I discovered that there are white variants of Hayfield Tarweed! (I had only seen yellow before.)
And then there was this complete rattlesnake skin. Look at those eyes!
My favorite photo from the day was of this Goldenaster going to seed.
Glen Schneider often half-jokingly calls us, “Cult of the Brown.” To love California native plants is to appreciate them in all seasons, including summer, when most of them go dormant and look dead to our colonized eyes.
Volunteering at Skyline Gardens has enabled me to see the lifecycle of these plants up-close, to observe how alive this place is, even in the dry season. It has reminded me that all living things need rest to flourish and to feel joy when I see them getting what they need.
I visited Seattle last week with my sisters and my younger nephew, Benjamin, who lives in Cincinnati. On one of our walks, Benjamin saw an Anna’s Hummingbird, and pointed it out to his mom as excitedly as a chill teenager might. We saw a few over the course of the week and always stopped to watch them flit about.
My friend, Aaron, lives in Michigan and is another hummingbird fan. When he and his family came to visit a few years ago, his enthusiasm made me realize that I take them a bit for granted, as we have them here year-round. We have at least two who live near our backyard. I’m watching one now, out my office window, darting between blossoms on our Meyer Lemon tree as the last remnants of the summer light fades away.
I try not to anthropomorphize animals too much, but it’s hard. Hummingbirds seem adorable, but they have a mean streak. Often, when I’m in the backyard, they will swoop nearby and hover, sometimes just a few feet away. I usually hear them before I see them, a steady stream of clicks and the telltale hum. I used to think they were just being curious or were coming by to say hello. I think it’s more likely that they’re being territorial and are making it clear to me that I’m not wanted.
Last Friday, I saw through my window that one of the hummingbirds had flown through a gap through my enclosed raised bed and was struggling to get out. I immediately went outside and opened the door so that it could escape.
It could be my imagination, but I feel like that hummingbird has made it a point to visit me every day since. This morning, I sat on my bench examining one of my unfinished projects, when the hummingbird flew a foot away from me and hovered. I looked at it and said hello. It looked at me calmly for several seconds, as if it were returning the greeting, silent except for the steady vibration of its wings.
I like to think that it’s decided that I’m its friend and is easing up on its territorial ways. It’s also possible that it’s still irritated that it got trapped in my cage and is making a point of letting me know.
It doesn’t matter. I think it’s wonderful. I feel very lucky.
Overcoming nature blindness does a strange thing to you when you travel: You start to pay an inordinate amount of attention to the local plants, sometimes to the annoyance of the folks with whom you’re traveling. When I was in upstate New York last month, I couldn’t help but notice the forsythia.
They were everywhere. You couldn’t miss their abundant yellow blossoms amidst the mostly barren branches, as Spring was just starting to emerge there. I saw them by the Finger Lakes, off the sides of the roads, and in just about every garden I passed. Much to my partner’s chagrin, every time I saw one, I would point and exclaim, “Forsythia!”
It turns out that this was no accident. In the early 1950s, the Ithaca Garden Club embarked on a major campaign to plant forsythia all over the region. They planted over 10,000 of these beautiful shrubs, earning the city the nickname, “Forsythia City.”
Last week, I was in Southern California visiting my parents. My Dad asked me how my bonsai dabblings were going. I pulled up photos of some of my projects, including some cuttings I had taken from my parents a few years earlier. My Mom quietly listened to me talk, then asked, “Do you know what 개나리 (gaenari) are?”
I shook my head.
She started telling me about these shrubs that were harbingers of spring in Korea and how her father (who died when she was 11) used to plant them around their garden. As I listened to her stories, I looked them up on my phone, then laughed, “Oh my gosh. They’re forsythia!”
I told her about my adventures in upstate New York and pulled up photos from my trip to show her. Then I asked, “What made you think of them?”
She replied, “Listening to you talk reminded me of my Dad.” Then tears started welling up in her eyes.
Later, I searched for “forsythia” in my photo album to see if it would be smart enough to find my photos. It not only found several, it also pulled up a photo and video of a bouquet I had taken almost exactly nine years earlier with my parents at a coffee shop in Newport Beach.
My Mom had spotted the bouquet and asked me if I knew what they were. Her reaction to the flowers moved me enough that I asked her to let me record them on video. She even sang a Korean children’s song about them.
Apparently, I quickly forgot about this encounter and about forsythia in general. I don’t think I’ll forget this time.
This past Saturday, my partner and I were in Point Richmond and spotted a bald eagle flying high overhead. The white head and tail feathers were unmistakable, and we stood there, staring in awe.
I saw my first bald eagle 15 years ago in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. I could not believe my eyes or ears. It is such an iconic bird, yet for the first three decades of my life, they were endangered. I was never sure I’d ever see one.
I can’t remember the first time I saw one here in Northern California, but they no longer surprise me. Heck, there was even a pair living in Piedmont last year, just a few miles from where I live. It still feels special, though.
The very next morning, two flew high overhead while we were doing our regular habitat restoration at Skyline Gardens. They were accompanied by a turkey vulture, a red-tailed hawk, and an irritated raven trying (and eventually succeeding) to chase the large raptors away. I couldn’t believe my luck as I stared up at them in wonder.
About ten years ago, I saw Corey Arnold give an amazing presentation at Pop-Up Magazine about how bald eagles were seen as pesky flying rats in Alaska because of how they picked through trash en masse. It muted my awe of bald eagles a little bit.
But not that much. This morning, I wondered what Matt Kracht’sThe Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America, which my nephew had recently given me for my birthday, had to say about bald eagles. I wholeheartedly agreed with its assessment:
Is this bird flawed? Hell, yes — it’s a bird. But it stands for the promise of something good. Please, don’t even get me started, because this is the best motherfucking bird there is. Period.
Last April, I went searching for river otters at Abbotts Lagoon in Point Reyes. It was part of the wonderful Point Reyes Birding & Nature Festival and led by Megan Isadore of the River Otter Ecology Project. Among the many wonderful things we saw on our ambling was this magnificent ravens’ nest on the face of a sheer cliff. We stared at it in awe for many minutes, marveling at the two large birds residing there and their remarkable feat of engineering.
Raven couple and their nest on the face of this cliff at Abbotts Lagoon in Point Reyes National Seashore, California.
Later, we came across a field biologist who was checking up on the Snowy Plovers. These adorable little birds inhabit many Bay Area beaches, where there are often fences attempting to protect their habitat. Unfortunately, there are only about 2,500 Snowy Plovers left on the West Coast, down from tens of thousands. Despite almost 40 years of protection, population recovery has been slow. Humans are the main reason why, but another nontrivial factor has been natural predation. And as we learned from the biologist, one of the most voracious predators of Snowy Plover eggs on that beach were those same ravens we were enjoying earlier.
I’m one of the thousands of folks who seem to have discovered birds for the first time during the pandemic. I’ve spent hours and hours and hours watching them in our garden and on the balcony outside of my office, and I’ve become familiar with many of them. I won’t lie, I usually greet them out loud when I see them, most often by their common name, but sometimes by names my partner and I have given them: Hoppy, Twisted Lip, Helen Hunt, etc.
The line between valuing and anthropomorphizing wildlife is a fine one. If you pay enough attention, you start to notice behavior that may feel unsavory to our human selves — bickering, bullying, and sometimes a lot worse. One time, I was at a red light on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way in Oakland, watching in horror as a murder of crows ganged up on an injured pigeon in the intersection. I wanted to get out of my car and chase the crows away, but the light turned green, and I ended up driving past, watching helplessly as the crows shifted their business to the sidewalk.
Corvids — including the ravens who snack on Snowy Plover eggs and the crows who bullied the poor pigeon — are large, social, and notoriously intelligent. They are marvelous birds, and, not surprisingly, many of their kind have adapted well to human development. Corvids are also known for theft and pedicide, often stealing hard-earned food from smaller birds or feasting on their hatchlings. It feels all too easy to pass judgement, but it doesn’t make any sense. Corvids are not people. This is what they do to survive. Moreover, many of the changes that we’ve made to the environment have served to amplify these “distasteful” behaviors.
On our river otter walk, Terrence Carroll (the Director of Research at River Otter Ecology Project and Isadore’s husband) explained that, over the past few years, river otters have been seen hunting and eating Brown Pelicans, one of the Endangered Species Act’s great success stories. According to Isadore, witnessing this is not for the weak of heart or stomach. The otters sneak up on the pelicans while they’re resting in the water, grab them by the leg and pull them under until they drown. They then drag them to shore, where they either consume them or stash them away in makeshift larders.
Angry birders who have found beaches strewn with pelican bodies have begun demanding that something be done about the otters. Carroll explained that we don’t know whether or not otter predation is having a significant impact on pelican populations. Their organization has applied for grants to try and study this. Regardless of what they find, the anger seems misguided. Ravens eat Snowy Plover eggs. River otters (which themselves have only recently returned to the Bay Area after disappearing for decades due to pollution) eat shorebirds, including Brown Pelicans. That is in their nature, and this is how nature works. The main reason the Brown Pelicans were and the Snowy Plovers are endangered is us — we human beings and our ongoing attempts to co-opt rather than co-exist with nature.
I’m still learning this lesson. I try not to project my human code of ethics onto wildlife, but I also have the opportunity to create my own space that encourages co-existence in a way that seems palatable to everyone. Early in my birder evolution, I started experimenting with bird feeders. Inspired by my friends, Jon and Linzy, I started by tying an old frying pan to a tree and filling it with sunflower seeds. That enabled me to see what felt like a wondrous number of birds in our backyards, and it also acquainted me with a familiar bird feeder foe: Sammy the Squirrel. (I name all squirrels I see, “Sammy.”)
Many of my early design experiments were spent trying to fend off Sammy. (Yes, I’ve seen the Marc Robervideo on deterring squirrels, and yes, it’s amazing.) However, over time, I shifted my attention to creating harmony among the many different bird species who visit my feeders and baths. I noticed that bigger birds sometimes dominate the feeders, chasing away (or worse) the smaller birds, so I created a tube feeder that only smaller songbirds could access. I noticed that a small single point of access would cause the smaller songbirds to fight with each other, so I strategically placed branches nearby where the birds could queue up.
Tube feeder I designed for small songbirds. There are two slots (carved in the shapes of a House Finch and a chickadee) covered in hardware cloth and a couple of branches to let the birds queue up. Larger birds and sparrows can’t balance themselves on the feeder or fit their beaks through the hardware cloth.
Hummingbirds are viciously territorial, and I often saw them fighting over our two feeders. Earlier this year, I visited bird illustrator Keith Hansen’s studio in Bolinas and noticed to my surprise that the hummingbirds fed side-by-side in harmony at his feeders. He has found that if you have at least six feeders up, the hummingbirds decide that there’s enough for everybody, and they cooperate rather than fight.
Structures impact behavior. I have always applied this principle in my work of getting people to collaborate more effectively with each other, but watching birds over the past few years have caused me to appreciate this even more. On my small balcony, I have managed to create my own little ecosystem of birds and nature. I have two feeders and two small bowls, which I regularly fill with clean water for drinking and bathing. I designed and placed them strategically among my pots of native plants to favor different kinds of birds so that there’s enough food and water for everybody.
The House Finches and Mourning Doves hang out on my balcony year-round, and a wide variety of birds visit regularly depending on the season — sparrows, Lesser Goldfinches, Chestnut-Backed Chickadees, hummingbirds, Scrub Jays, Brewer’s Blackbirds. I have a few individual stragglers as well, from the Dark-eyed Junco that serenades me almost every morning to the Yellow-Rumped Warbler (i.e. “Butter Butt”) who seems to enjoy the company of my bird cohort, even though their kind don’t traditionally visit feeders. I don’t know why, but the ubiquitous city pigeons mostly stay away, with the exception of one goofy couple that makes me chuckle every time I see them.
When the crows started coming, I had mixed feelings, as I was afraid they would scare away all the other birds. But I observed them for a while, and I came to love them. There are a few who now recognize me, and when I see them, I often take a short break to step out onto my balcony and feed them peanuts. A few of their cousins, the raven, even come by every so often, including an affectionate couple, and I’ve been able to marvel at their size and beauty up close.
Ravens cuddling on my balcony.
Last year, I was on a client call, when I heard a loud thunk outside. I looked outside, and to my surprise, a Cooper’s Hawk was sitting about ten feet away from me. It took all of my willpower not to jump off the call and grab my camera. Fortunately, the hawk and its mate became regular visitors, and I was able to watch them with interest. I didn’t want my balcony to become a restaurant for these raptors, which love to feast on Mourning Doves, although I was open to it happening. However, while the ongoing activity continued to attract the hawks’ interest, it turned out that some combination of my balcony’s proximity (which made it hard for the predators to sneak up on other birds) and my crow friends (who were used to warding off fiercer, larger birds) kept them at bay.
Cooper’s Hawk on my balcony!
It’s not my place to dictate whether or not a bird eats or bullies another bird. However, I think it’s fair for me to be thoughtful about how I can positively impact an ecosystem by learning as much as possible about these wonderful feathered creatures and by loving them without anthropomorphizing them.
I’m not going to stop naming them, however, or saying hello when I see them. I have to draw the line somewhere!
