Today at 8 PM I was walking down to the gym and happened to look down. Almost camouflaged into the gravel was a dead bird. After hearing Professor Brandes talk about this in class and after showing my ,somewhat horrifying, video of a bird flying into a window for GORP I had finally seen it in real life. I have no idea what kind of bird this is but I’m assuming its a Hummingbird because those are most often the ones that fly into our windows? And I am assuming that this window at Kirby Sports Center is the culprit. After seeing this in real life it really stuck with me how awful this trend is. This seems like something that we can really fix, who cares about our campus architecture?!? There are birds dying out their because of our selfish actions!!!

If only I had a plastic bag handy I could have brought this victim into class and shown us all that this problem is real and just how horrific it is.

“‘You’re not going to kill it, are you?’ It was a question he tried to deflect by saying that the beavers were being captured alive in cage traps… His customers, on the other hand, usually didn’t ask. Asking would result in an answer they didn’t want to hear. They wanted to assume that the animals causing their problems would be removed by LaFountain and then relocated to some place where they could live happily ever after.” (65)

This passage illustrates the widespread ignorance towards environmental problems. While environmental issues are gaining recognition around the country, many still refuse to acknowledge human impact on our ecosystem and climate. Sometimes it is because of a fundamental difference in opinion, but more often than not, we can’t accept the impacts of our actions because we are too scared to acknowledge any wrong doing or any negative result.

In this passage, the people hiring LaFountain want to protect the trees around their house for their own aesthetic benefit. To them, the beaver is an enemy, but when they see it trapped in the cage, they are forced to accept that they are selling the animals life so that they can have a nicely landscaped property.

Every so often, a bunch of relevant things will align to create an incredibly ironic, yet meaningful, moment. While scrolling through Facebook, I came across this status posted by a good friend of mine:

So I turned around and saw this:

A bright and ever so appropriately spooky moon was creeping over Farinon. I replied to Colin’s status, implying how perfectly the moon fit the upcoming holiday. The following comment thread continued:

I found Colin’s first reply comment painfully ironic for the fact that Halloween, like most holidays with deep historical roots, is based off of the seasonal changes in the natural world. This prompted me to think “no, Colin, nature does not ‘know’ about Halloween and then, to keep in theme, decorate itself with an incredibly spooky, cloud covered moon” and consequently reply to his comment by flipping it around. Then, in a moment even more relevant to our class, Colin claimed that my correction made no sense! To me, this represents a phenomenon that is present throughout Nature Wars: despite the fact that we still live in the forest/nature, we often forget or ignore that nature has always shaped human culture and will continue to do so!

To further explain myself, I cited a page about the history of Halloween to prove that Halloween ‘knows about’ nature because it would not exist without the progressions of nature. (Aside: I have a tendency to include sources in my Facebook comments when I’m trying to argue with someone. Some find it annoying, I find it essential to any good internet disagreement.) Some may even argue that Halloween is the most appropriate example of a holiday that exists because of how nature interacts with and affects civilization. Our modern traditions still reflect the death that came with the beginning of the cold season in the representation of zombies, ghosts, and various spooky/scary/undead symbols of Halloween. We trek through corn mazes and carve pumpkins and make scarecrows out of hay. Exploring the history of Halloween could actually make for a great analysis of how human culture interacts with nature because Halloween knows about nature.

“By mid-1990s, Michigan’s whitetail population had exploded in the southern third of the state, where millions of acres of cleared cropland had gone out of production, grown up with trees, and been converted to deer friendly sprawl.”(104)

Sterba spends a major portion of this book discussing the species such as the whitetail deer and beaver that have returned as farmland becomes forest. What he does not address is that certain species such as the deer have thrived because they are tolerant of living on the edge of human development in these fragmented forests. As we have learned in my conservation biology class, most species are unlike the deer and do not do well in fragmented forests that come in contact with humans. These edge sensitive species are not likely to do well in any of these regrowth forests surrounded by humans and the ecosystems will not have much biodiversity, simply the few species that thrive on the edge.

“As people left the land, pines and birches and blackberries crowded into the neglected pastures and forests sprang up in old corn fields. Many of the homes, barns, schoolhouses, and wooden fences collapsed, leaving only their more durable remnants in woods that are now crisscrossed with trails descended from an abandoned network of rural roads” (44)

Extremely powerful imagery.

“Although the environmental damage was great, the words environment and ecology were not familiar at the time and weren’t a big concern. Far more important was the scary idea that the population might run out of trees”(31)

“Hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men” (19)

It is very interesting seeing how the collective mindset has shifted and changed over time.

After reading about how forests in the United States have changed since European settlement, I was curious about how that image would look from above. While looking for some sort of image that might demonstrate the trends Stirba discussed I found this image from NASA that shows exactly what Stirba was talking about. Based on satellite data, NASA has noticed as well that forests are regenerating and it is different growth. They have been able to observe this regenerative growth is different than what there was before as the forests have different albedos (reflectiveness of forests changed- different growth, lighter colored, different reflectivity) than they did in 1650.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/AncientForest/ancient_forest6.php

The idea of suburban and exurban sprawl presented by Sterba was quite an interesting historical relationship, so I did some further exploration on the topic.

“Data collected for the 2000 Census had revealed a demographic tipping point: For the first time an absolute majority of the American people lived not in cities, not on farms, but in an ever-expanding suburban and exurban sprawl in between. Never in history have so many people lived this way” (46). 

Today, suburbs are so incredibly common. If you ask someone where he or she is from, the answer is generalized to say the Philadelphia, New Haven, Rochester, Newark, etc. area, referring to a suburb of a major city, where his or her parents probably work.

“‘If you looked down at Connecticut from on high in the summer, what you’d see was mostly unbroken forest,’ he said. ‘If you did the same thing in late fall after the leaves have fallen from those trees, what you’d see was stockbrokers.'” (52).

This passage resonated with me because I am from Connecticut. I know that many people in the state live there for (slightly) more affordable living than New York City and for a reasonable commute into the city. If not New York City, many people will work in the few larger cities in the state and live just outside of the city. While this trend is a common one across the country, the passage seemed to sum up the state well.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/urban-sprawl/

The article above made me reflect back on the reading in Nature Wars as it discusses the irony of urban sprawl. The article notes that people living in developments may ask incredulously whether the adjacent farmland will be developed, which is quite ironic considering the land that these people live on was previously similar farmland. This makes me wonder whether people are really so unaware of how these idyllic suburban neighborhoods have developed across the land. People see their fulfilled American Dream in these homes, but it took a lot of destruction to get to that point. Although the article is a long one, it offers worthwhile commentary on urban sprawl.

Looking back on our recent trip to the Catskills, I have come to the realization that my entire hiking experience could be outlined based on the birds I saw and heard. It is only recently from my other class in Conservation Biology that I have learned how to amateurishly identify birds, but I find it interesting and important to understand the biodiversity of an area and birds are something very manageable to do. For this reason the rest of my blog post will be a timeline of the birds I saw going along with the flow of the hike and our trip in general, and the corresponding bird pictures .

The first bird I saw and heard was the Gray Catbird. It was during our initial hike up past the elderly hiking group. Right before I began the slight climb up to the group I stopped for a moment and heard a slight murmuring cat sound, looked to where it was coming, and saw two gray/white birds buzzing around the adjacent canopy.

The American crow was the second bird I believe I saw. This is based on the fact I believe it was different than the Raven Professor Brandes later pointed out. I did not sight this bird, but its call it very definitive and its possible I heard more than one while leading the hike up towards the ledges.

As everyone most likely witnessed and remembers, this is the North American Raven that went squawking by us when reminiscing up at the ledges. Its very similar to the American Crow in appearance , but is much larger.

My next sighting was a very memorable one for me personally. It happened when Erik, Tessa, and I plugged on ahead without the rest of the group. When we eventually stopped to think about whether to turn around, we were extremely silent for a few minutes and a downy woodpecker landed on a tree right behind us followed by a pack of 5-6 Black Capped Chickadees. The birds acted as if we weren’t even there; talking, buzzing, squeaking. Even when humans are quiet, it does not always equate to an area being quiet.

On the way back to the vans I heard a definitive Flicker coming from where the transition point was about 0.75mi away from the ledges. I know it was a Flicker… I just know.

The final bird I sighted was the Ovenbird Warbler. I had a hunch it was an ovenbird when I first spotted a brown bolt of movement on the other side of the road where the van was parked. Unlike the other birds, this one was on the ground with a few of its friends and they seemed like the fastest birds I had ever witnessed.

The trip really brought me to a place where I truly got to see some birds. In my previous bird sighting experiences during conservation biology lab, I had really only seen a few woodpeckers, a ton of blue jay, and a very scary, ominous great horned owl. When sighting at Mariton State Park, the site of my labs, I was told many times that it was not optimal bird sighting season, but I guess when you go into the actual wilderness it is always bird sighting season. To me going to the Catskills really clarifies and quantifies the severity of habitat fragmentation that has devastated so many state park areas over the years in terms of biodiversity. Nevertheless, it is still nice to know that there are areas like the Catskills where that is not the problem and so the diversity lives on.

This Sunday, my roommate and I decided to go pumpkin picking. I was in favor of finding a small, organic farm for our outing we opted to join the Lafayette Hillel group to go to Grim’s Orchard & Family Farms. As we pulled up to the farm, I realized this was like no other apple and pumpkin farm I had been to as a child. This was massive, crowded, and much more commercial. Though the farms in New Jersey (such as Alstede Farms in Chester) were quainter, they certainly drew a large crowd on autumn weekends. The large-scale of Grim’s was overwhelming. The shop for kettle corn, ice cream, and cider donuts was long and there was a large barn-like structure where jams, butter spreads, cider donuts, and fall decorations were sold.

rows of cars in the parking lot

how to harvest your apples!

wagons for your bounty

I find it interesting that autumn is the time when people (particularly in the Northeast) are most connected to harvest – autumn conjures images of corn, pumpkins, and apples – mainly taking the form of mazes, jack-o-lanterns, and lattes, donuts, pies or cider, respectively. How did it come to be that the the apple and the pumpkin became the iconic harvest of fall? We use a great deal of land for the production of these goods, yet we do not celebrate nutritious, organically grown produce to the same extent.

Take a look at the difference in the Grim’s website versus the Alstede website. Alstede also advertises organic diary products,  a commitment to “quality of life,” and a variety of vegetables in the today’s harvest section, while grim’s is dedicated to it’s maze, fall festivities and pumpkins. What if celebrating good, nutritious, diverse foods became the norm? How can Americans become more perceptive to seasonal foods instead of the commercial concept of seasons?

http://grimsgreenhouse.com/

http://alstedefarms.com/