30 April 07
Chivvying Along the Chopping
They irrigated today.
This means they flooded the field, flooding our driveway. We are in a drought year; there’s water out there for the taking. Not a moment to be lost!
So while Numenius chopped onions, parsley, mint, tomatoes (not ours, yet), and feta for a tabouleh, I started hauling water from the ditch onto the various bits of the garden. The new wildflowers, planted and peeking, probably too late—need extra care (it’s hot now); the fennel; the eggplants; the leeks; the garlic; the parsley; the onions; the butternut squashes; the watermelons, zucchini, canteloupes; what’s left of the beets and carrots and chard and mustard; the lettuces and peas; the artichokes, now brilliant purple and splendid; and the marigolds I’ve planted near the tomatoes to deter nematodes.
I’ve bought two Spanish plastic baskets, ones I grew up seeing used in fields, but that are now available at Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, in recycled plastic. Their advantage is that they can haul dirt, veggies, and water — and because they’re flexible, they’re easy to fill in a ditch.
I was called inside at 8:30 with totally failing light to participate in the Yolo Ham net, which took ten minutes — during which time I became acutely aware of the extent of the caked mud on my jeans. Mud Glorious Mud.
29 April 07
Putah Creek Bioblitz
At the end of Blogger Bioblitz Week, I finally got out to my spot and did a bioblitz survey on my own. This is an exercise in humility: I do well at identifying birds, passably with vascular plants, reasonably well at reptiles and amphibians, but fail when it comes to identify insects or any other invertebrates. A proper bioblitz involves a team of skilled naturalists, but the main aim for the blogger version was to have fun, and so I did.
My spot was a bank of Putah Creek not far from home, located at N 38.5177° W 121.7616°. The upland portion was dominated by non-native grasses and weeds, primarily wild ryegrass Lolium perenne. Near the stream itself was a stand of narrowleaf willow (Salix exigua) with occasional Oregon ash (Fraxinus latifolia). I surveyed plants and birds, the latter anything within about 50 meters of my spot, including overhead and across the creek. I kept my eye out for dragonflies and butterflies, but only saw two of the latter and one of the former, and wasn’t able to get close enough to have a go at looking them up. My favorite identification was wild licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota), which I figured out after a browse through the photo library at CalFlora. My species lists follow:
Birds:
- Swainson’s hawk
- Western kingbird
- Snowy egret
- American crow
- Tree swallow
- Red-shouldered hawk
- Ash-throated flycatcher
- California towhee
- Turkey vulture
- Scrub jay
- White-faced ibis
- Bushtit
- Northern oriole
- Mallard
- Black-headed grosbeak
Vascular plants:
- Salix exigua (narrowleaf willow)
- Fraxinus latifolia (Oregon ash)
- Convolvulus arvensis (bindweed)
- Brassica nigra (black mustard)
- Lolium perenne (ryegrass)
- Centaurea solstitialis (yellow starthistle)
- Avena fatua (wild oats)
- Medicago polymorpha (California burclover)
- Eucalyptus sp.
- Vicia sp. (vetch)
- Plantago lanceolata (plaintain)
- Geranium dissectum
- Silybium marianum (milk thistle)
- Rumex conglomeratus (dock)
- Glycyrrhiza lepidota (wild licorice)
28 April 07
Tu/Usted
Susan writes about the tu/usted familiar/formal usage of the second person pronoun in the village where she and her sweetie spend half the year in Mexico. I’m interested in this because the usage seems fluid, local, and changing constantly.
When I returned to Spain after many years away, about four years ago, I was stunned by how complete strangers now used the “tu” form to each other. (I looked like a gringa or, to use the Old World form, a giri, and it wasn’t until I opened my mouth that they, once they got over their stupefaction, danced in multiple ways around the tu/usted maypole.) But usually one person sets the rules: either by establishing “nos tuteamos, ¿vale?” or simply by assuming that a “tu” will not be considered rude. (I did notice that nobody said “tu” to my mother while we were there for a wedding last year unless they had known her VERY WELL when she lived there. Perhaps there’s a certain age above which it’s never considered okay beyond the family.)
I had a sad occasion to call Madrid on Wednesday to order flowers — the mother of the groom died suddenly on Tuesday night. (Auntie Margaret, I hope there’s lots of good hot tea milk not cream, and toast and marmite, wherever you are now.) The local florist, Carlos, was from Ecuador. (This is definitely a new face of Madrid: the influx of Latin Americans, willing to do all the work that Spaniards etc. etc.) We discussed colors and the layout (the US usage “arrangement” is translated to “arreglo” in Ecuador but in Spain the term is “centro,” so once we got through all that we communicated quite well. I certainly used “usted” but I suspect that makes me a bit quaint. Carlos showed no sign of discomfort with it, though. I think the key here is to be attentive to the comfort level of the person you’re talking with…
Susan says that in contrast to the morass of Spanish usage, she understands the French usage of tu and toi and vous, but again I think it might be more nuanced. For instance, my boss in an insurance company in Paris in the early 80s was from a minor Belgian aristocratic family. She called her father “vous” on the phone and would never, ever dream of calling God “tu” — so when I attended her sister’s wedding in the Loire it was a chaotic, hilarious mishmash. The 12th century church was full of people who a) rarely went to mass, and didn’t know the vernacular prayers at all, having learned them in Latin pre-Vatican II; b) were aristocrats, and used the “vous” form loudly and proudly; c) were commoners who mumbled along with the “tu” voiced by the priest. But in the street, even in the early 80s, people of my age would never call me “vous” — it would accord me a status I hadn’t earned and didn’t expect.
I expect I’d be surprised, again, if I were to alight in Paris today, as Leslee is doing: but in this as in many things I suspect there are clear distinctions of region, urban/rural, class, and colonized versus colonizer. Of course it’s very hard to form any clear sense of how this is evolving on brief visits… Care to weigh in at all, Nicole? Jonathan? Beth, with a French Canadian perspective?
27 April 07
Which Side Of The Road?
A third of the world’s population drives on the left, according to this definitive reference. A map and list of countries is here.
26 April 07
Dappled Things
There was a snake under the peach tree yesterday — a gopher snake. It was trying to get a little sun. It had a fat bulge in its belly, undoubtedly the gopher that had been shaking through the Mexican primroses earlier this week.
I went out this evening to try and find it again; it was in the same spot, lazily flicking its tongue, checking us out.
Snakes have a hard time in ag lands. I wanted to tell it to invite its friends, to have lots of babies. I have no shortage of work for snakes… including the inflatable rattler at work that needs to be brought home so it can guard my lettuces.
25 April 07
Baseball Accounting
The site Cot’s Baseball Contracts tracks information about Major League Baseball contracts, based on unofficial but public sources. Here for instance is the page on all the San Francisco Giants players.
24 April 07
Sketching Our Way Through Colorado
This trip had always been billed as one where you freeze. You have to get to the leks about an hour before the birds do, then sit there, quietly, while the weather does whatever it’s going to do. (I quickly learned to snag the motel bedspreads to wrap up in for this long wait, the famous Heure Bleue, the time of day when most deaths happen, when the edge of day and night is as sharp as the frost on the windshield, inside.)
And then you hear them, long before you can see anything. In the case of the greater prairie-chicken, here on the right, what you hear is a three-interval boom, not unlike the golden-crown sparrow’s in pitch, but very different in timbre. (Think descant recorder duo versus cello.)
The trick now is to get your hands to work well enough to wield a pen. I made a huge number of sketches in the dark, trying just to capture the essence of these birds. I’d try to work the sketches up quickly at breakfast before we had to saddle up again. You have to work fast and there’s no time for detail…
It was easiest for the greater sage-grouse, since they were so close to the car. We could hear their feet on the ground outside the window. We could hear the intake of air as they filled their sacs, knocking them together in an audible Dolly Parton parody. And as the sun grew closer to rising, we could see the filoplumes on each male’s head, rising and falling with the dance.
Our tripmates mostly had small digital cameras, which they wielded to greater or lesser success through scopes or binoculars. (Our ptarmigan victory salute, for instance, can be seen here ). Paul had a good digital SLR; I’ll look forward to seeing some of his shots. But to learn the bird, learn its lines, its feathers, its stance, its essence, I’d rather sketch: these birds are now etched into my head.
24 April 07
Grouse Grand Slam
We’re back from our birding expedition to Colorado — a 10-day, nearly 2000-mile tour of the state focusing on the 7 species of grouse native to the state. The annotated itinerary:
Day 1 — We arrive in Colorado Springs and meet our carmates. It starts to snow.
Day 2 — We meet the rest of the group (16 people total, plus leader) and head off towards Elkhart, Kansas driving the last leg through a blizzard. In the evening we see the first of our target grouse, the lesser prairie chicken, visiting the lek site in preparation for the following morning.
Day 3 — The first day of our typical routine: up at 4:30 AM or something like that for a trip out to the lek site in the dark to watch the birds displaying before dawn. Lots of snow on the ground — it is very cold sitting in the car with open windows. We see 8 lesser prairie chickens displaying. We then head back to the motel for breakfast followed by a day of general birding.
Day 4 — A second try at the lesser prairie chickens, this time at a different site, followed by a drive to Wray, Colorado to see greater prairie chickens. Their lek interestingly is in the middle of an alfalfa field on a cattle ranch.
Day 5 — Before dawn we watch the greater prairie chickens display, about 35 birds total, at quite close distances. We head east through the Pawnee National Grasslands where after much effort we see McCown’s longspurs, a pair of chestnut-collared longspurs in breeding plumage, and a pair of mountain plovers. We spend the night at Greeley just east of the Rockies.
Day 6 — We travel through the Front Range to reach the small town of Walden in preparation to see greater sage grouse on their lek, and check out the lek site in the evening, the sage grouse cooperating with a partial display then.
Day 7 — Pica and I nearly oversleep and miss the 4:15 AM departure to see the sage grouse, but we get our warmest clothes on in record time and join the trek. We are thankful the grouse have no interest in hijacking our vehicles because they outnumber us and are certainly testosterone-laden enough to succeed at doing so. Off to Hayden via a lunchtime stop in Steamboat Springs, but we have little time for shopping, heading to the hills north of Hayden for a fruitless search for the dusky grouse. After this I sneak off to the local public library and look up some of the mammals we’ve seen already, including the thirteen-lined ground squirrel and the yellow-bellied marmot.
Day 8 — It snows overnight. With the help of a local guide we see a dusky grouse on his favorite spot in the hills, and a few sharp-tailed grouse on their lek spot, but they are mostly hunkering against the cold and we don’t see their display. Off to the mountain passes to look for white-tailed ptarmigan, but in two separate tries we fail to see any, the second time not reaching the site on account of too much snow.
Day 9 — Our third and final try at the white-tailed ptarmigan. We go to Loveland Pass, elevation 11,990 feet, and search the ridges on both sides. Two of our party ascend just high enough to spot a couple of birds, and we hurry up to their position despite the altitude. It is the literal high point of my birding career, looking at these white snow-footballs of birds at 12,280 feet in elevation.
We then travel east in preparation for our final grouse species, the Gunnison sage grouse.
Day 10 — Up at 4 AM for a 4:25 departure to the Gunnison sage grouse spot. Along with the lesser prairie chicken, the Gunnison sage grouse is the rarest species we see on the trip, and there is precisely one spot in the world from where this sage grouse can be viewed. Our preparations go well, and we are treated to a display that lasts well over an hour. After breakfast back in town, we start start wending our way back to Colorado Springs.
Day 11 — We fly back home, leaving the motel at 5 AM. The kitties are happy to see us upon our return!
11 April 07
Flowers as Characters
“Numenius, you know you don’t like pelargoniums? Well, I feel the same way about mallows.”
We were walking at the Tilden Bot Garden on Saturday in the rain which N. insisted was heavy mist.
“The ones I don’t like are Alstromeria,” said Joe. “They’re cheap. They’re the Britney Spears of flowers.”
At left is an alstromeria drawn by my niece when she was seven and sent to me. Since I don’t get many drawings from my sister’s kids, this one has been on my wall since. But I see Joe’s point: they have the aesthetic best suited to little girls heavily into anything pink and delicate (which T. no longer is, spending hours and hours these days hanging around the horse barn).
I had hoped the black-and-white columbine Ron gave us to plant last fall would have flowered by the time we left for columbine country (Colorado) tomorrow, but you’ll have to wait for a drawing of that one for when we get back in ten days. Aquilegea hybrid, var. Magpie.
9 April 07
Budburst
Project Budburst is a new citizen science effort to monitor plant phenology — that is, the timing of biotic events such as leafing or flowering. In an era of climate change, tracking phenology is an important part of ecological monitoring.
This spring is the pilot for this project, and next year they will kick it off in full. They have a list of 59 species across the continental United States they are monitoring. It’s a bit of an eclectic list. I’d like to see them add my local phenological favorite: western redbud (Cercis occidentalis).