While Jean and I no longer attend meetings of the Southern Oregon Beekeepers Association, the meetings are a little too far away for us, I still subscribe to their email updates. Thus that’s how I was informed of a most incredible set of photographs on the National Geographic website. Here’s how the article opens:
Researchers take advantage of photography technology developed by the U.S. Army to capture beautiful portraits of bees native to North America.
Text by Jane J. Lee
Photography by Sam Droege, USGS
Bees are the workhorses of the insect world. By transferring pollen from one plant to another, they ensure the next generation of the fruits, nuts, vegetables, and wildflowers we so enjoy.
There are 4,000 species of North American bees living north of Mexico, says Sam Droege, head of the bee inventory and monitoring program at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Only 40 of them are introduced species, including the European honeybee. (See “Pictures: Colored Honey Made by Candy-Eating French Bees.”)
Most of the natives are overlooked because “a lot of them are super tiny,” Droege says. “The bulk of the bees in the area are about half the size of a honeybee.”
The native species also go unnoticed because they don’t sting, he adds. They quietly go about their business gathering pollen from flowers in gardens, near sand dunes, or on the edges of parks.
The bee pictured above is a species of carpenter bee from the Dominican Republic known as Xylocopa mordax. It nests in wood or yucca stems, and is closely related to the U.S. species that chews through the wood in backyard decks.
Trust me when I say that to view these images, and more, in their breathtaking beauty you need to go here and revel in what you see and read. Plus, in the text above I didn’t include the many links that are in the Nat Geo site’s version – so go there!
The natural world is so deserving of man’s care and protection.
I ran out of writing time yesterday so looked for a quick and easy post to offer you.
Not that that undervalues what is presented; far from it!
George Monbiot’s essays are frequently on topics that concern him and rightly so. However, last Thursday George published an essay that offers real hope to those that want to see an end to the ceaseless news of lost species. It is called Otter Joy and is published with George Monbiot’s kind permission.
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Otter Joy
The return of Britain’s otters offers a glimpse of rewilding’s great rewards
By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 7th May 2015
I spent last week travelling with my family across the Scottish Highlands, meeting land managers to discuss possibilities of rewilding. The speed of change there is astonishing, and opportunities for a mass restoration of living systems are emerging faster than I could have imagined even a year ago. I’ll be writing about this in a few weeks, when Rewilding Britain is launched.
But for now I want to talk not about the practicalities of rewilding but about its essence: the reason why this idea excites and inspires me so much that I’ve chosen to devote much of the rest of my life to it.
During our tour across the Highlands we stopped for a few days in the village of Shieldaig, at the head of a sea loch on the west coast. We took a cottage overlooking Shieldaig Island, partly because, for the past few years, white-tailed eagles have been nesting there. After becoming extinct in Britain in 1916, this magnificent bird, bigger than a golden eagle, was reintroduced to the island of Rum in 1975. It has been spreading slowly along the west coast. (It could have moved further across Scotland were it not for shooting and poisoning by grouse estates and others). This is one of the species I would love to see returning to much of the rest of Britain.
Unfortunately, the eagles have chosen another place to nest this year. But there were other returning species to see. I woke one morning when it was still dark, and lay in bed until I heard the song thrush in the sycamore behind the cottage start to sing. I slipped out as the light began to rise over the hills.
There’s a path that leads out of the village, winding north over the headlands and around the small bays of Loch Shieldaig. The willow warblers in the trees along the path had started to sing, and from behind the crest of a hill I heard the cry of an unfamiliar raptor – listening later to recordings, I felt it might have been a white-tailed eagle. There was not a tremor of wind and the air was clear. I could see the promontories and islands stepping away for many miles across a polished sea.
As I came over a low ridge, I noticed a disturbance in the water below me, a few metres from the shore. I dropped into the heather and watched. A moment later, two small heads broke from the sea, then the creatures arced over and disappeared again.
After another moment, the larger one – the dog otter – scrambled out of the water with something thrashing in its mouth. He dropped it onto the rocks, gripped it again, then chewed it up. Then the bitch emerged from the sea beside him, also carrying something, that she dispatched just as quickly. They plunged in again, and I watched the trails of bubbles they made as they rummaged round the roots of the kelp that filled the shallow bay.
When they emerged once more, each with a fish in its mouth, I was able to identify the quarry. They were catching rocklings: small, very slippery fish of the same olive-brown as the kelp. Over the next half hour, each of them caught about fifteen. I marvelled at their ability to grab such difficult prey. I loved the slick, swift movements with which they dived and dolphined and twisted underwater. It looked to me like an expression of pure joy.
Hiding among the rocks and heath, I could keep ahead of the otters without being seen, as they foraged round the coast. As the cliffs became lower, I found myself coming ever closer to them. Then, though I don’t know why, the otters emerged from the water without fish, shook themselves out, and climbed up the rocks, long low bodies undulating, towards me. The dog grunted and huffed while his mate made a high whickering noise. They kept raising their heads and staring in my direction. But as I was buried in the heather and they have weak eyesight, I doubt they could have seen me. Soon they were standing about 20 or 30 feet away, raising their bristly little faces to smell the air. I could hear them panting.
Then they turned and rippled back down the rocks, slipped into the water with scarcely a splash and started hunting round the coast once more. Soon they disappeared around a cliff I couldn’t negotiate.
I walked back elated, recharged with wonder and enchantment. A week later, the feeling still buoys me up.
While many species in this country are in rapid decline, the otter is among the few whose prospects are improving. This is partly because it’s no longer hunted, and partly because of a reduction in the organochlorine insecticides that accumulated up the food chain. But, especially in England, it still inhabits just a fraction of its former range.
Otters are an adaptable species that, given the chance, can quickly recolonise the habitats from which they have been excised. Their hesitant return sharpens the hopes of those of us who want a wilder Britain, who strive for the re-establishment of magnificent, enthralling wildlife that you don’t have to travel halfway around the world to see.
Already otters are beginning to appear in a few towns and cities. As they become accustomed to their protected status, they’re likely to become less shy and easier to watch, bringing nature’s wonders closer to the lives of people who have become disconnected from the living planet. If our advocacy of the widespread return to Britain of animals such as beavers, boar and lynx succeeds (and one day, perhaps, of wolves, bison, pelicans, bluefin tuna and whales of several species), the opportunities for re-enchantment will begin to blossom in places that are currently little more than wildlife deserts.
Everyone should be able to experience such marvels, and to step outside the ordered, regulated, predictable world of our own making, that sometimes seems to crush the breath out of us.
2011 has proved another record breaking year for breeding pairs of Scotland’s largest bird of prey. White-tailed eagles soared to new heights despite heavy storms throughout the 2011 breeding season.
Conservationists, and many sea eagle enthusiasts, had been concerned that the high winds felt across Scotland in May could have had a detrimental impact on breeding white-tailed eagles at the vulnerable part of the season when most nests contain small chicks. Indeed, some nests failed including that of BBC Springwatch star, nicknamed “Itchy”, who experts fear lost his chicks in the storm.
However, the bad weather failed to blow the species off course. Recent survey figures for the 2011 breeding season reveal that there were 57 territorial pairs in Scotland, an increase of 10 per cent on the previous year. A total of 43 young fledged successfully from these nests.
George’s essay also mentioned the Scottish sea otter.
This game of blogging would have no meaning at all if it were not for the networking and sharing of so many ideas, thoughts and feelings unlimited by geographical distances. The ‘Likes’ and responses to my Hope Has A Place story yesterday meant so much.
I was trawling through my folder looking for something that felt good to publish after yesterday and came across the following that was sent in by dear friend, Dan Gomez, about a month ago.
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An old cowboy was riding his trusty horse followed by his faithful dog along an unfamiliar road. The man was enjoying the new scenery, when he suddenly remembered dying, and realized that the dog beside him had been dead for years, as had his horse. Confused, he wondered what was happening, and where the trail was leading them.
After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall that looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch topped by a golden letter “H” that glowed in the sunlight.
Standing before it, he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like gold.
He rode toward the gate and as he got closer he saw a man at a desk to one side. Parched and tired out by his journey, he called out, “Excuse me, where are we?“
“This is Heaven, sir,” the man answered.
“Wow! Would you happen to have some water?” the old cowboy asked.
“Of course, sir. Come right in, and I’ll have some ice water brought right up.”
As the gate began to open, the cowboy asked, “Can I bring my partners, too?”
“I’m sorry; sir, but we don’t accept pets.”
The cowboy thought for a moment, then turned back to the road and continued riding, his dog trotting by his side.
After another long ride, at the top of another hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a ranch gate that looked as if it had never been closed. As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.
“Excuse me,‘ he called to the man. “Do you have any water?”
“Sure, there’s a pump right over there. Help yourself.”
“How about my friends here?” the cowboy gestured to his dog and his horse.
“Of course! They look thirsty, too,” said the man.
The three of them went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with buckets beside it. The cowboy filled a cup and the buckets with wonderfully cool water and took a long drink, as did his horse and dog.
When they were full, he walked back to the man who was still standing by the tree. “What do you call this place?” he asked.
“This is Heaven,” the man answered.
“That’s confusing, the man down the road said that was Heaven, too.”
“Oh, you mean the place with the glitzy, gold street and fake pearly gates? That’s hell.”
The cowboy retorted, “Doesn’t it make you angry when they use your name like that?”
“Not at all. Actually, we’re happy they screen out the folks who would leave their friends behind.”
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Dan’s email went on to include this:
Sometimes, we wonder why friends forward things to us without writing a word. Maybe this explains it? When you’re busy, but still want to keep in touch, you can forward emails. When you have nothing to say, but still want to keep in contact, you can forward jokes. When you have something to say, but don’t know exactly how to say it, you can forward stuff.
A ‘forward’ lets you know that you’re still remembered, still important, still cared about.
So the next time you get a ‘forward’, don’t think of it as just another joke. Realize that you’ve been thought of today and that your friend on the other end just wanted to send you a smile.
PS: You’re welcome at my watering hole anytime.
Let me underline Dan’s PS by saying that all of life’s humans and creatures are welcome here!
Before you read any further please listen to Enya’s mesmerisingly beautiful track whilst reading the lyrics.
One look at love and you may see
It weaves a web over mystery,
All ravelled threads can rend apart
For hope has a place in the lover’s heart.
Hope has a place in a lover’s heart.
Whispering world, a sigh of sighs,
The ebb and the flow of the ocean tides.
One breath, one word may end or may start
A hope in a place of the lover’s heart.
Hope has a place in a lover’s heart.
Look to love you may dream,
And if it should leave then give it wings.
But if such a love is meant to be;
Hope is home, and the heart is free
Under the heavens we journey far,
On roads of life we’re the wanderers,
So let love rise, so let love depart,
Let hope have a place in the lover’s heart.
Hope has a place in a lover’s heart.
Look to love and you may dream,
And if it should leave then give it wings.
But if such a love is meant to be;
Hope is home, and the heart is free.
Hope is home, and the heart is free.
I have this notion in my head that we humans are predisposed to give priority to bad news over good news. I guess it does make sense especially when one reflects on likely times a few centuries back; or more.
However, I am certain that I am not alone in disliking intensely the predominance of ‘alarmist’ news headlines in all forms of media. We neither have broadcast television here at home nor subscribe to a daily newspaper although I do admit to dropping in regularly to the BBC News website.
The other morning I awoke a little before 5am and not wanting to awaken Jeannie decided to listen to some music using my iPod and earphones. I had a couple of Enya albums on the iPod and soon was listening to her album The Memory of Trees. Then up came track seven, Hope Has A Place, sung by Enya, composed by Roma Ryan.
I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful was the track.
Then my mind moved to reflecting on the life I have here at home with Jean and the dogs. There were three dogs sleeping on the bed while the track was playing: Hazel, Sweeny and Pedy.
How the love I receive from the dogs and the love I receive from Jean give me such freedom. Such emotional freedom to be the person I truly want to be. So perfectly expressed in the closing line of the lyrics: Hope is home, and the heart is free.
At this juncture I paused in writing this post, it was a little after 2pm yesterday, grabbed my camera and went into the living room. The two photographs below reinforce my message.
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Sweeny, Pedy and Jeannie – bountiful, unconditional love!
After welcoming Pedy last Saturday, now we welcome five young goslings.
First thing this morning it was another quick check on Mother Goose, as Jean and I tend to do each day these last couple of weeks. She was still sitting on her nest, as she had been since March 17th.
Still sitting at 7am.
Jean and I then had to go out this morning for a couple of hours. So imagine our sheer delight upon our return to see an empty nest.
Job done!
But this pair first started egg-sitting far too long ago for what we believed was the normal incubation period for Canada Geese; 24 to 28 days. Plus, neighbours Larry and Janell, had seen broken gosling eggs just inside their fence line. We held our breath as we looked around the pond.
Then a few moments later, we saw this:
Five wonderful goslings.
That zoomed in showed the new family.
And an even better image ….
Couldn’t stop taking pictures!
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So a very happy ending. Apparently young Canada Geese return to their place of birth when they are adults so we look forward to seeing some of them again in 2016.
The last two weeks predominantly have been posts under the umbrella of WordPress’ Writing 101 event. I’m bowing out at the half-way point.
Simply because the arrival of Pedy and the huge pleasure that Jean and I have had from rescuing him meant I wanted to return to writing most of the time about dogs and what we humans can learn from them.
So with that in mind it has been widely reported in recent days about the news that we humans bond with dogs as we do with babies. Let me quote a little from a recent article from the BBC.
Gazing into a dog’s eyes can stimulate the same bonding process that occurs between mother and child.
Presented by Zoe Gough
Eye contact between a mother and her baby strengthens their attachment by activating the so-called ‘love hormone’ – oxytocin – in the mother’s brain.
This drives emotional bonding between parent and offspring by encouraging both nurturing and interactive behaviours.
Studies have shown that stroking or making eye contact with a dog can trigger a similar release of oxytocin in a human’s brain.
Now a team of Japanese scientists have found that the “mutual gaze” between dogs and their owners can lead to a bond that is similar to that between a mother and child, with humans experiencing the same feelings of affection for their dogs as they might do for their family, therefore helping to bring the species closer.
The findings are reported in the journal Science and also note that wolves do not show the same response. Authors suggest this means that the bonding process probably co-evolved in both species as dogs became domesticated.
“It can be said that dogs successfully cohabit with humans because they have been successful in adapting the bonding mechanism to relations with humans,” said lead author Dr Miho Nagasawa, from the School of Veterinary Medicine, Azabu University, Japan.
All of which serves as a wonderful foreword to how the stray dogs manage so successfully to exist on the Moscow subway. I reported on this back in 2011 under the title of The Tenacity of Dogs but immediate neighbours Larry and Janell sent me a link to a much more detailed account of these subway dogs. Here is the remarkable story.
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The Life of Subway Dogs
To those of you who own dogs or like them, this should be interesting.
The elite of Moscow’s 35,000 stray dogs are about 500 Russian dogs constantly living in the Moscow subway (Metro). About 50 of subway dogs have learned to ride the trains, commuting from quiet suburbs stations where they spend the night to downtown where it’s easier to get some food.
Each morning, like clockwork, they board the subway, off to begin their daily routine amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. But these aren’t just any daily commuters. These are stray dogs who live in the outskirts of Moscow Russia and commute on the underground trains to and from the city centre in search of food scraps.
Then after a hard day scavenging and begging on the streets, they hop back on the train and return to the suburbs where they spend the night.
Living in the subway is just a survival tactic the Moscow stray dogs have come up with. The subway dogs have figured out how to use the city’s huge and complicated subway system, getting on and off at the stops they need. They recognize the desired station by smell, by recorded announcer’s voice, and by time intervals basing on their biological clocks. Usually they ride first or last car to keep away from crushes.
Experts studying the dogs, who usually choose the quietest carriages at the front and back of the train, say they even work together to make sure they get off at the right stop – after learning to judge the length of time they need to spend on the train.
In Soviet times stray dogs were barred from subway. Moscow Metro’s passengers are so accustomed to dogs on subway – sleeping on empty seats and hanging around stations – that they do not pay any attention.
For these strays the Moscow Metro is their home. The subway dogs get outside to do all their deeds and behave friendly to the passengers. They have very good instincts about people, greeting happily kind passengers and avoiding contacts with intolerant persons. And they always find somebody who will share food with them.
With children the dogs “play cute” by putting their heads on youngsters’ knees and staring pleadingly into their eyes to win sympathy – and scraps.
Dogs are opportunistic and intelligent, and when they figured out they were no longer chased away from the subway stations, they began hopping trains for a lift into the city. The Moscow subway system is a maze that can be confusing for people, but the dogs appear to have learned the system.
Once in the city, the dogs have their own special ways of getting food. Some position themselves outside butcher shops and wait for dog lovers coming out of the shop to toss them a bone. Others have refined a technique of sneaking up behind people who are eating food and surprising them with a loud bark which hopefully scares the person into dropping whatever they’re eating. If the dog is successful in getting the person to drop their food, he grabs his prize and runs.
Packs of stray dogs are led not by the strongest or most dominant member, but by the most intelligent dog in the pack. The dogs understand living among people in a large city requires brains and not muscle to survive. Researchers have observed dog packs selecting pack members that are smaller and cuter than the other ones who are then sent out to beg for food.
The dogs also don’t leave messes laying around where someone can step in them, and they relieve themselves in out of the way spots away from the main traffic areas. The subway riding stray dogs of Moscow have essentially learned how to interact with people and move among them in order to survive.
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Aren’t dogs the most remarkable species of animal!
Pedy has settled in so unbelievably well that it is almost impossible to comprehend, that when many of these photographs were taken yesterday, he had not been with us for twenty-four hours.
Pedy spent the whole night free to settle wherever in the bedroom. There was no hassle in the slightest and from 3;30am onwards he slept on the bed together with Hazle and Sweeny. (I more or less had Jeannie’s approval to publish this!)
First thing Sunday morning.
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Behaving as if Pedy had been with us for weeks.
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Happiness all round!
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Then one more taken later on in the morning.
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A dear, dear little fellow.
In so many ways we have so much to learn from dogs!
As is becoming our routine for a Saturday morning, Jean and I went in to the Farmer’s Market in Grants Pass. Then, because we wanted to buy some more plants for the garden, we decided to zip over to our local Grange Coop, also in Grants Pass.
The store, bless them, had given over quite a large part of their retail floor area to Shelter Friends, a local organisation supporting animal adoptions here in Josephine County.
There was one dog, a Chihuahua mix male, named Pedy. He is five-years-old and was found abandoned a few weeks ago here in Merlin. It felt like a privilege to bring him home.
So to today’s pictures.
Pedy, welcome to your new home.
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Hi! My name’s Cleo and this is a cool place to live!
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Hallo Pedy! Up until now I was the smallest of the pack. So a big welcome! Oh, and my name is Sweeny!
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Within less than an hour of being home, Jeannie was certain that Pedy could meet the dogs nose-to-nose so we all went outside.
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This looks like fun!
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Hi Pedy, I’m the bossman around here. Name’s Pharaoh. You’ll be OK.
Learning from Dogs 