Talking Points

Just got back from dinner at the Martin Hotel here in Winnemucca, probably the most famous Basque restaurant for a hundred miles. Of course, a hundred miles from here puts you in the middle of nowhere with yet another hundred miles to get to someplace else.

At a Basque restaurant, it’s country style seating so you get to sit with people you’ve never met.  Naturally, I was at a table sitting between two retired couples and the conversation touched on politics. There is quite a heated Senate race here between Harry Reid and the batshit crazy Sharron Angle. It’s more intense than even the Murray – Rossi race (my Starbucks pseudonymn is “Dino” for now; “Dino, your grande nonfat latte is up”).  The old folks don’t like Reid and one of the men said the incumbents aren’t following the Constitution. So “what part of the Constitution” I ask. Oh, gun rights. So “can you name any recent gun control legislation?” I ask. “Oh, they’re trying, they’re trying.” Look old man, try giving me some facts instead of barfing up Tea Party talking points. I didn't really say that.

Fortunately, we got on to other conversation and they were really genuinely nice people.  Both couples were touring around the west.  One of the couples just got back from hunting deer in Idaho.  Wolves are eating all the deer and elk because that's what wolves did before white people killed all the wolves.  I didn't jump on that topic.  At least there's more vegetation now that wolves are eating the herbivores.  We ended up talking about dogs and stuff, much more pleasant. 

Did I say the food was delicious at the Martin Hotel?  Chicken noodle soup, salad that comes with beans (the Basque way is to top your salad with beans), tender beef tongue slices in gravy, mashed potatoes, and corn.  I had pork chops, three of them, breaded and boneless.  I chased it all down with two Ruby Mountain ales, although the meal included some red wine in carafes.  Dessert was bread pudding with whipped cream.  It was Monday and the place was packed.  Lots of cowboy hats, laughter, and conversation.

Wood Recycling

I learn a lot about the natural world just hanging out on the patio grilling burgers and drinking beer. This time of the year, the great Pacific dampwood termites swarm, the fertile winged ones rising into the skies to start new homes in the fallen trees and branches rotting in the deep forest beyond our back fence. Their flight seems strained and clumsy on oversized wings.

I watch a dragonfly dart through the air along a straight path then suddenly switch direction looping back and doing it again along the same path. In one instant it deviates slightly from its chosen path, grabbing a hapless flying termite in midair, and then continuing along the same flight path. A few seconds later, the dragonfly drops the termite, which flutters downward slowly at the pace of a downy feather onto the patio, the gossamer wings no longer beating a struggling flight. I examine the fallen termite and observe that it seems generally intact but is missing its abdomen. This leads me to believe that the dragonfly simply eats the tender abdomen and casts away the remaining hard parts that include the head, thorax, legs, and wings.

Trees fall in the forest; they rot in place, broken down by fungi and termites. Termites swarm and take flight, most ending up trapped in spider webs or snagged in midair by the colorful and graceful dragonflies. This is how wood gets recycled in the natural world. Sure, I’ll have another beer. Barley and hops get recycled, too.

Seal Pup

The edge of Puget Sound is a mere 700 feet from my front door as the Northwestern crow flies.  On quiet mornings or evenings I can smell the salt air.  I usually take a walk the beach with my dog Ranger about every weekend, unless the tide leaves little beach exposed.

Sometimes I will see a seal slowly raise its head just above the water maybe 50 or so yards out.  They watch me as I walk the beach then slowly dunk down again.

At this time of the year, the mother Harbor seals have given birth.  They will leave their newborn pups on the beach while they go off and forage.  It is very important to understand that the pup is not abandoned and is best left alone.  Ranger spotted this one before I did but I was able to call Ranger back before the pup panicked and broke for the water.

Another sign of fall are the Heerman's gulls having made their annual migration northward from the beaches of Baja California.  They'll head south again before winter's wet and chill hit.  These gulls are all gray with a beautiful red beak. 

Pigeons, Windows, and Ectoparasites

Warning: This post is not for the squeamish. It contains graphic photos of a dead pigeon.

Pigeons or technically Rock Pigeons (Columba livia) are ubiquitous in the urban environment of temperate latitudes. Its natural habitat is open and semi-open environments with cliffs, usually on coasts, in western and southern Europe, North Africa, and into South Asia. The urban environment provides similar cliff-like structural elements on buildings as well as abundant food sources (don’t feed the pigeons). I’m not a big fan of pigeons but I can appreciate their adaptability.

Window strikes kill between 100 million and 1 billion birds in North America each year (David Malakoff, Audubon magazine, March 2004). Because glass is transparent and reflective, the birds see a reflection of the outdoors and try to fly through what looks like unobstructed open space. Like a science fiction force field, they are immediately repelled. We have birds occasionally strike the windows of our home, most recently a Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta Canadensis), who did recover but remained dazed on the ground for more than a few minutes. Some birds do not recover and it’s always a sad moment when this happens.

I had some field work last week at a vacant car dealership, the kind of place with large showroom windows and the perfect environment for pigeons. Below the large windows, I noticed a dead pigeon on the ground with a trail of dried blood trickling from its beak.

It was an obvious window strike. If you look close at the next photo, you can see the faint impression of two bird strikes on the window. The impression shows the body and outstretched wings in flight.

I took a close-up photo of the pigeon’s head. I could see a few specks but without my geezer glasses they were just specks. When I downloaded the photo, I noticed that some of the specks were actually insects, bird lice.

The next photo is an extreme enlargement showing one of the lice.

Pigeons, and probably most wild birds, harbor an attractive mix of ectoparasites. The one in the enlarged photo is likely a slender pigeon louse (Columbicola columbae). The slender pigeon louse belongs to a group of lice known as chewing lice, specifically to the Superfamily Ischnocera, who feed on the downy part of feathers and softer fur. The slender pigeon louse eats the fluffy parts of the pigeon’s feathers. Think about this the next time you’re inclined to feed pigeons.

Relationships

At this time of the year, as summer wanes, the rim of Puget Sound is ringed in bright yellow flowers of Puget Sound gumweed (Grindelia integrafolia). The gumweed seems to thrive in the breezy salt air and sandy soil that fringes the Sound. It is a harbinger of fall and of the dull gray days to come.

The lives of gumweed and a drab grayish brown moth known as the Hooded Mountain Owlet (Cucullia montanae) are intertwined. It was the colorful caterpillar curled inside a flower that caught my eye as I walked the sandy flats at Meadowdale Beach.

The Hooded Mountain Owlet moth flies in July and August. The caterpillars feed on gumweed then pupate underground. There is only one generation per year.

Puget Sound gumweed ranges from British Columbia to northern California, seldom straying too far from salt water. It is a member of the sunflower family (Asteraceae), whose members include such familiar plants as dandelions and many others.

Season of the Dragonfly

I have lived in the Puget Sound region for almost 20 years. I grew up in southern California on the edge of encroaching suburbia 20 miles east of Los Angeles. Nature was close in a subset of the Puente Hills. The change of seasons was subtle. The rains came in winter turning the hills emerald green then they baked to a soft golden crust in the rainless summer. I knew the names of the plants and animals.

When I first moved to western Washington I did not know any of the signs that marked seasonal transitions. Each year has taught me something new. I have a better understanding of the seasonal signs. I can easily rattle off the names of all the trees growing in the Puget lowland.

Summer here brings many more sunny days than the rest of the country would suspect given the popular myth of gray, rainy Seattle. But our climate here is really a modified Mediterranean climate, with the winter taken to an extreme in rainfall. The summers are generally sunny with moderate temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s (Fahrenheit). The summer days are long at this northern latitude.

Midsummer around my house is Dragonfly season. On sunny days, the largest of dragonflies, the darners patrol the broad open stretches of lawn and garden, catching and devouring smaller insect pray on the wing.

My favorite dragonfly of our garden is the Cardinal Meadowhawk (Sympetrum illotum). It is a brilliant cardinal in color. It usually rests on a conspicuous perch with wings folded downward, a characteristic of the meadowhawks.

 Dragonflies spend the juvenile portion of their life cycle in water as nymphs. Our neighborhood has several small streams that flow from upland areas into Puget Sound, which is only a few hundred feet from our house. These streams are ideal habitat for dragonflies.

Adult dragonflies are the ultimate sky predator, having a head almost entirely covered by a pair of compound eyes and legs that bristle with spikes that form a perfect basket for scooping up smaller flying insect prey.

Dragonflies date back to the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago, when Meganeuron was cruising the skies with a wing span of 2.5 feet. Imagine seeing that!

The next seasonal transition is the swarming of the Pacific dampwood termite and the corresponding rapid growth of the European garden spider.  This is a sure sign that the coming of fall is close.

Modern Medicine II

I've never had a "doctor" as in "whose your doctor?"  The only time I see a doctor is my annual occupational physical, which I dread.  It's a pretty comprehensive physical that includes blood work, spirometry (blow!), EKG, chest x-ray (which they always manage to screw up), and a hearing (which I fail because I used to listen to rock ... LOUD! ... what?).  Every year it's a different doctor and sometimes it's a female doctor sticking her fingers under my testicles and asking me to cough.  Based on my random sampling, there are no cute female occupational physicians.  The attractive female physicians become OB-GYNs, like the two that delivered my boys.

As requested, I scheduled an appointment with a bona fide "doctor", what you would refer to as a family physician.  He seemed gravely concerned about the clot in my calf and he didn't like the whole aspirin thing I was doing as suggested by the ER dude.  I gathered from our conversation that it sparked some of dialog among the various professionals who I've had the pleasure of seeing over the last week or so.

Conveniently there was an opening at the ultrasound place.  Again, I took my pants off, laid down on a tissue paper-covered table, while an attractive young women rubbed a thingee over my leg and talked into a microphone.  Modern medicine isn't all bad.  The downside was that the clot was still there.

Back I went to my official doctor, who is actually turning out to be an OK guy.  Modern medicine convinced me that the Warfarin blood thinning therapy was the way to go.  It would be for three months until my body figured out that my calf was healed up and needed to back off the clotting alert.

I scheduled an appointment with the blood-thinning clinic where the nice nurse started me on 7.5 mg a day.  I got the prescription filled and headed home.  It was lunch time so I decided to make a tuna melt.  While slicing cheese with a mandolin slicer I sliced my thumb open.  I know it's bad when you look at it once and think maybe it isn't real then look a second time and see all the blood and you know it's real.  So it was back to the clinic with my thumb wrapped in a couple sheets of Brawny paper towels to get my thumb sewn up.

I have now been on the Warfarin diet for almost two weeks.  I go in every few days to have my clotting factor checked.  Normal is a "1" but I need to be between 2 and 3, the ideal range to reduce further clotting but not so thin that my skull fills with blood.  I made a lame chart in Excel which shows my daily Warfarin dose in milligrams (mg) and the measured clotting factor.  I showed my chart to the nurse and she said "You must be a computer expert!"  Geez, it's really quite a lame chart.  I think I'll add a 3-D effect for my next appointment and really blow her mind.