This week in birds - #635

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

The colorful Tropical Parula is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. This beautiful bird can be found breeding as far north as the southernmost tip of Texas and is a resident through parts of Mexico and Central America and into South America. It is decreasing in numbers across its range.

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Monarch butterflies are on the move and have reached as far north as Michigan, New York, and Ontario.

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Our closest cousins, the chimpanzees, have been observed and documented using medicinal plants to treat wounds and other injuries.

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The current iteration of the EPA is rolling back protections against "forever chemicals" in drinking water. (I don't think they are taking that middle initial very seriously.)

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The fight against global warming does not need to conflict with the effort to end global poverty. 

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A new report outlines how corporations have fought against accountability for their part in global warming.

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"Forest management" is not necessarily a good thing; in fact, it is often just the opposite.

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Our current president hates wind energy, but its proponents are trying to find ways to change his mind.

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Florida's mangrove forests have been hammered by Nature and by human intervention, but there is an effort underway to restore them.

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Research published in the journal Nature this week argues that the feathered dinosaur, the Archaeopteryx, was probably capable of flight, at least for short distances, not unlike its descendant, the chicken.

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Is bringing extinct species like the dire wolf or woolly mice back through selective breeding a good idea? Or is it an unnecessary distraction from saving the species that still exist?

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I must confess it warms my heart to know that Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still out there after more than forty-seven years, still carrying out the mission assigned to them.

Poetry Sunday: Another Poem for Mothers by Erin Belieu

Mothers and our relationships with them can be complicated and it can be hard to put all of that into words, but Erin Belieu, I think, does a pretty good job of it. 

Another Poem for Mothers 

by Erin Belieu

Mother, I'm trying

to write

a poem to you—

which is how most
poems to mothers must
begin—or, What I've wanted
to say, Mother...but we
as children of mothers,
even when mothers ourselves,

cannot bear our poems
to them. Poems to
mothers make us feel

little again. How to describe
that world that mothers spin
and consume and trap

and love us in, that spreads
for years and men and miles?
Those particular hands that could

smooth anything: butter on bread,
cool sheets or weather. It's
the wonder of them, good or bad,

those mother-hands that pet
and shape and slap,
that sew you together
the pieces of a better house
or life in which you'll try
to live. Mother,

I've done no better
than the others, but for now,
here is your clever failure.

This week in birds - #634

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

This is the wonderful little Pine Warbler, the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. We here in Southeast Texas are at the outer limits of the Pine Warbler's range but they do exist here and my sense is that their numbers in the area may be increasing, perhaps as a result of the changing climate. My neighbors have huge pine trees in their yards of just the sort that these birds favor and as a result we get to enjoy their melodic trill when we are outside.

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Climate change is a reality and is likely to continue to worsen. How do we prepare?

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So our current government, in its wisdom, has removed the protections from marine protected areas. What could possibly go wrong?

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A new study confirms that North American bird populations are collapsing in places where they once thrived.

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Utah's Great Salt Lake is no longer "great." It's drying up.

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In Oregon, beavers are being restored to their former ecosystems and are helping to restore those ecosystems.

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Two major scientific societies have pledged to try to fill the void left by the government's dismissal of the 400 scientists who were working on a report on how climate change is affecting the country.

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A volcanic eruption in the eastern Pacific was witnessed by scientists who were diving in a submersible.

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Red wine bettas are a critically endangered fish from the small island of Bangka, Indonesia. They are disappearing as their habitat shrinks.

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She's got rhythm! She's a California sea lion who knows how to keep a beat.

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"Orphan wells" are gas and oil wells that have no active owner and are no longer producing but have not been plugged. There are a lot of them and they are a threat to our aquifers.

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The Yangtze finless porpoise is in a 1,400 year decline and poets have been writing about it for a millennium.

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Africa's Superb Starlings are distinctive in many ways and one of those ways is their propensity for forming friendships.

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Axolotls are another critically endangered species but there is hope for them as those that are captive-bred and then released into the wetlands in Mexico City appear to be thriving.

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Margaret Renkl writes of spring in Tennessee.

It's an invasion!

Stolen from Daily Kos: 

Poetry Sunday: Ode to Aging Bodies by Jan Mandell

I try to read at least one poem each day, generally picking at random, and occasionally, that randomness leads me to something that is absolutely perfect. Like this poem written by a poet I'd never heard of but who might have had me in mind when she wrote this. See if it resonates with you, too.

Ode to Aging Bodies

by Jan Mandell

Aging bodies
wake to blue veins

that pop up
and travel like river tributaries
over paper thin skin
pocked with freckles, tags and blotches
that look like unidentified sections
of abstract art

Aging bodies
Rise up to the chatter and 
creaking sounds of thin, porous bone
that feel like cheap metal pipes
refitting poorly into their stubborn mates

Waking up the aging body is familiar
like an attempt to turn over
the frozen engine of a used car
left out overnight
in a below zero day
in the dead of Minnesota winter  

The ache and noise of an aging body
is like a constant companion,
a highly extroverted friend 
who simply won’t shut up, 
yet is there thru it all.   

This is an ode to aging bodies
who cough and spatter and wheeze like sounds of old cars,
who drive thru the day anyway
making poetry from pock marks, skin tags, speckled hands
and remain unbothered 
by the constant twitch and crunch of bone grinding into thinning cartilage

Rather they hear this noise as music,
a jazz riff or a smooth soul remix, 
a moan of an old-time blues band. 
Lulling the aging body back to sleep. 

If blessed and favored
aging bodies wake up the next day 
to the twitch, crunch and chatter and of thin, porous bones 
To the pulse of blue veins 
The feel of wrinkled, sagging skin 
The sound of an old time blues band 

Calling to every aging body
to rise up
And do it all again

This week in birds - #633

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week for this week is the Worm-eating Warbler, a bird that breeds throughout much of the eastern United States from southern New England all the way down to eastern Texas. It is a rather plain-looking bird of the forest interior and is not closely related to other warblers. Its name is a misnomer as it doesn't really feast on worms; rather its favorite food is caterpillars which, of course, are sometimes colloquially referred to as worms.

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Here is a list of the top five fossil fuel companies that produce harmful emissions. They are mostly the ones you would probably expect.

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Who needs to know about how climate change is affecting this country? The current administration in charge thinks the answer is "Nobody." All the scientists working on a report detailing that have been fired.

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The current iteration of the Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back public health protections right and left but says it will take action to combat toxic forever chemicals. Color me skeptical.

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It appears that the Yellowstone supervolcano has a safety cap.

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Two previously unknown species of crocodile have been identified in the Caribbean.

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It's not really Nature-related but I find it infuriating so I include it here: The state of Texas wants to punish bookstores that sell what it defines as "obscene" books, because of course they do! Reminder: The book burners/banners are NEVER heroes.

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It turns out that the songs of humpback whales like this one share patterns with human language. 

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In Peru, archaeologists have discovered the graves of twenty-four members of the Chuquibamba culture that preceded the Incas and dated from 1000 to 1450 C.E. The remains were wrapped in textiles and buried with offerings that indicated they were being honored.

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Terminator sparrows? Well, Lili Taylor thinks so!

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The beautiful Bali Myna once faced extinction, but it has been saved by a unique approach, at least for now.

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"Crypto noise pollution" is now a thing and the people of a small town in Texas are fighting against it.

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A public art initiative featuring herds of life-sized animal puppets is helping to raise awareness about the climate crisis.

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Bite marks on an ancient skeleton found in England is taken as physical evidence that Roman gladiators fought lions in the arena.

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I was pleased to read that Chattanooga, home of my alma mater, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, has been designated as North America's first "National Park City."

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Here's some good news about Monarch butterflies from Arizona's lower deserts. Turns out there are quite a lot of them there.

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Swans are considered invasive in New York City but they have their champions there.

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Amazingly, Valerie, the miniature dachshund, survived alone in the Australian wilderness for 529 days and now her story has had a happy ending. She has been rescued.

Poetry Sunday: Swifts by Anne Stevenson

One of my favorite late afternoon spring and summer activities from childhood even until the present day has been watching the Chimney Swifts as they crisscross the sky over my neighborhood. "Sky-scythers" and "earth-skimmers" traveling at two hundred miles an hour and cutting the air with their shrieks, they are marvels of Nature's engineering. Was there ever a creature that was more aptly named?

Swifts

by Anne Stevenson

Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.

The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.

But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child

You shout, 'The swifts are back!'

Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther

Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.

Swereee swereee. Another. And another.

It's the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs.

The next day, a fleet of high crosses cruises in ether.

These are the air pilgrims, pilots of air rivers.

But a shift of wing, and they're earth-skimmers, daggers

Skilful in guiding the throw of themselves away from themselves.

Quick flutter, a scimitar upsweep, out of danger of touch, for

Earth is forbidden to them, water's forbidden to them,

All air and fire, little owlish ascetics, they outfly storms,

They rush to the pillars of altitude, the thermal fountains.

Here is a legend of swifts, a parable —

When the Great Raven bent over earth to create the birds,

The swifts were ungrateful. They were small muddy things

Like shoes, with long legs and short wings,

So they took themselves off to the mountains to sulk.

And they stayed there. 'Well,' said the Raven, after years of this,

'I will give you the sky. You can have the whole sky

On condition that you give up rest.'

'Yes, yes,' screamed the swifts, 'We abhor rest.

We detest the filth of growth, the sweat of sleep,

Soft nests in the wet fields, slimehold of worms.

Let us be free, be air!'

So the Raven took their legs and bound them into their bodies.

He bent their wings like boomerangs, honed them like knives.

He streamlined their feathers and stripped them of velvet.

Then he released them, Never to Return

Inscribed on their feet and wings. And so

We have swifts, though in reality, not parables but

Bolts in the world's need: swift

Swifts, not in punishment, not in ecstasy, simply

Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world's breathing.

The grace to say they live in another firmament.

A way to say the miracle will not occur,

And watch the miracle.