From My Nature Journal: It Had Been a Good Day for a Naturalist…

Up until the late evening, Monday had been a very good day for an amateur naturalist on vacation.

That morning while sitting at the end of the dock I watched an eagle take a fish from the channel. This natural drama is always exciting to witness, with the eagle coming up empty more often than not. But when it is successful, it is an absolutely remarkable feat of body control, aeronautic timing, beauty, and, if I may wax anthropomorphic, grace.

Later that afternoon on my daily walk, I ran across a beautiful set of fresh moose tracks. A solitary animal had entered County Road 206 from the thick Ottawa National Forest woods to the north, walked west about 75 yards on the rain-softened gravel, then cut abruptly into the woods to the south. I had not seen the tracks the day before, so they were put down sometime the previous evening or early that morning, the times of day these enormous and ungainly animals are most active. And since it had been a long while since I’d seen fresh moose sign around here, I was just very pleased to know they are still around. Some day I may be blessed enough to see one, as have some of our neighbors.

Then that evening after supper, Gail and I took to the water to go scouting the status of the lake’s new loons. We knew the floating platform here in our bay had been successful, with two chicks coming off it on Independence Day, thus receiving the nicknames George and Tom. And though we had heard that the other platform on the lake had not had a successful hatching this year, our kids told us they had seen another adult pair feeding a lone chick further down the lake. Maybe another had come the natural way, from somewhere ashore, though the birds have vastly preferred the platforms in recent years. Sure enough, we spotted the family from our bay on the north end of the lake, where they tend to stay, and the family with the single chick on the south end. Score three chicks this year for Beatons Lake.

And to close out the outdoor portion of the day, the ‘seeing’ that night had been fantastic. Sky watching has always been a particular delight, and the Northwoods never disappoint on a clear night. The Milky Way was brilliant and the constellations and asterisms clear as a bell, with numerous shooting stars and satellites amplifying the sky’s three-dimensionality.

Yes, it had been a good day for an amateur naturalist. But then came my late evening reading, which made me feel like an absolute lightweight, just a naturalist ‘wannabee.’ I’m reading through a book by Jon Young called What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World. It belongs to my sister, who often shares great nature reads with me; but once again, it’s one of those books that make me feel like a know-nothing. After observing and studying nature since childhood, I sometimes think I’m stuck in kindergarten in God’s nature school. The book is about deep observation, in this case, deep birding; it’s the kind of observation that not only allows one to know a lot of things about a species, but even know things about an individual bird, so one may be able to successfully read its cues and clues. Take this for example:

If one day I see a small bird and recognize it, a thin thread will form between me and that bird. If I just see it but don’t really recognize it, there is no thin thread. If I go out tomorrow and see and really recognize that same individual small bird again, the thread will thicken and strengthen just a little. Every time I see and recognize that bird, the thread strengthens. Eventually it will grow into a string, then a cord, and finally a rope. This is what it means to be [a naturalist]. We make ropes with all aspects of the creation this way.

I guess I may not be the naturalist I thought! Have I ever been able to tell one robin from another by the depth of my observation? No! This guy’s birding knowledge puts me to shame. And though I know it’s my personal insecurities at play here, I read this genre to be inspired to go deeper, not to be shamed!!! Still, I’ll persevere. After all, I’m only a quarter of the way through the book. Perhaps there will still be some ‘baby steps’ he’ll share that will be more suitable for a lightweight like me.

For now, I’ll have to be content… that the

first step to being a naturalist is to love…

For now, I’ll have to continue to be content with something I’ve long believed, that the first step to being a naturalist is to love, to love God’s creation. There’s so much to see, so much to know, so much beauty to observe, so much that nature can teach (not the least of which is humility!), all of which leads me to the Creator and to the truth of the Bible:

Ask the animals and they will teach you,

The birds of the heavens and they will tell you.

Speak to the plants of the earth and they will inform you,

Even the fish of the sea will declare to you:

Who among all these does not know that

The hand of the Lord has done this?

In His hand is the life of every living thing,

Even the breath of all humankind.

                                                                                    (Job 12:7-10)

~~ RGM, August 24 2020

P.S. I just shared that Bible passage last week at the memorial service of a dear naturalist friend who recently died. Peace to the memory of my friend Bob, who also knew countless good days enjoying God’s creation.

Blowin' in the Wind: Webcams and Nature 365

(Blowin’ in the Wind is a regular feature on my blog consisting of an assortment of nature writings – hymns, songs, excerpts, prayers, Bible readings, poems or other things – pieces I may not have written but that inspire me or have given me joy. I trust they will do the same for you.)

I’ve a different kind of Blowin’ in the Wind post this week, an alert to direct you to three timely online nature resources you can check out while the checking is good.

For several years I’ve followed a couple of live web cameras online that take me into the very nests of two of my favorite critters -- eagles and loons. Webcams can be fascinating things. Some time ago, I followed one for a while that brought me to a small pond in Africa where many a beast came for respite and drink. Once in a blue moon there’d be something dramatic to see, but usually it was just the simple and routine lives of animals coming and going, not unlike if a camera were propped somewhere in a corner of your kitchen to view the pedestrian things that typically happen there! One of the things I loved about that webcam, though, was that no matter what was being viewed, there were almost always jungle sounds, especially at night when the camera screen itself may have been dark. What a fantastic, relaxing drone as background for winding down for the day!

The eagle-cam is located in an aerie in northeast Iowa near the city of Decorah. (One of the things that is fun for me about this webcam is that I had the privilege of helping plant a church in that city some years ago, and I enjoy imagining the parent eagles hunting somewhere there along the Upper Iowa River or flying high over old friends.) Aeries can be huge, six feet or more in diameter, with the parents, who mate for life, adding more and more branches each year until it can weigh a ton or more. Inevitably the nest comes crashing down out of sheer tree fatigue, which we have seen numerous times in the northwoods. This year in the Decorah nest, three eggs were laid in mid to late February, with all three eaglets successfully hatched about five weeks later in late March. They’re nearing a month old at this point, and the last I checked a couple days ago fresh rabbit was the menu du jour. Things will intensify as the three grow, start jostling for advantage, and begin to fledge. This particular site even allows you to search archived video of significant moments in the family’s life, and that of past families, by hitting the ‘About the Eagles’ button on the right. Hit this link to see live video, even at night.

By contrast to what you can see today on the eagle-cam, all will still be still on the loon-cam with the possible exception of waves lapping against the nest – it’ll be some weeks before the loon parent occupies it. And there’s way less drama anyway in a loon nest than the eagle’s, simply because the chicks will not be raised in it; in fact, they can leave the nest the very day they are hatched, or will spend no more than a day or two in it. Then the whole thing will never be visited again until next year, and it’s solely lake life for the family until flight lessons in late summer and departure for winter before the lake freezes over. But the lack of nest drama is more than made up for by the simple and unique loveliness of the bird! For now, though, be patient: you won’t see the nest occupied until mid-May at the earliest; once laying takes place, both mom and dad (who also mate for life) will take turns keeping the eggs warm for about twenty-eight days before chick birth. This loon-cam is located on a man-made floating nest island in a lake somewhere in central Minnesota, an area where we once lived. (How appropriate… The state bird of Minnesota, after all, is the loon.) Typically, a loon nests in a secluded spot on land or atop a muskrat lodge, but floating nests have been created in some areas to increase chick survival by providing nest sites completely isolated from possible adult loon or egg predators (coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, weasels, snakes, etc. – it’s a jungle out there!). With this particular webcam’s image, and depending on the time of day that you look, you can even see the shadow of the camera mount sweeping from side to side across the nest. Here’s the link to this site.

I said I had three resources. The third is also something quite unique, from the camera of outstanding nature photographer Jim Brandenburg, also of Minnesota. Though I was acquainted with Brandenburg’s stills, he has taken thousands of hours of video, simple seasonal scenes, and with a producer from France edited a daily video of one minute or less duration that is called Nature 365. He is posting a video every single day this year, appropriate to the season. One can easily subscribe to receive a daily link via email; it’s always one of the very first things in my inbox each morning, and I’ve found it a delightful way to start my day, especially on days when my schedule might require me to be nature deprived! My sister Carolyn directed me to this site back in early February, having come across it somehow, and I have been watching ever since. All the videos are archived, and since Brandenburg typically follows a theme for several days at a time (the activities of a wolf pack, for example, of migrating swans or cranes, or simply of a river’s ice melting and breaking up or dry winter grasses waving in the breeze), you can go back and check out the archives every seven days or so and find particular things for which you might want to have a more complete look-see.

Getting behind some of the scenes of nature in remote places… We don’t often have an easy opportunity to do that, but it’s a perspective these three web resources provide. God asks Job in Job 39, “Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and stretches her wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up, and makes his nest on high? On the cliff he dwells, and makes his home, on the point of the cliff, and the stronghold. From there he spies out the prey, seeing it afar off... Shall he who argues contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.”

Though God’s ultimate questions to Job can only be directed back to God, Who alone has the power to direct his creation, we at least get a chance to have a look at things we might never get a chance to see.

~~RGM, April 24, 2015