Lubbock Local Wildlife: Earth Day, Drought, Clapp Park

Earth Day is fast approaching. April 22. This will be Earth Day's 45th anniversary, so Earth Day and I are close to the same age. This year I have wanted to do something more significant to honor the day. The old brain casted about for the right thing, and then I ran across this article:

Earth Day Pond Cleanup

And Clapp Park came to mind. I love Clapp Park. I love that such a wild and often beautiful place is a two-minute bike ride from my house. (I love Mae Simmons and Aztlán Parks in the same way, but they require a lot more pedaling.) I decided to spend a few hours picking up trash at Clapp to mark and celebrate Earth Day. I am going for the old Think Globally, Act Locally idea this year.

Wednesday was a rough day - lots of rough news about people around us. Sasha and I found ourselves with a shared restlessness, so we decided to walk around Clapp on an Earth-Day scouting run. (Note to self: never go to Clapp without a real camera, the vaguely intelligent phone just does not do it justice.)

We saw lots of cool things and apparently smelled even more. We saw some nice raised-bed gardens inside the arboretum fence. We saw evidence that someone has been using tree branches to lay out protected areas for butterfly gardens and other small nature refuges. We also saw that someone had been working at clearing trash.

On a less positive front, we saw that the two ponds had dried up to almost nothing. We saw lots of trash. Lots of trash. The two remaining spots of water were teeming with overcrowded life - turtles, frogs, fish, and opportunistic birds.

With man-made trash and drought, the place has become a bittersweet place for me, but one worth working for. So, what are your plans for Earth Day?

May every day be Earth Day, and may you be one of those who keep it going.

Lubbock: We want a playa-lake island for Christmas!

An open letter to Santa or our wealthy Dickensian benefactor:

 

One of my foibles as I get a little older is a deeper and deeper appreciation for birds, pretty much all birds. From house finches to great blue herons, I am a fan.

I used to work across the street from this playa-lake park:

And every day my office mate and I would take a walk around the park. It became our park. Some days we would carry bags to pick up trash. Some days we would fish during our lunch hour. Some days we would take cameras and binoculars to check out the new ducks and shorebirds that had stopped over.

 

 

 

The frustrating part with the shorebirds was in knowing how much it disturbed them when we walked around the pond. There was nowhere for them to escape people (and dogs and cats) and still be at the pond.

 

So we speculated a plan. We needed an island where our visitors could hang out in relative peace. A few parks in town do have islands, and the birdlife thrives in those parks.

 

We actually came up with two plans - the public plan and the stealth plan. The public plan involved the city council and an indiegogo campaign. The stealth plan involved my old canoe and some construction site castoffs. Neither plan actually got off the ground, snagit!

I recently found an article on Grist about a Scottish company, Biomatrix Water, that thinks like we do - that adding islands to existing bodies of water can be very beneficial, but they are looking on a broader scope. Their islands benefit birdlife, but they also improve water quality, reduce pollution, support fish and plant life, and reduce algae blooms. Lots of benefits from a very simple structure.

So, that is what JG and I want for Christmas - a couple of Biomatrix Water islands. She wants hers in Jan Jennings Park, I want mine in the un-named park at 78th and Orlando or Remington Park, or both :-).

May our migratory friends find a light on at the inn.

Good morning, friends!

It is a rainy Friday morning in Lubbock, and it is glorious!

Readership has been way up on this blog lately, and I wanted to say thank you for taking the time to read these scribblings. I hope you find inspiration, mirth, and motivation in what you read here.

Lots of random stuff:

I saw two Inca dove this week. I haven't seen them here in several years. Beautiful smaller dove - easily recognized by the burnt red color visible under their wings when they fly.

And a tiny Mediterranean gecko was scarfing mosquitoes near the mailbox - too fast for photos.

I finished reading the Urban Bestiary (finally) and have been reeling from the ideas presented in the last chapter of what seemed a simple book. I am now reading Crow Planet by the same author and finding it equally inspirational.

The National Bike Challenge is going very well - very happy to have joined it - 18 days left!

I learned about another bike group that I am learning more about - I found them on the back of a beer bottle from our bike and beer loving friends in Ft. Collins, Colorado.
New Belgium and Bikes

I ordered some used battery packs for building a lithium-ion battery pack for my winter bike. (Next week is National Drive Electric Week - Keith, be ready!)

I learned about a very cool neighborhood revitalization project/movement. Check it out at betterblock.org.

The playa lakes are full again - if you are near the park at Quaker and the South Loop in the evening, check out the island in the middle - it has become a rookery for snowy egrets. Let's build islands in all the playa lakes in town - tiny bird sanctuaries in the middle of our lakes!

Thank you again for reading! May you have health, joy, and blessing!

Tadpole Update: 8 Days & No Tail + Jumbo Tadpoles

We'll start with the incumbent - in 8 days it went tailless!

8-12-14

8-12-14

8-4-12

8-4-12

Last weekend Swartzy and I went back over the pond and caught a lot of tiny carp and bluegill. While we were there we met a unicorn - a young lady tromping through the mud carrying a styrofoam cooler, a fish net, and a Nikon. She was out doing the same thing we were, but taking much better photos than we were. I borrowed a few to show y'all. If she doesn't mind, I will feature more of her work here. She has some great shots of local flora and fauna. (Hi, Tanya!)

She directed us to a spot with some really big tadpoles. We brought two home, and I hope to share photos of them as they develop. For now, though, I will share a few of her images from that visit to the pond.

This frog made a huge splash!

Who needs Shark Week when you have beasts like this a few blocks from home?!!!

May you find time to see the something more than a TV or a phone this week.

Aubade, Lubbock (Get out and ride!)

My favorite book to read over and over is Cannery Row. There are a hundred reasons why it is my favorite, and high on that list is that Steinbeck begins each chapter with an aubade. (An aubade, pronounced "Oh Bod!" is a song or poem that greets the dawn.) Imagine your favorite TV show, but some truly wonderful person at the TV station replaced the commercials with very cool, powerful, and relevant short films and you will have an idea of what he accomplished in adding those. Each chapter is a new day, and he starts it out right.

[Literary sidebar - feel free to skip this part like a bad commercial. Sweet Thursday is the sequel to Cannery Row. It has no aubades to speak of. It is best to read Sweet Thursday a few years after Cannery Row at a time in your life where you are very distracted and possibly drinking a little too much.]

[Cubicle worker sidebar - ditto. My office mate is in Seattle right now and keeps sending me photos from whale watching boats and mountaintops and such. Here is the window view from my cubicle:

(Look closely to find the Cannery Row cup and the money our family has set aside to see places like Seattle.)

Today, I needed an aubade.]

(Here comes the part where I turn this into a bicycle post. You knew it was coming.)
This morning I was headed to work on the bicycle and I had one of those great moments. I went west on 55th Street from Quaker Avenue. The road runs downhill (from the perspective of an overweight middle-aged guy on a bicycle.) In a few blocks I found myself coasting near one of our playa-lake parks. With our recent rains, everything is green. There were lots of standard birds and waterfowl, even a snowy egret. I pulled over and soaked it all in for a very short time, and I remembered what those aubades do for Cannery Row. And I was very thankful to be there on a bicycle, and I was very thankful not to be road raging it out with other traffic while driving a car to work.

May you experience your own aubade this week. Joy comes in the morning.

The Great Blue Heron and Red-winged Blackbird

I originally saw this photo on Treehugger.com. They were reposting the original from the The Nature Conservancy.

It's funny. Both of these birds can be found locally, but the photo was taken in Canada. If you are a Lubbockite and spend any time looking around our playa lakes, you will see a great blue heron. In fact, I believe that the gbh is probably the largest wild animal you are likely to encounter within our city limits. It's a rare week that I see fewer than four as I travel around town.

As a teenager, I was lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of early mornings fishing by myself. During those times, I came to view these solitary and graceful birds as kindred spirits as they stalked the shallows in search of fish, frogs, crawdads, and snakes. I often stopped fishing so that I could watch them efficiently pick out their breakfast. One of my favorite things to see was a heron stretching its wings in the early morning sunlight.

The other bird in the photo is a red-winged blackbird. They have a very distinctive call that I have come to associate with water. You will often find them nesting in cattail reeds. If you do, don't get too close. They are quick to attack and will very aggressively defend the nest. (I was once knocked out of a small boat by one.) Respect the blackbird.

May you have the opportunity to be moved by natural beauty soon.

Bonus links:

NatGeo Great Blue Heron

NatGeo Red-Winged Blackbird

Bobby McFerrin sings "Blackbird"