Whilst Sunday Walking ...
10 August (with Video)
Rekindle Your Relationship with Nature, One Salamander at a Time
A TeDEX Talk by Dr Sara A. Gagné, Chair and Associate Professor of Landscape Ecology, UNC Charlotte
The key theme running through all my “Whilst Out Walking” newsletters has been introducing readers to the range of wildlife and plantlife that surrounds us in our urban neighbourhoods, if only we take the trouble to look as we move about. I have been watching a 15 minute video talk by an academic that treats exactly either this important subject … what’s more, she grew up in the town where I live and opens her talk with childhood memories of fluourescent salamanders in the arboretum that I have often mentioned here.
Take a quarter hour to watch and listen to her … here is the link.
I was particularly taken by a mention she makes of a study done with school children. Bird feeders were set up in their school grounds and for six weeks they fed the birds and watched them too. At the end when asked, they all said that they were sure the feeders and their activity had resulted in more birds than ever coming to the sites. In parallel, professionals were monitoring the birds and they found NO change in bird populations at all. The lesson? The birds had been there all along, but the children did not know how to look at them. QED
Back in 2005, a study by the National Wildlife Federation, NatureServe, and Smart Growth America found over 4,000 threatened and endangered species in the continental United States. The scientists conducting the study found that more than half, 60 percent, live within urban areas. And half of these species live in major metropolitan areas with populations exceeding one million people and which are also the fastest growing urban areas.
– from: Life in the city for endangered species, a post in the Green Dispatch Substack by Paul Hormick
Not unconnected from the above talk is the following, that I was already setting up for today’s newsletter before the video crossed my path:
Thinking About Plant Blindness (Reprise)
Substack’s algorithms pulled up a post I shared this time last year and suggested I re-post it. I don’t think you all need the full thing, but I had included this (now abbreviated) section which I am sure bears consideration by new readers … and so:
Our natural world is in trouble. It’s crucial that people are aware of the threat to biodiversity. Many people don’t care or don’t see the problem. We notice fewer butterflies in summer and less bird song, but we don’t see the impact on plants, which are essential to our existence. This inability to see the problem with plants has a name, but it lacks a solution.
“Plant blindness” is the term used to describe the inability to see plants in their natural environment. This lack of awareness leads to a focus on charismatic animal species over endangered plant species, despite their equal importance.
This blindness may start with an education system that unconsciously prioritizes animal biology over plant sciences, leading to limited knowledge about plant diversity, physiology, and ecology. Urbanization and digital lifestyles further disconnect people from nature. Ask yourself, what is the last bird or mammal you saw? Can you remember its colour, size and shape? Could you easily distinguish it from other animals? Now, how about the last plant you saw?
Studies suggest our brains seek visual cues to distinguish objects. A background of green plants is less distinct than a moving animal. This is important. I’ve noticed this problem because I’m often asked to help identify birds, insects, and common plants. I’m eager to help, but I often wonder how someone could go through life without knowing the name of a common plant.
People often feel overwhelmed by their lack of knowledge about these matters, even when they’re interested. Access to basic identification and the ability to name plants and birds can spark interest. I’ve seen this happen. I’m not alone in trying to show the natural world to neighbors and their kids. The internet and artificial intelligence can help, but they’re not infallible. Mind you, I wish I had these tools fifty years ago. A smartphone with an app can open people’s eyes and help them identify plants. PlantNet, iNaturalist, and Merlin (for birds) are the ones I use and recommend. To truly understand something, you have to know its name. Naming and identifying plant diversity encourages people to manage and protect their environment more efficiently.
In 2011, plants made up 57% of the US federal endangered species list but received less than 4% of federal endangered species funding. Similar patterns likely exist in other countries. Building emotional connections with ecosystems, species, and plants is crucial for conservation.
Many of us probably have the knowledge to help others see the world around them. Schools and parents should take kids on nature walks or simply pay attention during walks. A good starting point for children.
The Mead is at Its Best
August is the time of year when our garden really comes into its own as the mid-summer flowers start to show their colours. Usually people call what we have created a wild garden or a native garden or a pollinator garden, but we prefer to think of is as The Mead (or mini-meadow).
Creating Meads is a landscaping technique that goes back to the 1500s. It involves planting low-growing perennial flowers in mowed grass. The perennials aren’t planted randomly.. The mead was often surrounded by hedges within a walled garden. Benches were placed strategically around the mead so a garden stroller could sit and contemplate nature’s beauty. In medieval times to start a mead, your gardener went to a meadow and cut pieces of sod with native wildflowers growing in it to take back to the estate. In a perennial mead, you have to be diligent, persistently removing some seedlings and leaving others (and) cutting back the dead stems of the wildflowers at various times of year.
– edited extract from https://www.nnbw.com/news/2017/aug/14/joanne-skelly-landscaping-technique-has-intriguing/
The camera can show what you want it to show, not necessarily always what is there. The photo below looks across the garden from the house and, I know, it looks a pretty big area. In reality, this is a corner of suburbia and the rear garden is quite modest - perhaps 100x100ft … but careful planting and creation of curated sight lines magically double the apparent size. In 2017 we made the decision to convert what had been a fairly conventional, though well-stocked, garden into one with mostly native plants in order to attract more birds, bees and butterflies, and to eliminate any vestige of lawn. Who needs lawn, anyway? We certainly don’t.
The clumps of very tall, yellow flowers are Cut-leaf Coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata) which is tall, sometimes reaching 10 feet (2.5m) in height, with yellow disk and ray flowers. Far taller than other Rudbeckia species. In our garden it reaches about seven feet - taller than we are. The nectar and pollen of the flowerheads attract many kinds of insects, including long-tongued bees, short-tongued bees, predatory wasps, butterflies, skippers, moths, and various kinds of flies. Some of our plants have developed large galls near the base of the flowers - see the first photo below. These are induced by the summer generation ofAsphondylia rudbeckiaeconspicua, one of the Gall Midges (below)
Beside the pond and waterfall there is somewhere shady to sit. Earlier in the week I collected a load of wood chips from the town public works department and topped off the paths that enter the garden for those who like to wander - this is the gateway directly from the back door. Walking along that path, with a taller-than-me flowers on either side is feast of entomological discoveries. Discoveries, for example, like this Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) … quite a large lady, here wrapping herself a meal for later. We see these spiders most summers about now - a marker that summer is past its peak, rather like the Golden Rod that will be blooming very shortly. Autumn is over the horizon. They are quite large and have large webs to match, where they wait for prey to be trapped. When prey arrives, the spider will wrap it as shown in the photo and kill it by injecting venom. It’s hard to tell what this meal was, but I think a bumble bee.
Sitting in the sunroom looking at the garden at this time of year we are bombarded from above as squirrels release pine cones - big, hard ones - to rain down on the roof. BANG! There are times when it is dangerous to walk in the area. Having thrown the cones down they then forget about them for several days before chance puts them in the vicinity of each other and breakfast can begin.
New Birds in the Garden
For most birds, the nesting season is done with. A few like the Goldfinch are late nesters, waiting until thistle and zinnia seeds etc are available before getting down to it, while a few, such as Cardinals may try for a second brood … but for most it’s time to take it easy. This means that a number of garden birds are this year’s crop, just recently let out to explore the world. This young Song Sparrow, for example:
Those are genuinely new birds, being this year’s hatchlings, but recently we have begun to encounter a few individuals such as warblers popping up here and there. Generally speaking we see them in spring migration as they pass through on their way north to breed but not often thereafter. Even species that breed hereabouts - realistically we can’t compete with the arboretum, for example. Nevertheless, Yellow Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Cape-May Warbler and Bay-breasted Warbler have appeared and American Redstarts must have nested locally as we are seeing a couple almost daily - normally once, or at most twice, a year would be typical. There was a Baltimore Oriole early in the morning one day mid-week. Not especially rare birds, but also not usual garden birds either in mid to late summer. Nestlings leaving the nest and family group will account for some of it - in not many weeks early migrators will be on their way.
Twenty seven species in the garden between 7am and 8am this morning.
A wonderful seasonal bird we will never see here, but which we did see this week a few years ago while on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, was a mass, migration gathering of Semipalmated Sandpipers. This gathering on the muddy shoreline is one of the world’s great birding sights and we were fortunate to be there at the time. This picture shows just a few of thousands and thousands of the birds.
Over two million Semipalmated Sandpipers – roughly 75% of the world’s population -- move through the Fundy region en route from nesting grounds in the Canadian Sub-arctic to wintering areas in South America. By design, sandpipers return to the Bay of Fundy when food resources - mostly shrimp - in the mud flats are optimally available.
Walking Companions - A brief message
How well do you know your Song Sparrows?
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/secret-song-sparrows-success-genome/
Whether you are a gardener or not, you will enjoy this entertaining piece by a writer in Wales. Mostly about social interactions in allotments (community gardens) - it will bring a wry smile to your face, I am sure.
I was blessed with a father who was interested in, and planted, native Carolinian forest trees, and a mother who knew flowers and birds, at least the more common ones. And the luxury of a home with children's books identifying birds, flowers, trees and mammals. (Also, a puzzle to me a child, but one I became immensely grateful to as an adult) British plant and bird books they'd brought with them, so when I first went to the UK as an adult, I knew (mostly) what I was seeing. So much of feeling at home in a place, for me, is having a broad understanding of its landscape and ecosystem.