Country Diary of a Crockett Lady

Chronicle of the trek from city back to country, although hardly or completely so, as big city life is still only a 20 minute drive away.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I'm Just a Boid Whose Intentions are Good: Oh, Lawd, Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood!

“I am Revenge sent from the infernal kingdom
To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind.”
 

(from Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus”)

FAMILY Cathartidae
ORDER  Ciconiiformes
SPECIES Cathartes aura

Once the sun came dangerously close to the earth. The Great Spirit sent Fox up to push it away but when Fox bit the sun to push it away, he burned his mouth and fell back to earth. Still, the sun did not move. Then Great Spirit sent the Opossum to lasso the sun with its tail and pull it away from the earth. Opossum took to the task but only succeeded in burning off all the hair on her tail. Still, the sun did not move. Finally, Great Spirit sent a large bird with strong black wings and feathers all over his body and face. Vulture shoved his beak deep into the heart of the sun and succeeded in moving it farther away. In so doing, he burned off all the feathers on his head and the heat turned his face bright red.               (Native American legend)

Our common turkey vulture, Cathartes aura, has been sorely misunderstood. A New World bird, turkey vulture makes his home from Canada to Cape Horn. Cathartes aura means something like “purifying breeze,” or “cleansing breeze,” or possibly “golden breeze,” depending on whose etymology you accept. Calling the turkey vulture a buzzard is a likely holdover from when English colonists likened the eastern Black vulture to European buzzards which are of the buteo or hawk family. Our California vulture is more akin to the stork than to hawks or eagles; the "turkey"  part of his full name is a reference to his bald red head and dark plumage. The Latin root of the word “vulture” identifies this bird as a skilled “tearer” of food, a technique he uses much in the way we gnaw on barbeque ribs or tear at tough but good-tasting sourdough.

When you see a vulture circling, he is not necessarily sighting a dead animal as many people think. The bird is “climbing thermals,” attempting to gain elevation in order to mark territory, protect a nest, scout for food, or do all three at once. The vulture is constantly on the look-out for pockets of warm rising air and beats his wings somewhat awkwardly at first to locate and climb these thermals. When you see several vultures circling and riding high on thermals, it is called a “kettle,” while a gathering of vultures on the ground is called a “venue.” The turkey vulture is a graceful, skilled glider who can soar up to six hours without flapping his large wings.

Another common misunderstanding about turkey vultures is that they are vicious hunters; in truth, they are not hunters at all, but gentle janitors who scour our roadsides and fields of carrion, occasionally enjoying a salad of decaying vegetation or marshland plants. On a rare occasion, he might sample a heron nestling but, in general, the vulture is not predatory.

Not knowing where and when you will eat next can make you do strange things. Since the turkey vulture depends on carrion--dead animal flesh--he travels far and wide to feed himself and his family, visiting roadsides, farms, ranches, shorelines, hunting grounds and campgrounds. One group of researchers hid dead chickens in a forest and discovered that vultures had no problem locating the hidden carcasses, which they do by sniffing out ethyl mercaptan gas that arises from a deceased animal.

In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Vulture are quite the ‘family-values’ kind of birds we want in our neighborhoods. Cooperative and monogamous, they mate not just for a long season of raising a family but for life. And, since they can live up to 16 years in the wild--and as long as 30 years in captivity--they have had to learn some tricks for keeping interest in their mates. “Toulouse,” a turkey vulture who lives at San Francisco zoo has lived more than 30 years.

They cooperate too, with others in their species while eating. One bird may bite into a tough piece of meat, holding the carcass as it pulls, while another pulls at the opposite end so they can each get a good chunk of food torn from the flesh of a dead animal.

The vulture relies on two powerful senses: sight and smell although he doesn’t see well at night. His lack of a syrinx--the vocal organ found in songbirds--means that he can only grunt and hiss. Fortunately, he has few natural predators and a cooperative spirit, so he doesn’t have to do that very often. He has long legs and vestigial (meaning, he no longer needs it) webbing between his toes.

One seemingly nasty habit the vulture has is the practice of urohydrosis, a fancy word for saying that he poops on himself.
If you get close enough to observe the legs of a vulture, you may see they are coated with a whitish residue. This liquid excrement helps to keep the vulture’s legs nice and cool. Even that baldy red head has a function. Since the vulture can stick his head deep into the orifices of a dead animal to draw out sweet-tasting internal organs and sinews, he can get himself pretty messy. If he had feathers all over his face, they would be hard to clean and could cart around bacteria. Instead, he can easily clean the bare skin.  Because the turkey vulture regularly sticks his strong short, hooked beak into bloody, decaying carcasses, he has built up an incredible resistance to bacteria and disease and through his generous act of clearing our roadways, farms and fields of dead vermin, raccoons, skunks, and deer, we, too, are all the more hygienic.

Turkey vultures like a good picnic and gather around located food. They rarely have to defend it unless a larger, distant relative like a condor or black vulture intrudes; for the most part, predatory birds like hawks and eagles would rather hunt and kill their own meal. Turkey vultures prefer eating out and like the meat of herbivorous (plant-eating) animals best. They do not take food back to the nest, except to tuck some of it into their crops for regurgitating into the mouths of hungry young ones. Yummers!

Northernmost vultures migrate but our local birds have plenty to eat and places to sleep. We are fortunate to see them hovering above McEwen Road, Pomona Street, and Highway 4 as they keep the roadsides cleared of road-kill.

The male turkey vulture is a real ham when springtime rolls around and it is time to hook up: he struts around with wings outspread like a toreador with a red blanket, bobbing his head and rising to his full height. With deep grey-brown eyes and long eyelashes on his upper lid, his two pinkish-white stained legs, two-toned blackish-brown wings, and featherless red head, he is Mr. Fancy courting a dame who tends to be somewhat larger than Himself. Other than size-difference, both male and female look much alike.

When they finally mate, they take off on pair flights, alternately rising in the thermals above their nests with wingtips nearly touching. This lets other vultures know that they have settled on this particular plot of earth and to back off. Both male and female care for the nest of one or two brownish-spotted cream-colored eggs. At least one egg may survive the 35-40 day incubation and be ready to fledge (learn to fly) at about eight to 13 weeks. The family group remains together through the summer and into early fall.

They enjoy a somewhat private home life and are solitary nesters, adopting nests in caves, cliffsides and hollow trees. They do not actually build nests of twigs or found materials and lay their eggs directly on whatever surface of the nest they adopt. The kids like to hang around with mom and dad for a relatively long time as the bird world goes. They will fly to and from the roost, hanging out with one or the other parent for months after fledging, still taking food from their parents. Kind of like our 20-year-olds today.

SOME ADDITIONAL FACTS:
Like shoreline cormorants, turkey vultures like to sun their wings, holding them out and away from their bodies in a posture that made Edward Gorey famous. Their feathers can get misshapen when they soar, so this activity may help them get straightened out.

Turkey vultures are not in danger of extinction although they are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a mother goddess Met who was represented by an Old World vulture, while the Greeks believed the vulture was descended from the mythological griffin. In Greek mythology, the harbingers of trouble. But closer to home, the Pueblo Indians collected vulture feathers to use in purification ceremonies, believing they helped send away evil influences in people and objects. Because the vulture routinely walks a line between the living and the world of the dead, they have been honored for the balance they achieve and teach us to embrace death as a part of life. It is likely this association with death that has brought them an unearned and false reputation of being vicious and evil, but in fact they teach us to understand that death is just one more transition in a larger cycle of nature and life. They also are admired of being skillful conservers of energy as they use natural forces--the thermals--to achieve great heights and soar without effort.

Use a turkey vulture feather to purify your living space and to bring the harmonious and cooperative energy of the turkey vulture into your life. (You might want to wash it off before letting your cat chew on it.)

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Apple Blossom Time, Not

It's not apple-blossom time. The apples are round and green already. The Santa Rosa plums have fallen and I've made as much plum jam as I ever want to. The persimmons are like chartreuse nuts and there are many pears on a very old pear tree.

What is blooming in mid-summer in Northern California is music. As I become familiar with neighbors, I've found one who is an autodidact in the field of big band and jazz from the 1920s and 1940s. He began collecting old 78s when he was a teen and after a lifetime has a wonderful collection that still sound great on a turntable.

This is my mother's music, not my own. But when an apple tree is left growing strong in your backyard, I believe it's my luck and duty to take advantage of the sweet nutrition offered. People who come into my life often feel like these heaven-sent gravity blobs, not to put too romantic a spin on it. And so, I've commenced my lessons in 1920s, 1930s, 1940s jazz and big band recordings, tasting for the first time in all seriousness: Fats Waller, Bunny Berrigan, Helen Forest, Boots and His Buddies, the Boswell Sisters, Jelly Roll Morton, Jimmy Noone, Vera Lynn and many more.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

TThe green hills are drying up, turning to the gold that California is known for. Summer has arrived with packs of bicyclists rolling through town, and on Sunday, the motorcyclists headed up to Port Costa for an afternoon of socializing and drinking (or drinking and socializing). 

We are here on the estuary, where (to paraphrase an eloquent title of a book of poems by Raymond Carver) 'water comes together with other water.' It's a small town of about 3,000, and yet very busy on weekends especially with pool parties, fish fry's, yard sales, and ice cream socials. I've yet to jump into many of these social activities, except for the once-a-month poetry readings at a deli.
    But I have been getting to know neighbors and find the friendly ones among the less-than-friendly. There's a myth about small towns I think, that people are inclined toward friendliness. I actually think urban centers tend to be more friendly. People live in smaller towns for several reasons: they are born to them and never venture beyond; they marry someone who was born to them and refuses to venture beyond; there's a job drawing them, but they aren't so sure; or, they seek more disengagement, more solitude than a larger city would impose. 
      For us, it is to be closer to natural surroundings and more quiet. After a busy life of being very social, I'm giving in to the introverted part of me that wants less social obligation and more down time to pursue writing projects, art, gardening, hiking on the nearby hills. And, yet, there is a transition, not wanting to give up the old activities, friends, social engagements implied by both of those. So, I drive more, the 17-miles or so into Berkeley, Oakland, across the bridges to Marin and San Francisco. 
    The difference is mostly in the coming-home experience. Turning off the freeway one exit early to take the back road through the hillside, slowing down with the brights on at night because a deer could jump across the road. Pacing myself downward to where waters come together with other waters . . .





Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Getting a Hood on Your Oriole

As an extremely novice birder, I am enjoying expanding my vocabulary to describe and identify the feathered people living in my new country setting. I could not do this without the help of friends who have flown farther down this particular bird trail. Alison, for one, has become my fall-back gal for identification, but I also rely on the Mt. Diablo Audubon's list-serve, East Bay Birders, for the constant stream of bird notices that are sent out in emails every day, notifying Bay Area folks of who and what and how many are flying through.

My first encounter with birders, however, was not so pleasant. It seemed odd that we would go out all in a bunch, with scopes and guidebooks, while some seemed exceedingly competitive about getting the name out first of a particular bird sited. And, I struggle with whether knowing a bird's name--a man-given nomenclature, after all--really helps me know the bird any better.

Nonetheless, when I spotted this yellow brilliance on a utility pole just outside the house about two weeks ago, I was eager to know what name he goes by (he must surely be a "he," because in the bird realm, the brightest and showiest are usually male). I guessed some kind of oriole by using two or three of the usual birder books (Petersen's, Sibley's), but it was my friend, Alison, who affirmed my suspicion that he is a Hooded Oriole.

Old Hoodie came back after a week. I heard his slight single-noted song, not very fancy but unique and went outside to snap the photo. I feel lucky he has visited twice. This is my first encounter with him and I hope he will return, whether or not I call him by his right name.

We are also getting our red-wing blackbirds in abundance. I took a number of shots down at the Port Costa Reservoir.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Species Coexistence

Our birdfeeder has finally been discovered by a squirrel, and the neighbor's cat Ziggy. I'm surprised it took a month to attract anyone other than the birds, mostly house finch and scrub jay, a few white-crowned sparrows, who visit the front yard feeder.

On the hillside just opposite our front, we have watched cows and wild turkeys taking turns in the green green grass. They never seem to appear on the same morning.

And, new neighbors . . . getting to know slowly. Each seems a separate species; we are all coexisting in this little corner of the world called Crockett: the gang that spills out of the church hall after AA meetings, the sincere activists fighting the refinery's disregard for the local residents, the older people who gather for a free lunch at the neighborhood community center, the poets who come into town for a once-monthly reading series, and the bicyclers and motorcyclists who roll through on a Sunday, getting a taste of the "country."

We finally partook of our nicest restaurant in honor of Julian's birthday and got some nice shots of the Carquinez Bridge. Water and grassland are our largest surrounding neighbors. We're learning to navigate our existence in between these two amazing ecozones.




Tuesday, March 30, 2010

What the Children Saw

We peeked, each of us with one bare toe
Squeezed into a knothole,
Glad to trade the pain for another look.

We couldn't see any trees back there,
Just a concrete patio blotched with dirt, and
Blood, and in the far corner
Heavy wooden crates, bound with baling wire.

Full of rabbits, hundreds of them,
All young ones, hiding in the shadows.

Over their heads a sheet of crinkled metal
Stretched across the neighbor's yard.
Underneath, lined up against
The back fence were ten silver buckets.

Catching the steady drips from where
They hung, above, with their necks wrung out.
     by Jannie M. Dresser, copyright/all rights reserved 2010

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Turkey Lurking

Wild turkeys couldn't drag me away . . . from the window this morning because they were the very point of my excitement. Looking out across to the green hill opposite of our home, there were nine of them, one male and his harem. The neighbor lady next door, who is mostly reclused with emphysema (we can hear her cough throughout the day and night) used to feed them and when I first moved to town, we watched a bunch of the birds strut down the middle of our street.

I grew up across from a chicken farm that became a turkey farm in Fresno. That was when there were still farmers in Fresno. (Well, there still are, but that gorgeous agricultural land is fast being paved over, as in "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.") We kids played in the poultry runs after the birds all disappeared in the late autumn.

If everything we connect with in our lives is here to teach us something, I suppose turkeys have taught me not to trust stereotypes. To be a "turkey" is to be foolish, awkward, dim-witted, a loser. But these are magnificent birds and it is good to see the wild ones. Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird, and I have to say, if the turkey had beat out the eagle, perhaps we would be a more accommodating society, learning to live with the earth rather than constantly soaring over it, trying to figure out what we could strike next.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Country Diaries


In 1977, a delicately beautiful book came out, The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, which was a facsimile of Edith Holden of Warwickshire, England's 1906 diary. It chronicled her year of observing nature and showcased her illustrations of the local birds and plants she lived near.

Holden's "country diary" is my model, and Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and other American naturalist philosophers are my inspiration for attending to the near of nature in my new environs along the Carquinez Straits. I begin with watching and drawing the birds.

Our backyard apple tree was left unpruned and still covered in slowly rotting fruit for the winter. This first attracted the Western Scrub Jays and Robins, but it is the Northern Mockingbird who really seized the tree as his territory, and for days we could watch him plumping himself on half-chewed apples.

In late February, I added a birdfeeder with sunflower and small seeds, and we have since been besieged by House Finch. But, this past week, I have also observed a large flock of Cedar Waxwings come through.

Other birds of note in the environs, have been Black Phoebes, a Northern Flicker, crows, mourning dove, vultures and a hawk I cannot identify as yet. We also were visited by a Yellow-Rumped Warpler and a Chestnut-Backed Chickadee.

"Women have less accurate measure of time than men. There is a clock in Adam: none in Eve," said Ralph Waldo Emerson. This doesn't have to be taken as a sexist remark (though sexism pervaded the culture in Emerson's day, he was relatively enlightened as to women's value and intelligence). Instead, I choose to read it as a compliment. To photograph a bird, for example, requires losing a sense of time; one must be patient and greatly slowed to wait for the right moment to snap the shutter. I am learning to photograph birds as I am learning to wait for the right moments when I shall snap the shutter.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Envy the Poor Immigrant

Most people move with a great deal of help from others. I was lucky to have a my former co-worker and friend, Anita, introduce me as a new member of the Crockett community. Like a sister to me, Anita is a poet, a lover of music, tender of a beautiful slope garden, and hard-working woman devoted to her husband, family and friends. I feel lucky to have her in my life as we grow a new phase of our relationship: country neighbors.

Crockett is a small town of about 3,000 people located at the northeastern tip of the San Francisco Bay. Here it is that the Carquinez Strait brings fresh water from California's High Sierra to the Pacific Ocean, via the San Pablo and San Francisco bays. I have old family history linking me to this place, of that more later.

I have lived in Oakland and Berkeley for over 30 years, loving it. Having immigrated first from Fresno, California, I came to the city for its cultural opportunities, the possibility of working in the field of my choice (bookselling and publishing), and for its cool guys. I met and dated a few of those, and finally, at the ripe age of 42, married one of the best. My husband is an actor in the SF Bay Area theater scene, an accomplished scholar of the drama, a hardcore Giants fan, and the sweetest smartest love I could have found.

I am a poet first of all, and have held all kinds of jobs. Currently, I am right in the cultural zeitgeist and not-so-fashionably unemployed. The move to Crockett fit in with having time and energy to make a new home and new friends.

This blog will explore country life at the edge of the SF Bay.