Hot off the press! Available now from LSU Press, Amazon, etc.: Bayou-Diversity – Nature & People in the Louisiana Bayou Country. Also just out in 2011 and available from Amazon: Iron Branch: A Civil War Tale of a Woman In-Between, and available from Amazon and other fine book stores: Flora and Fauna of the Civil War: An Environmental Reference Guide.
Watch Your Step! We’re still building here. I’m out gathering Spanish moss now for the bousillage….
Read a recent review of Flora and Fauna of the Civil War from Choice Reviews at: http://www.cro2.org/default.aspx?page=reviewdisplay&pid=3629235
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Bayou-Diversity (6 February 2012) Rich in mythology, more than 40 species of crows around the world are considered among the smartest of birds. They are confirmed tool users and also have the ability to recognize individual humans. When addressed this hooded crow in Istanbul declared with a croak that he did not know me.
Bayou-Diversity (17 January 2012) They’re up! The first wildflowers of 2012, white violets display their goods as enticement for sunny day insects interested in an early sip of nectar in return for a bit of inadvertent pollination.
Bayou-Diversity (9 January 2012) Highly refractive crystals behind the retinas of
this gray fox result in eyeshine captured by a trail camera monitoring our compost pile. Her pupils appear to glow yellow as do those of visiting raccoons and stray cats. The scavenging possum, though, glares out of red eyes behind his devilish grin. With the aid of these specialized organs (called tapetum lucidum) many animals can see us much better than we can see them in the dark of the night – a fact that encouraged our ancestors to seek the light of a campfire as the sun set.
Bayou-Diversity (1 January 2012) This 3/4″ white oak acorn has the potential to develop into a living organism that will exceed 100 feet in height, 100,000 lbs. in weight, and 400 years in lifespan. Until just a few years ago white oak was a keystone species in the canopy of Louisiana hill country forests. As a nurturer of wildlife, it has few equals. Today it no longer grows on hundreds of thousands of acres, being replaced by genetically modified pine trees planted in rows and harvested in about 20 years. For a 2012 New Year resolution, perhaps we should strive to appreciate the value of life around us in species other than our own – and in units other than $$$ derived from the likes of pulpwood cords.
Bayou-Diversity (19 December 2011) The lower third of the Mississippi River
experienced the historical record flood this past spring. Spring floods often build on waters in the basin from the preceding winter. Today the Mississippi River at Vicksburg is 25 feet higher than it was a year ago. Just saying…
Bayou-Diversity (12 December 2011) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, just so long as the beholder is another brown pelican. Officially designated Louisiana’s state bird in 1966, the species in a splash of irony vanished from within our borders that
year due to pesticide poisoning. Since recovered from that calamity, brown pelicans now keep a watchful eye out for signs of actual progress toward coastal restoration.
Bayou-Diversity (28 November 2011) Gray fox can climb trees to escape predators, search for bird nests, and in this case to snack on juniper berries. Earthbound red fox is perhaps more cunning but lacking the ability to climb trees must look up to his arboreal cousin.
SENSES OF THANKSGIVING
Thank you, O Lord, in this bountiful season for the five senses to relish your world.
Thank you for the succulent smells of the fruits of the earth in the kitchens of our mothers and wives. Thank you for the odor of rich delta dirt on a warm, foggy winter morning. Thank you for the smell of wood smoke, especially that tinted with
lightered pine. Thank you for the stew of odors distinct to our rivers and bayous— cypress needles, primal water, mud and decay, life and life to be.
Thank you for the sound of voices of those who came before us and those who will carry our legacies into the future— our parents, grandparents and our children. Thanks for the muffled wings of waterfowl above an overflow swamp and the belligerent snort of a doe at dusk. Thank you for haunting sounds of great horned owls and distant thunder.
Thank you for the taste of spring mayhaws and autumn muscadines in the jellies of a late November Thursday. Thank you for the abundance of other native flavors, subtle and brash— breast of teal, pecans, filet of bass. Thank you for the taste of contentment.
Thank you for the feel of a driving north wind as an Arctic front races for the gulf. Thanks for the textures of sweet gum balls, feathers, gumbo clay, and beech bark. Thank you for the heat of an open fire and the warmth of an open heart.
Thank you for the sight of falling leaves, fattening squirrels, and rising waters that foretell the change of seasons. As the sun approaches the solstice, thank you for lengthy shadows and longer sunsets. Thanks also for fleeting glimpses— of a bobcat at dawn, of a shooting star on a rawboned night, of curiosity on the face of a young grandson.
I pray also, O Lord, for a sixth sense. Grant us common sense to be good stewards of these treasures. Amen.
Bayou-Diversity (7 November 2011) Buttermilk Racer – On this day she is “listening” for skinks as they rustle in the dry leaves. On another she will hunt mice, rats, lizards or frogs. As one of five subspecies of racer in Louisiana, she does her part to maintain the precarious balance of nature. Humans – not so much.
Bayou-Diversity (31 October 2011) Halloween Go-Devils: In the Louisiana bayous and swamplands we call these surface drive outboards Go-Devils. In the Amazon basin they are known as pecky-peckies. Here, resourceful natives remove the motors from their boats and convert them to portable sawmills in order to poach rare and valuable rain forest trees in “protected” areas – a pretty scary proposition.
Bayou-Diversity (25 October 2011) These reds, these golds did not suddenly appear in our midst. They have been in the leaves of maples and papaws since their spring unfurling. It’s just that the green of chlorophyll absorbed the bright colors and
reflected back to us only the verdant hues. As our position on the planet tilts away from the sun, days shorten and the brewing of chlorophyll diminishes to permit a riotous view of nature, one that has been here all along, and just in time to embarrass an insipid winter that looms beyond the solstice.
Bayou-Diversity (17 October 2011) The bear/hummingbird/human connection: As a result of drought in much of the West a bear’s natural food is scarce, thus obliging him to partake in campground scavenger hunts. For all parties concerned, his sweet-tooth is
not so good.
Bayou-Diversity (13 October 2011) As for the endangered whooping crane killings of late, we in Louisiana all bear responsibility…
For failure to insist on environmental education in schools but beginning at home,
For tolerating, even celebrating, such behavior as part of our “culture.”
With this tragedy, opportunity trumpets.
Bayou-Diversity (6 October 2011) Warning, shameless promotion ahead! I realize this type blurb has traits common to poison ivy and cottonmouths so I promise to keep them at bay to the extent possible. LSU Press just released my book Bayou-Diversity: Nature & People in the Louisiana Bayou Country. It is a collection of 156 short essays on the natural history of all of Louisiana. Be ye pirogue paddler, woods walker, or front
porch floater, there’s something here for you. It will be a featured book at the Louisiana Book Festival later this month and is available now at LSU Press, Amazon, etc. in hardback or e-book format. Happy reading!
Bayou-Diversity (12 September 2011) Sittin’ place. Like a chameleon the gray treefrog can change its skin color to match the background environment, even if it’s a front porch chair. As for size, he’s on the middle rung of Louisiana frogs — larger than a spring peeper but smaller than a leopard frog.
Bayou-Diversity (5 September 2011) Fibonacci numbers are integers of a mathematical sequence that begin with 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. Thus the sequence starts as 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, etc. Common in biological settings such as flower petals, shell spirals, and honeybee biology, the phenomenon is usually attributed to evolutionary efficiency of design.
Bayou-Diversity (27 August 2011) Can you smell these? Emitting the sweet, musky perfume of late summer Deep South forests, the bruised orbs of muscadines make sensuous our place with visual and aromatic treats. Jelly is lagniappe.
Bayou-Diversity (15 August 2011) Bayou Headlines: Alligators Found Thriving in New Mexico Deserts. Whoever named this tree alligator juniper surely had a connection to bayous and swamps a thousand miles away. How else could they have noted a superficial resemblance of the tree’s checkered bark to the hide of an alligator? Just like the reptile, the alligator juniper has special habitat requirements and is sensitive to unnatural meddling in its surroundings, albeit in a much drier clime.
Bayou-Diversity (8 August 2011) Along this driveway now, 135 year old trees are dying in the heat and drought. Are these climate extremes natural? Is the hand of man involved? An honest person cannot sit on my front porch gazing into this magnificent old forest without wondering such.
Bayou-Diversity (1 August 2011) When the hawks roll up their britches’ legs and come to the bird bath, you know it is hot and dry in bayou country. A visit by this young red-shouldered hawk has created chaos among the local crew of daily skinny-dippers–titmice, chickadees, Carolina wrens and restless summer tanagers. As they sulk in the thickets one can almost sense their disdain.
Bayou-Diversity (25 July 2011) From the top of a tall white oak near a secluded pond, she flushed just at this morning’s sunrise. Swirling in her slipstream like a descending pendulum, a primary flight feather settled to earth. The loss of this finger-like wingtip is part of a natural ordered molt and of no concern to the red-tailed hawk. The issue is why the feather came to rest in the branches of a winged sumac.
Bayou-Diversity (18 July 2011) We are losing the old wise ones, and this is no fish story. Some of our most erudite naturalists never heard a professor’s lecture or studied in a lab that reeked of formalin and moth balls. Still, they know the eddies where giant flatheads prowl and the ridge-top trails of foraging coyotes. They understand the consequences of a poor acorn crop and a late backwater; the implications of a dammed river and a clearcut forest. More so than anyone, they know that we all are inextricably attached to the natural world and will sink or swim into the future depending on the depth of our commitment to its health.
Bayou-Diversity (4 July 2011) For the students of my vocation:
In another time
When field biology was an honorable calling,
And research just for the sake of knowledge was valued,
Before silicon chips replaced seines, slide rules, plant presses, and snap traps,
With the blind asssumption that environmental issues can be resolved,
Without a practical wisdom of the parts,
The job was fun!
Bayou-Diversity (24 June 2011) European exploration of Canada and much of America was driven literally by the skin on his back. Beaver felt top-hats stoked the egos of high-brow men in London and Paris. It probably didn’t occur to them that their vanity was being augmented by headgear made from hides of the world’s second largest rodent.
Bayou-Diversity (16 June 2011) We watch, and we watch, and we’ve not seen them yet, Amy and I. In the west Texas rest areas, are we the only ones who really, really want to see them?
Bayou-Diversity (9 June 2011) Yesterday she came twittering up Corney Bayou with rascally triplets in tow. As one pup climbed her back and another submarined with playful abandon she stopped to recon for danger in a pool of light. Why will these kids not just stick to their otter lessons of cracking freshwater mussels and fiddling crawfish from burrows! Ah, but I must be careful with such anthropomorphic thoughts…
Bayou-Diversity (5 June 2011) Chemical warfare in D’Arbonne Swamp: Black Swallowtail caterpillars feed only on plants in the carrot/parsley family. These plants contain toxic chemicals that interfere with DNA functions. Concentrated in the caterpillar’s body the poison make them distasteful to predators, which must learn this fact the hard way.
Bayou-Diversity (1 June 2011) Fly to San Jose, Costa Rica. Take a bus east for 50 miles until the pavement disappears. Continue down a bone-jarring, cobbled lane for 2 hours through banana plantations until the trail ends on the bank of a roiling, tropical river. Hire a boat and motor north through a myriad of canals, rivers and lagoons for 27 more miles while flocks of parrots squawk overhead and howler monkeys scream. Pull ashore at the small native village of Tortuguero. Recycle. Why not in Louisiana?
Bayou-Diversity (23 May 2011) Like removing dams for the greater good in the Pacific Northwest, removing levees in the Lower Mississippi Valley for the same reason is a new concept that for some will be hard to digest. Only appropriate in areas with minor social impacts, levee removal to increase the capacity for floodwater storage – with a healthy dose of ecological benefits as lagniappe – is coming of age.
Bayou-Diversity (19 May 2011) The Waiter is in no hurry. He moves at a rate of millimeters per minute through the rich, organic slurry of a Louisiana swamp. “Isn’t he closer to that basking turtle now than he was a moment ago?” Patience has proven lucrative for his kind since the Mesozoic era. In that attribute he is moving steadily away from us.
Phenology of the Day (15 May 2011) Like red-eyed banshees they wail the lamentations of the underworld where they have been imprisoned since 1998. 2011 is THE year of the 13 year cicadas in the South. (The 17 year periodical cicadas are found mostly in northern states.) With only a few weeks of life above ground the males must chant their siren’s song to attract a mate while the sun still shines.
Phenology of the Day (9 May 2011) Naturally, nothing is wasted. The carcass of a giant hemlock serves as a verdant nursery log for a potpourri of tree seedlings, mosses and wildflowers…yet profiteers still assert this is a squandering of sorts – because the log was not processed into 2x4s or newsprint.
Phenology of the Day (25 April 2011) Out of sight, out of mind. Seasons pass and memories of America’s worst oil spill have faded in only a year. Opportunities to soar up to the next level of consciousness regarding sustainable energy remain mired in the tar pits of politics.
Phenology of the Day (11 April 2011) Louisiana marsh scene – NOT. This is Dalyan Delta on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey with phragmites, needlerush, bitterns, egrets and herons just the same. We call the streams that braid our vital wetlands bayous; there the term is “batakliki kol,” arms of the swamp.
Phenology of the Day (6 March 2011) Swamp troll mystery. Nope, they don’t help the trees “breathe,” or provide much support, or even sprout into new trees as surmised through the ages. The bottom line is that in spite of a fair amount of research, scientists don’t know the function of “cypress knees.” Perhaps they exist to perplex mere mortals.
Phenology of the Day (21 February 2011) Somewhere in the middle of creation a nexus formed between the unfurling leaf of a north Louisiana buckeye and neurons behind the eyes of a ruby-throated hummingbird 800 miles away on the northern coast of Yucatan. They are both at work on this very day preparing for a life-sustaining rendezvous – the plant gathering sunlight to build the red flowers – the bird gorging on insects to build fat for his night flight across the Gulf of Mexico to reach the flowers…just in time for both species.
Phenology of the Day (13 February 2011) Where did chimney swifts nest before chimneys? In chimney trees, of course. Now wintering in South America, these “flying cigars” return each year to fewer natural cavities (one can’t make a dollar from an old hollow tree, you know) and more modern covered chimneys that exclude the birds. Voracious consumers of flying insects that tend to aggravate humans, this species is in decline throughout its range.
Phenology of the Day (6 February 2011) First up! Wake-robin has business to conduct now before being drowned in the shade of hardwood leaves to come. Protected by antifreeze proteins that prohibit the fatal crystallization of ice in intercellular spaces, she has to spread her solar panels straightaway. Seeds must be ready for the first emerging ants who hold an exclusive franchise on dispersal.
Phenology of the Day (31 January 2011) “The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: ‘What good is it?’” (Aldo Leopold) In their realm of southern rivers and bayous alligator gar are apex predators not unlike grizzly bears and gray wolves. Similarly too, they have been unjustly persecuted as adverse to things that men covet, biological facts notwithstanding.
Phenology of the Day (23 January 2011) A bear from my past – July 1975, near the Arctic Circle in northern Alaska.
Powerless to stop a giant oil pipeline, he nevertheless postures.
Thirty-six long winters later, we still crave the finite Carboniferous detritus that threatens his web.
As for solutions, we too posture.
Phenology of the Day (17 January 2011) Cryptic plumage and zig-zag flight are the defensive game of Wilson’s snipe. He is no match though for extended cold snaps on the Louisiana wintering range. Frozen ground denies his long, flexible bill the pleasures of earthworms and larval insects. Then, it’s follow a star south or starve.
Phenology of the Day (10 January 2011) Tree crime: This cypress, too small to market, and hundreds of other swamp trees were girdled and injected with poison to make room for off-site, corporate sponsored loblolly pines – a common biodiversity squelching practice in Louisiana. Only a few survive to mark the seasons with expanding scars.
Phenology of the Day (3 January 2011) Eventide Slough – resting now in this season, void of chlorophyll except for a greenbriar vine above the reach of deer; waiting for an overdue backwater flush of nutrients to fuel the vernal growth of cypress needles, overcup acorns and dragonfly nymphs; swamp business.
Phenology of the Day (1 January 2011) Anno Domini 2011. Many of us mark time based on the traditional birth year of a singular man from the Mideast and the time it takes for our planet to orbit the sun. Insulated deep within our cultural niches, we forget (and should be reminded) that millions of other humans measure the ages using different rules and starting points.
Phenology of the Day (20 December 2010) Recurring periodically in this swamp, annual Christmas Bird Counts can be considered ritualistic phenology. A static circle with a diameter of ten miles is superimposed on the landscape. Armed with the best polished glass of Nikon and Zeiss, a couple dozen of the faithful search every niche to tally all birds in the imaginary ring. At days end around a black pot of brumal chili the important questions are asked. Have we ever counted so many rusty blackbirds? Where are the robins this year?
Bayou Grackles
Phenology of the Day (6 December 2010) Frozen Fright – Bayou grackles bedizened in sunlight enspirit a sandbar during daily ablutions. This vulnerable occasion requires vigilance. Was that the shadow of the small lightning hawk?
Phenology of the Day (29 November 2010) On these dark nights they swim unnoticed down our bayous and rivers bound for a procreative rendezvous thousands of miles away in the Sargasso Sea. Only those American eels several years old and sexually mature feel the tug of the cosmos in every cell. For them it is now a one-way trip to their natal, spawning, and burial grounds. For us it is an enigma too profound to explain with science.
Thank you, O Lord, in this bountiful season for the five senses to relish your world.
Thank you for the succulent smells of the fruits of the earth in the kitchens of our mothers and wives. Thank you for the odor of rich delta dirt on a warm, foggy winter morning. Thank you for the smell of wood smoke, especially that tinted with lightered pine. Thank you for the stew of odors distinct to our rivers and bayous— cypress needles, primal water, mud and decay, life and life to be.
Thank you for the sound of voices of those who came before us and those who will carry our legacies into the future— our parents, grandparents and our children. Thanks for the muffled wings of waterfowl above an overflow swamp and the belligerent snort of a doe at dusk. Thank you for haunting sounds of great horned owls and distant thunder.
Thank you for the taste of spring mayhaws and autumn muscadines in the jellies of a late November Thursday. Thank you for the abundance of other native flavors, subtle and brash— breast of teal, pecans, filet of bass. Thank you for the taste of contentment.
Thank you for the feel of a driving north wind as an Arctic front races for the gulf. Thanks for the textures of sweet gum balls, feathers, gumbo clay, and beech bark. Thank you for the heat of an open fire and the warmth of an open heart.
Thank you for the sight of falling leaves, fattening squirrels, and rising waters that foretell the change of seasons. As the sun approaches the solstice, thank you for lengthy shadows and longer sunsets. Thanks also for fleeting glimpses— of a bobcat at dawn, of a shooting star on a rawboned night, of a first smile on the face of a new grandson.
I pray also, O Lord, for a sixth sense. Grant us common sense to be good stewards of these treasures. Amen.
Petroglyphs
Phenology of the Day (21 November 2010): Around the world wherever prehistoric people encountered rocks, they left their art in the form of petroglyphs and pictographs. In the stoneless realms of our southern swamps, do such images lie carved and buried in the annual rings of the few remaining baldcypress trees that stood as slick-barked canvases before Hernando de Soto’s pillage?
Phenology of the Day (9 November 2010): The season of dragonflies is ending. This lingering yellow one that lands on the tip of my fishing pole is the same species found at elevations above 18,000 feet in the Himalayas, in Madagascar, Japan, and the Brazilian rainforest. Known as the Wandering Glider, it is the only dragonfly that inhabits remote Easter Island. Humans don’t have a monopoly on adaptation.
Phenology of the Day (3 November 2010): Almost three inches of slow rain broke the back of the 2010 drought at Heartwood. Organisms within kingdom fungi have been waiting for this event in order to go about their fructuous affairs of procreation. Overnight they appear as Halloween- orange sentinels on rotten logs and creamy discs of basidia scattered about the oak litter. A physiological ripening will occur in a few days, often ending in an explosive discharge of spores. Then it’s back to the serious subterranean business of cycling essential nutrients and decomposing organic matter that I might exist.
Narrow-leaved Sunflower
Hearts a 'bustin'
Phenology of the Day (15 October 2010): This morning a freshly migrated northern harrier (aka marsh hawk to old biologists) hunted voles in the yellow nutgrass fields of a nearby waterfowl sanctuary. The bird appeared to be an adult female. Those of her fair sex always arrive on the wintering grounds before the adult males in their sleek gray plumage. Perhaps it is because voles taste a bit like chocolate.
Phenology of the Day (12 October 2010): Strawberry bush, wahoo, American euonymus – not at this place. It’s hearts a ‘bustin’ (with love) at Heartwood. This specimen doesn’t appreciate her good luck. Just a few feet farther from the house she would be browsed to nubs by the resident does and their young of the year.
Phenology of the Day (10 October 2010): The drought is persistent and a grim reaper for native trees at Heartwood. Already, dogwoods, wild azaleas, witch-hazels, some oaks and hickories have succumbed. Birds are more desperate than I knew as even my front porch banjo picking did not frighten blue jays and red-bellied woodpeckers from the oasis of nearby bird baths.
Phenology of the Day (8 October 2010): A coyote lopes across the pond levee this morning looking back over his shoulder at me with the insolence of a hormone-laden teenager. Also, in the form of a shedding summer coat he wears his pants too low.
I love this! Thank you for sharing this wonderful slice of your life.
Fructuous affairs of procreation? You’re on a roll, son.
Excellent ! We really are enjoying this, don’t stop.
Reading these lines and then closing my eyes and I am just able to reach out and touch the memories of his descriptions. Beautiful. Every line of this holds a special memory for me in one way or another. I did not appreciate this fully in life until I could no longer physically do these things. Thank God I still have my cognitive skills even though they are limited.
Thanks for sending this Leslie.