2012-02-12T15:57:31Z Ron Harton Copyright 2012, Ron Harton SPHPBLOG
I thought I’d take a day off and head up to Mariposa Grove in Yosemite to see what the wind was like in the Big Trees. I anticipated a great roar as the wind poured through the branches because the wind sounded like a freight train in the pines and oaks on our ridge.

When I arrived at the Lower Grove, there was no wind. Cold air had sunk into the basin overnight and remained at mid-morning. A few patches of old snow lined the parking lot.

I took the Outer Loop Trail, heading north first, quickly warming on the uphill trail. I stopped to shed a layer and stuff it into my daypack. In a couple of miles, I came to the top of the ridge, above the Upper Grove. The ridge drops down to Wawona on the north and the South Fork of the Merced on the east.

That’s where the wind hit. The wind raced down the Merced River canyon from the headwaters up in the snowy mountains by Red Peak Pass. My little thermometer sank from 45 to near freezing, and that didn’t count the windchill.

The Sugar Pines, Incense Cedars, and White Firs caught the wind in their branches and made it sing. After a lunch stop on windy Wawona Point (about 6,800 feet), I dropped down to the Sequoias of the Upper Grove. I searched the tops of the trees for signs of wind and listened for a roar. The smaller top branches moved sedately as if tossed by a spring breeze with hardly a sound. The trees handled the wind easily.



Looking at the massive trunks of the trees, some of which are almost 2,000 years old, I wondered how many windstorms they had endured. Perhaps this wind was nothing to what they felt, say in the fall of 1509 or during the big storm of the winter of 1173.

I followed the Outer Loop Trail on down the south side, where a fire had burned most of the cedars, firs, and pines. The trees were very exposed and the here wind hit them full force. Fir snags creaked in the wind, small branches and needles rained down. Yet here also, the branches of the Sequoias gently swayed. There were signs of recently fallen Sequoia branches--footlong sections of limbs, with needles and cones, but the trees themselves seemed little affected by the wind.

In several sections of the burn, nurseries had sprung up, featuring hundreds of Sequoia seedlings. I stopped to sit on a fallen tree and watch their tiny branches trembling in the wind. Only a few years old, they were just beginning life, and they hadn’t experienced many strong winds. A few of them will survive to maturity. Perhaps this wind will help drive their roots deeper, enabling them to withstand the blasts of the future.


]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry111202-140127 2011-12-02T00:00:00Z 2011-12-02T00:00:00Z
It’s comical to watch them try to balance on the slender top branches of the live oaks as the gorge on acorns. They swallow the acorns whole making large bulges in their crops. Then they flap noisily to one of the nearby lodgepole pines to sit while they process the food.

The acorn woodpeckers do not find them comical. A flock of fifty large pigeons consumes a prodigious amount of acorns and the acorn woodpeckers see their winter food supply dwindling. They rally their community to scold them from nearby trees and to fly out at the pigeons, but to no avail. The acorn woodpecker is not small, but at only 3 ounces, has no impact on the pigeons. The band-tails take no notice of them or any other birds.

Except hawks. Cooper’s and Red-tailed hawks live in the area. When a hawk flies by, the pigeons take off in a roar of flapping, circling the ridge in a synchronized formation until they deem the coast is clear.

The band-tails remind me of descriptions of the extinct passenger pigeons of eastern North America that flew over the forests, roosting and nesting in massive flocks that covered thousands of acres.

Like the passenger pigeons, band-tailed pigeons were also hunted for food. Birds of American (1917) records that great flocks ranged along the Pacific coast of North America. Market hunters shipped thousands of birds to Portland, Los Angeles and San Francisco as late as the winter of 1911 and 1912.

Judging from the noise and mess the flock of band-tailed pigeons on my ridge produces, the impact of the gigantic flocks of birds of the past must have been tremendous. The ecology of the continent must have altered with their disappearance, just as certainly as the local ecology of this ridge will be affected by the nomadic appearance of this flock.

The little snow stops the plow
The big snow stops the riverboats
(Chinese Proverb Trans. W.S. Merwin)]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry111113-114433 2011-11-13T00:00:00Z 2011-11-13T00:00:00Z


The south deck can only be accessed through the house, so on the way I started the coffee. Opening the sliding door to the deck, the loud calling of a saw-whet owl greeted me. It was somewhere in the dark, dense foliage of the live oak by the deck. As I listened, I heard another saw-whet owl answer from down by the meadow. Since they seemed to be having such a meaningful dialogue, I decided not to disturb them.

By then the coffee was ready, so I took a steaming mug out to the front porch. The moon was just coming over the mountains, so the night was still very dark. I had a great view of Orion and the meteors flashed overhead. The highest density I saw was four within a few seconds of each other.

Interestingly, right after that display, the owls really started calling, a lively discussion between the saw-whet owls, and down the canyon, a northern pygmy owl hooted in the background. Soon after that, goldfinches began chattering in a live oak, even though first light was still a half-hour away.

Were there connections between the meteors and the owls? I bet they noticed the meteors. I don’t think they miss much of what goes on in their night world. I don’t know whether their increased vocalization was because of the meteors, but it sure seemed like it.

There might have been a connection between the owls and the goldfinches. The call of the pygmy owl probably disturbed their slumber, and the goldfinches chirped cautions to each other to be careful as they took their early morning flights.

One thing I’m sure about was the connection between getting up early and my observations. All that excitement would have gone on as I slept. I would have missed discovering more about the world just outside my door.

]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry111024-121434 2011-10-24T00:00:00Z 2011-10-24T00:00:00Z
The snow gradually deepened, almost a foot in drifts along the trail. We could see the white granite crest of Buena Vista Peak shining in the sharp sunlight to the west. Bear tracks came from the west and joined the trail in front of us. Both front and rear paw prints with claws imprinted the snow. The bear was not far ahead. We were following it over the pass.



The snow in the trail was only about 6 inches deep, so the bear was walking its normal gait. It’s hind track was about 8 1/2 inches, not counting claw imprints, making it an average size California Black bear. The bear seemed to be coming from a high rocky area under the peak and heading straight on the trail for Buena Vista Lake in a small cirque under the north face of the peak.

We looked around for possible food sources in that area, but there weren’t many berries in that area. Lodgepole and white pines dominated the forest. Since black bears forage in the day and fall is approaching, we thought the bear might be seeking some high protein foods around the lake.

The bear led us on around the peak to a windy ridge overlooking the high country of the Sierra Nevada. From there the trail switches back to the west side of Buena Vista Lake, but the bear left the trail and headed down through deeper snow to the northwest side.

We stopped for lunch, sitting on granite ledges, looking out on the back of Half Dome, Red Peak and all the way across the range north to Sawtooth Ridge above Twin Lakes.



Later, at the lake, we saw the northwest side of the lake was thick with scrub. Perhaps some of the bushes still had berries, and the bear, while we lunched on the pass, was down enjoying lunch by the lake.

We never saw the bear, but we felt like it was our companion on the trail for a brief time in our fall journey.

An excellent guide for identifying and following animal tracks of all kinds is The Tracker's Field Guide by James C. Lowery.

]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry111017-144020 2011-10-17T00:00:00Z 2011-10-17T00:00:00Z
A Northern Saw-whet Owl lives around my house. Earlier in the summer, in June and July, I heard it in the Live Oaks on the edge of the little meadow at the bottom of the ridge. Last evening and this morning, it called from the oaks right by the front porch, a steady quick series of barks that some think sounds like a lumber jack’s saw being whetted or sharpened with a file.



Birds of America (1917) edited by Gilbert Pearson and John Burroughs lists an old name for the bird as the Acadian Owl. Acadia is a region of North America extending from Quebec and Nova Scotia down into Maine, hence the “Northern” attached to saw-whet. However, the owl ranges through much of North America, but it doesn’t inhabit the northern parts of Canada or Alaska.

The small, eight-inch owl likes to nest and roost in old woodpecker holes and to dine on mice and other small rodents. We have plenty of woodpecker holes in the trees around our house. The heavy snowstorm at the end of last March left many snags, and the acorn woodpeckers made some new holes this year. Perhaps the owl uses one of their old abandoned holes.

A new book, The Owl and the Woodpecker (2008) by Paul Bannick beautifully portrays in words, photos and sounds the relationships between the two species.

Drawing on his vast experience, Alexander Wetmore, wrote the section on owls in Water, Prey, and Game Birds of North America (1965, National Geographic) in a personal, anecdotal style. Look for used copies of it with plastic sound records in a back pocket.

Hearing an owl’s call, draws me into the night world, a world filled with drama and intrigue. It sparks my imagination to recreate that world in my mind. One day I want to try to recreate that world in writing, the way David Rains Wallace did in The Dark Range: A Naturalist’s Night Notebook (1978).

I’m going to listen for the Northern Saw-whet Owl again this evening and tomorrow at first light. I hope he decides to stick around for the winter.
]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110921-131524 2011-09-21T00:00:00Z 2011-09-21T00:00:00Z
Finding the trailhead can sometimes be the hardest part of a hike. Yesterday, I planned to hike to Grizzly Lake. I had seen it on the map many times, and it isn’t too far away, so I thought I’d give it a try.
The map indicates a trail leading from Sky Ranch Road, dropping down into a canyon and ending at a small isolated lake. From the lake, a stream tumbles down the canyon into the South Fork of the Merced River.

On the way up the road, I stopped at Fresno Dome. A couple of weeks ago, I found a community of Fringed Pine-sap (Pleuricospora fimbriolata), a white mycotrophic wildflower that is far less common than the red Snowplant and Pinedrops. I wanted to check on the plants and take a photo.


The plants, sheltered under Douglas fir, red fir and Jeffrey Pine, had begun to dry in the late summer heat, without making any berries. Small mammals like to eat the berries, but it looks like they will be out of luck this year. I wonder what made the plants start out so vigorously and then come to a screeching halt.

Mycotrophic plants have no chlorophyll. Instead they draw sustenance from a fungus that lives symbiotically on the roots of other plants

The meadow downslope from the Pine-sap is still moist and cool, alive with the calls of Wilson and yellow warblers, nuthatches, and chickadees. The aspen are lush green and their heart-shaped leaves shimmered in the breeze. But up the hill, the duff under the trees is powdery dry.

My guess is that the late spring caused the plant to emerge only days before the sun slanted through the canopy that had been thinned by late storms. The strong sun dried out the forest floor and the pine-sap.

I drove another six miles searching for the trailhead. I didn’t think it would be marked, yet I hoped I could find it. A number of new logging roads and jeep trails crisscross the area. They aren’t on my map, and that complicated my search. I found what I thought might be the trail, but there was no place to park on that section of the narrow dirt road. I made a note to get a new map and I drove on to the end of the road.

The road ends near the boundary of Yosemite National Park (California) at the Quartz Mountain Trailhead. That one was easy for me to find since I couldn’t drive any farther and there is a big sign marking the trail.

I hadn’t walked fifty yards before a pine marten (Martes americana) came bounding up the trail toward me. It saw me, stopped and rose up on its legs. Then it bounded a little closer, stopping not more than ten yards away. It checked me out once more and, leaving the trail to me, hopped through the duff, up on a log and ran out of sight.


Martens are not common in this part of the world. They once were, but trapping and development have caused a great decline. Now they are considered indicator species. (See the Science article on indicator species. If martens are present, then the experts consider it a sign that the forest is being managed effectively.

This one seemed right at home. The forest in that area is full of large, old growth trees. There is no sign of recent logging, no development of any kind. In fact, I hiked the rest of the day, down to Gravelly Ford on the Merced River and then following its cascades up toward Chain of Lakes, and I didn’t see another person. I kept the inquisitive little face of the marten in my mind all day long.
]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110905-174035 2011-09-05T00:00:00Z 2011-09-05T00:00:00Z
I hiked yesterday out of Nelder Grove, near Yosemite National Park in California, at about 1700 meters. The trail winds through the territory of ancient sequoias that survived the logging industry of 140 years ago. I was surprised to find, so late in August, characteristics of early summer or even late spring.

The cool mixed deciduous and coniferous forest was alive with birds, which I had expected. Most had already nested and were busy about their own feeding. I watched a Townsend’s Warbler find and devour a green caterpillar almost half its length. I also found a family of young robins, the juveniles just old enough to hop around the scrub, flapping vigorously.



In the Nelder Creek basin, I found ripe gooseberries, red and prickly, a few meters away from blooming dogwood and bluebells. Most of the various species of lupines were already dispersing their seeds, but there were spots where it was still in peak bloom. The bright red paintbrush was just opening in full bloom, but there were no hummingbirds in sight.

High in the giant Sequoias, the clusters of cones were forming and the cones of the sugar pine were still small and green. Of course, small for a sugar pine cone is about 15 centimeters since a full grown cone is 30 to 45 centimeters.

It seemed like the seasons were mixed. In some places on the trail, it seemed like late spring or early summer in others it seemed like late summer. spring was late in arriving this year due to late heavy snows. High mountain passes, usually almost snow free by now, are still buried several meters deep.

I wonder if fall and the arrival of rain and snow will be late this year. Some people try to predict the months ahead by looking at the animals’ activities or the production of acorns. It seems to me that those are more reactions to the past seasons than predictions of future ones.

One thing that I love about nature is the way it keeps surprising me. Within the regular cycle of the seasons, within the constant rhythm of day and night, within the boundaries of species and habitat, the life of the individual in nature surprises and delights.
A Surprising Season]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110819-153719 2011-08-19T00:00:00Z 2011-08-19T00:00:00Z
For birds that cannot soar, God provides the low branches. --Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernières.

A hermit thrush fluttered like a falling leaf through the sprinkling rain down onto the sandstone walk by my study window. Every year for the past fifteen years, I have had one, and only one, hermit thrush visitor during the winter months.

The hermit thrush left last spring about April 10. I like to think it is the same one returning, but I don’t know that.

For the first five years, I was living in a different house, a few blocks away. A hermit thrush visited every winter there. I wonder if there is still one coming to that house. The yards have a common denominator: they both have tangles of ivy and shrubs along the edges. That is where the thrushes like to hang out, hopping from the lower branches to probe the ground for worms or fallen berries and then jumping and flicking back into the shrubs after insects and spiders.

The bird visiting my garden is dark and has probably descended from Alaska or Canada to stay here in the mild California winter. Last spring, he even sang a bit from my neighbor’s junipers that line the yard.

The hermit thrush is a good companion. In its eyes, I see myself reflected, a kindred soul. “You don’t befriend a Hermit Thrush by storm, but with quietude and reverence,” David Gaines in Birds of Yosemite.

Somehow he reminds me of Christmas: making a long journey; lodging in the lowly, dark neglected places other call undesirable; alone, isolated, seldom seen, ignored. He only flits by my windows a few times a day, but he always pulls me back into his world--to the small, gentle wildness close to home.]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry101220-140541 2010-12-20T00:00:00Z 2010-12-20T00:00:00Z
I live in a neighborhood of walkers--some are out for exercise, some are walking dogs or children, others are just out for a stroll.

I’m walking a lot slower these days, but I’ve found I notice a lot more as I walk. The world looks radically different at different speeds. (I wonder if that is part of Einstein’s theory of relativity.)

I am rereading Edwin Way Teale’s Journey Into Summer and came across this encouraging passage in chapter two, “Walking Down a River.”



“…The way to become acquainted with an area intimately, to appreciate it best, is to walk over it. And the slower the walk the better. For a naturalist, the most productive pace is a snail’s pace. A large part of his walk is often spent standing still. A mile an hour may well be fast enough. For his goal is different from that of the pedestrian. It is not how far he goes that counts; it is not how fast he goes; it is how much he sees.”

The spirit of Teale’s passage is so antithetical to the “spirit of the outdoors” portrayed today in the media, even in so-called nature magazines. The emphasis—and it isn’t new, just more dominant—is on extreme activities in the outdoors: how far can a person go in how little time while using how many electronic devices.

Teale goes on to say, “To one observer a thing means so much; to another the same thing means almost nothing. As the poet William Blake wrote in one of his letters: ‘The Tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way.’”

One thing I’ve seen recently, that I would not have seen at a faster pace is walking honeybees. Last week, the last of the lemon flowers dried up and the bees have forsaken it. But before they did, I observed in the late afternoon, on two separate days, honeybees walking “home” from the lemon tree.

I had been watching the bees take off from the tree and head south down a narrow passage between the garage and the house—flying off to their hive somewhere else in the neighborhood. I have a bench that I sit on against the garage wall because it catches the late sun just right and I can feel the sun warm my body and soul once more before it sets. The bees would fly past me and zip up and over the fence.

On two consecutive days, I saw two honeybees walk down the sidewalk in front of me, walking the route that the other bees had flown. As I observed them, I saw that they took the same route: down the sidewalk, on to the garden path, and then right into the grass where they disappeared.

I don’t use any pesticides, but the bees could have been suffering from pesticide poisoning from a neighbor’s tree, or they could have been suffering from mites or some other bee disease. But the interesting thing to me is that they were walking the flying route home. Somehow, they had retained enough memory of the homing communication, that even in the last stage of life, unable to fly, they were moving home.

I can’t imagine that they made it. I feel certain their lives ended somewhere in the grass jungle of my lawn, but they were giving it a try.

Those honey bees may be a good symbol for a lot of us these days. Poisoned by one of the many diseases of modern life, we can no longer fly for home. But retaining some memory of the idea of home, we limp along toward it somewhere, trying, vainly, to find the place called home before we die.

Next year, as I eat the lemons they pollinated, I will remember those bees.
]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100509-201811 2010-05-10T00:00:00Z 2010-05-10T00:00:00Z
The house sparrows nesting in the neighbor’s tile roof have finished this round of nest building and settled into, quieter, probably incubationary duties. This week, their nest building antics afforded me two new observations about their behavior and raised several questions.

Earlier in the week, a hailstorm rolled up the valley with lightning that knocked out power, pelting rain and hail up to the size of a quarter. A mourning dove had built a nest in the plum tree just outside my kitchen window and chose to ride out the storm in the nest—sitting stoically for hours, pelted and rocked by the elements—even though there was no egg in the nest. That evening she abandoned the nest and did not return the next day.

The next day, a house sparrow couple flew into the plum tree and began to look over the mourning dove nest. They seemed very cautious, not approaching it directly, but hopping from branch to branch, drawing gradually closer. Then, with the male standing guard on a branch about a foot away and above the nest, the female house sparrow hopped into the nest and began rummaging through it—obviously looking for building materials. She found some pine needles to her liking, so she flew off with them, leaving the male in the tree perched on guard.

After a few minutes, the female sparrow returned and rummaged some more, found another item and flew away. This continued for about an hour—the female deconstructing the nest and the male hopping about to various on-guard locations.

It was certainly a very logical action. I have read of birds using other birds’ nests for building materials although I had never seen it with my own eyes.

The question their behavior raises has to do with their consciousness of doing something “wrong.” They obviously knew they were taking something that did not “belong” to them and they knew they could get in trouble for it. From whom? A mourning dove? I don’t think I have ever seen a mourning dove fight a sparrow. I would bet on the sparrow!

Can it be that house sparrows have clear social mores of right and wrong that carry over between species, rules that apply foremost to their own social group? That observation seemed to indicate a general application of a species specific social code.
The second house sparrow observation happened a day after the dismantling of the mourning dove nest. Apparently the major nest construction was finished and now the final touches were being added. Several males and females busied themselves at a patch of brass buttons growing between the bricks on my driveway. This non-native wildflower (cotula australis) has soft fern-like leaves and small, round rayless flowers. The sparrows were breaking off leafy stems with flower heads on them and flying them up into the nesting sites in the tile roof.

That new observation also leads to a question: are the leaves providing something in addition to a soft nesting cushion? Could the plant have a medicinal or pesticide quality? The leaves and flowers do have a strong, chamomile-like scent when crushed.

I may never know, but the birds sure seemed pleased with their find. They are such successful breeders, they must be doing something right.
]]> http://www.naturewriting.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100423-200922 2010-04-24T00:00:00Z 2010-04-24T00:00:00Z