I love birds. I love my cat. I love my garden. Some would say that these are the ingredients for a perfect storm of potential bird carnage. However, with a little research, ingenuity, and diligence I believe that I have minimized the risk for my feathery friends
Coronavirus Nature Opportunities
While the Coronavirus raises havoc, it has also created an unprecedented opportunity for everyone to truly note, appreciate, and enjoy our surroundings, and experience nature from our own homes, gardens, and environments.
I have my own little ecosystem on a 4’ x 10’ balcony just outside my city condo, where nature’s drama plays out every day. Most of my personal contact with the animal kingdom rests with dogs, cats, guppies, goldfish, and a mountain lion I met napping on the hood of my car! I have ridden hunter-jumper through Torrey Pines Park chasing ecstatic hounds posing as foxes. In grad school, there were red fox dens in our stone Civil War wall and a cardinal who made her nest against our dining room window. We left seeds for the birds and meat for the foxes in Winter.
The Daily Commute of the Low-Flying Geese of Westchester California
The world-famous geese residing in Westchester, California, as everyone knows, love to hang out in the sunny green fields next to LAX airport during the day and watch the airplanes take off and land. They sit in amazement and discuss the size of the planes and try to distinguish between a Pratt & Whitney, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, or Rolls Royce, etc. They spend hour upon hour pondering the cutting edge engineering and technology involved in running one of the busiest airports in the world.
The Return of the White-crowned Sparrows
Wasp Puzzle
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya a few (OK, “many”) years ago, I taught physics at a rural secondary school and maintained a rear, prep area stocked with cabinets and shelves of paraphernalia for classroom demonstrations and laboratory assignments. Since the school was only about 8 miles north of the Equator, classrooms usually were open-air for natural ventilation.
A Swarm of Bees
A swarm of thousands of bees swooped into our front yard on a recent hot afternoon in October. The sound was incredible, buzzing so loudly that it attracted the attention of my neighbors. The bees quickly formed a cluster about double the size of a large football, piling up one on top of another in our bracelet myrtle tree. Then the buzzing stopped and they were calm.
FROM OUR READERS—The Spider and the Fly
A New Beginning, By Rachelle Arslan
Leaving California is never easy, especially when you’re fifteen years old. The night before my father’s job moved my family to St. Louis, Missouri, we had dinner at the Charthouse in Malibu. It was a pink and orange sunset. Seagulls gathered, uttering mournful cries that to my teenage ears sounded like painful goodbyes. I watched a pelican dive into the Pacific, pursuing its dinner beneath the waves. I turned my attention back to my plate. The thought of leaving my home state and its beautiful wildlife to move to the frigid Midwest had all but killed my appetite. I looked back out the window and saw a small pod of dolphins playfully chasing one another. I wanted to cry.
FROM OUR READERS: Springtime in South Pasadena During Covid Pandemic 2020
It has been an eventful spring. Early I spotted a pair of Red Whiskered Bulbuls, a first for me. They must have been nesting nearby, as I saw and heard them all season. Next our ravens returned daily, in the carrotwood tree, enjoying the large berries, in spite of the 'gang' of Northern Mockingbirds dive bombing them and hissing away. It went on all afternoon for all of a month, and then one day in June they all vanished.
