hundreds of thousands of years. But we should be willing to look at ourselves as animals dependent on the environment as well as possessors of the land, lest we consume more than we can sustain. After all, we'd much more like to look like the animal at the top of this blog than the remains of the animal at the bottom.
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