Spring and equinox and all that jazz

Al Denelsbeck

Unidentified leafhopperShocked as I am to report it, the calendar event of the vernal equinox and the weather coincided quite well – the skies cleared and the temperature got into the twenties (or the seventies, if you prefer,) so I did indeed get out to chase a few spring subjects. It was exceedingly few – it’s still a little early for spring in North Carolina, and more so with the temperature fluctuations we’ve had this year, but there were a couple of things to be found. The most interesting one is shown here, having attracted my attention by waggling when I was doing a close examination of the rosemary bush for the resident green lynx spiders. If it had held still I would have missed it easily, since it’s but a few millimeters long and wonderfully camouflaged as a dried rosemary leaf. I have yet to identify this, other than as a ‘leafhopper,’ which really doesn’t narrow things down too much, but I can at least pronounce it a juvenile, due to the undeveloped wings.

My model here was reluctant to hold still, or even remain out in the open, so I have few really detailed images. It possesses a few physical traits to remind me of a jagged ambush bug – it has several elaborate flourishes in its chitin, including a lower ‘face’ plate that looks like it’s intended to prevent rocks from striking the oil pan – but the proboscis leads visibly well back under the abdomen like a typical leafhopper and those legs are positioned more for jumping than grasping, so I doubt this is a predatory specimen.

Unidentified leafhopper
Here’s a slightly better look. The dark plate on the back about midway along the body will later develop into wings, and below/behind the well-camouflaged eye you can see the typical leafhopper antenna – interestingly, it has a groove immediately behind that it can fold into, something that the ambush bug has as well. In some of my images, those whitish spheres along the edge of the body don’t actually look attached, but more like pollen that it’s been nosing through – or, perhaps, globules of rosemary oil that the leaves exude, which makes even casual handling an aromatic experience.

molted exoskeleton and fingertipI discovered the evidence of a recent molt, likely today’s, on the underside of a nearby rosemary leaf. The image below illustrates the scale fairly well, since that’s my fingertip in the background, but also visible are the white spheres that can be found on the leaves – whether these really are what decorates the leafhopper, or its camouflage just resembles this, I am unable to say. Just full of info today, aren’t I?

Scrounging around in the yard, I found a few other examples of insect life, but nothing too exciting – some woodlice and centipedes under rocks where they could gather a little heat from sunlight absorption, a couple of early colonies of ants, and the same (I’m almost certain) black widow that I photographed last year, significantly larger in girth and likely to produce an egg sac soon. She has a nice protected shelter underneath a wooden box that no one is likely to mess with, and I’m inclined to let her remain there, even with impending young that will spread out on their own. Black widows (in this case the southern variant, Latrodectus mactans) like dark, quiet nooks, and just about the only place they could find like this is the crawlspace under the house that no one ever goes into. This species has lived in the area for a long time, and wiping out her or her egg sac really won’t make any difference. Moreover, I’m the only one who ever gets into the habitats they like, and I’m well aware of the possibility of running into them and fine with it. It is a considerably lower risk than fucking with your phone while driving.

aconite bloomJust for the counterpoint, I sought out the aconite flower that I’d photographed encased in ice only three days ago, none the worse for wear it would appear. This (and the other images soon to follow) represents barely visible color in the yard, which is primary dormant grass, mud, and the sporadic patches of wild onions. With little growing, the rain and melted ice doesn’t get soaked up by anything and the ground is like a sodden towel – I use ground pads at this time of year to do low-level photography, because I’d get sopping wet otherwise.

In fact, let me segue off into a side topic while here. In the yard, I use carpet tiles to toss down, since they’re about 60cm square and have a durable, waterproof rubber backing, but these are way too bulky to carry around in the field. There, I use carpenter’s kneepads or a small auto floor mat, a thin square of polyethylene (or something – plastic, anyway) that rolls up tight enough to either wrap around a tripod leg or stuff into the pocket of cargo pants. What I really need are waterproof pants, but even I will only go so goofy looking – not to mention that everything I’ve ever seen makes more noise than bubble wrap in a daycare center. I suppose I could always check out those latex bodysuits that are available in, um, ‘specialty’ shops, but what would probably work best is cutting up the ground pieces from an old camping tent. While not as durable as a floor mat, they’d be considerably easier to carry around.

red dead nettle flower laughingI don’t think the red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum,) among the first plants up in the spring, copes well with repeated freezes, since it’s barely making an appearance this year – this is one of the very few examples to be found throughout the yard. But it seems to be amused anyway…

(Okay, I doubt anyone has gotten the same impression that I have, so I’m going to illustrate it for you and then you won’t be able to get it out of your mind. Not only does this look like an open, braying mouth, but the orange pollen head up there reminds me irresistibly of buck teeth – turning this into the classic depiction of a country yokel, hyuk hyuk hyuk. I apologize for doing that, but add that this is typed in a very insincere way and you can tell that I’m not sorry at all.)

I often wonder what pollinates these early bloomers, since I can only occasionally spot a flying insect whenever these appear each year. I used to think, for instance, that daffodils were wind-pollinated, but it seems very few flowers actually do this. It also stands to reason that those that do would gain no benefit from bright colors, scents, or nectar of any kind. With this inviting alleyway and the pollen head positioned to anoint the back of a foraging insect, it’s obvious that something must perform the spread of genetic material for these flowers – I’ve just never seen what. I could always stake out the blooms until I see the culprit, but I’m afraid my curiosity will not demand that much patience – it’s not exactly a burning question.

CrocusPollenI close with a tight macro shot of The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog’s crocus, which I may try to get out tomorrow morning and make another attempt at an opening sequence. I just happened to like the detail of the pollen, but I can’t even tell you why. Maybe it has something to do with being a hue that we’re naturally attracted to. Perhaps I have bee genes, though I don’t recall coming back inside and doing a little dance after finding these, so probably not (I’ll let you try to get that image out of your head as well.)

In any event, I’m trying to make the most of it, because the cold weather is forecast to return in just a few days. The flowers are coping with this better than I am, I suspect…

Thanks for the guidance

Al Denelsbeck

I was about thirteen or fourteen, I believe, when an uber-religious friend talked me into attending the summer camp his church recommended, with assurances of countless activities including water-skiing and nature hikes, the kind of stuff all summer camps promise. There was almost none of this, even less than most camps produce, and instead there were numerous christian indoctrination sessions – this came as no surprise to me even at that age, and I willingly admit I was ridiculously naïve when younger (save the comments until the end, please.) But I will credit it for something crucial to my outlook now, something that they certainly didn’t intend.

In one of their evening bible sessions, the counselor was discussing the story of David and Goliath, and at one point provided this little gem: “It is said that David took three stones with him, [it was five, but bear with me] and many take this to mean that David was unsure of himself, that he had extras in case he missed. But David had absolute faith, because god was with him – he knew he only needed one stone. The reason he took three was that Goliath had two brothers, who David would have to slay as well, and so he had a stone for each.”

Now, this church was adamant that the only true, correct bible was the King James version, and so that was the only one we all had in our possession – and it’s pretty clear that no such brothers are mentioned in the slightest. It even trashes the narrative, since Goliath was the Philistines’ champion, and his death caused a rout – David wasn’t about to go find any brothers in the circumstances, nor would there be the slightest need. I remember suddenly thinking: Hey, wait. We all have the same book, and that isn’t in here. So where is the counselor getting this information from? They don’t make a Teacher’s Edition bible. And with that, I knew he was making it up.

In the same camp, we had a campfire story of some nice christian dude who worked at a railroad yard, who brought his young son into work with him one day. Like all good parents, he was paying no attention to his kid and discovered, to his chagrin, that his child was playing on the tracks right smack in the path of an oncoming passenger line. Switching the passenger train to another track would derail it, but letting it go would kill his son. With faith in salvation and god’s plan and all that horseshit, he allowed the train to plow over his son and thus spared all of the passengers, some of which were undoubtedly unsaved heathens, but so it goes. The point, I believe, was that faith in god meant you could kill your son without misgivings.

While the story had a profound effect on me as an adolescent, mostly horror, it only took a few days or so before I realized it was nonsense too – and this was long before I heard about the Trolley Problems, the well-known psychological examination of moral decisions using fictional scenarios, to which the counselor’s story bore a remarkable resemblance. Once again, these fine, upstanding baptists were lying their asses off to the kids in their control care – and, I have no doubt, knowingly as well. And that started a very long observation, still taking place, of how often religious folk exuberantly and hypocritically lie in their efforts to “spread the good word.” I always thought it was satan that was supposed to be the Prince of Lies, but maybe I missed the subtle nuances of scripture in that regard.

The worst thing is, this is rampant, and not just in brainwashing camps. It takes no effort whatsoever to find wild interpretations of scripture provided as doctrine, much less the countless instances of things just made up out of, if you’ll pardon the expression, whole cloth. Just about every time I hear some respected religious leader speak, and in almost every written article, I find something that is clearly not from any established source.

Now, one could argue that these might actually be examples of divine revelation, god expressing his thoughts through individuals – the kind of blanket statement that provides a nice counterpoint to cynicism, or so it would seem. The curious thing about open-mindedness, however, is that it does not go only one way; there is also the possibility that the person is outright lying, that the person is delusional, and even that some other non-corporeal being is using this person as a relay, for any variety of purposes. Most people urging objectivity manage to halt inquiry entirely at the option they most favor, hard as that may be to imagine, and it should be noted that this is no way resembles having an open mind – precisely the opposite, in fact. But even when practiced with rigor, having an open mind doesn’t actually lead anywhere, since there are thousands of possibilities to be considered. The counselor might have been telling the truth, and if so, David was confident in god’s existence – perhaps. It still remains a story, after all, its authenticity impossible to establish. Or the counselor might have been lying, which means he was trying to propel his agenda by imparting falsehoods to impressionable adolescents – the ability to recognize such, by the way, will certainly come in quite useful later on in life.

Such speculations about divine revelation falls flat when it comes up against the clearly fictional stories passed along as fact, endlessly forwarded through e-mail, such as this list. Whoever first kicks off any of these chains quite clearly knows they’re fabrications, while indisputably geared towards a religious agenda. This entire resource was created to counteract the pervasive attempts to subvert, denigrate, and deny established science – take a look at the list of creationist claims being addressed there (and for preference some of the sources cited within,) and try to fathom how much effort has been poured into the act of, as it is occasionally known, “lying for jesus.”

I don’t have to belabor the fact that not just all major religions, but all societies we know, are pretty dead set against lying, dishonesty, falsehoods, and so on. But what’s most stunning about this is how often we are all assured that religion is responsible for inspiring, instilling, and maintaining moral behavior in people – many people even insist we would be savages without it. This moral guidance is quite possibly the biggest lie of them all – and the competition is stiff.

There are a lot of avenues of examination that can be followed with this, and some of them will come up in later posts. Right now, I’m going to come back to the personal angle, which is the effect it had on me – and, I doubt I’m alone in this regard. Seeing the amount of intentional deceit perpetrated in the guise of ‘moral superiority,’ I realized at a young age that trust was actually a stupid thing – it invites abuse. The edifice of respectability that has been built up around religion (and, indeed, many other things discovered later on) is an elaborate disguise, hiding the true nature if we’re gullible enough to fall for it all. You could call this an epiphany if you like irony – it’s certainly not the kind those counselors were hoping to provoke. But, sometimes, it’s the conniving little shits that provide the best lessons.

A thousand words

Al Denelsbeck

cryogenic aconite
I think this is the probably the best single image representation of this winter’s weather that I’m likely to achieve. I never spotted this winter aconite flower before the freezing rain came, but was lucky enough to see it afterward.

Not quite as much rain this time, so no issues, though I’m pretty sure I heard a nearby transformer blow last night. But we’re not out of the woods yet…

African Drums, by Luke Despain

Al Denelsbeck

When I was growing up, my dad had some record albums by a guy with the fabulous name of Babatunde Olatunji, who specialized in African drum music. This is almost a worthless statement; African is a big place, with over 50 countries and dog knows how many different cultures, so “African drum music” is almost the same as saying “American guitar music” – it doesn’t specify any particular style. Nevertheless, Olatunji tackled quite a few of them, and I find some of them to be excellent. Others, not so much.

So I was searching around for music samples to know which album I should purchase, and came across this independent composition. I can find little information on composer Luke Despain, but it seems pretty clear that he’s not a professional musician or ‘big name,’ which is a shame – he should be. This track is somewhat misleadingly titled African Drums, since it’s synth work all the way and the drums aren’t a huge part of it. Call it anything you like, however – this is a pretty damn solid piece of work, and considerably better than a lot of popular music out now. Despain has an excellent sense of balance and progression, and if I knew more music terms I’d explain this better, but since I don’t, you can fill in for yourself.

The site this embedded track comes from was being a little fussy playing his other tracks for me, so if there’s any difficulty, you can also try here.

According to a comment he made on YouTube, Luke Despain performed this for a Broadway play later on – I doubt that’s surprising to anyone. Here’s hoping he gets tied in with a major label or film studio sometime soon.

First mud

Al Denelsbeck

Southern chorus frogsThe other day, with the warm weather assuring us that it was here to stay (dishonestly, I must add,) I donned shorts for the first time to meet with a student and go out seeking the first real signs of spring to a nature photographer, which is generally wildlife in search of booty. While I had earlier been hearing the evidence of the critters pictured here, I had yet to go down to their typical lairs, which are small ponds and even puddles surrounded by high grasses. These are likely southern chorus frogs (Pseudagris nigrita nigrita,) though I stand to be corrected – I am using an Audubon Guide for identification, which unfortunately lacks strong descriptions and photos to make firm distinctions; at least three species could fit what you see here, especially when they give markings as “three stripes along back that may be broken into spots.” All likely chorus frogs in this area have spots…

The most distinctive trait of them, however, is reflected in their name. This was nothing more than a large puddle, and at 3 pm they were advertising for mates in their manner, which is a reedy high-pitched vibrating sound. You know you’re closing in on them by the increase in apparent volume, but generally as you get close they see you and stop making any noise at all. We had pinpointed the puddle but took some time to finally spot a few, since they are no more than 3 cm in body length and colored much like the mud and grasses of their habitat. Suffice to say that when I got this photo, I hadn’t even seen the second one to the left.

As we stood there, they decided all at once that we were no threat, and began the chorus again. I don’t have enough experience with them to know for sure what triggers it, but they don’t sound off alone; everyone in the area speaks up, possibly because they’re in competition with one another. There are no false starts, no lone voice ringing out before the others start to chime in – within a second, half a dozen or more frogs are all calling together. When close, the sound is unbelievably penetrating, certainly uncomfortable and making conversation a bit difficult. I regretted not bringing any kind of recorder along with me, but I got plenty of shots of them calling. We’ll get back to this shortly.

In the same puddles scampered a large number of tiny fishing spiders, not even a centimeter in leg spread and mostly a deep reddish brown. As I watched, one set off at high speed across a tire rut filled with water, passing in front of another that was perhaps twice its size, unseen by either of us until it shot out across the water and seized the smaller. We might think of this as cannibalism, but I have no idea if they were the same species or not; we eat mammals ourselves. Not to mention that spiders aren’t a social species, and have no reason to cooperate with each other. Food’s food.

fishing spider eating another
I would have liked this image to be a bit better, but I was shooting in natural light without flash and couldn’t afford to stop down too much, since it would have slowed the shutter speed and my own movement would have ruined the shot. As it was, I was in kneepads, propped on my elbows in the mud at the edge of the puddle, trying not to get my hands filthy. While getting some of the frog pics, I buried my sandals in the mud so thoroughly that I was in imminent danger of leaving them behind, or simply falling over because I couldn’t extract my feet to maintain balance, to the amusement of my student. Nevertheless, that is why I wear them, and to me, getting the shot is worth the mud and inconvenience – they’ve received this spring’s christening.

protective brown snakeThe next day, I was determined to capture the sounds of the chorus frogs, and went to a nearby park that has lots of water basins. The biggest one, that provided some of the action shots from last year, was curiously still – it’s early yet – and while I could hear the frogs sounding in the middle distance, they were never calling at any body of water I came across. Subjects to photograph were so sparse it seemed almost like a total waste of time. It goes like this sometimes, even though I can usually find something to capture.

Then, a minuscule brown snake (Storeria decayi) that was basking on the concrete path displayed its reluctance to yield, which provided some great poses – there’s no way I should have been able to take as many shots, from as many different angles, as I did. This behavior is often an indication of a recent meal, since snakes need a certain body temperature to maintain digestive energy and will often warm themselves on sunny surfaces in the morning after finding food. Their mobility may be hampered by the mass in their abdomen, but even if not, they would rather stay in the sunlight, so will defend themselves more vigorously than at other times, when diving into the underbrush is their chief defense. However, I spotted no telltale swelling or change in girth at all, so I considered it unlikely in this case; it might have simply been the first time out since the torpor of the winter months. It’s not often that I get to see a raised head pose, and when I do, it is often accompanied by a vibrating tail, the threat display of far more than just rattlesnakes. This is quite impressive, because it’s a blur, and it can make a great drumming sound against a solid surface, but a fiercely creepy rattle in dry leaves – unfortunately, my subject here wasn’t so inclined, nor did it strike at me as I lay on my side right in front of it with the camera.

brown snake scaleAnd I can’t let this go without a scale shot. While I’ve seen bigger, brown snakes really aren’t very impressive in size no matter what, though they do outclass the worm snakes.

Satisfied that the trip produced at least a few shots, I wandered back to the areas with all the water, and this time around, the frogs were calling actively. I had brought along two different audio recorders – my MP3 player with voice memo function, and an old-school microcassette recorder I’ve had for years. I was counting on the MP3 player, since it produced files already in digital format, but despite being right on top of the frogs and practically going deaf, the sound quality was particularly lacking, with a seemingly mechanical backbeat that had to be from within the player. Luckily, the cassette recorder was able to patch between the earphone jack and the Line In port of my sound card, and I recorded the playback through Audacity, which is an excellent free audio recording and mixing program.

Now, the difference between the two days. I was sitting right smack on the edge of a catch basin that was, at most, 2.5 meters across, with numerous frogs sounding off in very close proximity. I’m pretty good (though not perfect) at spotting such critters, especially when they’re announcing their presence at ear-shattering volume. And yet, I did not see one frog at all. They had to be above the surface, and unlike the previous day this water was perfectly clear, and the grasses at the edge were not thick at all, but the frogs maintained perfect concealment. It is entirely possible that this was a haunted puddle, brimming with little tormented amphibian spirits with unfinished business (I’ll leave the speculation of what this could be to you,) but for now, despite the urging of my ego, I’m going to go with their ability to hide being better than my ability to spot them.

chorus frog calling sequenceSo, as I provide the recording that I made that day, I give you a photo sequence of a frog from the previous day, when I could actually see them. The first pic was ‘at rest,’ as it were, while they were all silent. But imagine the next two alternating regularly during the call – the inflated belly during the silences, with the distended throat sac while emitting that bad-bearing squeak that you can hear by clicking on the tag below. It should be said that there was never the appearance of expelling the air – it simply switched places, being recycled as it were, since the sound is as internal as humming is to us. I had originally tried to produce an animated gif (pronounced “hor-hay”) of this, yet couldn’t get it to appear less than bad claymation and gave it up after playing with it far too long last night. It would undoubtedly be better in true video, but I’ve never bothered to get a digital camcorder and have little enough use for a low-end model – I’d want something that could do serious macro work, but that would require supplemental constant-light sources and a whole lot of playing around for, what, the blog and website? Not justified (no offense.) Anyway, this recording was started as I was a short distance away and approaching, ending up just a few meters from the frogs – the volume is, hopefully, able to express the idea without getting too obtrusive.


There is an added bonus in that you can drive the cats nuts with this. Actually, you can drive anyone nuts with this, I suspect…

The fine line

Al Denelsbeck

Out in some states in the western US, places where sparse plants compete with rock and Star Trek villains for attention, there can be found a thin grey line between sedimentary layers. This line, an abrupt change in the composition of the sandwiching rock above and below, is a visible remnant of one of the most recent world-changing events, an actual border between geologic periods. It is, to be dramatic, the day the dinosaurs died.

With that lede out of the way, now let’s get down to more accurate stuff. Not all of the dinosaurs died then, and it sure as hell wasn’t a day – single days don’t leave distinctive sediment layers. But this demarcation in the rock is what used to be called the KT boundary, or the line between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, Tertiary being the one we presently live in (and ‘C’ already in use for the Carboniferous period, so geologists went the product advertising route, or perhaps simply liked Krispy Kreme donuts.) Now, however, the present period has been renamed the Paleogene, and it has now become the K-Pg boundary, and not somehow the Cr-Pg one – whatever.

For decades, this boundary was known, since the sauropod fossils largely stopped everywhere above it, in newer sediment. But it wasn’t known what caused this mass extinction. It was assumed to be some kind of major event, since mass extinction just doesn’t occur every day, and something pretty radical to take out so many species. But until the late 1970s, everything was speculative.

At that time, various geological surveys had revealed that the sediment layer was rather high in the element iridium. Iridium doesn’t appear often in the mineral record, and it has two primary sources: volcanic eruptions, and asteroids. This layer of iridium was being found in the same boundary layer the world over, indicating an event of catastrophic proportions; a volcanic plume that extended, with noticeable sedimentary deposits, across most of the planet is a hell of a big eruption, or series thereof. And the same can be said of an asteroid impact. One way or another, the planet was radically affected by the event(s), to be changed forever.

An eruption (or series thereof) that big, extending ash deposits across most of the world, would also be producing vast amounts of greenhouse gases, perhaps for very long periods of time – centuries to millennia. This would naturally slam the climate and thus the plant life, and untold other portions of the ecosystem – not hard to see how this could wipe out quite a few species. On the other hand, a major asteroid impact that produced that much particle matter in the atmosphere would also have a drastic affect, but from cloud cover reducing the warmth from sunlight, rather than trapping it as greenhouse gases do. There would also be the effects of the immediate impact crater and the tectonic activity triggered by it, including massive tsunamis and shock waves. The biggest difference between the two would be the length of time the effects lasted; the impact scenario is generally envisioned to be a shorter period of time than a lasting series of volcanic eruptions.

Pretty much everyone knows the asteroid theory is the favored one, and this is because we actually know the asteroid that remains the prime suspect. Geologic surveys revealed an ancient crater on the tip of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, near the town of Chicxulub (“CHEEK-shoe-lube,” a popular lubricant in kinky adult stores in Mexico. Okay, not really.) The crater, now determinable only by the circular gravitational anomalies, the shocked quartz, and the peculiar cenote caverns of the region, is massive – and more importantly, dates to that exact time period. “Exact,” in geologic terms, means within a few hundred thousand years. This is a small portion of the interesting controversy about the K-Pg terminator.

Because before this crater was found, there was another possible culprit: a region of intense volcanic deposition known as the Deccan Traps, in what is now India. They also date from that time period, and feature lava and ash deposits that indicate a vicious, long period of vulcanism, one considered capable of changing the atmosphere of the entire planet. This remains a competing theory, and to me, a curiously compelling one, since the volume of basaltic deposits from lava are enormous – over 512,000 cubic kilometers, or 123,000 cubic miles, and this is today’s figure, after 65 million years or so of erosion. The lava flows themselves, 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick, cover an area the size of Spain. The gases emitted into the atmosphere from these eruptions, over a period of perhaps 30,000 years, had to have been of a remarkable volume themselves.

A bit of perspective. The geologic feature thought to be responsible for these eruptions, something called a mantle plume, would have been positioned off the coast of Madagascar, near Reunion Island – that’s where the Indian tectonic plate was then. In the time since, India has traveled north and collided with the Asian plate, rather forcefully, since this collision formed (or is forming, to be accurate) the Himalayas. Seen on a relief globe or decent 3D mapping service, this crumple zone of Earth’s crust is eminently visible. It’s an interesting illustration of timescale.

While the consensus seems to lean towards the asteroid impact, we still don’t know for sure. One of the main reasons why this is not settled is that the extinction of species appears to take place over a period of 300,000 years, which seems unlikely with something as short-term as the after-effects of an asteroid. But we’ve never seen a major impact event, or even a relatively minor one – we’ve seen, at best, tiny little things, like the Chelyabinsk meteor which didn’t really impact (it shattered and produced fragments, no craters, much less one 180 kilometers across – that’s almost the distance between Philadelphia and DC.) Would there, for instance, be ripple effects among species, certain ones getting hit first, whose loss caused Change A in the ecosystem, leading to Species B eventually dying out, with Change B resulting, and so on? We really can’t tell – the fossil record isn’t that detailed, nor do we have more than a cursory knowledge of the foods or habits of the species extant at that time. Species also go extinct without the help of any such dramatic events; the real causes may be multiple and murky, or even coincidental.

Another thing that I suspect might temper the Deccan Traps idea is the long time frame over which they occurred, perhaps never dumping too much gas into the atmosphere at once. 30,000 years is a significant length of time – much longer than humans have been on the American continents, longer than we’ve been without Neanderthals or mammoths. Yet there’s also the fact that the Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) extinction, 252 million years ago, coincides with another major volcanic period, a suspicious detail that makes one think, at least.

There is no doubt, however, that both events had their effects on the time period. The Chicxulub impactor produced debris extending across most of the US and Mexico; the Deccan Traps are among the largest volcanic deposits known. The asteroid impact effects might have been too brief to cause so major an extinction; the Deccan eruptions might have been spread out enough not to change the climate radically. It is even possible that both are at fault, a coincidental one-two punch that prevented the potential recovery from either alone.

I have no images to illustrate even this thin sediment line, since I’ve never been out west – I have plans to go, since I’d really like to see this for myself. I’d also like a rock sample that contains that line, but (departing from the original topic a little) I also find this a little silly. Holding such a rock in my hands won’t impart anything more to me than research does, considerably less in fact, and to be honest, any such rock around here might have its own link to cataclysmic events – I just don’t know about it. Like meeting a celebrity or viewing a famous painting, the thrill is all in our heads, a strange emotional sense provoked by a perceived importance rather than any external stimuli. I suspect that the sense is actually confirmation; we’ve heard all the stories, but it takes the input of our eyes, ears, fingers, to tell us they were real. We may never know exactly what happened 65 million years ago to eradicate so many species, but right there sits a memorial, the barest hint of an abrupt turn for species on Earth. The rocks are the only remaining witness, but we, at least, can sometimes read their story.

Seriously annoying

Al Denelsbeck

Ice coated branches
I had a post lined up to go Thursday night, and decided to wait a little, do a final check Friday morning before posting. The sleet had started Thursday at 5 pm, and while it soon turned into rain, the temperature hovered just above freezing, which has a curious effect. Things with a high ratio of surface area to mass – tree branches, wires, and so on – lose their heat quickly and can drop lower than the ambient air temperature, by only a few degrees at most. But that’s enough to give rain something to freeze onto.

By Friday morning, internet was out, and at noon, the electricity went, courtesy of poorly anchored wires and branches heavy with ice that came crashing down individually, when they didn’t carry the entire tree with them. North Carolina utility companies live in perpetual denial – every ice storm brings exactly the same effects, yet they cannot possibly figure out that keeping trees trimmed well back from electrical wires, much less burying the fucking cables to begin with, will prevent the repeat of these scenarios. Forever.

Natural tinselThe rain continued for perhaps 22 hours, and our county ended up declaring a state of incompetence emergency. Ice never formed on the roads, and there wasn’t even much accumulation on the ground, since that never got cold enough. This likely contributed to the mess, since it meant the soil became saturated quickly and tree roots were loosened. Throughout the morning Friday, we could hear limbs crashing down and trunks splitting under the weight of the ice, and our neighbor lost two sizable trees. The rain finally stopped in late afternoon, but by then the damage had been done. Predictions of when the power might return were far from encouraging, and emergency shelters were being set up. As the sun peeked out for a farewell appearance at sunset, we headed out to The Girlfriend’s Mother’s house in Raleigh to spend the night.

Returning Saturday, we found power still not back on, and the cats that we’d had to leave behind (because they would fare better snuggling up into the bedclothes than traveling for 45 minutes each way in the car,) were seriously disturbed – they’ve never dealt with the cold, and while none the worse for wear, their mental state was a little unstable for a while. Just to make things totally surreal, the temperature hit 22°c (72°f) Saturday, the nicest spring day you could ask for, as long as you didn’t want a cold drink from the fridge. By evening the power had yet to be restored, and Duke Power was hedging their bets and only promising by 11 pm Sunday, so we returned to Raleigh.

The electricity was on once we returned late this morning, but the internet router had been fried somehow, so we had to get another and make it play nice with the VOIP phone, which took longer than it should have. I also had a major camera issue to repair before I could even get at the images you see here, taken during the height of the storm. By late afternoon I was finally back to full functions, but no longer inclined to take advantage of it, having reached a visible level of irritability.

BudIceIt must be said, this was just an ice storm, and certainly not all that rare around here – we see them at least every two years, and usually with the same results. There are countless preventive measures that would reduce the impact of these to trivial, among them trimming trees away from wires, cutting back the ridiculous number of unstable longneedle pines along the roads, and burying the utility cables. Most likely, the extremely shortsighted (or fucking lazy) powers-that-be think that the cost of doing these is much more than hiring emergency crews from several states away to try and handle the inevitable problems, but this has to be weighed against not just the immediate costs, but the dangerous crippling of services when power is lost, as well as the huge reduction in routine maintenance over the next decades – while it’s hard to dig up cables to make repairs, they also don’t need repairs every time there’s a fierce storm or some drunken bastard goes off the road. Lightning strikes have far fewer targets to hit and propagate along, construction crews don’t have to worry about overhead wires, and there’s even the serious improvement over appearance. These aren’t just speculation – residential areas not hopelessly mired in backwardness and feeble excuses have implemented these successfully, long ago, and can document their benefits. Even when I lived for 17 years in New York, with ten times the winter weather seen around here, we never went without power for more than a couple of hours – damyankees know how to handle winter. But this is the south, and its trademark is being proud of not learning a goddamn thing.

Okay, I feel better now, at least until the next routine winter storm makes southerners look dumber than shit. Again. We return to our regular programming.

First world problems

Al Denelsbeck

Many years ago I worked for an idiot landscaper, one that insisted the tiny little splash of color on his business cards had to be a precise shade of green – none other would do. Apparently he believed this made some difference, though somehow he never made the effort not to be an asshole; I would have thought that might make more of an impression, but what do I know? Anyway, that’s beside the point – I only bring it up to demonstrate that I’m not that bad in comparison.

I was about to print some more business cards of my own just now, and decided to create some new designs and tweak the old ones. I have gone with photos of course, actually having real photo prints made and cutting the cards out myself, which allows me to have several different designs at once without incurring a ridiculous set of printing fees. While I have two logos of sorts that appear on my letterheads, these are photos converted to line art; on the cards my ‘branding’ is just a particular font that I use over top of the background image, one that presents a set of problems all its own.

The font is Eras Demi ITC – it came along with some software long ago, but is not typically included in everyone’s package, and I had to search for it to install it within my computer’s TrueType fonts so all of my programs could access it. I do my photo editing in Photoshop CS2, which allows text to be added easily. Making business cards is no sweat then, right?

Not so fast. I use the font in italic form, but there’s something weird about this particular one. The option to alter it to either bold or italic, which can be found for most fonts, does not exist for this one – in Photoshop, anyway. I can do it easily in Word, for some reason. So, in order to use it, I have to type out what I want in Word, then copy it and paste it into Photoshop.

It pastes in with its own baggage, which is the background color, generally white. So I have to delete that to have just the font. This introduces the fun of anti-aliased images: in order not to produce ugly jagged edges, the pixels on the border of the text are blended with the background color to give a smoother appearance. When I select the white background to delete it, there still remains a thin border of pixels of varying shades of grey. Change the parameters of the selection to try and get rid of these, and it can actually end up turning the text slightly transparent for some godawful reason. Leaving the borders looks ugly.

Not only that, but if I decide to change the color while in Photoshop, the fill tends to eradicate this anti-aliasing and get a bit blotchy and jagged around the edges, looking even worse. So I try out a few colors to see what stands out the best against the background image, then carry that color into Word and set the text therein. To help with the anti-alias edge issue, I usually ‘highlight’ the text in a medium-grey tone, so the background is more neutral and doesn’t produce much in the way of border problems.

But wait! For reasons known only to Microsoft, the highlighting function accounts for normal fonts, but not slanty italic fonts, so it often ceases inside of the right side, where the leaning text overlaps the edge that a proper, upright text would remain within. Add some spaces, doesn’t matter, nothing happens – who would want to highlight empty space? So to have this background color extend past the end of the font completely, I end up adding three spaces and a period, which fools Word into thinking there’s more to the sentence. This, of course, has to be deleted out as well once it is pasted into Photoshop.

I actually have Illustrator CS2 installed on this machine, but no matter – it doesn’t recognize Eras Demi as a potential italicizable font any more than Photoshop does. I’ve also tried using Open Office because I really don’t like Word, but it has its own collection of quirks that makes exporting text painful.

“Use a different font, you idiot!” I heard you say earlier. I would, really – I’ve been through dozens; none of them have the look I like, either being plain or (and you’re familiar with this if you’ve ever gone seeking fonts for a particular use) unbelievably goofy-looking. There is apparently a strange subset of people who spend time making text look quite bizarre, and worthless for any reasonably normal function.

business card sampleWhat this means is, creating new business cards is a remarkably tedious process for something that really shouldn’t take that much time. I honestly consider all of the serif fonts like Times New Roman – those that need curlicues and bases hanging off all of the letters – to be ugly, so this is the price I pay for that opinion. I would also dearly love to find a distinctive semi-serif font, one that allows an easy distinction between uppercase “i” and lowercase “L,” but there are few of those around too.

The other issue I have with this font is that few computers have it installed, and most text-editing programs embed the type of font in the document as a tag – take the document you created and print it from a computer that does not have Eras Demi ITC installed, and it will be replaced by whatever the default font is, usually Times New Roman. This makes my letterhead look really hideous unless I purposefully save the document as a PDF, which makes the whole thing an image instead.

So every place you see that “Wading-In Photography” or “Walkabout” banner, here or on the home page or on my business cards and handouts, it’s an image, because you probably don’t have the font installed. And getting it there took more stupid fussing than it ever should have. I have no real idea how much this kind of thing affects people, but I’m hoping most find my choice at least a little snazzy looking. At least tell me you do, so I think the effort is worth it…

All too brief

Al Denelsbeck

new buds against glitter trailsOn Sunday, the temperature topped 22°c (72°f,) making me break out the sandals for the first time since November – they’re my summer footwear, if I’m wearing anything at all. I had a student, and these images came from our session out scouting conditions and planning for the busy season come spring. It was easy to believe it was here already.

Then came Monday, with the temperature plummeting below freezing and producing sleet and snow – nothing serious, but certainly a far cry from the previous day. Putting up these images is almost an act of defiance, as I sit here with cold feet and a runny nose (the computer resides in the coldest corner of the house) – kind of a, “pics or it didn’t happen” attitude.

This image is taken against the reflection of sunlight in the background pond, aperture wide open to render the sparkles as circles (from the shape of the lens element) instead of polygons (from the shape of the aperture opening.) The term for this line of sparkling water pointing towards the sun is ‘glitter trail’ – or at least, it is now. Formerly it was used for Liberace’s concert tour…

I don’t like to shoot a lot when I’m with a student, since this is their time, not mine – I’ll typically only do it when they’re in pursuit of their own images, as kind of a side activity and so they don’t get the impression I’m hovering over them watching everything they do. In some cases however, like this one, the point is to work together and bounce ideas off one another, seeing how many different ways any subject can be approached – everyone has their own style, but inspiration is always a useful tool. I purposefully offset the glitter trail to one side to reduce the direct glare into the lens – you can see the negative effect this can have with the lowermost bud. Then as I did the post-processing crop for this image, I specifically put the base of the branch right in the corner, because I prefer that kind of framing.

daffodil closeupIn some places the daffodils are in bloom, a species that often gets snowed on from the mid-latitudes on northward. I had gone low to put some complementary sky color in the background, and cropped this one much tighter for a semi-abstract feel – you still know what it is, but now it’s more dramatic shapes than simply a flower blossom. The light angle is a huge help here, not only sharply defining the rumpled texture of the petals, but also throwing a shadow behind the pollen organs that makes them stand out brightly. Almost unnoticeable details like this can make one image more interesting than the others, even when we may not be really sure why it is.

Once again, I’ll emphasize being willing to get into weird positions to create a better composition. I was lying full on my side, head almost on ground, to get the upwards angle necessary for this framing – to say that I get dirt stains and damp patches in odd locations on my clothing is an understatement, but the way I see it, big fat hairy deal. I occasionally carry kneepads and ground covers with me just for these purposes, but they’re cumbersome, so it isn’t often. I never worry too much about how I look to anyone – this is what I do. What’s funny is watching the students emulate me, no longer self-conscious about looking weird, or perhaps suddenly realizing how much decorum has held them back from creativity – only kids roll around on the ground, right? But if it helps you create a better image, something different and compelling, go for it. Discomfort is fleeting.

Now, this next bit came up while I was putting together this post, sparked by another student who is into black & white work. There are many ways to tackle this from a digital standpoint, not just from converting to greyscale. Digital images are composed of red, green, and blue dots (RGB colorspace,) separated into channels. Selecting just one of these channels and deleting the other two can produce quite interesting effects, depending on the colors within the original image, and I tried it out on the daffodil pic for giggles.

daffodil blue channelThis is just the blue channel, converted to greyscale after deleting the red and green channels. White is composed of all colors, and receives an equal representation among all three channels, so the mostly white bloom still came out bright. But yellow is the complementary, or opposing, color of blue in RGB space, so whatever is yellow tends to go darker in the blue channel, making the central trumpet stand out in greater contrast – more so than in any other channel, and much more so than simply converting the whole image to greyscale. The problem is, the blue channel tends to be the poorest in terms of quality, and why this is I cannot say right offhand – it could be typical of digital RGB files, or just a trait of my camera. But the sky especially went grainy and a bit blotchy, faintly visible at this resolution but truly ugly in larger versions. I could ‘shop this out easily enough for an arteestic print, but it still makes using solely the blue channel to be a little challenging.

I had no sooner mentioned to the student that he should keep an eye out for just such subjects when this next critter was spotted, taking advantage of the day.
basking stinkpot mud turtle
This basking mud turtle, likely a stinkpot (Sternotherus odoratus,) was remarkably patient with us, allowing some very close approaches without bolting from its sunbathing spot into the water, though I was using a long lens for this particular image. With any wildlife, get a few frames from a distance when first sighting it – the ‘proof’ shots, as it were. Waiting until you get the perfect framing may mean the animal bolts before you get that close, and you end up with nothing. This turtle did, eventually, duck back under, but not before we’d gotten within 2 meters – surprising, since most won’t allow anyone within 10 meters or more, and I’ve spooked some from better than 20. I’m aware that anyone reading might think it cruel that we chased the turtle back into the cold water after it got warmed up and should have left it alone, but it must be said that turtles weather far worse conditions than this, buried in the mud of the pond and lake bottoms – their systems handle it just fine, so we can’t judge from our own human perspective too readily. Living as it did on the edge of a housing development where people walked their dogs all the time, it would probably fare better being a bit more cautious, anyway.

The bright sunlight produced a lot of contrast, throwing deep shadows, so this image is assisted by some fill lighting – I mounted the flash to throw a little light into the shadow areas and brighten them up a bit, rendering them only half as dark as they had been. The turtle wasn’t going to be so cooperative as to raise its head enough to get sunlight onto an eye, which would have been much more dynamic a frame, and this was also as low as we were going to get without sinking into the mud of the pond bottom ourselves. You take what you can get.

Amateur naturalism, part six (again)

Al Denelsbeck

I admit to not applying myself to finding a new topic for the long-quiet category of amateur naturalism – if you could see me now, you’d know by my face how contrite I am. But baby critter season approaches, and so I am reposting this one from last year regarding injured and orphaned wildlife (and wildlife rehabilitation) in the hopes that it provides help to someone in need.

I used to work in this field a fair amount, both in administration of wildlife organizations and as an active raptor [birds of prey] rehabilitator, plus I served as wildlife adviser in several different situations. So I’m familiar with most of the more common reactions people have when they find ‘orphaned,’ injured, and ill wildlife. It’s hard to give enough useful information without trying to cover every situation or alternative, so treat this as an overview. One thing that I especially want to emphasize here is that there is an immediate emotional response in most cases, which tries to override the advice given by those who work in the fields, so be aware of it. There isn’t an ‘instinct’ we might have that applies to wildlife, and the rational mind is the part that needs to take control.

Additionally, the amount of folklore regarding wildlife is not just abundant, in most cases it’s ridiculously wrong. I’m not even going to say, “If in doubt…,” because you should doubt right off the bat, and consider that most of what you’ve heard is highly suspect. This means, contact someone who is supposed to know, and go with their advice.

Number one rule, and I can’t repeat this enough: Don’t try to raise wildlife on your own. Their diets are specialized, their needs varied and specific to the species, and their adult behavior dependent on how they’re raised. This isn’t the place for guesswork or experimentation. Even if they seem to be ‘doing well’ (like the viral video of the guy raising a baby hummingbird,) they may have developmental issues from an improper diet or exercise, or simply have imprinted on the wrong species, and you are in essence just prolonging the death of the animal. In the US, it’s illegal to raise any species without a specific permit, and songbirds are federally protected. It’s possible to obtain these permits, and quite frankly encouraged, because there are few places with enough rehabbers, but if you’re going to do it, do it right. More further down.

So, we’re about to enter baby bird season, and this accounts for a large percentage of wildlife encounters. I’ll dispel the first myth that touching a baby bird will cause the mother to abandon it. Utter hogwash, pure and simple – yet, I don’t always discourage parents from teaching this to their children, because it’s one way to try and get kids to leave them alone, which is a good thing. Better, perhaps, to teach them to leave them alone for the right reasons, which is to avoid interrupting their feeding schedule, or injuring them, or thinking it would be neat to have a pet robin. But returning to the myth, baby birds will occasionally fall from the nest, and it’s perfectly fine to return them to it, and in fact this is recommended.

It doesn’t always work, however. Some species will discard young that are not doing well, and some even kick their own siblings out – this is nature’s method of selecting the most viable offspring, as ruthless as we find it, and we’re not going to change it. Basically, if it’s a baby bird not ready to leave the nest (not fledged; we’ll return to this,) put it back. If it keeps coming out, there may not be much you can do.

Can’t reach the nest? Try to find a way, first. If that’s not possible, occasionally the parents will accept a substitute nest, such as a plastic berry basket with soft tissue as bedding – this should be placed as close as possible to the original nest, firmly anchored so it doesn’t come down. Observe the nest carefully, but from a safe distance, for 30-60 minutes to see if the parents have indeed found the substitute. If not, seek out a rehabilitator or wildlife official.

Abandoned nest? Maybe, maybe not. Once the eggs hatch, the parent birds go into feeding mode, gathering food constantly during daylight hours and stopping at the nest for brief periods to jam it down the gullets of their ravenous progeny. The 30-60 minute rule above is because waiting less may mean you’ve simply missed the brief feeding period between the extended gathering periods. Observation has to be done at a distance that does not alarm the parents – minimum is six meters (yards,) and more is recommended. Also, being low key is paramount, so take a seat (with binoculars, for preference) and remain still and quiet. Yes, it’s boring, but it’s for the health of the offspring, and if you didn’t care about that you wouldn’t be reading ;-)

fledglingsAs the nestlings become fledglings, they abandon the nest on their own in learning how to fly. This does mean that they’ll be found unable to fly, fluttering around at low level and even just sitting there staring at you. This is normal, and they should remain undisturbed. The parents are nearby, providing food and encouraging the flight attempts. Most bird species know enough not to give away their progeny’s locations to predators, or draw attention to themselves by moving a lot, so your ability to approach, or not being attacked by angry parents when you do so, means nothing at all. Again, observation is good here, as is knowing the calls of the species in question – the parents may be coaching their young towards them.

Now, telling the difference in ‘nestlings’ and ‘fledglings.’ A nestling is a baby bird that must remain in the nest for a while; they will have few feathers, or perhaps even odd ‘quills,’ which is what the feathers look like as they are growing out. Unable to support itself? Eyes not open? Nestling. Fledglings are the babies that are ready to learn how to fly. Their feathers will have good coverage with little to no stragglers or ‘stuffing coming out’ (the baby down.) One rule I always used over the phone was to ask if there were tail feathers – if there are, they’re about ready to fly. These are fledglings and should only be observed.

If in doubt, contact a rehabber/official. This is before doing anything else, save for getting it out of immediate danger. No food, no water, nothing at all. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard people say, “We’ve tried giving it water and worms” – birds can aspirate the water if it’s not given the way the parents do (you’ve noticed the beak getting jammed halfway down the throat, right?) and only one species in North America eats earthworms. Again, folklore – ignore it and be safe.

Also, bleeding in birds is serious, no matter what. Birds have very thin blood that doesn’t coagulate easily, and they can bleed out quickly. Also note that those ‘quills’ of new feathers mentioned above have a blood supply for a while, and these can be broken and start bleeding as well. Time is important in such situations.

HappyOwletBaby raptors will tear you up – they know how to use the beak and talons very early (often on their siblings) and will not hesitate to protect themselves. And adult raptors will protect their young. This is where it’s best to leave it to the experienced.

And it may seem funny to have to say this, but baby birds do not look like their parents. Adult kestrels and screech owls, both diminutive raptors, are often considered “babies” when found by those not familiar with what a real juvenile looks like. Basic rule: if it has a smooth appearance and good coverage of feathers, it’s at least fledgling age, probably older.

What about mammals? This is a little different – mammals are generally not found away from their parents unless something has gone wrong. Most especially, if the youngster’s eyes aren’t open, they’re wet from the rain or dew, or if they’re cold or dehydrated, this is the time to contact someone. Test for dehydration by gently pinching up the skin over the shoulders or side in a ‘tent’ and releasing – if the skin takes more than a second to go back into position, this is dehydration.

Always use gloves. Juvenile mammals can certainly bite, and there’s an additional risk to this: rabies is active throughout much of North America. This is an invariably fatal disease once it passes a certain point (much more so than HIV,) so this needs to be taken seriously. It is not just the bite that can transmit it, but contact of an infected animal’s saliva with mucous membranes can introduce it as well, which means that picking up a damp animal and rubbing your eyes puts you at risk. Animals do not have to be showing symptoms to be infectious, and symptoms vary anyway. BE SAFE.

It’s not just rabies. Mammals are far more likely to introduce other zoonotic issues than birds – they’re enough like us that parasites (internal and external) and some viruses can be transmitted to us. Bringing them into the house may mean you just introduced fleas, lice, giardia, and so on into your home. You’ve been warned.

possumpeepingAlso, and it pains me to have to always say this, but cute does not mean safe. Any animal can defend itself. I have never been bitten by a raccoon, despite their aggressiveness, but I have a scar and a touch of nerve damage from a grey squirrel – one, moreover, that was raised in a house. Rabbits and mice can bite the hell out of you. Shrews even have a toxic saliva. Yes, I am trying to scare you – if you’re scared, you’re cautious, which is better than incautious.

In many cases, mammals about half of the adult size can be on their own without issues – they learn how to forage for their own food reasonably quickly. Again, the stillness thing doesn’t mean they’re lost – it may simply mean they’re trying not to attract attention. This is especially so for white-tailed deer fawns – they often curl up in the grass and conserve energy while mom forages, and will not move even when someone approaches – occasionally not even when picked up. Leave them be, and come back in a few hours. If they’re still there, that’s when you should contact someone.

Rabbits are notorious for abandoning the nest if it’s been disturbed, even with a full brood of young within. This is doubly hazardous because their nests are often in clumps of grass and can be inadvertently discovered by cleaning the yard. If it happens, immediately put everything back as it was, without touching the young, and place a few distinctive blades of grass across the nest opening (preferably something you can see from at least a short distance away,) then leave it entirely alone. Come back in a few hours and check to see if the grass has been moved. If it has, things are probably okay. If not, it may be time to check the warmth and hydration of the young. Contact a rehabilitator.

Again, trying to raise them yourself puts them at a high risk. This is especially true for rabbits, which are among the hardest mammals to raise in North America. I can’t count the number of people who have assured me that they did it once before, so “they know how to do it.” While this may be true, it ignores numerous things, such as how viable the released offspring were and whether they lasted longer than a month, whether they had developmental deficiencies because of improper nutrition, and even whether they had habituated to food or behavior that left them ill-prepared for their conditions. There is a shortage of rehabilitators, so believe me, if it was easy most people would be encouraged to tackle this on their own. The fact that not only is it discouraged, it is unlawful in most areas, should be a good indication that there’s something more to consider. And the welfare of the animal should take higher precedence than anyone’s ego.

Injured animals are extra dangerous. Yes, they may seem incapacitated or helpless, but you know what they say about appearances. One of my colleagues rashly checked an injured, near-comatose squirrel bare-handed, and it bit through her finger, joining its teeth together in the fleshy part of her index finger – I actually heard them grinding together. It then passed out without letting go. Animals in pain (even pets) often respond aggressively – they have no concept of your attempts to help them, and restraint can make them even more agitated. Deer can do vast amounts of damage by thrashing with their hooves, and the big waterfowl like herons and cranes can drive that beak into your face (and yes, they aim for effectiveness.) I really want to emphasize this, because the nurturing instincts are badly misplaced here, and extreme caution is necessary instead.

“There’s a nest of animals in my attic/crawlspace/walls and they need to be removed!” No. Most especially not when they’re raising young, which is most often when anyone notices them. Once the young are there, no further damage is going to be done to your house, because the parents are concentrating on raising their brood. Trying to relocate them is hazardous, both to the animals and to people in many cases, and pointless. Let them be, and in a few weeks the young will be old enough and move out on their own – about the only exception to this is bat colonies (more below.) Once there are no young to raise, the adult animals often leave on their own – nests are primarily for young – but they can also be encouraged to leave or stay out at that point. Squirrels are pretty bad about wanting to return to successful nest areas, and will even chew through wire mesh at times, but most others take the hint and find better places to live.

“But what about rabies?” Animals raising young, even in the eaves of your house, are not an especially high risk. Contrary to belief, rabies does not cause animals to leap suddenly out and attack people; those events are remarkably rare. While anyone should be quite cautious of any mammals that openly approach, living near them does not place anyone at special risk – you’re at greater risk of being killed by the tree near the house falling on you, and we won’t even talk about road risks. Like snake bites, most contacts with rabies vector wildlife occurs by people initiating the contact.

beaverspoor“Animals are doing damage to my property and need to be removed!” No. I can’t tell you how much this attitude annoys me, but that’s what a blog is for, right? Wildlife goes where the habitat is ideal, and pays no attention to humankind’s imaginary idea of “property.” First off, anyone should enjoy the opportunity to see behavior, something that is often hard to accomplish even when making the effort. If someone has wildlife around, chances are they aren’t in a high-rise apartment, which means they wanted to live with at least some vestige of nature visible; surprise surprise, it comes with other animals. While we might decry the damages to our gardens or landscaping, that’s part of the territory, just like road noise and power lines. Learn how to cope, and the ways to exclude animals from certain areas so we can have tomatoes. I’m sorry that a $500 tree was stripped, but no one should have planted something that was that appealing to the local species in the first place, and chances are, numerous appropriate trees had been cut down first so that the fancy landscaping could be put in its place (and I used to work for a landscaper, too.)

Trapping and removal is rarely effective. If there’s a habitat, someone else will move in. And wildlife populations have been shown through numerous studies to be fairly self-regulating; the issues come because habitat destruction by humans is not. We can put in housing developments much faster than the natural cycles of population reduction and management, and those displaced animals end up somewhere. They likely feel the same way about us – dread the point where they develop opposable thumbs.

But what about bats? Ah, the poor little guys! Much of our population considers them ugly and creepy, not at all helped by folklore and horror stories, yet bats are actually way cool mammals, and good to keep the insects down. But most species nest in colonies, and this does sometimes mean in attics, which can produce lots of guano (bat poop) and increases the risks of rabies exposure, primarily when one gets lost and ends up within the human spaces of the house. However, the damage that they can do is minuscule, since they do not dig or gnaw, and excluding them only takes 1/4″ hardware cloth (small-holed wire mesh.) Again, this should be done when no young are being raised, and should always be done with gloves and a breath mask (guano turns into dust easily and can be inhaled.) Should you find a bat in your house, contact your local animal control, since states differ on how they handle potential exposures.

I said I’d get to this: So you want to learn how to rehabilitate wildlife? Once again, this is actually encouraged, but like riding a motorcycle, it should be done properly and responsibly. If there isn’t a wildlife center or organization available in your area, contact your regional Wildlife Resource Commission office (for the US at least) to find out who in your area can train you, and most especially what permissions you need. In the US you’ll need at least one permit, possibly several. What you’ll mostly need is training, because any species requires a decent body of knowledge to tackle well – which also means pick a species, at least to start. Your local rehabbers can suggest a few, which might mean picking something you didn’t initially desire, but which is either easier to learn or presents the greatest needs within an area (and again, is this about you, or the animals?) Expect to spend a lot of time at it, since most animals need lots of attention – mammals may need feedings every four hours around the clock, and birds every 15-30 minutes during daylight (yes, I knew a songbird rehabilitator that kept baby birds in the desk drawers of her office.) And it’s almost certainly all coming out of your own pocket.
SquirrelFeeding

I feel obligated to say this, too: wild animals are not pets, and should not be raised as such. There are lots of reasons. The domesticated animals we have as pets, like cats and dogs and horses, have been bred that way for thousands of years and quite likely were chosen because they already had traits that assisted the process. Animals do not domesticate by simply raising them around people, and in many cases have behaviors that cause them to run afoul of our own (I mention once again the squirrel scar I bear, and will post that story later on.) Many animals also do not have diets that are easy for humans to replicate, meaning that they’re unlikely to thrive and may develop serious disabilities. But most distinctly, what we might imagine them to be like is rarely ever the case – they are highly unlikely to bond with humans in the slightest, and aren’t going to make good companions, do tricks, or even exhibit any appealing personality. They belong in the wild, and that should be your only goal.

Now, if the demands of rehabilitation are too much to contemplate, you can always volunteer with a local organization, and do rehabilitation on a rotation as your schedule permits. This helps prevent burnout and lets you have vacations and family emergencies. This also allows you to get involved without necessarily requiring the permits, because you can operate under the aegis of the organization and its own permits (which is how I worked with raptors, since my apartment would not fit the 15-meter flight cages required.) Still, expect to be dedicated to the job, even when it’s unsavory – cleaning cages and wounds, and even euthanizing injured animals, is a requisite part of it all. Not to mention how many species expect live or fresh food. If you’re thinking of cuddling fluffy bunnies, you’re not ready; rehab requires lots of ugly stuff, and very little bonding – they’re not pets, but wildlife, and need to be wild.

Or, simply donate money or materials. That works too, and is just as necessary – the nice thing about the subject is how nearly everyone can find a niche (provided they accept the reasonable expectations.) Despite such things as Wildlife Resource Commissions and the US Fish & Wildlife Service, there really isn’t money being put into wildlife rehab, especially not from a state or federal level. The vast majority of organizations run solely on donations and grants, and often even have to have veterinary services donated. Experienced workers are great, but donors are just as important, if not more so. Even people who can promote greater donations are important. Just about everything is grass-roots level, all of the time – the few exceptions are great, and demonstrations of what can be done, but not what you can expect throughout the field. Your help, whatever it is, will be appreciated.

A final note: find out, now, how to contact your local wildlife people. Before you find yourself with an injured owl on your hands. In some areas, it’s not self-evident or easy to find, and if it’s not a registered organization, you can forget about searching any telephone listings. Local animal control usually knows, and the 24-hour emergency vets. Often, 911 operators do not, and even local law enforcement may be stumped. A few minutes to get prepared can save a lot of hassle later on, and as I said, we’re entering baby season.

Hope this helps!

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