I’ve been here in The Lung for almost 20 years now. The time has flown. Nature is still as mysterious as ever.
I take such joy in simple things like the return of the many species of flycatchers that come back year after year. I say “simple” like an arrogant human, but it’s not simple at all. Every spring is different. So far the constants are the paper wasps, flycatchers, robins and bluebirds, and kestrels. There are species I don’t see anymore that I used to take for granted – the bobolink is one.
I leave my fields un-mown long into mid-summer, after the babies have fledged and flown, even if I don’t actually see one. GMO farming intensity, chemical use, and earlier season harvesting of hay has taken a huge toll on these little guys. They have seen a 75% decline in Vermont between 1966 and 2007. That is a MAJOR blow. They are one of the most beautiful little birds you’ll ever see and their call is very distinct. I am holding out hope that they can come back like the monarch butterfly seems to be here in northeastern Vermont. A farm here without a splendid little bobolink flitting along the fenceline doesn’t seem like a Vermont farm.
They live like little long-haul truckers; some even have more than one family at a time! They winter in South America, then migrate back to the Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada through places like Jamaica, The Galapagos and the Carolinas. They feed heavily on grains while migrating but also the destructive armyworm; they eat so many armyworm moths they are sometimes called the “Armyworm Bird” in the South. I chose that article I linked to about the armyworm on purpose. The article has good info, but, more importantly, it lists the chemicals used to control this insect – SO many chemicals, all “cautioned” or “restricted” because they are so poisonous. The long and short of it is we need more friends like the bobolink and fewer poisons. (And as much as we don’t want to admit it, we even need the armyworm.)
When migrating, bobolinks can travel as many as 1,100 miles IN A DAY! Needless to say, by the time they get to my house they are ready to settle down and start a family (or three) and get down to eating bugs and seeds with a vengeance. Sadly, I haven’t seen a bobolink in about seven or eight years. I’m not a scientist, obviously, but I am a chronic “noticer” here in The Lung and to me the bobolink’s absence is stark. I am not giving up though. I hadn’t seen a monarch butterfly in forever either, but for every year I don’t cut the milkweed and just let it thrive, more and more butterflies show up! So please, think your kindest thoughts about the bobolink and let me end with a very hopeful article about the Yurok Tribe and condors by Tiana Williams-Claussen. Thank you, Tiana! This was the fuel I needed. XO
Bobolink drawing by Walter Alois Weber
Heyo. Happy Sunday. I was thinking about the bobolink and I wondered if more than poison, it was habitat loss that was causing their declines. Not because I wanted to be right, but because I'm finding that habitat loss is more and more the culprit to declining species of all kinds. Turns out I was right, tho. They are actually a grassland species, and they're main threat is land converted for wheat production. Going to throw the armyworm back on here cause it makes sense that this would be an entire ecological process. The more farmers destroy the land, the less bobolinks, the more armyworms. Food chains gone amok - it's a positive feedback loop.
I was thinking about Leslie Marmon Silko and her parrots being attacked by the owl, and her cursing the bulldozers. It's happening everywhere. In North Carolina, they are rapidly building new housing and it's destroying their wetlands. It's causing the Venus fly trap populations to decline rapidly - it may cause them to go extinct in the wild. It sucks because people who go out and collect wild plants for income, can't collect anymore and they get fined big time. Even indigenous folks can't go out and collect medicinal plants because of the declining numbers. They keep blaming over-harvesting, but it really is only because the land is quickly disappearing. Don't even get me started on ginseng.
There were a couple things I said that I wanted to correct:
1) I retracted my views of flooding, but I was right. It's both that the aquifer isn't getting replenished, and there will be flooding. It's because the climate change will intensify storms, but the raising temps will cause quicker evaporation.
2) I said that they "should let the earth do what it does", but then I watched a documentary on the prairies, and there were some Prairie Indigenous folks who reminded me that they did burning to keep prairie lands grassy. Also having bison do the same thing - they are a keystone species for the grasslands.
3) I keep saying "native" when I know it should be "Indigenous Americans" or "American Indian", or even better their nation. That's my bad. That new info that I have and it takes a minute for my brain to switch gears. I know which nations who lived on/were affiliated with the land I'm on, but there's several so that's why I haven't been referring to a specific nation.
I'm working on having better/correct info before I talk, but everything feels so urgent. That's probably the ADHD.
I think that's all.
Hello I'm back. Do you know about the concept of succession? Maybe you learned about it in your soil composition class? Anyway. It's about the armyworm.
So there are invasive species of armyworm, but there is a native north American armyworm. They are found east of the rocky mountains - overlapping farmland in the Midwest. Here's the irony. You know how the Midwest was glaciated, yeah? So what happened is that glacier melted and turned in to a giant lake, and the residual remnants of that giant lake are now the great lakes. The things is, like all things geological, lakes are temporary features in the landscape. Central Illinois was an uninhabitable swamp because it was a lake going in to succession - which is the process of land turning back in to forest as more and more plants grow in and around them. The first plants of succession are small, like violets and dandelions. Then you get tall grasses, etc etc. All of this requires animals, of all kinds, to eat these plants to recycle nutrients back through the soil, via poop and death. Armyworms, I'm assuming, serve the purpose of eating the same type of plants that people are cropping - which in turn puts nutrients back in the soil and helps make room for the next line of succession species.
I was wrong when I was worrying about there being too much water in central Illinois. We are sitting on a very large fresh water aquifer - and we are depleting it to give residents and farmland water. In the meantime we are monocropping and not allowing the land to recover or do what it wants to do. It's going to create a dust bowl in the place that is essential for food production. And the rising temperatures are only going to exacerbate the problem because water evaporates in heat so much quicker. That's why the land is sinking.
Anyway, not all invasive species are threatening, like dandelions. You are a non-threatening invasive species. Maybe your mantle can be made out of north American lepidoptera moths.