Dawn Emerges

Before the sun is up,

a light goes on in a neighbor's shed.
Chickens cackle, an egg laid?

A warm breath meets cold air.
Fingertips tingling, our pace quickens
to warm the hands.

Grass blades and oak leaves,
rimmed in ice crystals,
glisten in the headlamp's rays.

The hardwood trees,
empty of leaves,
their form laid bare.

A jet streams south,
the horizon appears, splashed in orange.
Dawn emerges, a star's twinkle fades.

Animal Planet

Although we do not get Animal Planet on television,
I wanted to alert those who do
that Atticus M. Finch of Tom and Atticus
will be on Animal Planet tonight:

Dogs 101 episode which originally aired on October 10th,
is on tonight at 8 pm and 11 pm.

Hunting Season

Hunting season for deer and bear is in full swing. Orange hats grace the heads of guys in pickup trucks. In our part of New Hampshire, fresh "Posted" signs are nailed to trees on many lands, but there is plenty of public and private land still open.

I don't hunt and I don't like guns, but I do see the value of hunting, as a way to gather a local, sustainable food. Though I have never been fond of the photos showing a killed moose, deer, or bear with smiling hunters sitting or standing next to their quarry. Especially those hunters who go for trophy animals, rather than to fill their freezer for the winter.

We still go for walks in the woods this time of year. Bella is outfitted with a hand-me-down orange vest, one that Aria (our 12-year old Shepherd) used when she was a thin pup. Bella stands only a foot and a half tall, but she springs through the woods, leaping logs, rocks and small streams in a single bound, and her tail stands up like a whitetail flag.

Bella models her orange vest

Bella is a tidy little package at forty pounds. Her breed -- English springer spaniel -- is a hunting breed. She seems to be more a show line than a field, hunting dog. As she flies through the woods she is mostly chasing her own demons. Not much flushing or "springing" of game. At home Bella struggles with her role in the pack, constantly stressing at the need to keep the humans and other dogs in line. We try to remain calm and assertive, but I suppose just like dealing with difficult teenagers, we don't always meet the test.

Bella is a challenge; sometimes we waver on our ability to live together peacefully, but then we see her big brown eyes and keep trying. She is happiest "hunting" in the woods, so I take her out as often as possible. I don't mind.

A Beaver Pond in November

The beaver pond is quiet in November. Great blue herons, ospreys and kingfishers left the wetland weeks ago, their young fledged and dispersed by summer's end. A few mallards swim silently along the edge, preparing for a flight south. The water level is high following heavy rains last weekend. The sturdy dam holds fast. Any leaks are inspected and fixed each night by the resident beavers.

The industrious beaver, is especially busy this time of year. The parents and their 1 1/2 year old offspring are filling the pantry next to the lodge. They gather their favorite woody foods -- small branches from aspens, willows, birches, and other tender hardwoods. These twigs are cached in the pond close to their lodge; the top layer sticks up above the pond, which helps prevent water freezing around the food cache.



The lodge is firmed up with mud to form a solid roof that is nearly impenetrable by beaver predators such as coyotes. This also keeps the beaver warm in winter. Safe inside the lodge the beaver family -- which includes the parents, the teenagers, and the young of the year -- swims out from its underwater entrances to grab something from the underwater cache and carry it back into the lodge. Beavers can tuck their lips behind their large incisors. This allows them to carry twigs in their mouth without swallowing lots of water.

Elsewhere, along a river, another beaver seems to be on a different mission. This beaver is busy gnawing large oaks. Actually, he's taken a bite or two out of every tree in a small circle around this oak. Maybe he's nervous, feeling the pressure of oncoming winter, the lodge not ready, the food not stowed. Maybe he lost his life-mate and is starting over.

The results of a busy beaver

Back at the pond, the low sun captures a perfect reflection of the rock-studded shoreline. The pond is calm and serene at mid-day.

On warmer winter days, the beavers will swim out to feed on the fleshy tubers of pond lilies and cattails. On the pond's surface oak leaves and pine needles float among the lily pads now tinged in red, marking the season's end.

Cattails

Cattails are common. They form dense stands around the edges of marshes, sometimes so prolific when conditions are right that they fill in the entire marsh. The roots - a thick fleshy rhizome -- creep along in the muck, such that a vast stand of cattails may be from just a few plants.

Marshes go by different names, depending on the water depth, and plant community, and substrate. Some are shallow, some are deep, some are more sedgy or have more grasses, some are shrubby or have some trees. One with mostly cattails, is simply called a cattail marsh. In these marshes cattails are so dominant that they exclude most other plant species. When they are not so dominant, cattails will share the marsh with tussock sedge, bulrush, bur-reed, manna-grass and blue-joint, and some others.

Red-winged blackbirds, muskrats, swamp sparrows, rails and bitterns come to mind when I walk near a cattail marsh. Muskrats and cattails are quite a pair. Muskrats eat their fleshy roots and make their small huts or lodges out of the leaves, creating channels through the cattail stands as they go. Ducks like the open water cleared of cattails by the muskrat. They can swim among the reeds, safe from predators, while catching small aquatic insects among the emergent wetland plants.

David Carroll, a New Hampshire artist, writer, naturalist, philosopher and swampwalker, writes in his award-winning Swampwalker's Journal-A Wetlands Year:

"Determined swampwalker that I may be, I am kept out of much of this cattail marsh. As in many wetlands, the muck here is more than an impediment, it is an impassable barrier. I cannot make my way through most of the cattail stands, nor wade the muskrat channels. The pools of floating-leaved and submersed plants and the spaces of open water are well beyond my reach. They are the realm of muskrat, Blanding's turtle, black duck, and dragonfly.......I content myself with circling the wadeable margins, getting glimpses into the interior through reedy curtains of cattail."

The brown spike of the cattail is the pistillate or female part of the flower. The staminate or male part of the flower is above the corn-dog looking female flower. The flowers are borne on tall stalks, over your head and mine. The sword-like leaves are slender and stiff, sheathed together at the base. At this time of year, the brown spikes are breaking open, scattering their seeds -- up to 250,000 seeds per spike -- into the wind and the water.


Read more about David's art and his "wet-sneaker trilogy" at his studio -- the Carroll Studio Gallery -- a family affair. Meanwhile strap on some sneakers and wander the margins of the cattail stands, catching the fluffy seeds as they scatter in the wind. Watch for the muskrat, swimming among the reeds, its hairless, scaly tail, a tell-tale sign that it is this aquatic vole and not its larger cousin the beaver.

Rock Polypody

My handful of regular readers will know that I like ferns. One of our most common, in this land of rocky woods, is the common polypody (Polypodium virginianum). The polypody grows in cracks or small depressions in rocks and boulders or on cliffs, hence its other name, "rock polypody."

A walk in any woods around here eventually leads past a rock outcrop or a large boulder. These rocks host a miniature ecosystem -- much like the small terrariums we made as kids. Mosses, lichens, and ferns live separately or together under shade or part-shade.

Thoreau is said to have called these small ferns, "fresh and cheerful communities." They do brighten a woodland walk in November. Sometimes the polypody starts out on its own, in a small crack on the vertical face of a large boulder.

Its shallow roots form a mat, and are very shallow given their growing surface. The fruitdots, or sori, are round, prominent, and naked (no covering like most other ferns). Click on the photo above to see the sori on the underside of the frond.

The common polypody is evergreen, its leaves once-cut and leathery. Each leaflet is mostly entire (not lacy cut) and has a bit of a wave. The leaf, typically less than 10 inches, narrows to a blunt-tip.

Seafood and the Sea

Every once in awhile I get a craving for a tuna fish sandwich. I am not a fan of sushi or tuna steaks; my tuna has always come from a can. For the good of my health and the health of the fish, this necessitates specific choices. Tuna has those heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids-good, but tuna is also high in mercury-not good. Add to that, the variety of tuna species and methods of harvest and it starts to get a little confusing. This goes for all the other seafood choices that we make.

Thankfully, good guidance is at hand from such places as the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute. The Aquarium just published Turning the Tide - The State of Seafood, a must read for anyone who eats seafood and cares about oceans and the life within. The Seafood Report offers a sobering summary of what we have done to fish populations and other sea life, what needs to change, and how we all can help.

Oceans are home to millions of species. How could one species - us - mess up such a vast area so much, not only for other species, but for ourselves. Oceans are key in regulating the global climate: they produce half the oxygen that we breathe and absorb 1/4 of the carbon that we emit each year. Of all the things we do to the oceans from dumping garbage overboard to allowing polluted runoff, the most significant factor in the ocean's state of decline is our demand for seafood. Consider that fishing (including wild caught and farmed fish) represents less than a quarter of 1% of the global economy, yet it has one of the largest ecological footprints of any economic sector in the world (see the Seafood Report).

Some of the sad stuff in the report: populations of large long-lived marine animals--whales, sharks, tunas, turtles, manatees, some fish--have plummeted; once vibrant coral reefs in Jamaica are essentially gone; industrial-scale fishing in the North Atlantic has wiped out major fish stocks of cod, halibut, and bluefin tuna; the Pacific leatherback--the largest of the sea turtles--may be extinct soon, its latest threat is as "bycatch" in longline fisheries.

According to the Seafood Report, some places are getting it right. Alaska has some of the best managed fisheries; Pacific salmon from Alaska is one of the "best choices" for seafood on the Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" list. Consumers are given credit for helping restore swordfish populations in the North Atlantic, by avoiding this species for a long while.

Julie Packard, Executive Director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, strikes an optimistic chord if we all act. The report offers ways for consumers, businesses, chefs, politicians, fishermen --anyone who is involved with seafood--to just that.

So, here is what I am doing to help our fish, our oceans, our climate, and my health.

• Follow Michael Pollan's advice: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Fish is a healthy food, so it meets the first principle. Just don't eat it too often (second principle), and when I do, have lots of vegetables and grains too (third principle)

• Eat local, seasonal seafood when possible

• Choose seafoods with low mercury levels, high levels omega-3 fatty acids, and those harvested sustainably. Based on Seafood Watch for the Northeast this includes:

sardines
canned clams
canned tuna (skipjack - "light")
canned pink salmon
U.S. or Canada shrimp
U.S farmed catfish
U.S. farmed tilapia
Alaska wild-caught salmon
Pacific halibut

• There are other choices and a long list of things to avoid always such as imported shrimp (farmed or wild-caught), bluefin tuna, shark, most of the big fish, and most seafood imported from Asia.

Billions of people include seafood as a source of protein in their diet. What kind of seafood each of us eats makes a difference, just as it does with beef, and pork, and chicken, and other foods. We can save the oceans, but only if we try.