Nature Note #151: Those Small Moments

Sycamore in the Stony Brook

I feel like every once in a while you can appreciate nature in small doses. Nature has become big and that's not just because it's marketing team got better (we can thank National Geographic for that certainly). People wanting to "experience" the great outdoors, buying organic food, life listing rare and unusual species, hunting locavores (as in locavores hunting for wild food, not Ted Nugent's third favorite thing to shoot from a helicopter), and many other grandiose and specific things.

Taking a sip

While it certainly feels amazing knowing just how maple sap rises due to temperature fluctuations or why amphibians can breathe through their skin, taking time to appreciate a moment of pure presence can impress upon someone all the more. Take for example Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus).

You see them gliding along passageways of tarmac and concrete, flapping furiously along roadsides looking to refuel not at Micky D's or Starbucks, but upon milkweed and Joe Pye (Eutrochium purpureum). Their wings crafted as if from tissue paper on stiffened board with the intention of doing something insane. These delicately tensile creatures migrate thousands of miles from the northern states into the coniferous forests of central Mexico and they do it all within a few months.

Trees offer brief glimpses as well mainly because they don't move and a rapid change for them is slow for us. Many people cram themselves into cars at this time of year to gaze lovingly at the hues of birch, maple, and eventually oak. But my favorite thing to look for in trees are squirrels. They can be really hard to spot as branches jiggle and jive to their hurried searching. Hop, hop, jump! Then onto the next branch, running, scaling, and leaping. They're so plentiful now that even outside the apartment, I sometimes see their shadows as they bounce along the roof. We have one that lives near the bins that my girlfriend nicknamed "Midnight". As one of the many black squirrels that make Syracuse their home, Midnight excels in pilfering the lost treats and excess dropped off by us wasteful primates. Just the other day, I saw the little rascal running off with a huge slice of pizza!

Scatter

Another favorite of mine to watch are the Ring-billed Gulls (Larus delawarensis). Ubiquitous scavengers of the parking lot, they crow complainingly at their rotten luck and hang about like dispossessed youths, waiting to grasp a scrap dropped from less discerning hands. I saw less of them today due to the pouring rain but as I drove home from work, I noticed one walking away from a pedestrian. Well, it wasn't really walking. When Ring-bills speed walk, they look prissy, stuck up almost. As this Ring-bill cleared the pedestrian, it turned around and watched her go. Their yellow eyes suggest a piercing, judgmental stare, but more than likely it was just studying her and whether to fly away from a potential threat.

I wonder if they think of us as more than strange two-legged animals that occasionally drop food for their consumption.

As the rain continues to pour outside the window, I reflect on these moments that I've shared here. I'll certainly notice more as the year trudges on, but in those moments, I will find peace and appreciation for those lives other than my own.