Winners and losers in the attention economy

Warning: existential navelgazing ahead. Proceed with caution.

Our magnificent, chaotic, messy,
interdependent world.

As I walked the length of our beautiful trail recently, my mind swirled with current events that have been dominating our news cycle. There, seeped in the buzzing-trilling-chirping of assorted amphibian, arthropod, and avian inhabitants, I walked. And I considered. 

I thought of how we passively direct our attention to the topics that politicians and media outlets think are most beneficial for them. How our attention economy converts that attention to power, such that those people and topics that dominate headlines and garner clicks reap rewards both tangible and intangible. How rarely I see the discussion in the public sphere involve this natural world that so many of us love so deeply.

When reported at all, it is under a category like "environment/climate change." They always seem to be paired, as if each on its own is insufficient, despite them encompassing literally everything that surrounds us.

 Environment? What a small and sterile word for the teeming life all around us. For the wondrous and complex world we inhabit, that provides everything we need to survive and asks nothing in return other than to be left alone. The diversity and abundance of the beings who share our small corner of the universe, the only other living things we know of in all of existence. 

Climate change? How narrow a thing to describe the very wellbeing of us as a species and the complex interconnectedness of everything. Our responsibility to steward the living world, and the multitudinous ways we are failing in that obligation. 

When I look at the headlines and accompanying photos, they are men and women in suits, in front of concrete or glass. Nary a blade of grass to be seen. Scarcely a glimpse of blue sky. Our actual world—the world we inhabit and the world that sustains our basic functions of life—is invisible. Why?

The woodpeckers, owls, and other residents, priced out of their
homes in the wooded area north of Birds in Flight.

Maybe the stories that people choose to focus on are the easy ones. They require no knowledge or understanding, but are particularly suited to strong opinions. They are "problems" that can be easily solved by dictat without any pesky investment or spending. Or the stories that are promoted are those that have the largest financial impact on the bank accounts of those steering the conversation. The living world is an invisible backdrop...something that supports and enables our very existence, but neglected nonetheless.

Our living world doesn't have big-money investors and shareholders to promote its interests. And yet...we are ALL shareholders in that world, and we can only thrive when it is allowed to thrive. Maybe we all need to step up and become lobbyists: attending candidate meetings and speaking or asking questions about what can be done to preserve and protect our natural heritage. Clicking on and sharing articles about topics related to nature and our environment. Exploring this amazing world and bringing it into the conversation until it is given attention proportional to its importance.

As a charismatic predator's life ends, others are quick to make
use of her legacy to further their own ends.

Grasshopper heaven

It's the most wonderful time of the year! When you can walk along a trail and see hundreds of springing grasshoppers cascade ahead of you, wave after wave of tiny hoppers leaping in every direction. Some land on the sidewalk with a click, some grab a tall stem and peep around it at you, some catch a blade of grass momentarily before rapidly descending to the ground in a surprisingly coordinated rappel. 

The Greenway seeming a little sparse in the springers, I headed over to Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, which was an amateur orthopterist's heaven. The sandy soil around the lake, with wide swaths of Little Bluestem, Sideoats Grama, and other low-growing prairie plants along the trail, made for an interesting contrast with the moister/shadier and a bit weedier Greenway. 

The plan was to take pictures of grasshoppers. All kinds of grasshoppers! My hope was to find another Admirable Grasshopper, such as the one I encountered at nearby Sand Prairie a couple of years ago. They are not rare, but they are unusual enough (to me anyway) to stand out amid the more numerous specimens. 

It was a dry, sunny day; the air filled with songs of cicadas and katydids punctuated by the percussion of fleeing grasshoppers ticking against foliage. The occasional rhythmic whir of wheels or thuds of footsteps indicated a passing human. Have you seen an Admirable Grasshopper? I wonder wordlessly in their direction. I don't care to imagine what they may have been wondering in my direction in return, as I hunkered red-faced and dripping in sweat, to peer at the ground.

Like taking photos of swallows in the sky, it can be a little tricky to pick out a single grasshopper out of hundreds on the move and follow it to a landing point to take a picture. I began with taking a shot of every grasshopper I could focus on, and quickly discovered that they were all the same: Red-legged Grasshoppers (Melanoplus femurrubrum).* 

Red-legged Grasshopper

To be more discriminating I watched how they hopped. Some took broad leaps of a meter or more, going high above the ground. Some took sad little tiny hops, frantically trying to get away from the giant blundering about. Some jumped in the air and spread their wings to glide gently to a landing on the ground. 

Taking the time to stop and stalk, I encountered this handsome charcoal-colored individual, a Clouded Grasshopper (Encoptolophus sordidus). The banded femurs and interesting eye colors made it easy to see it wasn't like the others. 

Clouded Grasshopper

The robust Differential Grasshoppers (Melanoplus differentialis), a smooth porcelain green with black chevrons on their femurs, were fairly common, peering from the greenery.

Differential Grasshopper

A walk in the mowed grass alongside the paved trail proved to be a good strategy to flush some hoppers out of the grass and onto the trail, where I could get a good look at them. One of the first to appear using this technique was a little guy...even from several feet away I could see something a little different about it: the silhouette was unlike all those I'd been seeing so far, with a decidedly slanted face. Could it be...?

A glance left and right to see if any cyclist might unwittingly scare (or squish!) my target, then a few quick snaps, circling to get a good look. It was! An Admirable Grasshopper. What a beaut. 

Admirable Grasshopper

More photos, of tiny nymphs with nubs for wings. Some bright grassy green, others a little more yellow, and others a subdued tan with black stripes; IDs difficult, especially for nymphs, but possibly more Red-legged and maybe Two-striped Grasshoppers?

Assorted grasshopper nymphs

I saw several grasshoppers holding themselves high off the pavement, as if to try to keep their bodies cool from the sun-baked surface:

And finally one more individual that looked just a little different, with wonderful dark mottling and grassy green stripes highlighting its wings and pronotum, with a fainter wash of green on the face and femur. Tentatively a Slant-faced Pasture Grasshopper (Orphulella speciosa), though the slant of its face doesn't appear nearly as extreme as that of the Admirable Grasshopper! 

Slant-faced Pasture Grasshopper

Circling around to the boat ramp area where the grasses and forbs reached far overhead, much taller than the low grasses along the trail, the grasshoppers continued their popcorn leaps. The height of the greenery brought many of the leggy arthropods up to eye level or higher, a unique opportunity for us to eyeball each other on equal footing: their inscrutably faceted compound eyes and my watery orbs in contemplation at the vastly different ways we experience the same world.

* As a non-expert, I have attempted to verify as closely as possible with resources at hand, including iNaturalist and those listed below, but welcome corrections and alternative suggestions!

Resources/Additional Reading:

• Field Guide to Common Western Grasshoppers
• BugGuide

Opting out of the attention economy

In a world where everything has become transactional...where everything is an opportunity to make a buck or to sell a product, from politicians selling legislation in exchange for campaign donations down to a podcaster rapturously offering paeans in service of the latest supplement or gadget to service their advertisers, our attention one of the most valuable products of all.

That's why it feels joyously transgressive to opt out for an hour or two, and give your attention to nature, who asks for nothing in exchange. To the contrary: our money is no good with nature. There is no price you can pay to get a rain shower or a sunny sky. You can't order up a nice warbler or fritillary on demand. They show up when they show up. You can increase your chances of encounters if you take the time to get to know the rhythms and ways of the nature, but that, too, takes an investment more valuable than dollars. 

Each summer, as the heat presses in August, the smartweeds begin to bloom in colors from a dirty white to a shocking hot pink, half a dozen different species or more found along the trail and in the wetlands. The tiny flowers attract equally tiny bees, flies, ants. 

Maybe it's their humble stature, or the lack of attention they get in comparison to bigger, more charismatic flowers, or the extravagant carnation-pink hues against their elegant green leaves...but I'm inordinately fond of these little plants. 

That's why I was delighted to spot the telltale flower in a new (to me) spot along the trail. And even better...what is that bunch of dead hanging off the inflorescence? Could it be...a Camouflaged Looper?! One of my favorite invertebrates, on one of my favorite flowers. 

Sources note that Camouflaged Loopers often, though not exclusively,  use members of Asteraceae, or Composite, family of flowers (like coneflowers, Silphiums, and daisies) as a host. It was particularly fun to know that they also appreciate smartweeds' Polygonaceae family. 

I can't go down to the local nursery and buy a flowering smartweed. And I definitely can't order up a Camouflaged Looper to decorate it. The smartweed doesn't want anything from me except to be left alone to do its smartweed thing. Same for the looper. 

They don't even want our attention.