Category: Ecological niches
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Long ago, starter birdwatchers in an Arizona desert spotted a huge black bird. Perched commandingly, unimpressed by puny humans. Could it be – a raven? In the desert? Weren't they forest wilderness birds? A handy bird guide said the raven was “Common only in the Far North and in the West, especially near heavy timber.”…
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Sometimes you see a barn and you know it has owls. This one is airy, with many escape routes. As we walked to the door, a barn owl (Tyto alba) silently flew out. A helpful person had put up an owl box. Owls had accepted it. Not recently, judging by the size of the charnel…
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San Francisco's wild parrots, subjects of a very nice book and movie, are famously “of Telegraph Hill.” But sometimes a few appear over my obscure Ingleside neighborhood where they land in the trees, shrieking. I have seen a flock of eight, and family groups of four. They are cherry-headed conures (Aratinga erythrogenys), native to Ecuador…
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According to the newspaper Daffy Duck reads, “The TASMANIAN DEVIL is a powerful, vicious, evil-tempered brute… hungry at all times… it will eat anything but is especially fond of wild duck.” In creating the character of Taz, Warner Brothers was building on precedent. The person who described the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisi) for science, in…
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In the middle of California's broad Central Valley, the Sutter Buttes rear up, surrounded by flatness on all sides. Because the craggy volcanic buttes just barely beat 2,000 feet, the place is sometimes called the world's smallest mountain range. On an elevation map, like this, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Buttes are that…
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In late summer successful gardeners become superbly generous, even pushy. The fields of California burst with extra tomatoes. All over the Central Valley, tomato trucks bomb along blazing hot roads. You know they are tomato trucks because they have open tops and spill tomatoes, especially on bumps and curves. Roads with tomato-spangled corners mean the…
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For many years my friend Mary Lynn Fischer lived with QuickView, an Arctic Fox (Alopex lagopus). Quickie's immediate family had been raised for the exotic pet trade; her ancestors just before that were bred for fur farms; and before that they had been wild. Quickie herself was both tame and wild. When you came over…
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A few years ago, Terri Nelson and I went to the San Francisco Zoo, and came upon the Nocturnal Gallery. This is closed now, but it was a little building with glass-fronted cages with small primates. It was dark inside, with double doors so people entering wouldn't let in daylight. There were dim red lights.…
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