Wild Watch
'Park on a possum' is far easier said than done
Apr 4, 2002 Back in 1848, some bright spark had a “good” idea. Let’s import common brush-tailed possums from Australia and fur-farm them in New Zealand, they thought. They followed up on that idea with action — action that New Zealand’s environment has been paying for ever since. ...
Confused responses cloud vital issues of ecology
Mar 21, 2002 Sept. 11, 2001, a date now etched indelibly in our memories, provided an awfully pertinent lesson in human actions and human responses. Shock, fury, anger; all were reasonable, acceptable emotional responses to horrendous acts of terrorism. ...
Waiting with ravens for hunter and hunted to die
Mar 7, 2002 Nature Diary notes for Friday, Feb. 8: Lake Kussharo to Notoro Misaki, then along the Sea of Okhotsk coast to Utoro. ...
Denizens of the deep that take your breath away
Feb 21, 2002 Almost exactly a year ago, I was introduced to scuba diving and the astonishing submarine sights of corals, colorful fish, sea lions, flightless cormorants and even penguins. ...
Precipitate beauty of nature's own ice sculptures
Feb 7, 2002 “The sky has holes to let rain in; the holes are small, that’s why rain is thin.” So wrote the zany British comedian Spike Milligan. Rain. Some hate it; I love it. It’s a gift (thin though it may be) from the heavens. ...
Why do birds of a feather tend to flock together?
Jan 3, 2002 “Flocks” read the sign outside the onsen, or so I thought. My bird brain immediately clicked into “Hey, an onsen for birders.” But why in remote Higashi Mokoto, Hokkaido? Surely it wasn’t “Frocks?” A women-only onsen? But no, men were most definitely welcome. So what, I asked, did “flocks” mean? ...
People may fear it, but many trees thrive on fire
Dec 20, 2001 In the melange of pagan midwinter mythology and religion that we now call “Christmas,” trees, particularly evergreens, have come to occupy a prominent place in the festivities. In times gone by, mistletoe and holly were most common, but since the 17th century the Christmas tree has typically been some form of spruce, with its pleasant, resinous...
Nature allows for few winners in the face of fire
Dec 6, 2001 Fire! It’s a word that strikes terror. Images of leaping, roaring, scorching flames spring to mind; images of billowing smoke and suffocating fumes; of people and other creatures great and small fleeing for their lives. ...