3 March 2010



Watchers at the Pond, by Franklin Russell was the first nature writing book I purchased. A traveling book fair came to our rural Florida school several times a year and students were allowed to order books we saw on display. I was captivated by the cover and idea of Watchers.

I spent a lot of time wandering out through the scrub along the river near our house. I was a watcher already. I loved to sit and watch the birds and insects as they went about their business, seemingly totally unconcerned with my presence.

And that is the basis of Watchers at the Pond. Russell uses his journalist’s training to construct the life of the animals and plants at a northern pond. Growing up in central Florida, I didn’t know much about snow and ice, and the book let me in on the mysteries of the changes that deep cold brings to life.

The book doesn’t romanticize nature. It clearly relates how life can only exist in a balance of death and life. I remember being upset at his account of the turtle eating the young ducklings, snatching them from below while the mother, confused by the unseen attacker, tried to lead the survivors to safety.

That chapter ends with these words:

The trees were filled with young birds who were as vulnerable as the ducklings. At dusk, the woods between the marsh and the pond tingled with the mellifluous runs and trills of the hermit thrush. It was a song of survival and of re-creation. Death did not break the promise of endless generations of young creatures springing into life at the pond.

This book has all the things that I enjoy in a nature writing book. It has the description of how the life of a place goes through the cycles of existence; it gives me new knowledge about the natural world; it provides though-provoking comments that make me consider life and death from other vantage points. It doesn’t include human interaction with nature in the text, yet as I reread it now, I realize that it does with its point of view. The point of view is third-person omniscient. There are many animals that are watchers in the book. As I read, I become a different kind of watcher. I am the human element, unnamed, but present.

It is the human presence that can tie all the little pieces together. No other creature in his story of the pond does that. In my mind, I am the watcher rising above the pond, seeing and connecting all the interactions and contradictions--holding those in my mind and letting all the associations they bring form and swirl in my mind.

The Florida scrub where I rambled as a boy, is gone now under houses and shopping malls, but fifty years later, Watchers at the Pond still brings back the feeling of excitement and discovery I had as I watched the world cycle around me.

Other Books by Franklin Russell
The Secret Islands 1966
The Sea Has Wings 1973
A Season on the Plain 1975
Wild Creatures 1975

26 January 2010
One of the events that I have enjoyed the past couple of years is the Great Backyard Bird Count, http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/howto.html, sponsored by Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

This year the GBBC will be held during February 12-15. The idea is to count all the birds that you see in one location on one day. You can count in more than one location on more than one day if you want to, but the only requirement is one 15-minute period in one location on one day. The birds seen are entered into the Cornell database for analysts to look at bird population movements, increases, declines, and diversity from year to year.

It’s a good opportunity to participate in science and have a great time. I’ve participated by observing the birds from my small urban yard, but I’ve seen some interesting birds. The Cooper’s hawk that hunts pigeons and doves in our neighborhood obliged me with an appearance in a neighbor’s tree, and a swarm of bushtits came chattering through one year.

I enjoy counting the several orange-crowned warblers that visit my hummingbird feeder regularly. Their winter coloration differs enough so that I think I can tell the individuals apart. There haven’t been any kinglets at the feeder this year, but they may appear by February.

How many birds make up a good count? Well, what you don’t see is as important as what you do.The scientists use the data of what is not seen in a location. For me, I enjoy the few common birds that co-inhabit my city home space in winter. I enjoy the busy house sparrows that roost in tiles of my neighbor’s roof and the mourning doves that catch the slanty summer sun in my backyard flowerbed. I like the common birds.

Those common birds and I are not great travelers. We won’t be flying off to Mexico or Hawaii for a vacation adventure. We’ll be right here in the backyard trying to keep life going one day at a time. That is a pretty big adventure—doing the little everyday things that make a life. It will be fun to wake up February 12 and know we all count.

25 January 2010

I recently walked down to my local nursery, Gazebo Gardens, to buy some tomato seeds. It was a wonderful, bright sunny day: a rose pruning class was going on in the rose section and several people were perusing the many varieties of bare root roses for sale.

I overheard two women talking about the weather. “Well, it feels like spring,” one said. The other responded, “But winter isn’t over yet, not by a long shot.”

Sometimes, here in central California it is hard to remember what season it is. It did feel like spring. Sometimes, by the end of January or in early February, here in the Central Valley, the almonds are blooming.

Sure enough, when I arrived home, I checked the plum outside my kitchen window and saw that the maroon flower buds have begun to swell and little white petals are showing at the tips.

I like the traditional Chinese system of twenty-four seasons. The names are very descriptive and the many divisions mark the passing of the year in a way that increases awareness of the continuous turning of the earth better than the four seasons.

There is a website that calculates the Chinese seasons for each year and location: http://www.chineseastrologyonline.com/S ... oints.htm.

Sometimes it seems that the seasons vary so much from year to year that they can only be realized in the moment and demarcated in retrospect. For example in our area we are now in the season of Cold Rain. It began on January 16 and it may continue for the rest of January. What happens in this season? Rain, cold temperatures (for our area), and … I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, my tomato seedlings are already up in their little mini greenhouse, and the plum buds continue to swell.