Kathleen Kudlinski

The sight was so cute it made me smile. Mr. and Mrs. Goose had stepped out this morning between rain showers to parade their fluffy babies around the pond. They swam as engine and caboose to a tightly coupled little train of six wee goslings. Papa stormed ahead, head held high, neck feathers fluffed to make his manly neck look even more forbidding. Mama Goose watched over her flocklet, keeping the line tight. There was no daylight between any of them gander, goslings, and goose; no space for a predator to dart in and attack.

Two days ago the babes were tinier, new hatchlings, perhaps. My husband watched them in infant-guard battle formation. Mr and Mrs motored side by side through the water with only enough room between them for a flocklet of fuzzies. They swam in such a tight little bunch that Hank couldn't count them. He could barely see them - and that was the point. They were almost invisible to predators.

The parents made the shift from infant to child guarding smoothly. They didn't think it through or discuss it with each other. Nobody told them the best way to guard their offspring with their bodies - and their very lives..

May Day is known world wide (except in the USA) as a worker's or labor holiday. Mom and Pops Goose were not frolicking about this morning enjoying the lovely flowers of spring. They were working in the most harrowing, labor intensive job around with the most demanding boss of all. Instinct told them exactly what to do. The geese had no alternative but to obey. The survival of the species was at risk.

The adorable little scene only looked sweet to me until I thought about what lay beneath it: raw fear and selfless, mindless bravery. It was a scene of life fighting for survival.

All the abnormally summery weather of the past few weeks confused our trees. They somehow 'decided' to pop their bud scales weeks early. Their tiny leaves spread wide, pumped full of sap drawn up from tree roots far, far below.

And then the weather reversed itself. We've had a week of near-frosts.

The Trees appear to have regretted their optimism. They can't suck the leaves back into the safety of their tough bud scales, but they've done the next best thing. The trees have halted leaf growth. (more…)

Tonight, and every night this week, Venus reigns, a brilliant white disc glowing in the west just after the sun goes down. Jupiter, almost as bright appears above as the sky darkens. The planets are so bright and shine so steadily that they are clearly not sparkly, twinkling stars.

Astonishingly all the light from those two planets is simply a reflection of our own sun's brilliance. Photons of light leave the sun, travel through space, bounce off those planets, careem back at light speed (of course) direcly back into your retina. This is such magic!

But it gets better. Venus and Jupiter will seem to draw closer and closer together in our evening skies for weeks. And soon another heaveny body will join them, adding even more drama to the display. Stop back for updates.

Hi, all -
There hasn't been much activity on this site lately, though I've been writing up a wild storm elsewhere.
All of November, I'm taking the write-a-novel-in-a-month challenge.(go to NaNoWriMo.com)
It is taking all of my effort to reach the breathtaking goal of 50,000 words (or more) by November 30.
Last month I was furiously writing on another children's novel to get it done before NaNoWriMo took over my life. (I didn't, quite.)
Come December, I'll be back delighting in nature with you daily.
Take care-
And let me know what you are seeing outdoors while I'm chained here to my keyboard.
Kathleen

Hi!
It is my birthday.
If I were a dog, I'd be dead by now. (That, from a thoughtful birthday card from my daughter.)

I've outlived most small creatures by a half century or more (though it horrifies me to type it out!)Most living species have at least one upper limit on the number of times cells can divide. For humans, this is called the Hayflick limit, although number of cell divisions does not strictly control lifespan. Non-dividing cells and dividing cells lived 122 years in the oldest known human.

Thank goodness I am not expecting to live THAT long!

Nor am I going to have to get gnarly like an old plant.

A giant sequoia, General Sherman is alive and well in its third millennium. A Great Basin Bristlecone Pine called Methuselah is 4,841 years old and the Bristlecone Pine called Prometheus was at least 4,844 years when cut down in '64. The oldest known plant (possibly oldest living thing) is a creosote bush in the Mojave Desert called King Clone at about 11,700 years.

One species of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, reverts to a sexually immature stage after reproducing, rather than dying as in other jellyfish. So this species is biologically immortal.

Not me!
I'm just happy to have one more birthday. Next year we can see if I will renew this life contract for another year.

Our sweet little love birds (2, unrelated) turned out to be a male and a female. They, of course, produced a nesting and 2 related young - whom I gave away. But the original pair went right back to work. Now here are five. I could deal with that.

But someone (and I don't know whom)has laid six egs.

We surely don't need eleven lovebirds! And then what...? 2 - 5 - 11 - 23 - 47??? That doesn't begin to count in all the young who will come online as egg layers along the way.

Populations are like that but their growth can be stopped. If they run out of water the birds will all die. But I give them all the water and food they need. Space? My husband and I are alkready talking about getting a new, bigger cage. We already clean the cage daily, so they will not foul this nest, nor would they poison themselves in a larger space.

There seems to be no limiting factor to their population growth. With no limits, a group reproduces slowly at first, but then exponentially. Sooner or sooner, we will have to do something to avoid overpopulation.

But what?

This is the crisis that dare not say its name for fear of inciting angry responses. It needs a calm assesment. Overpopulation is true. It is global. And it affects all life on earth.

October will mark man's population on earth reachng 7 Billion. I'll be blogging abut what this means for nature from now until we reach that mark.

MAN SWARM AND THE KILLING OF WILDLIFE, Dave Foreman's new book stands out from most writing on overpopulation by focusing on the devastating impact our population explosion is having on plants and animals. Overpopulation is bad for humans, he writes, "but it is much worse news for other Earthlings . . . who are taking a far worse beating than we are for our devil-may-care childishness and greed. Long ago we overshot Earth's carrying capacity for keeping wild things hale and hearty."

It is fall. All of our nesting birds and their young are gone. Their birdhouses have stood empty and silent - until today.

One of our bluebird houses started squalking loudly. The muffled sounds of fluttering wings and scratching claws seemed to signal wild conflict trapped inside.

As we crept closer to investigate, first one, then another downy woodpecker shot out of the doorway and streaked into the nearest tree.

What were they doing fighting inside a bird box at this season? I do not know - and that's embarassing. I am "The Naturalist" at The Sunday New Haven Register. I should know, but only have guesses. The birds could be following insects into the used bird house and squabbling over an easy meal. They might have been scoping out the box for shelter in the coming winter storms. They could also be this year's young, just trying out the concept of selecting - and agreeing upon - a nesting site.

The observation was accurate and priceless. I'll need to do some research online and among friends (that's you!) for confirmation - or correction - of my woodpecker behavioral guesses.

Anybody out there can help?

"Where have the birds all gone?" I complained to my husband. "You filled the feeders. Did you buy really cheap food, all ground corn, or what?

"Look around," my endlessly patient husband said. So I did. The milkweed pods are bursting with seeds. Berries and fruits hang heavy on every plant. Seed heads droop from grasses, Queen Anne's Lace, mulliens, and hundreds of other plants are out there offering "my" birds a better mix of food than Hank could ever buy at a pet food store.

The birds will flock back to our feeders when they've cleaned out the all-natural buffet table.