Meditation on a Feather

 A single wispy white feather, backlit by the morning sun, caught on a slender stem near the ground. A few crystals of frost glitter along the threadlike barbs. It's a fairly large feather, so I assume from a fairly large bird. Maybe it fluttered to the ground from one of the geese winging overhead?

My brain catalogs it as a down feather, the fluffy white feathers close to a bird's body, under the smooth outer feathers, that help insulate it from the cold outside. A bit of research with the Cornell Lab's Bird Academy introduces me to the seven different types of feathers: wing (or remiges), tail (rectrices), contour, semiplume, down, filoplume, and bristle. 

The first three--wing, tail, and contour feathers--are those we are most familiar with, the feathers we see immediately when looking at a bird. They are used for locomotion and protection from the elements, as well as communication (for example, courtship and territorial displays). They have a central shaft, or rachis, flanked by a series of barbs that are zipped together by interlocking barbules and tiny hooks called barbicels.

Down and semiplume feathers trap heat below the surface feathers; these feathers lack the hooked barbicels so they don't zip together as neatly as the surface feathers. Semiplume feathers have a central rachis, which is reduced or absent in a down feather--so my feather here appears to be a semiplume. 

The other two types of feathers are not easily visible: filoplumes, whiskery feathers with a tuft of barbs at the end, thought to help birds feel or sense what is going on feather-wise (since the feathers themselves don't have nerves in them), and bristles, basically just a threadlike rachis without barbs along most of its length, often found near a bird's eyes or beaks and also thought to provide additional sensory information.

Watching birds preen, carefully drawing a long feather through its bill to zip the barbs together cleanly, I marvel at the efficient and tidy bodily covering, so different from my own lackluster human coat, with its messy mop of hair that snarls and curls and tangles, above a pale and sensitive pink skin that requires a different protective coating for essentially every different condition: winter coats, rain coats, jackets, sweaters, sunscreens, hats.

How convenient it would be to have just a single covering for every condition and every season! When cold, puff up and allow those downy feathers to capture heat close to your body. Rain runs off the sleek, overlapping arrangement of feathers, while feathers shade the tender skin beneath from the sun's damaging rays. I imagine the meditative calm of arranging each feather so it lies perfectly in place, or maybe the irritating discomfort of a broken or misaligned feather. 

I wonder what the birds think, seeing us in our ever-changing array of adornments through the seasons, unable to face the elements without all these accoutrements, unable to compare to the marvel of a single feather. 

Sources/Additional Reading:

• Bird Academy: Everything Your Need to Know About Feathers
• Bird Basics: Six different feather types explained 
•  The Most Mysterious Feather: Filoplumes
  

There Is No "Away"

"Just throw it away."

What a convenient phrase we use for disposing of our unwanted stuff. Don't need it anymore? Just throw it away. That plastic packaging for the item you just bought? Throw it away. Where is this mythical "away" to which things are being thrown? 

For many beverage containers, unfortunately, "away" is along streets and medians, where they eventually wash into the Greenway or through other stormwater systems ending up in our rivers and streams. Spend an hour picking up trash along McCollister Blvd, for example, and make note of all the cans and bottle that have recently been heaved out of vehicles. Busch Light is a favorite along this stretch, as well as a somewhat vile-looking "performance energy drink" called A SHOC. Within the Greenway itself, huge amounts of flimsy plastic water bottles and fast-food beverage cups collect near the stormwater outlets from surrounding neighborhoods.

It's so easy, you see, to simply toss these beverage containers when finished with them. They are often consumed on-the-go, away from home recycle bins or convenient public receptacles. And this is not a new problem: in fact, over 40 years ago Iowa's legislators enacted a Bottle Bill that would help prevent exactly this sort of littering. But it doesn't seem to be working, does it? 

Thus some legislators, backed by an extremely insistent grocery industry, feel it should be scrapped entirely. They argue that recycling is so widespread and convenient that a Bottle Bill is unnecessary. They argue that it places an undue burden on those grocery stores that have to accept the returns. They argue it is a hassle for consumers to properly dispose of the containers. 

But clearly--the first point is obviously untrue. If someone can fill a trash bag full of these containers every month along just one mile of one road, these containers are not being recycled as they should be, even with readily-available programs in our city. Imagine if each of those cans and bottles were worth a quarter--an amount that would be in line with the original nickel forty years ago--would people be so eager to toss them out of their car?

Grocery stores have eagerly seized upon the pandemic as an excuse to scrap their bottle return systems whenever possible. But the Bottle Bill was an early and elegant means of putting responsibility for trash produced back onto the industries that produced it: Distributors and grocers make money selling this trash, while leaving municipal waste systems to clean it up. The deposit system ensures that the trash is collected and recycled by the very industries that produced it. 

We need to move beyond a one-way stream from production to use  to trash, into a modern circular system where the entire lifecycle of a product and its packaging is considered at the time of production, and all costs included in the purchase price. The Bottle Bill is an effective way to internalize the costs of these single-use containers and ensure they are collected and recycled properly.

In fact, Iowa manages to recycle 65% of its deposit containers, twice as much as in states without deposits(1). But far less than the nearly 90% attained by Michigan, with its 10-cent deposits. We can do better.

By no means should we be considering scrapping the Bottle Bill entirely; rather the entire country should enact a National Bottle Bill. It should include a deposit of at least 10 cents, and it should cover not only the limited products currently covered (beer, wine, liquor, soda, etc.) but should be expanded to include the materials that have exploded in usage since the Bottle Bill was first passed in Iowa--particularly water and sports drink bottles. 

A national Bottle Bill is included as part of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021, an important piece of legislation that tackles many of the plastic waste problems that our country is facing that are only growing worse with time. You can encourage your members of Congress to support it. 

There simply is no "away" when it comes to our trash.

Resources/Additional Sources:

1. The Ten Cent Incentive to Recycle (PDF)
   
2. Sierra Club Beverage Container Guidance (PDF)
   

A Family Gathering

Ah, naturally the moment I stop to change lenses on my camera I hear the noisy call of the Sandhill Cranes from the southwest. Are they approaching? Hanging out in the field off in the distance, out of sight? Moving in a different direction? Better safe than sorry, I quickly re-attach the more "zoomy" lens just in time to snap some photos as pass over to the north and turn back into the wind from the south. Three huge birds, almost hovering as their legs dangle and wings curve for a landing at the edge of one of the outlet ponds.

This trio appears to be the same as I've seen earlier in the summer, two adults and a juvenile (lacking the scarlet forehead of the older birds), which I assume to be a little family unit. Sandhill Cranes will lay up to three eggs at their wetland nesting site in April or May, although generally only a single chick survives (even with such formidable parents protecting them, many young birds are lost to predators such as coyotes, bobcats, and raccoons. 

The young bird will stay with its parents throughout the winter, migrating in late November or early December and returning with them in late February or March, at which point the youngster will strike off on its own (sometimes joining a small flock with other young cranes) when the parents begin to nest again. 

Sandhill Cranes can live 20 years or more, with some birds documented as being over 35 years old. They will normally not pair up until they are around 7 years old, and will stay with that mate for life, often returning to the same area year after year to nest. How fortunate for us that a pair has chosen the Sycamore Wetlands as their home! Let's do everything we can to be good and hospitable neighbors to them and future generations of cranes. 

 Sources/Learn more:

• All About Birds: Sandhill Crane
• Audubon Field Guide
  
•  International Crane Foundation: Sandhill Crane
  
• Birds of the World: Sandhill Crane [subscription required]
  

 

Rivers of History

Our state is the most altered landscape in the country. The land that was prairie was plowed over, and what was once wetland filled in, to create the vast swaths of corn and soybean monocultures that represent our state to the world. What was once a diverse and ever-changing habitat for thousands of different species has become a tedium whose sole function is to support one species at the expense of all others. Any insect or mammal that dares feed at our exclusive trough—covering 93% of our state—must be exterminated, with extreme prejudice.

The land is unrecognizable. And with every acre converted from crops to human dwellings it becomes even more so, as we shape the land to suit our needs, Developers install gentle slopes and channels to tell the rainfall where to go, and scrubby little ponds to capture the water that doesn’t get diverted into our rivers. Every inch of land is remade as rich topsoil, the product of thousands of years of life growing and decaying, is scraped away and replaced with plastic-meshed turfgrass atop the hard-packed clay soil that remains.

Iowa River near Amana

But one thing has proved difficult to significantly alter: our network of rivers and waterways. Try as we might to dam them, divert them, channel them, constrain them, we are ultimately no match for the water's collective power. Their sometimes extravagant twists and turns may look terribly inefficient to our human sensibilities when viewed from a satellite, but their routes are etched in the land according to the properties of the land itself as water seeks the path of least resistance through softer earth or around geologic formations. The river's inevitability will erode that which it encounters, sometimes cutting off some of those crazy curls to make a new channel, leaving an oxbow lake or, in some cases, shunting a piece of Illinois onto the west side of the Mississippi.

As I travel virtually down the Iowa River, into the Mississippi and beyond, I grow to appreciate more and more how rivers shaped our history: how we traveled, where we settled, what we bought and sold, the borders and scenery of towns, cities, and states. I see the green trees edging the winding blue lines, quickly fading into the patchwork quilts of agricultural fields, and wonder what those patchworks looked like before.

Mississippi River near Cairo, IL

Often the rivers run directly through cities and towns, like our own Iowa City. In some places, the rivers have been embraced and made the centerpiece of their communities, with scenic riverwalks and places to touch the water, launch kayaks, drop a fishing hook or wade in the clear shallows.

Our muddy, sometimes frothy, occasionally unruly Iowa River must have been an indelible part of our history, but it is difficult to visualize. Our trails and parks that overlook the river seem so distant, separated by scrubby brush or rocky rip-rap. I’ve seen images showing steamboats on the river—steamboats! Can you imagine? Where did they dock, who did they carry? What did the bridges that traversed the waters look like? How did people use the river a century ago, two centuries ago?

Much of the infrastructure from that era is gone, but the river remains. We may not travel along it, to the Mississippi and beyond. We may not  ever touch its waters--or want to touch its waters!--but it is still a part of our community. 

I only recently learned about a somewhat neglected piece of our city's history: the Montgomery-Butler House, built before the Civil War and currently nestled in a wooded part of Waterworks Prairie Park. What intrigued me was the fact that Martin Montgomery, who built the house, also ran a ferry across the river in that area. Who used the ferry? Where were they going, whence were they coming? Was there a road that would become Dubuque Street present at the time, lacking a bridge? Much of the evidence of the lives that were lived are lost to history, but we have a small stone structure to remind us...and the river. 

 

They're from the Government...and They're Here to Help

 

Although it has been trendy for decades now in some circles to hate on “government” (as that oft-quoted celebrity politician from a bygone era once claimed, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”*), our government—and it is our government—exists to serve our needs. And nowhere is the usefulness of government more apparent, and more responsive, than in our local communities.

Share your thoughts on planned changes to
Whispering Meadows and other local parks.

We are fortunate to live in a city that takes its role as a protector and steward of our resources seriously, and consistently seeks input from citizens on how best to carry out its duties. Every year we have the opportunity to cast votes for people to represent our interests on the City Council, County Board of Supervisors, and the School Board. We are able to communicate with all of these groups at public meetings, and raise concerns about issues that are important to us.

There are any number of Boards, Commissions, and Committees made up of regular community members that help city staff and elected officials make decisions and guide plans (if you are interested in serving, there are a number of vacancies for those willing to offer their time and experience).

In addition to all the indirect representation through these individuals, the city often asks for your direct input about plans and programs that will guide them in the future. Here are just a few opportunities to share your opinions:

·       Iowa City Gather Here Recreation Master Plan: related to the future of the city’s recreation programming and facilities. Take a survey or browse and add notes to the idea wall.  You can also provide feedback at the Rec N’ Roll events from 3 to 5 pm October 24 (at Scott Park) or October 31 at Happy Hollow.

·       Park Projects: The City is looking for feedback on improvement plans to three parks:

o   Whispering Meadows: park plan and Survey

o   Chadek Green: preliminary concepts and survey

o   Court Hill: preliminary concepts and survey

"Hello, ICgovXpress? There appears to be a
giant...sinkhole along the Greenway."
Days later:

In addition to these formal requests for input, there are a number of ways to share your thoughts directly. You can easily report concerns around town, from a dark streetlight to a downed tree to potholes and more, via ICgovXpress. Each city department’s web page also has a link with staff contact information, so you can reach out directly with questions (speaking from experience, both of these methods of communication resulted in a swift and satisfactory response).

City staff can’t be everywhere, see everything, and talk to everyone, so citizen feedback—your feedback—is essential to keeping our city a great place to
live.

 

*Just as often the introductory qualifying phrase “In this present crisis,” is omitted, interestingly transforming the meaning from a limited rhetorical flourish to a universal ideological truth.

Thieving Parasites?

 

Alas, poor bee. One must take care when buzzing about flowers, for danger lurks around every petal. I had seen this tableau before, with other bees on other flowers, a motionless individual dangling. 

The culprit, I assumed, was a Jagged Ambush Bug, those fearsome predators that sit motionless in wait for a hapless pollinator to wander within snatching distance of its strong forelegs. Once within the Ambush Bug's clutches, the victim is subjected to "extraoral digestion": saliva from the Ambush Bug is injected via its proboscis, breaking down the victim's tissues so they can be easily sucked out.

I  pivoted to get a shot from another angle...

...and yep! Not one but two Jagged Ambush Bugs, a smaller male piggybacking on the larger female, who was feeding on the bee. 

But wait--what's this? Tiny flies hanging around the scene, several on the bee itself. Are they sharing in the Ambush Bug's meal, crashing the party to partake of the nutrients available on the bee's corpse?

iNaturalist tentatively suggests an ID in the family Milichiidae, known as "freeloader flies" for their kleptoparasitic ways (kleptoparasites take food from others, with "klepto" meaning "thief" or "theft"). I am not knowledgeable enough to confirm the ID, but the behavior certainly fits!

"Freeloader flies" (also called "jackal flies") will feed off the prey of Ambush Bugs, spiders, and other predators, possibly even sucking the juices the predator has conveniently dissolved for them as part of its own meal. They are attracted by the smell of the prey insect. 

When I imagine how nice it would be to pollinate for a living, buzzing happily from flower to flower in the sunshiny summer, I must remind myself that it's a dangerous, yet complex and fascinating, world.

Knotweed: Smartweed's Low-Growing Cousin

 Sitting in the sun, gravel digging into the parts of my resting on the ground, I met a new friend. I was there to see the pretty bright pink Scarlet Smartweed and its tiny insect visitors, when my eye wandered down to a nondescript, slender stem that didn't quite match its surrounding greenery. 

It sported one or two minuscule white and pink flowers at the base of the leaves (my brain insists on calling flowers located on axils like this "armpit flowers" despite the anatomical mismatch), and the shape of the flowers combined with the membrane-wrapped joints along the length of the stem were similar to the traits of my target. Was this a less-flashy relative, living comfortably in its cousin's shadow?

Fastidious gardeners and those who maintain lawns are no doubt familiar with my stringy new friend: Prostrate Knotweed (Polygonum aviculare), a common weedy plant that can often be seen spreading along sidewalk edges, forming an open flattish mat on the pavement.  It is a nonnative from Europe and, like many other widespread nonnatives, thrives in poor, compacted soil where lesser plants fear to tread. 

The leaves are not clustered in a showy inflorescence but spaced along the stem, just one or two flowers tucked in at the base each leaf.  The open flowers mostly appear white with touches of green within, while the closed flowers are a bright pink, matching the clustered flowers of the Scarlet Smartweed. 

That membranous sheath, or ochrea, a trait of the larger Polygonaceae family that includes smartweeds, docks, and even rhubarb, encloses the joints and wraps the flowers and leaf in a tidy, papery bundle at their base.  

The seeds...I shouldn't be surprised any more when researching these common weedy plants how often I find the seeds are eaten by many species of birds, including my favorite sparrows and doves.

It is one of those plants that is literally everywhere, but has gone unnoticed in my rambles simply because I had never taken the time to look! Back at my house--yep, there were those sprawling stems with rounded leaves. A hairy caterpillar happened along just as I sat down with the camera, and appeared to be nibbling near one of the flowers until a careless movement sent it disappearing into the grass. 

Though they may not be welcome in lawns among the more well-mannered flora, I can't help but admire the tenacity and the humble beauty of these hardy plants, flourishing in an unkempt mop along the sweltering pavement, unfazed by either trampling footsteps or the baking sun.

A Unique Refuge

If you leave the trail a little north of the Sycamore Apartments, following the mowed path east toward the wetlands, you’ll be treated to an ever-changing vista. Gleaming water teeming with migrating waterfowl in the early spring, giving way through the summer to a lush green vegetated sprawl when the water is low.

Many days you can hear the call of the resident family of Sandhill Cranes nearby or off in the distance, or see the Bald Eagle couple perched in a snag on the horizon. Dragonflies and swallows swoop and soar overhead, hunting for insects in the summer air. Occasionally Trumpeter Swans will stop by, paddling slowly, large and elegant among the Canada Geese.

On this day, a Great Blue Heron flies a short distance, its broad wings curving as it lands. Nearby a Sandhill Crane strides, deliberate steps against a backdrop of tall cattails. Then a second, and a third, walking together. One of the three lacks the scarlet mask on its forehead, perhaps the offspring of the other two. They pass behind the heron, which stays perfectly motionless as the much larger birds go by.

Nearer to the trail-side of the wetlands a snapping turtle of conspicuous stature rests, smooth, dark carapace glossy amid the jumbled green chaos of the leaves. Two other herons stand in the distance, one neck outstretched and the other tucked down.

These constructed wetlands, like the planted cells alongside the trail, are habitat and home to hundreds, if not thousands, of species.  The crane family has likely lived in the area longer than many human residents on the south side of town, and hopefully will be able to live there many years more. How many years has that snapping turtle been basking in the mud there?

As our neighborhood grows and develops, I hope that the city takes into consideration these long-term residents and their well-being, and works to minimize the disruption caused by enclosing the wetlands along the western border with housing and roads. It is a refuge for wildlife in an increasingly hostile world, and being able to share in a small part of their lives, it becomes a refuge for us as well.

Flowers Underfoot

 This time of year the eyes is drawn, well, to eye-level and above, where so many tall plants are blooming along the trail with their bright-yellow Silphium faces aimed at the sun. Cup Plant and Compass Plant everywhere, with Tall Coreopsis and Prairie Dock getting started. Some pinkish Purple Coneflowers dot the scenery, along with some late blooming (reblooming?) orange Butterfly Weed.

But down below, in the crusty gravel or hard-packed dirt next to the pavement, scrappy little individuals are performing the same functions of life as they grow and flower, attracting miniature pollinators with their teeny blooms. They don't seem to mind being stepped on and overlooked (and may in fact benefit from being overlooked rather than yanked out by the roots as weeds).

Pretty little Prostrate Vervain (Verbena bracteata) has pale purple flowers similar to its taller cousins, but its inflorescences tend to lay flat along the ground rather than being held aloft in elegant spikes. It is a native that is found throughout the continental U.S., often in urban areas where the soil is poor and gravelly. Small bees may forage at the flowers, and birds will eat its seeds.

 

Another mat-forming plant with tiny flowers is Spotted Spurge (Chamaesyce maculata), also a weedy native that thrives in those urban wastelands with poor soil. Even more subtle of flower than the Prostrate Vervain, this member of the Euphorbia family bleeds a milky sap when its stem is broken. The tiny white "petals" are actually parts of glands: Euphorbias have structures called cyathia, which contain the minimal male and female floral parts along with nectar glands that may have petal-like appendages. Like the Prostrate Vervain, Spotted Spurge is visited by small bees, as well as flies and wasps, and its seeds are also eaten by many types of birds.

 

So while we're busy admiring the the burly prairie denizens towering over the Greenway, spare a moment to appreciate the lower-profile plants that thrive under our feet. 

 

Resources/Further Reading:

• Illinois Wildflowers: Prostrate Vervain 
•  U.S Forest Service: Spotted Sandmat
• Wisconsin Horticulture: Spotted Spurge
  

 

Mountain Mint, Ol' Buddy Ol' Pal

Although I like to think I don't have any botanical enemies, I tend to divide the plants I encounter into categories of friends and...let's say acquaintances. The friends are those I love and look forward to seeing every year: the Ratibida pinnata, the Pineapple Weed, assorted Violets, the funny little rockets of flowering Narrowleaf Plantain. Usually they are entwined with a fond memory or something unique about their appearance or life that strikes me as appealing. 

Others--the rest--are enjoyable enough to spend time with, and while appreciate them in a general sense they don't inspire the same joy as those friends do. Until recently, Common Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) was among these. I've noticed it occasionally, its small, purple-spotted flowers often crawling with a variety of pollinators, but it never stood out among its taller, more robustly-flowered, or otherwise more interesting neighbors.

That is, until I discovered we had a friend in common. Hold on, what's that? 

There, a petal out of place, next to more browning petals. Moving in jerky starts and stops across the small cluster of flowers. A Camouflaged Looper (Synchlora aerata)! I've been enchanted by these sharp-dressed caterpillars from the moment I saw them, and finding them in my garden is always a treat. Because they make use of the petals of the flower on which they are foraging as camouflage, they use a variety of different flowers as hosts--though I spot them most often on the R. pinnata (maybe because it is easy to notice them on the smooth, rounded flowerhead?).

Not just one Looper, though. A whole armada of them, each in varying states of dress scattered around the stand of Mountain Mint! Some had just a few brown petals adorning their pastel bodies; others seemed to fully decked out, dried anthers dangling over their backs as they inched along. One unfortunate individual, camouflage working perhaps a bit too well, found a bee upon its back. 

Suddenly, with the discovery that we have a friend in common, the Mountain Mint has found a place in the always-growing circle of friends out along the Greenway.

A Thorny Encounter

And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers
is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.

                                        - Thomas Moore

 

Hunkered down in the mowed grass alongside the trail, looking for the minuscule grasshopper and katydid nymphs that spring away from my footsteps, I happened to glance to my left at a long green stem nearby.

Wow, those are some fierce thorns!

Curious. I didn't recall seeing anything thorny around here in previous years; the roses and other shrubby plants with prickles and thorns are found in other areas. The thorns were brown and pointy...and there were only two of them.

My eye followed the stem upwards to see the distinctive and familiar yellow petals of Ratibida pinnata, gray-headed coneflower, at the top. Those don't have thorns. 

Closer inspection revealed a set of eyes below the pointy protrusion, and veined wings aft, simulating the broad base of a prickle. A set of chunky, hairy-looking legs below the eyes completed the insect. What a clever disguise! I wonder how many predators are fooled as easily as I....

The Wide-footed Treehopper (Enchenopa latipes), like other treehoppers, has built-in camouflage that renders it difficult to spot when it is feeding on the sap of plant stems. Many species are commonly known as thorn bugs, for obvious reasons.

The long "thorn" is actually a fancy extension of the pronotum, commonly seen as a smooth, shield-like plate on the thorax of insects like grasshoppers and beetles, between the head and the base of the wings. The disguise serves double duty, not only helping the treehopper to blend in with its surroundings, but also deterring investigation by predators perhaps familiar with the sharp end of actual thorns they've encountered in the past.