Maggie's Farm

A re-post from the archives:

It feels very bad to me to know that the fate of the Everglades is in the hands of the notoriously and historically disreputable Miami-Dade County Commissioners.  I'd like to hope that their bad days are past.

It's tough to be an ideological purist in real life. I've known Libertarians who went nuts when a neighbor put in a tennis court too close to his property line. And it is true that we all have a stake in the land. Developers, and the folks they sell to - homeowners and stores and businesses - will always want more if there is profit in it; conservationists will always want more of which to be good stewards; farmers - and I don't mean small family farms in Fla - will always want what they need. So it's always a battle for conservationists. (I don't mean environmentalists, whatever they are.)

My solution tends to be to urge groups to assemble themselves to buy up land, or to buy up the development rights to land, if they want to protect and preserve it for the future. States, land trusts, conservation groups, ad hoc groups with an interest in a specific piece of land. This can be done without a sacrifice of property rights.

BUT it is best done BEFORE there is economic pressure on the land. Unfortunately, people tend to be of the Big Yellow Taxi school: "You don't know what you got til it's gone. You take paradise, put up a parking lot."

I have no doubt that one of my literary heroes, Carl Hiassen, is on the story. I missed him on 60 Minutes last week, but was told that he is as funny in person as he is in print. If you haven't read him, especially his early handful of books, they are absurdist, black humor mysteries set in South Florida, with memorably strange characters, many of them deeply depraved, corrupt, and plain evil.

Carl cares about conservation and he loves Florida, and, bless his heart, he remains a reporter in Miami, so I will count on him to take care of this story, and this problem.

A fairly common Eastern woodland migrant and breeder, but often missed, despite the male's dramatic color, because they often forage up high in the oaks, way above eye-level. 

Read more about this handsome bird:  All About Birds

Photo courtesy of P. LaTourette.

Our post on how flies manage to land on ceilings a while ago was such a hit that it inspired me to do another fly post.

In the fall Cluster Flies head for houses to spend the winter in dormancy. When you turn on the heat, they wake up and clamber around disgustingly, often in clusters around windows.

When that happens to us, we get out ye olde vacuum cleaner.

You can read about their natural history here (they leave their winter shelter and lay their eggs on earthworm holes at this time of year. Their maggots live on earthworms).

I've never understood the passion for the boiled or steamed Blue Crab on the Atlantic coast. Too much work for too little reward - though they are by far the tastiest crab in the world, and a true Maryland Crab Cake is the best.  A lobster rewards effort better, but lobsters do not live in Maryland.

(Sauteed soft-shelled - moulting - Blue Crabs are another matter entirely. Great stuff.) Spelling note: "moult" or "molt" are both acceptable spellings, but apparently "molt" is more American.

Some Blue Crab links:

The Peoples' Lobster

A little natural history of the Blue Crab

How to correctly "pick" a crab

How Blue Crabs moult

This is Heade's Newbury Marshes (c. 1871) from the John Wilmerding Collection.  Newburyport, MA lies on the coast 40 miles north of Boston, at the mouth of the Merrimack River.

In those days, salt marshes were used for cattle grazing, and salt hay was harvested for winter fodder. Over the past 100 years, the once-vast Atlantic coast salt marshes have been devastated by fill, development, and by channelization in the early 1900s in an effort to reduce mosquitoes (Malaria was a big problem in New England at the turn of the century.) In one of the coastal New England towns I grew up in, the salt marsh acreage dropped from 1000 acres to 30 acres, mostly since 1940.

I think the subject of Salt Marshes will need to be a future post.

Goose chicks, early this morning (thanks, reader)

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.

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

The reintroduction of Moose to Scotland. Very cool. But why do they have to be fenced?

Battles over wolves in the American West.

It's Skunk Cabbage time in New England. They are the earliest of marsh plants, producing their fleshy flower (in photo) before they produce their abundant cabbagy and funky-smelling leaves.

Remarkable fact about these plants: They are thermogenic. That's how they can punch through snow and ice so early in Springtime.

Just grow them, dry them out, punch a 1" hole in them, and hang 'em in a tree. Instant House Wren house.

A house is not a home unless you have these members of the chattering class around. (Ours haven't arrived yet this Spring. Global cooling is to blame.)

Thanks for the photo, Chris

As readers know, The Friends of Blackwater NWR in Cambridge, MD have two live BirdCams, one on a Bald Eagle nest: Click here: Friends of Blackwater NWR - Bald Eagle Cam (I only see one little eaglet in the nest) and the other on an Osprey nest: Click here: Friends of Blackwater NWR - Osprey Cam.

Photo is an eagle with a fish, perched on a not-yet used Osprey nest platform.

I heard one whinny at around 5 AM on Good Friday. It's a treat to hear, and I hope that it means we will have a nesting pair of these pigeon-sized little owls in the area.

Maybe I should put up a Screech Owl nest box, but there are so many trees with holes around here that it's probably not necessary. I have never had to chase them out of any of my Wood Duck boxes, but they are known to occupy them. I had neighbors who had a pair for years using their Wood Duck house on a tiny island in a pond (which seemed reckless of the owls, to me). You could see the owl's face, sometimes, sunning itself in the hole.

It's unusual to see them. Practically speaking, the only way you would know that they are around is by hearing them at night. These owls do not mind suburbia at all, and are probably breeding in all five boroughs of New York City.

These nocturnal birds are not rare everywhere east of the Rockies, and come in Red, Brown, and Grey races. They do not screech; they have a trill and a ghostly whinny. One more of those eery night-time sounds.

Here are their calls.

Read the detailed CLO entry on the Eastern Screech Owl here.