Happy Easter. Happy Spring!

The beauty of life in our state is its unceasing change. From winter to spring, cold to hot, wet to dry, death to life. Clear blue skies give way to looming gray clouds, and a burnt, blackened prairie transforms into a lush field of cheerful flowers within a few short weeks.

We bid farewell to winter (trying to push it out the door, at this point), and urge spring to hasten its advance. We know that buds are lurking just beneath the surface, underground, ready to burst forth. The bees and grasshoppers are waiting for long, warm days to emerge from their winter hideouts, and the monarchs are preparing for their great migration north out of Mexico.

Soon the dry, brown remnants of last summer will give way to tender green shoots, then to bright petals of pink and yellow. The male red-winged blackbirds will welcome their (several) mates to their territory, and begin defending it from interlopers, be they other blackbirds or unfortunate pedestrians straying too near.

Spring is the time of resurrection, bursting with the promise of the future. Embrace and enjoy it, for it passes quickly. Welcome back all the old friends from last summer, and spare a thought for the poor souls in less temperate climates, who don't get the pleasure of anticipating spring after a long, cold winter.

Will You Pitch in a Patch?

Scenes from my "patch" last summer.

Habitat is important. How many millions of acres in Iowa that once were prairie, teeming with birds, insects, and all manner of diverse life, have been converted to bland turfgrass in sprawling suburban housing developments, pocked here and there with rosebushes or vegetable gardens? How many yards are regularly poisoned--by their very owners--to keep unwanted life at bay?

 Our country is a tapestry, each individual, each culture combining as a subtly different thread to create an a single image. In the same way our natural world is a tapestry, the original design barely visible after centuries of being torn apart and fragmented. It is tattered, and it will never be the same as it once was, but we can get to work patching and repairing it, strengthening the worn spots and making new designs amid the old.

This spring and summer, you can help weave again the fabric of your neighborhood and restore, in a small way, the world that once was. We can restore habitat that was lost, bit by bit, patch by patch. It won't be perfect, and it won't be pristine, but it can be better.

It just takes a small commitment to get started. Plant a stem of milkweed. Choose a native tree for your yard instead of a non-native cultivar, and allow insects onto your property. In exchange for tolerating a few munched holes in the foliage, you will help feed a family of birds. Surely you can find a little 5' by 5' patch in your yard that you can devote to native plants? That's just about the size of a single sidewalk square.

Join Habitat Network's
"Pitch in a Patch" campaign

Fortunately there are many great resources to help get started in restoring your yard. Check out Habitat Network's Pitch in a Patch for Pollinators campaign. You can map your yard and join groups to share your progress and find information on pollinators and ways to help them thrive. Submit your photo to add your patch to their quilt.

The Xerces Society is devoted to invertebrate conservation, including bees and butterflies, and has a wide variety of resources for gardeners, citizen scientists, and other insect enthusiasts. 

Closer to home, the Iowa DNR has resources for pollinator gardens, as does the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. The ISU Extension has a free brochure with information about creating and maintaining a healthy pollinator garden, and just up the road a ways, the city of Cedar Rapids has committed to "pitching in patches" totaling 1000 acres of habitat for pollinator...surely you can spare a sidewalk square's worth of space?

You don't have to be an expert gardener or an entomologist; all you need to do is pick a few plants and flowers that are enjoyed by bees or butterflies as a source of food or a host for their larvae, and allow them to grow in your yard. It's an easy way to be one more thread in the tapestry.

Sandhill Migration

A trio of sandhill cranes coming in for a landing near the wetlands.

Driving through Indiana this weekend, I was surprised to pass stubbled corn fields packed with hundreds of smoky-plumaged sandhill cranes, picking through the waste corn to fuel their migration back to breeding grounds in the northern US and Canada.

I knew about the massive flocks of sandhill cranes that passed through Nebraska in the spring, more than half a million birds converging along river valleys in March and April. I had never heard of large flocks coming through Iowa, and assumed that their migration route did not venture further east.

A glance at their species maps, however, shows two distinct migratory populations: one that winters in Texas and Mexico, migrating north through the Great Plains; and another that winters in Florida and migrates up through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana to breeding grounds in Wisconsin, Michigan and points north. There is a distinct gap in the regular migration routes from southern Iowa, down through Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

We are lucky, though, in that the Sycamore Greenway regularly hosts a family of sandhill cranes, with a breeding pair occasionally raising young near the wetlands. Some days, you can hear their raucous calls rolling across the Greenway for nearly a mile, a happy reminder of the wildlife that this stormwater management system hosts and sustains.