A walk, a kestrel and a cop'straffic stop

Seeing the American kestrel pumping its tail up and down while perched on a high desert tree just down-slope from I-84 a few days ago spurred lots of good memories of the many times Monica and I spotted kestrels during our time afield on the Bloomsburg Christmas Bird Count.

They were all special.

I was exercise-walking on the Mountain Home Pathways System at the time of my latest sighting. Point-and-shoot camera in hand, I studied the bird as truck traffic roared by on Interstate 84 just 25 or so yards away.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology: “North America’s littlest falcon, the American Kestrel packs a predator’s fierce intensity into its small body. It's one of the most colorful of all raptors: the male’s slate-blue head and wings contrast elegantly with his rusty-red back and tail; the female has the same warm reddish on her wings, back, and tail. Hunting for insects and other small prey in open territory, kestrels perch on wires or poles, or hover facing into the wind, flapping and adjusting their long tails to stay in place. Kestrels are declining in parts of their range; you can help them by putting up nest boxes.”

I once tried doing just that on a friend’s farm in Butler Township. Just seconds after I anchored the box to a 25-foot utility pole, European starlings flew to it in hopes of making the box their own nest site. So that was that.

Walking, not driving a car, made the sighting possible. For one thing, the Mountain Home Pathways System is for walkers and people who chose to burn calories, not gasoline, by rollerblading, running, jogging, walking or cycling.

It’s fun, most importantly. But it’s also the best and most productive way to explore one’s community and its natural areas. I look forward to each day’s trek with that, more than anything else, in mind as I head out.

America, though, is very much a car-centric place. An incident this past Thursday brought that point home – again.

This is what I wrote in an e-mail to friends and family: “Filled with energy, my afternoon fitness walk took me out American Legion Boulevard and to the trailhead for the Mountain Home Pathways System. While crossing (n the crosswalk, of course) North 8^th Street I was nearly taken out by a motorist turning left off American Legion onto 8^th. I was about two-thirds of the way across the street when a motorist cut in front of me, perhaps four feet from my knees. Too bad for her that a city police officer was right behind her and pulled her over.

“I continued walking (now on the sidewalk of 8^th) while hoping that the cop had indeed stopped the motorist for violating the traffic code (not yielding the right-of-way to a pedestrian in the crosswalk). Eventually, just as I was walking past the golf course clubhouse, the officer stopped her cruiser to chat. She had indeed stopped the motorist for a right-of-way violation.

“I thanked her and she wished me a safe walk. And that was that

“In my life, I’ve been taken to the ground three times by motor vehicles (the tally does not include the time a man opened the driver’s-side door of his parked car just as I was passing on my bicycle. That happened in Pocatello, Idaho, while, as a working college student, I toiled for the city parks and recreation department. Painfully hurt, my father, than a professor at Idaho State University, rescued me.

“One of those three resulted in a traumatic brain injury.

“I’ve been in lots of close calls as well: One in Vermont, one on Langley Air Force Base, Va. (in front of the officers’ club) and another in Oklahoma.

“The walk began at 3:15; I was home at 6.”

A follow-on word: In my years of covering state and local police work in and around Hazleton, I learned early on that most police officers really do like to known as “cops.”

It’s now two minutes past 1 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time) on the following Saturday and the sun is out. With yesterday’s incident tucked away in my daily journal, I’ll be out again in another hour; most likely trekking on the same route.

Why walk when one can drive a car? Because a long walk is the best time of day in which to do some good thinking. It’s also the prime time to watch nature and learn about our world.

And one never stops learning.

Anyone for a long walk? Hey, there might be a kestrel out there.

Neb. court ruling removes hurdle for Keystone pipeline

The Cornhusker state appears to not care about its natural heritage, nor that of the country, never mind planet Earth. Read about the legal eagle debacle.

FWS studying pssible listing for Monarch

This just in from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced it will be conducting a status review of the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Service has determined that a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Dr. Lincoln Brower to list a subspecies of monarch (Danaus plexippus plexippus) presents substantial information indicating that listing may be warranted. 

Monarch butterflies are found throughout the United States and some populations migrate vast distances across multiple generations each year. Many monarchs fly between the U.S., Mexico and Canada – a journey of over 3,000 miles. This journey has become more perilous for many monarchs because of threats along their migratory paths and on their breeding and wintering grounds. Threats include habitat loss – particularly the loss of milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s sole food source – and mortality resulting from pesticide use. Monarch populations have declined significantly in recent years.

The Service will now conduct a status review to determine whether listing is warranted. To ensure this status review is comprehensive, the Service is requesting scientific and commercial data and other information through a 60-day public information period. Specifically, the Service seeks information including:

• The subspecies’ biology, range and population trends, habitat requirements, genetics and taxonomy;
• Historical and current range, including distribution patterns;
• Historical and current population levels and current and projected trends;
• The life history or behavior of the monarch butterfly that has not yet been documented;
• Thermo-tolerance range and microclimate requirements of the monarch butterfly;
• Past and ongoing conservation measures for the subspecies, its habitat or both;  and,
• Factors that are the basis for making a listing determination under section 4(a) of the ESA;

The notice will publish in the Federal Register December 31, 2014, and it is requested that information be received by March 2, 2015. To view the notice and submit information, visit www.regulations.gov docket number FWS-R3-ES-2014-0056.

For more information on the ESA’s petition process, visit http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/listing-petition-process.html.

Thoughts on water and how humans waste it

In years of walking (for fitness and exploration of the surroundings) in Conyngham borough, Pa., passing by a water-wasting activity was a given each summer. While house-hunting in southwestern Idaho last summer, I again saw such waste.

A first thought then andc now was always: I wonder how Californians would think if they could see this?

That “this” was the watering of concrete sidewalks and the adjacent asphalt street; almost as if watering such an impervious surface would, ultimately, cause it to grow. (The little pellets of lawn fertilizer scattered across the asphalt/concrete would also help matters – and roots – along.)

Another water-wasting activity: Watering an already-green turf farm (aka the lawn) at the height of a summer day, prime-time for evaporation.

Here are some water facts published by the Lake Champlain Committee of Burlington, Vt.:

-        While 75 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, less than one percent is available for human use;

-        More than one trillion – yes “trillion” – gallons of water are wasted each year in the U.S. alone due to east-to-fix leaks in homes;

-        Letting a faucet run for five minutes uses about as much energy as keeping a 60-watt light bulb on for 14 hours (something I see daily in my Idaho neighborhood);

-        Fifty percent of the water used for watering gardens and lawns (aka turf farms) is wasted due to over-watering;

-        The average American uses 100 gallons of water each day, enough to fill 1,600 glasses with drinking water.

A phone chat yesterday with a longtime friend and fellow naturalist who lives near Nescopeck borough included this observation: The Colorado River, from which Las Vegas, southern California and a whole lot of the urban Southwest get their water, is drying up. The bathtub rings of the (fake) Lake Mead, the reservoir created by Hoover Dam, continue dropping further and further downhill as the water level continues receding.

No other substance, it’s easy to argue, has greater importance to Wild Nature than does water. The Wood Ducks I spotted with binoculars in my first visits in the 1990s to what became Nescopeck State Park were present on the floodplain of Nescopeck Creek because of water and quality habitat.

And birding on Christmas Bird Count teams near Bloomsburgh and Tunkhanock and Wyalusing were always more fruitful, fun and exciting when the quiet water of ponds and the flowing water of the Susquehanna kept both Bald Eagles and wintering waterfowl present in good numbers.

The sad ethos of the green all-American lawn calls for massive infusions of water and chemicals. The city in Idaho where I now live even warns homeowners to watch our for and remove the first weeds that might show themselves in Spring.

One more thought: Wasting water also wastes energy. The biggest use of electricity in many municipalities is supplying water and cleaning it up after its been used (aka “consumed”).

A lot of energy is used to collect, transport, treat and deliver water and wastewater. Water must be pumped from its source to its end use in homes, apartments, businesses and institutions like schools then collected again for post-use treatment.

Reducing water use and fixing leaks saves money and lessens demands on the energy-intensive systems that deliver, treat and heat water

There would be no Wood Ducks – or a lot of other wildlife and flora – were it not for clean water.

Just what is 'available' land?

Western states like Idaho, which I now call home, are rich in public lands.

And they’re a heritage today’s older generation ought to be protecting at all cost – 100 percent – as a legacy for future generations.

Americans who remember the first Persian Gulf War ought to remember the late Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf. A recent visit to the land/water/nature shop operated in Boise by our federal land management agencies yielded a copy of a wonderful poster titled “Wildlife and Wildlands.” It’s focused on quotes and ideas from the historic Army leader on the safe enjoyment of public land and the wildlife that lives on it.

The poster rightly focuses on the Pacific Northwest, but I’ll paraphrase the general, for his words and thoughts apply equally well to public lands in Pennsylvania and the rest of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

Our wildlife in the Northeast – from the Jersey and New York shores across the Delaware and Hudson rivers and on into and beyond the Allegheny Mountains – is a heritage for which we are responsible.

As my Nescopeck-area friend Autumn has reminded me, “wild land is a treasure, not a ‘resource’.”

Schwarzkopf: “I encourage each and every one of you to practice and share with others the responsible stewardship techniques listed on this poster to help make your outdoor activities rewarding and safe for both you and our precious wildlife.”

That wildlife is not represented by just the always-diminishing population of grizzle bears in and around Yellowstone National Park. It’s also the woodland salamanders, wood frogs and American toads and red-eyed vireos of forest environs protected in places like Nescopeck and Ricketts Glen state parks.

Wildlife, though, pays no heed to the artificial boundary lines written on the land by human things like property deeds and the lines of incorporation created by the formal governmental standing of boroughs, townships and cities.

The slogan that appears on many states’ wildlife license plates – “Conserving Natural Resources” – ought to instead read: “Conserving our natural heritage.”

Long-distance walking and hiking are great times to think and ponder. That’s how it was the first time I trekked – both to burn calories and get out and explore a bit – out of Conyngham borough on East County Road.

And it’s the same notion that spurs me to go for long fitness walks today across local sections of the Great Basin Desert at Mountain Home, Idaho.

Among the questions I’ve considered on recent forays is this: What do folks think about as they carve out a new road, driveway and housing pad in what, until a bulldozer showed up, was wild land replete with native flora and fauna?

It would take many an interview and an armful of questionnaires to get anywhere near the point of answering that question.

But it remains something that not only borough council members and township supervisors should consider and think through before blessing more “development” of land that real estate posters describe as
“available.”

"The things I feel very strongly about are education, the war on drugs, the environment and conservation and wildlife,” the general once told People magazine.

More people, more scars upon the land

Most folks, I’m sure, have long forgotten him. But sometimes a story or happening stirs up the memory pot and it all comes rushing back to the fore.

An e-mail note from a longtime friend in Pennsylvania’s north country served as the stirring post for me in this bucket of memories.

It helped matters – a lot – that I just happened to be working on the Standard-speaker’s night Associated Press wire desk at the time. The job then and now, I think, revolves around selecting the key state, national and international news articles that ought to be in next morning’s edition, given their overall importance to the readership.

Among the news stories running on the AP wire that evening in 1997 was the obituary of singer John Denver, who had died when his private aircraft crashed into Monterey Bay, Calif.

Denver – the son of an Air Force fighter pilot – had many hit songs through his lengthy career and life. One constant in his work, though, was this: Denver often sang about the land – wild and natural land.

Veteran Pennsylvania conservationist and advocate for things wild and free, Ed Zygmunt, wrote this in response to a note I had shared with him and other friends: “This story brings to mind the lyrics from one of my all-time favorite songs, ‘Rocky Mountain High’ by John Denver: ‘More people, more scars upon the land’," Denver sang.

Here’s the note I wrote to which Ed responded: “As all of you know, I've been railing about the evils of sprawl development for a long time, as in decades. Well, it is true that I now live in a sprawl development. I cannot tell if Mountain Home [Idaho] is now a bedroom town for Boise (50 miles) or is simply growing to feed its own maw. In any case, I crossed paths yesterday with the real estate pro who worked with me to find my new home. Nice fellow. But as we're talking, he notes, with pride in his voice, that the 100-acre sagebrush steppe land across the main drag will be bulldozed starting next spring for more sprawl development. I didn't have the chutzpah to tell him that just days before I had spotted and photographed real live Sage Grouse on that same land.

“Little wonder that our natural heritage continues sliding down.”

Spend time out-of-doors and sooner, rather than later, you’ll see one of the scars upon the land that Denver sang about. Yes, Colorado, is a far hike from Pennsylvania, but the scars always have one thing in common: They degrade and destroy habitat needed by our natural heritage.

In my many years of transiting the Pennsylvania countryside between Hazleton and the suburbs of Wilmington, Del., on the way to Air Force Reserve duty at an air base in coastal Virginia, I passed many such scars: New roads, new subdivisions, new fast-food fry pits, new parking lots, new turf farms, etc. They all had this in common (and still do): Each meant wrecking a natural area to make way for human progress.

Twenty years before Denver’s passing, while I was cub reporting for an Idaho weekly newspaper that today is long gone, the editor-publisher swooped into the tiny newsroom and proclaimed that singer Elvis Presley had just died. The date was Aug. 16, 1977 and I was just months away from starting my career in the Air Force.

Elvis sang about love and having a good time, but he didn’t sing about the land, as Denver did.

Our diminishing natural heritage needs more defenders and advocates in the mold of Denver.