Maggie's Farm

No man loves marshes and bogs more than I do. The variety of life they contain, protect, and support, from protozoans to minnows to bass to amphibians to snakes to deer to woodpeckers to geese and ducks to eagles to bears is astonishing, and feels primeval.

Except for river-fed or run-off-fed marshes, though, most sizeable fresh-water marshes are ephemeral geographical features. In the northern US, most are the remnants of post-glacial ponds and lakes, gradually filled in with plant detritus and, just before they become the damp meadows that the Moose enjoy so much, the sphagnum bogs which, in Canada, are the source of most of our soil-enhancing peat moss.

The only sources of new marshes in the US are man (who is more inclined to fill them for building lots than to create them or rehabilitate them - except for Ducks Unlimited), and the Beaver:

And that is one reason we appreciate the remarkable beaver so much. He not only creates marshes, but he recycles them. I doubt that there is a single beaver marsh in the US which has not been used, on and off (until they have eaten or cut down everything they can find) over the several thousands of years since our last Ice Age buried Manhattan under a mile of ice.

Here are a some of the critters I see (or hear) most often in the immediate vicinity of our small (8 acre) beaver marsh in western MA over the past few years - off the top of my head and probably omitting some:

Beavers (of course)
Otter
Black Bear
Raccoon
White-tailed Deer
Red Fox
Coyote (alas)

Wood Duck (nesting)
Black Duck (nesting)
Mallard (nesting)
Canada Goose (nesting)
Pileated Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Wodpecker
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Veery
Wood thrush
E. Phoebe
Wood Pewee
Great Blue Heron
Green Heron
Tree Swallow
Barn Swallow
Kingfisher
Swamp Sparrow
Grasshopper Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Barred Owl
Screech Owl
Great Horned Owl
Baltimore Oriole (Northern Oriole)
Marsh Wren
Turkey
Goldfinch (nesting)
Warblers of all sorts (during migration)
Turkey Vulture
Red-Tailed Hawk
Sharp-Shinned hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Broad-winged Hawk
Sparrow Hawk (Kestrel)
E. Bluebird
E. Kingbird
Ruffed Grouse
Cedar Waxwing
Catbird

Wood Turtle
Eastern Painted Turtle
Snapping Turtle
Garter Snake
Eastern Water Snake
Black Snake

Bullfrog
Eastern Newt (and their Red Efts by the trillions in the adjacent woods)
Leopard Frog
Green Frog
American Toad
Wood Frog
Spring Peeper
E. Gray Tree Frog

Our Spring Peepers have been out for a while, but now, on warm days (we haven't had many), the larger frogs come out to play.

I have eaten plenty of frog's legs in my time, mostly in the South, and they aren't bad sauteed with a little butter, wine and garlic... but so is anything.

However, I prefer that my Bullfrogs stay alive, croaking in the swamp. "Jug-a-rum."

These large (3-6") frogs are native to the Eastern US and Canada, and have become pestiferous when they have been transplanted (as in California and Europe). They will eat anything moving that they can fit into their Jaba The Hut-sized mouths, including small snakes and frogs.

I love swamps for their mysterious wildness and their abundance of life. Sippican isn't so sure that he does, but he is an effete, hyper-civilized egg-head sort, isn't he?

These handsome sparrows are uncommon in New England. However, I was pleased to see a flock of five or six this morning under the bird feeder. They are just passing through on their way to their Arctic and sub-Arctic breeding grounds.

Photo from this site. More about these sparrows at CLO.

We'll quit putting out bird seed as soon as our diminishing supply runs out: the bugs are coming out despite our sub-40 degree nights (the earth is cooling, you know - climate change), so the birds can go off welfare for a while. What's been around ye olde feeder today?, you ask.

Cowbirds, Redwing Blackbirds, Mourning Doves (tons), White throated Sparrows (lazy ones - should have migrated north by now), Song Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, Blue Jay, Purple Grackle, Cardinal, Goldfinch, Red Bellied Woodpecker, House Finch, BC Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, WB Nuthatch. All in their splendid breeding plumage. 

Plus some Chipmunks and, of course, Grey Squirrels working the system. 

Photo: A male Goldfinch a month ago, before fully changing into his Spring plumage.

Springtime, and amore is in the air. (h/t, Theo)

I think so, and Climate Skeptic agrees:

Observe today how little of the discussion is about anything other than climate.  There are still many environmental issues in the world that can be improved by the application of man's effort and technology -- unfortunately, climate is the least of these but the issue getting the most attention.  Consider how the global warming panic has sucked the oxygen out of the environmental movement.  Ten years from now, I predict that true environmentalists will be looking back on the hysteria over trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere as a huge setback for real environmental progress.

As readers know, we are old-time Conservationists here. We believe in National Parks, State Parks, nature preserves, farmland protection, habitat protection, species protection, zoning, "open space", clean rivers and waters, unpolluted air, and we do not approve of the government subsidizing real estate developers and urban sprawl by building highways to nowhere.

The Audubon Society came into being to protect Egrets. The photo above of an American Egret in CT, with his breeding plumage (sent in by a reader last week), shows the reason. At the turn of the century, those breeding-season plumes were all the rage for decorating lady's hats. Thus our egrets - the American and the Snowy in particular - were hunted almost to extinction. That is called "unsustainable use."

The same applied to the market-gunning and netting of waterfowl - and the Passenger Pigeon. Of necessity, we now have hunting laws, hunting seasons, wildlife refuges, and protected species.

Thus we are not Libertarian when it comes to land-use and unsustainable and irreversible exploitation of wildlife or wildlife habitat. The Conservation Movement of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt had to become politicized, because laws were required in the presence of competing interests: witness, nowadays, the political conflicts in MA and in Europe around the efforts to enforce sustainable fish harvests.

We simply try to be rational about it all. For example, we have no problem with oil drilling in ANWAR or off the Florida coast (as the Cubans and Chinese are doing). We have no problem with responsible logging, which effectively mimics the effects of natural wildfire on forest succession. We love to hunt and fish, and do so responsibly and sportingly. We think the earth probably has more than enough people on it. We favor nuclear power for reasons of energy independence and because it's the closest thing to a free lunch after compound interest. We feel that biofuels are a lousy idea for many reasons.

At the risk of sounding corny, we believe in good stewardship of our inheritance.

What's irrational? The Green Movement is irrational. Most of it represents feel-good ideas that are hooey: symbolic hooey that is meant to make people feel virtuous while accomplishing nothing. Witness the lightbulb craze, "organic" vegetables, "recycling" plastic bottles (totally energy-inefficient), or hybrid cars (which do nothing "for the planet" but which are great on gas mileage). It's empty vanity and fashion, and nothing more (for an example, see this foolish agonizing piece by Michael Pollan, who has caught a bad case of the vain and guilt-ridden sanctimony of the "I can make a difference" disorder).

Pure organic pixie dust for the latte liberals.

The CO2 obsession is similarly irrational, and, deep down, everybody must know it. It is irrational because it is futile, regardless of whether there is any current warming, and regardless of whether there is any man-made warming. (We suspect that it is long-term cooling.) As Steyn said yesterday at NRO:

Whether or not there’s very slight global cooling or very slight global warming, there’s no need for a “war” on either, no rationale for loosing a plague of eco-locusts on the food supply. So why be surprised that totalitarian solutions to mythical problems wind up causing real devastation? As for Time’s tree, by all means put it up: It helps block out the view of starving peasants on the far horizon.

If anybody thinks the Chinese, the Russians, and, eventually, Africa, intends to stop building fossil fuel power plants, they are dreaming. If anybody thinks wind power will ever be more than a drop in the bucket - even if subsidized as it is - is dreaming. And those who want (more) "carbon taxes" just want another cover, another excuse, to take more of our money. They can have more "carbon tax" if they reduce my income tax to compensate.

Everybody wants more power, and as cheap as possible, because power is the wonderful stuff that makes our modern civilized, efficient and lazy lives possible. The rapidly-developing world understandably wants more of it.  Somebody will need to pry my Stihl saw - and my computer - from my cold dead hands.

So, to meander back to my main topic, I agree with Coyote that the CO2 frenzy and the other trendy Green frenzies have "drained the oxygen" from a Conservation movement which has many other compelling areas in which it can be, and should be, effective. And, yes, I do believe that many of those Greenies are motivated by a Socialist agenda using "Gaia" as a front. I will believe their sincerity when they quit driving and flying. However, their socialist-totalitarian streak, plus their wackiness and scolding, have damaged rational conservation goals via guilt by association.

On the other hand, I do favor the use of local, state and federal powers (and especially some non-profits which do the same things free from political considerations) for the conservation goals which are important to me, which I believe to be rational, and which I like to believe contain no ideological agenda but which certainly contain a moral and practical agenda: we do not wish to hand down a planet covered with asphalt and oceans without Codfish.

Some things - maybe just a very few precious things - should be more important than freedom and free markets, but that's where the political debates begin, isn't it? That is the line of scrimmage.

On the "values" scale, we rank individual freedom at the top of the list, but, like everybody, we also have competing values, morals, and interests.

We enjoy seeing our local Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds buzzing around, and we plant things that they like.

Wayside lists 56 varieties for them. Butterflies tend to like similar plants.

Gardens without hummingbirds and butterflies feel sterile.

Photo: An Agastache (Hyssop).

Scott at Powerline has a good grip on the penis stories. Honestly, I would not eat a Reindeer's Johnson if you paid me, but maybe I am homophobic or something.

Or maybe I just feel bad for all those poor Reindeer who are now running around the tundra without their equipment.

Speaking of the Noble Male Member, I was entertained by some hot Purple Grackle (aka Common Grackle) romance on my lawn this morning. The male does quite a display for the lady: he hunches up his shoulders, splays his wings, and raises a dramatic iridescent ruff of feathers on his neck as he struts before her: he tries to make like a Bird of Paradise. Then he hops on top of her for about 4 seconds. He did that twice in five minutes.

Afterwards, she did a shake to compose her feathers and her excited feminine heart, no doubt - and he walked off cheerfully, with a bit of a swagger, looking for bugs in the grass.

I think it was consensual, but she did seem a little put out by it all. Women are sometimes like that.

With Spring warbler season upon us, it seemed timely to note that Nikon has finally come up with a binocular that can compete with the Germans.

Here's the 7X42. There is also an 8X32.

Image: A few Spring Warblers, by Peterson

Spent yesterday trout fishing with Gwynnie down in central CT. We took a few photos to give our out-of-Yankeeland readers a little taste of CT in April:

Trout Lily, in bloom:

A close-up:

A 10' high glacial "errratic," but so common we call them glacial "regulars," in the woods. Even ox teams could not remove these from the fields (these woods were dairy farms 60 years ago):

Part of the beat I fished:

 A pool on that beat. The Swamp Maples are in full-bud, and the Wood Ducks are buzzing all around:

 The Connecticut River, with East Haddam across the river:

 The Goodspeed Opera House from across the river:

At the turn of the century, the Eastern Wild Turkey was nearly eradicated by hunting and habitat loss, and was entirely absent in the Northeast.

By the mid 1800s, the woodlands of New England had disappeared for farming, charcoal production, and lumbering.

But the woodlands have returned as farming moved west, and the wierd gobble now can be heard even in residential areas.

Thanks to dramatically successful conservation and transplantation efforts, there are now estimated to be 7 million of these huge iridescent birds, which Ben Franklin felt to be so quintessentially American that he wanted one on the US Seal. (Video of the turkey's comeback here.)

There are six species of wild turkey in the New World, and none elsewhere. (The domestic turkey is likely a descendent of the Mexican species.) It is the Eastern which we feature here which has, in recent years, been transplanted successfully west of the Mississippi, and elsewhere.

As a sought-after game bird, the turkey's habits have been much studied. They are wary and cautious. In most areas, there is a spring and a fall hunting season for turkey, and they are pursued with bow or shotgun. It is the one game bird which it is sporting to shoot on the ground. 

I have hunted them on a couple of occasions. Never managed to shoot one, though. Had a good time however, sitting at the base of a tree in camo, watching the other wild critters pass by.

Does the wild turkey taste different from a supermarket bird? Yes - the wild turkey tastes like turkey and the supermarket bird tastes like a supermarket.

The tail-fanning? That's part of the male's mating strut. The CLO page here, and the website of the worthy National Wild Turkey Federation here.

The reintroduction of