A Pine Siskin (Image: Brendan McGarry)

As we go about our lives, the rest of the world keeps moving. Seasons change, animals and plants enact glorious revivals, tremendous gatherings and movements, that we take various approaches to noticing. All too often we miss great natural events in urban spaces, either because we are simply too distracted or don’t know where or when to look. Sometimes it’s simply that our spaces don’t support such events.

And sometimes we do notice, because they’re too hard to miss. The Eastern Cottontail Rabbit population explosion of the past couple years. Or this winter: the initial joy of Pine Siskin flocks at our bird feeders — a moment that quickly backpedaled into dismay.

If you don’t feed birds or don’t watch them as religiously as some, I wouldn’t put it past you to have missed the bevies of tiny finches. However, if during this dark winter, you were constantly at home you might have found new (or renewed) relief in bird feeding. It’s entirely likely that a few people reading started feeding birds for the first time in 2020, realizing how fun it can be to see our neighbors up close and personal. This isn’t just a posit: during the spring of 2020 Instacart searches for “Bird Food” rose by as much as 450%.

The birds
Pine Siskins are small, brownish finches with embellishments of yellow in their wings and tails. They are extremely gregarious, exploding into noisy flight, filling the tops of alder and conifers to find the winter seeds they subsist on. Siskins flocks are hard to miss once you know their intensity.

Though they are a northerly species, they are year-round residents on the Hill (though most head for the forest in summer) and mountainous areas of western North America all the way into northern Mexico enjoy them as such also. Siskin populations are deeply influenced by coniferous seed crops, so much so that in some years we have huge numbers and others they are entirely absent. Many finches have similar ways of responding to the variability of food and live irruptive, nomadic lives across much of their ranges.

Especially epic eruptions of finches are called “superflights.” Not only do Pine Siskins show up, but their enticing cousins do as well. Redpolls, crossbills, and grosbeaks, all are reliant on cone crops in winter. Only sometimes that food isn’t there. Continue reading →

A Townsend’s Warbler in San Francisco (Image: Wikipedia)

I own dozens of field guides. Field guides to Pacific Northwest Flora and Fauna. Field Guides to the birds of South East Asia. Field guides to places I have yet to travel to. Field guides my partner sincerely wishes to never have to fill a box with and move ever again, except to a used bookstore or better yet, the dump. I love to peruse these satin paged compendiums of knowledge, these promises of where and when I can see a bird or a plant. Even the smallest of field guides — say, if there were a “Birds of Capitol Hill Seattle” — would be compelling.

They are more than mere guides to nature.

Opening field guides you see lots of things: descriptions, range maps, illustrations, and names, so many names. If you’re lucky, you might have a guide that shares colloquial names or indigenous names.

You might also notice a common thread.

While there are certainly a bulk of “Chestnut-backed” Chickadees and “Northern” Flickers, there’s also a lot of organisms named after people. And if you took a moment, you would find that the vast majority of these names are from dead white men. Continue reading →

(Image: Seattle.gov)

Growing up in Seattle, summers meant good things: weather warm enough for swimming, time to poke about on foot, and blackberries by the handful.

I gorged on the fruit wherever I wandered. There was never any worry I wouldn’t find them either, because Rubus armeniacus, the Himalayan Blackberry, was everywhere.

Those of us on the Hill who spare thought for plants likely have a complicated relationship with blackberries. As a former arborist, I can say they make working in overgrown areas of the Greater Duwamish hellish. As a gardener, there are few more unwelcome guests. As a human who doesn’t appreciate their skin being perforated and cares deeply for native flora and fauna, I’m increasingly less of a fan. And yet, I love their berries and I frequently have my eye on arcing, sundrenched patches both for birds and fruit.

But let’s back up a moment for the folks that are new to the area or have never considered this: Himalayan (also known as Armenian) Blackberries are an introduced species native to Armenia and Northern Iran. They were brought here for their heavy production of large, delicious berries that spill from hardy, fast growing stalks. Give them a moment anywhere on the Hill and they will take over. Continue reading →

(Image: Eric Anderson with permission to CHS)

(Image: Eric Anderson with permission to CHS)

Every morning for the past several months I have opened my eyes at dawn to a combined joy and anxiety. I hear the dawn chorus of birds defending territory and displaying their sex appeal.

I also hear the voices shouting for change. Now waking up to bird song isn’t quite as simple and dreamy; and naturalizing needs to be examined more thoroughly. And yet, I am still present in it all — migratory songbirds are an ephemeral pleasure that buoy the spirits, lending the endurance needed to strike down hate and inequity. Appreciating birds has often been a practice in mindfulness, helpful in other aspects of life.

As a person who enjoys nature at home, the nearby wildness that melds with my everyday, I secretly dread summer near sea level. My better half finds this absurd. Typically this is the time of sun and beach and tans (or sunburns for me) and reprieve from the gray. However, as a birder I’ve enjoyed the slight extra space I had to meditate on backyard birds this spring. It’s brought a moment of peace to wake up with birdsong before the waves of despair flow in. And now it feels like it’s all over. Mornings are significantly quieter.

Continue reading →

A pinned Asian giant hornet, one of two found in Washington State (Image: Washington State Department of Agriculture)

Alongside the very serious things happening in the world at this very moment, and with Capitol Hill being an epicenter, in particular, the natural world keeps churning. I am not writing this as a tone deaf naturalist, nor as someone who completely separates environmental harm from racial injustice (they often go hand in hand). I write this because the 24-hour news cycle can tend to drive us towards myopia, and in the worst cases can lead to serious misunderstandings about many things in the world, including nature. For the past month or so, the term “Murder Hornet” has kept drifting into my feed and it’s time to talk about this insect, and this term.

Let’s start off by dispelling the term “Murder Hornet.” The species in question is the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia, the largest species of hornet in the world, native to much of East Asia. Nearly all species in the family Vespidae are predators and the Asian giant hornet is no different, with a taste for colonies of wasps as well as social bees, like honey bees. Asian giant hornets are no more murders than Bald Eagles are. They merely hunt prey and are good at what they do.

And they are here in Washington.

Continue reading →