That's not good

That seems to be the universal response when I tell people about this:



Fortunately, we have a fenced yard. So the biggest problem with this is that when I ask the The Kid to let the dogs out, he now replies that he is busy, and I should tell Thomas to do it.

And yes, yes that is dog snot on my door. We have that in abundance.

Otter cam

After the mid-September Otter Fest that went down here, I felt the need to visit some of our mustelid friends. About the same time, I noticed that last week was Sea Otter Awareness Week at the Oregon Aquarium. There are no giant otters at the Oregon Aquarium. As far as I know, the only zoo in the U.S. that has giant otters is in Philadelphia.

But I wanted to see some otters, so we packed up and headed to the Oregon coast, where we proceeded to have any number of camera-related battery malfunctions. (Later it was determined that these problems were mostly due to attempting to charge the batteries in the car.) Before the video and still cameras gave us the Big Battery Finger, Mr. T got a couple of otter videos and I got a decent image of a shrimp. That's it. It was still fun, of course. The Kid got to hang out at the touch pool and walk through the aquarium hallway, so he was pleased.

None of the voices on here belong to us, but I think a few of the kids bumped into him and caused some camera shake in the middle.

Paddling the mangroves

Jade over at Arboreality and I share a passion for mangroves, trees and shrubs that dwell in and around coastal waters. Mangroves are a testament to tenacity, having adapted extensively to the challenges of growing and reproducing in several feet of seawater.

If I recall, Jade got her introduction to mangroves in Belize; I've been fascinated with the Florida mangroves off the Keys since I was a child. Forty and fifty years ago, my grandparents navigated the mangroves in their boat to fish for snapper. In the last ten years, I've taken to exploring them by kayak. This is my favorite way to see them. It's impossible to overstate how much life is supported by these unique plants, and kayaking offers an opportunity to see it all up close. The wikipedia entry for Florida mangroves lists the following:

"The branches of mangroves serve as roosts and rookeries for coastal and wading birds, such as the brown pelican (Oelicanus occidentalis), roseate spoonbill (Ajajia ajaia), Frigatebird (Fregata magnificans), Double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), Brown Noddy (Anous stolidus), Great White Heron and Wurdemann's Heron, color phases of the Great Blue Heron (Adrea herodias), Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), Green Heron (Butorides striatus), Reddish Egret (Dichromanassa rufescens) and Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca). Other animals that shelter in the mangroves are the American Coot (Fulica americana), American Crocodile, Bald Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus), Mangrove Snake (Nerodia clarkii compressicauda) and the Atlantic Saltmarsh Snake (Nerodia clarkii taeniata ).

Above the water mangroves also shelter and support snails, crabs, spiders, bromeliads of the genus Tillandsia, including Spanish Moss, and Reindeer lichen. Below the water's surface, often encrusted on the mangrove roots, are sponges, anemones, corals, oysters, tunicates, mussels, sea stars, crabs, Florida Spiny Lobster (Panulirus argus) and seagrasses."

Here is an image of a cormorant rookery I took a few years ago:



Two years ago, I took along my Nikonos V and attempted some underwater shots after donning my mask and snorkel and lashing my kayak to Mr. T's boat. That roll of film got ruined in a tragic film spool accident. I haven't yet recovered.

This trip, Mr. T and I took our son along in a double kayak, so there was no underwater photography. Anyway, I promised Jade mangrove pictures, and the best I could do was this video. I'm used to my own boat, and the hatch on this one -- where I kept the cameras in dry bags -- was too far forward for comfort. Also, my seat kept slipping, making the video a little jittery. (These are all obviously excuses for my sorry-ass video recording, I know.) We went deep into the mangroves on this paddling trip, and the passage was often extremely narrow.

As always, there's a bit of four-year old narration on this one. I like to think of him as a budding Sir David Attenborough.

Snakebird, I love you

Spindly yet striking, the anhinga is perhaps my favorite bird. Lesser souls may find the anhinga to be an ugly, awkward and vulgar creature, but these people have no taste and should not be listened to. No doubt these are the same folks who endowed the anhinga with its other, less glamorous names: Snakebird, or alternatively, Water Turkey.


How anyone can spend any time watching an anhinga live its life and not become an admirer is beyond me.

An anhinga has initiative. These enterprising birds dive right into the water to chase down their supper. Unlike the buoyant duck, the feathers of an anhinga are not coated with oils, so they can quickly get waterlogged. This allows them to swim for quite some time in search of fish.

And what a spectacle that is. Sometimes you can follow the progress of the submerged anhinga just by watching the water that's stirred up by fish trying to get away from it. Once they've emerged from the water, they have to spread out their wings to dry. While they're airing their feathers, they chatter noisily among themselves.


Recently, I was lucky enough to watch one of these characters catch and consume a meal. Between myself and spouse, we captured video and still images of the event. Here's the video. Forgive the running commentary from the four-year old, and the clicks of my shutter in the background.



I watched this same bird for another hour afterward. She'd spear a catfish (an exotic species in the Fakahatchee Strand), and she'd beat it against a branch for several minutes. Apparently, she has to make sure it's really, really dead before she swallows it, lest it thrash around and cut up her throat with its spines. I got no footage of this process; unfortunately, the above video took the last of my video camera's battery.

But the next day in Everglades National Park, I had the good fortune to run across a nest of anhinga chicks, and I'd had the foresight to charge my battery. Here's a (too) short clip of the two-day old chicks. I didn't want to spend too much time around the nest.

Bald Cypress

The cool thing about these conifers, apart from their wonderful knees and the fact that they harbor an unbelievably rich degree of wildlife, is that they lose their leaves in winter. (Larches are also conifers that shed their needlelike leaves.) Here's a brief clip of a tree from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve in southwestern Florida.

P.S. This may not be even remotely interesting to anyone but me. Mr. T just viewed the clip and said, "I don't get it. What's the big deal?" There is none. I just a) really like trees and b) have been getting way too happy lately with the digital video recorder.

Pieces of Montana

While it may be said -- and has been -- that the entire blogging endeavor is an exercise in rank narcissism, I hereby institute a new series that reaches previously unachieved degrees of self-indulgence. Ever since a friend from South China gave me a digital video camera, I've been recording bits of pieces of the my world. Thus, the inauguration of the "Pieces of" series.

Our corral was a veritable Deer Thoroughfare this Christmas. This was particularly nice given that we saw none over Thanksgiving. It was hunting season then, and they made themselves scarce. But last week, they held several deer meetups in my corral at various times of day. In summer, I can get pretty close to them, but they were brooking no human foolishness this close to the end of hunting season. So I captured the footage through the glass. And, alas, you can tell.

O Fir tree dark

Back in the early part of November, the family and I were exploring in the Cascades, and we came upon a Christmas tree farm. That happens a lot. Oregon is the largest Christmas tree producing state in the union, along with North Carolina, where I also used to live. But as we approached the neat lines of trees, we saw a helicopter zinging back and forth over the grove. It had a magnet attached, and would pick up a tree, zip back to a large truck, drop it, and repeat the process. Harvest time! It was riveting in its way. I shot a few frames, and the husband, kid and I stood gazing at it for a long while. Mr. T even shot some video, with permission of the folks onsite:



I doubt many people pause to consider Christmas tree production as a form of agriculture. Likely, even fewer consider the environmental impacts of our societal fixation with parking cultivated evergreens in our houses and adorning them with lights and ornaments (which were probably manufactured in China and shipped here on container ships). I'm quite fond of Christmas trees myself. And Americans are not about to give up those trees anytime soon. But what are the impacts, and what are the alternatives?

Christmas tree farming isn’t totally devoid of environmental benefits. Like any other trees, they’re carbon sinks. But – you knew that was coming – an Ohio State University study found that pine plantations are not as effective at retaining carbon as hardwood or natural pine forests. That same study estimated that an area the size of Los Angeles is converted to pine plantations each year. So, replacing hardwoods and natural pine with pine plantations is a net negative, carbonwise.

And that’s not all.

Christmas trees farms also rely significantly on pesticides. (Though it appears there is some debate about how much.) There are, naturally, human and environmental costs to this. Aside from the degree to which properly applied pesticides endanger environmental and public health, which also appears to be a matter of debate*, it’s important to note that not all pesticides are applied properly.

This article observes that many (often Spanish-speaking) farmworkers often receive little training in pesticide use. What’s more, the instructions on the containers are written in English, a language many don't understand. In addition, many of these seasonal farmworkers live very near the fields on which those pesticides have been sprayed, further ratcheting up their exposure.

And yet, while some Christmas tree growers are moving toward pesticide-free practices, they are still few and far between. That the organic Christmas tree market is still so small suggests to me that most folks buy organic to avoid ingesting harmful substances, and that concerns for putting pesticides into the environment and worker pesticide exposure are less a part of the collective consciousness.

You may have a hard time finding an organic tree. Even living in Oregon, I have yet to find an outlet for organic trees. Go here to determine if you can get one in your area.

2007 Update: There are quite a few folks googling their way onto this post. If you find a source for organic trees and/or greenery, would you kindly let us know in a comment on this post? Lots of people are looking, and it would be lovely if they could find something.

*The Agricultural Health Study, a long-term study of farm families and commercial pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina, has found that farmers generally have a lower cancer risk than the general public, but:

“Other findings include the suggestion of an association between exposure to specific pesticides and higher risk of specific cancers. The suggested associations include: prostate cancer and methyl bromide, immune/blood cancers and alachlor, lung cancer and chlorpyrifos, and some evidence of increased breast cancer associated with exposure to several pesticides."