Twenty Years
(This
1045th Buffalo Sunday News column was
first published on April 3, 2011.)
This
column completes twenty years of "Nature Watch". I'll mark this
occasion by reminiscing. Here are excerpts from a few early columns at this
time of year.
1991.
Little Valley. My first trail hike of the year. My
shins, calves and finally hips keep me informed. Three hen turkeys quietly feed
on the trail. Seeing me, they shoulder each other off the path and melt into
the woods. Along a ridge are several acres of blowdown.
The absence of overhead canopy encourages bare raspberry branches to tear at my
clothes. A fox sparrow, like a big, richly dressed and redder song sparrow,
works its way through the tangle.
1992. A confession: I joined a group that
sought to have the kingbird named our New York State bird. Of course our
insurrection was immediately crushed and the lovely Eastern bluebird continues
to represent us. There were many arguments in the kingbird's favor, but I
recall one telling criticism. A discerning opponent felt that the kingbird
represented one aspect of "our state personality" too well: our belligerence.
1993.
Hiking
the Erie Canal from Middleport to Brighton, near Hindsburg
I find dozens of dead bees curled in the snow. My bee-keeping friend Guy
Johnson informs me that these are drones, driven out of a nearby hive by the
female worker bees. This way food is conserved for the contributing members of
the colony. Perhaps the honey bee could serve as the
designated insect for N.O.W.
1994 How can you hide a baseball behind a pingpong ball? My father posed that puzzle to me when I was
about ten. His answer was instructive: it taught me about solar eclipses. The solution:
close one eye, hold the baseball at arm's length, and
with the other hand hold the pingpong ball between
your eye and the baseball. By adjusting the distance, you can find a point at
which the pingpong ball just hides the baseball. And
that, my father told me, is how the smaller moon hides the sun in a total solar
eclipse. The sun's diameter is 400 times that of the moon, but it is also
almost 400 times as far away.
1995. Skunk cabbage is at its best in March and April. Now you'll see a group of oddly attractive purple monk's hoods, each with a peak that bends forward to screen its interior. If you bruise that hood, you'll release that skunky smell, but if you are more careful, you may be able to detect (as I cannot) what some describe as a more appealing fruity odor.
1996. At the Clarence turf farms, we came upon
two rough-legged hawks that put on a spectacular show. They were
obviously courting, their soaring loops almost intersecting. When they
approached each other they would heel over on their sides and flash their
talons toward their partner. I hoped they would "grasp hands"
like we saw the Iroquois eagles do two years ago, but they never got quite
close enough.
1997. Along the Peanut Line Railroad pathway in Amherst I find many burdocks - and, indeed, they find me as well. My pants and jacket are festooned with burdock burrs. That is, of course, this hitchhiker's mode of transportation. Every burr is a bristly sphere of spears hooked like crochet needles. Many attached themselves to Velcro patches on my jacket, a case of the original adhering to its imitation.
1998. One of the best features of April is that favorite of children - and me as well - the pussy willow, a common shrub of low wet areas that is often "civilized" to form a garden hedge. Now their soft furry catkins have burst from under the varnished brown, tent-like bracts that protected them through the winter. Those gray pussyfeet invite stroking.
1999. I have only seen one weasel in a lifetime of outdoor activity. It was wintertime and the weasel was all white except for the tip of its tail, remarkably handsome in that soft, petable ermine coat and with a sleek body obviously built for speed. It seemed miniaturized: tiny ears, tiny beads for eyes, tiny dachshund-like legs. It stopped only briefly, rose erect on its hind legs and then bounded off.-- Gerry Rising