Column: Al Batt, Nature’s World

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Everything is nearly copacetic. Slip Shod is the nosiest guy I’ve ever known. He asked me how old I am. I told him that I was 29. He said that I’d been telling him that I was 29 for as long as he’s known me. He was right but I’m not one to go back on my word. I bought some new shoes and boots from Slip Shod but he won’t let me have them.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“I bought the shoes and the boots, but I didn’t have any money. I put on the shoes and started to walk out of the store. Slip Shod had a conniption. He told me that I couldn’t leave with the new shoes. He said I hadn’t paid for them. I told him that I’d leave the new boots as a down payment. Slip became unhinged. He said that I hadn’t paid for the boots either. Now why would I pay for boots I didn’t take with me? I buy my shoes two sizes too small. I like my clodhoppers snug.”

“Those shoes must kill you. Why would you want your shoes so tight?” I wonder aloud.

“Because some days, taking off my shoes is the only pleasure I get.”

Wow!

We watched hundreds of bald eagles gathered along the Chilkat River near Haines, Alaska. A momentary abundance of birds that made precious dreams come true. I asked a fellow eagle watcher what she thought of her first visit to the Valley of the Eagles.

Her reply was, “Wow!”

That small word described perfectly what we were seeing in our biggest state.

Eat like a bird

Did your mother ever say, “You eat like a bird?” If so, you must have been a good eater. A chickadee may eat as much as 35 percent of its weight in food each day. A hummingbird can consume its body’s weight in sugar water or nectar daily. Canada geese devour grass like a lawn mower. A five-pound Canada goose eats about a half-pound of grass per day.

Q and A

“Can bald eagles swim?” Yes, they are good swimmers and sometimes need to be when they latch onto a fish that is too big for them to lift. They often drag such a catch to shore for ingestion.

“Do coyotes prey on deer?” In “Roughing It,” Mark Twain described a coyote as a “long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolfskin stretched over it” and as “a living, breathing allegory of want.” Twain’s description inspired the animator Chuck Jones to create that perennial failure known to cartoon lovers everywhere, Wile E.Coyote. This character used complex devices from a mail-order company, the Acme Corporation, in the hopes of catching the Road Runner. An Ohio State University study, which monitored radio-collared coyotes in the Chicago metro area, found coyotes forsake roadrunners to eat mostly small rodents, fruit, deer (primarily fawns or roadkill) and rabbits. Domestic cats and garbage made up less than 1 percent of the coyote’s diet. Pets and trash were a larger part of coyote diets in the studies of coyotes in the southwestern United States. Coyotes rarely take adult deer, but are primary predators of fawns, which may help slow deer population growth in areas with high deer density. Coyotes may also slow Canada goose population increases through egg predation. They typically do not prey on adult Canada geese.

“What is a gizzard?” When a bird eats, its food may be temporarily stored in the crop, which is a storage sac-like structure extending off the esophagus. Birds have two parts to their stomachs. When food leaves the esophagus, it passes through the glandular stomach, which starts the digestion process, before reaching the gizzard. Gizzards contain powerful muscles that contract repeatedly, working as a millstone to grind and pulverize hard food like grain and nuts.

“What is the world’s most important bird?” The one you are looking at.

“How long do bald eagles live?” The record for the oldest bald eagle in the wild is 32 years, 10 months. That eagle was killed by a car in New Brunswick in April 2010.

Nature lessons

Bats are able to use echolocation to detect something as fine as a human hair.

The costliest hailstorm in U.S. history occurred on Denver on July 11, 1990. The losses reached at least $625 million, and 47 people trapped on a Ferris wheel were injured by softball-sized hail.

Research suggests that men are more likely to be attacked by mosquitoes than are women, primarily because of their greater body size.

Mixed seed is like Neapolitan ice cream. Not all birds will like everything in the mix.

It is estimated that for every pound of human beings there are 300 pounds of insects.

Oystercatchers rarely eat oysters.

Make your birds count

People once engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas Side Hunt. They chose sides and went afield with their guns. Whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won. Many observers and scientists became concerned about declining bird populations. Beginning on Christmas Day 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman, an officer in the fledgling Audubon Society, proposed a new holiday tradition, a Christmas Bird Census that would count birds in the holidays rather than hunt them. This was the beginning of the Christmas Bird Count.

During the 1987-88 CBC in Pine Prairie, La., 103 million birds were recorded, including more than 53 million red-winged blackbirds. Making do with a mere two and three-quarters hours of daylight, counters of the Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, CBC in 2009 spotted only one species — the common raven.

Please join me by counting the birds in your neighborhood, at a park, at work or at your feeders. The Albert Lea CBC will take place on Tuesday, Dec. 28. Please contact me at 507-845-2836 or at snoeowl@aol.com for information on reporting birds seen on that day.

Thanks for stopping by

“Nature tops the list of potent tranquilizers and stress reducers. The mere sound of moving water has been shown to lower blood pressure.” — Patch Adams

“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.” — W. T. Purkiser

DO GOOD.

Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com.