Nature Keeps Doing Its Thing Despite Human Beings

 Humans have changed the landscape of the earth ever since they settled down in one place and began cutting down trees.  With modern technology we've been changing the earth at a devastating pace.  But nature is resilient and ever evolving.  Even if we were to kill half the life in the oceans and destroy half the landscape, nature measures time in millions and billions of years.  It will endure.  And if we aren't totally crazy, life forms will survive.  I even wonder whether COVID isn't one of nature's adaptations to human life, a way of slowing us down to allow other life forms to escape our hunger to destroy.  

But there is still much of nature to still awe and amaze us.  The other night when the clouds had briefly left the Anchorage sky, I walked out onto the deck and tried to capture the beauty of the frosted trees in the backyard.  The image on my iPhone was pretty dim, but editing tools on my laptop enabled me to get it back to what it actually looked like, and even more dazzling than it really was.  

And Sunday we enjoyed one of my Anchorage winter highlights - the visit of the Bohemian Waxwings to harvest the berries on our Mountain Ash trees.  They come in swarms of 30-50 birds, swooping down and then abruptly taking flight and then returning.  

Bohemian Waxwings Collecting Mountain Ash Berries

The Mountain Ash tree in front of our house is part of the Anchorage Bohemian Waxwing community's pantry and yesterday many dropped by to get some provisions.

There's such beautiful birds with their soft, smooth grey feathers, with a dash of cinnamon, some white, and a bit of brilliant yellow and red, highlighted with black.

I said they had red, but up to now, the only red has been the berries, but on this last shot you can see the red on the wing.

Hairy Woodpecker and Friends At Still Icy Potter Marsh

One more post from last Sunday's outing.  [The other two were Always Looks Different:  Turnagain Arm and McHugh Creek]  We stopped at Potter Marsh on the way home [as we did two weeks before.] 

The only birds we saw this time - and this is not a complaint - were a pair of hairy woodpeckers and a flock of bohemian waxwings. 

The woodpeckers were fun.  Maybe it's my early introduction to Woody as a kid.  Surely the red patch helps, and the tapping noise.  And one of my favorite posts, which still gets hits from weird folks like me, is Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage? 









The waxwings too, but they're more common, and we'd recently had a very close view as they came to feast on the Mt. Ash berries in the tree in front of our house.  Here their spectacular colors aren't visible.

This time without such an obvious single food outlet as the Mt. Ash, they were scattered in pairs and small groups around the marsh. 

Here's a typical view of the marsh, though the summer tourists don't get to see it with the ice.

The boardwalk has signs prohibiting, among other things, dogs.  And as we got back to our car, we saw this one waiting patiently in the car for it's servants. 

Bohemian Waxwings Visit Our Mt. Ash Tree

We hadn't seen the waxwings all winter and our tree and beneath it were full of berries.  They came Sunday.  They're such beautiful birds. 

Flocking Bohemian Waxwings, Signs of Moose

I went out yet one more day to shovel snow off the driveway.  It feels like I'm doing this every day.  The sun was nice and the air so crisp and clean.

Here's a spot in the snow in front where a moose must have crashed for a while.  The footprints are all around the mountain ash tree.  (Where the Bohemian Waxwings end up on the video.)




And while I was clearing snow, a flock of Bohemian Waxwings flew in.  I love to watch how they swarm.  If you make the video full screen and watch closely, you can see them most of the way from the beginning in the lower right then as they fly out around the tree and then back on the left to roost in the tree.  It was so quiet that I figured I needed some music, so I borrowed some from Waldemaar "The Bohemian" Music Video.  His has much different and much better video, unless, of course, you're a bird freak.  I hope he doesn't mind my borrowing.

Red, Red Mt. Ash

This tree in front of our house has always kept its leaves longer - sometimes through the winter - than the other trees.  It's the second half of October and the temperatures were moderate - into the low 40˚ F (4.4˚C) range today - and the sky was blue after Monday's grey. 

I also noticed that this tree and the one to the left (a few reddish leaves are still near the top) don't have many berries this year.  The Bohemian waxwings will be disappointed when they show up in the winter.

Bohemian Waxwings Visit

Bohemian Waxwings Visit

Update: Last year they came January 27. You can see the Bohemian Waxwing Video here.

The ADN reported that the Audubon Annual birdcount this year said the waxwings were the most numerous bird in Anchorage this winter - 22,000 - four times more than seen at last year's count.

One theory for the increase in waxwings over the last 30 years is the free mountain ash trees that were given away by oil companies in the early 1980s. We have one of those free trees. The other one was already a serious tree when we bought the house in 1977.

Bohemian Waxwings return to the Mountain Ash

The waxwings live through winter harvesting mountain ash berries and similar fruit stored on trees around Anchorage. Swarms of up to 100 or more birds perch on the telephone lines or giant cottonwood. Then small groups swoop down into the tree an pick at the berries. Then fly back as another group takes over. Later, with berries all over the snow below, they return to get what's left.

The video is a compromise between what's reasonable for normal people, and all the video I actually captured for the hard core bird freaks. Well, it's only 3:25 minutes altogether. So view as much as you can take. Catherine and Dianne, enjoy. The slow motion is for you.




The quality is much worse than the original. It's hard because our windows look south, into the light. But the birds are right there. But I'll eventually learn the technical necessities of getting better quality onto the web. This was January 5, 2008. I would have loved to get the natural sounds of the birds, but I was inside and there were in the house noises, so I added the Chinese flute music.