"intruder alert! intruder alert!" by slworking2

Glen Martin, former environmental reporter for the Chronicle, will recount how mid-level predators are thriving in the Bay Area.

You can get an intro to the subject through his Bay Nature article from July 1st of 2011, the Middle Way.

It started with a moth which turned different colors depending on the leaf it could see and eat (the color change is not the same if done in the dark). Like a manzanita leaf which has bell shaped flowers that the bumble bees grab onto, hang upside down from, and buzz, to vibrate the nectar out to be collected. Other bees like carpenter bees, drill holes in from the top to collect the nectar, which Dance flies take advantage of when they are not hunting. When they are hunting the males (when they are not cheating) bring little presents for potential mates which they carry about in swarms you might find above a trail. Birds of course take advantage of this. Birds like hummingbirds who don’t just eat nectar, they do like a bug or too, and go so far as to rob spiders as well. Not just of meat, the hummingbirds also take strands of spider web to help hold their tiny little nests together, the elasticity and strength of the spider strands comes in handy as the nest needs to stretch to take in the tiny eggs, then the little but growing birds. The hummingbirds pick out the strands because they glow in UV which they can apparently see, but know one knows why bugs can’t see them. Moths though — like the one we started with, can escape a web thanks to the scales that cover their wings.

This is one but of many equally fascinating stories all around us. But it takes effort to see it. He gave us a couple tools to do that. First is to leave the name behind: the name is not the thing. It is an important tool of science, but can shut us down to seeing the thing.

Second, is to get in a dialog with whatever that creature is. The important thing here he suggests is to say it out loud — our minds are excellent machines for forgetting, and speaking things out loud is a way around this. And when we are in this dialog, we should say

• what we notice…
• what we wonder…
• what it reminds us of..

He ran us through a test of this, a bird with not quite a white ring around the eye, a slight white beard, a puffed up orange breast with a spiderweb pattern of white across it, the breast was not as red as we expected, its tail feathers had white dashes. We wondered how old it was, what it was doing on the branch, if it ate the berries in the picture. The bird was an American Robin, but I don’t think many of us had looked so closely.

Drawing is of course another way of seeing, and another way of heading off our brain’s forgetting machinery.

For this, Laws is hoping to turn the bay area into a field sketchbook mecca. He firmly believes anyone can learn the skill of drawing. You can find out more about these efforts (and how to draw a bird) on his website johnmuirlaws.com

This is our last talk of 2011. We should have announcements about some of next year’s schedule soon.

The Coast Ranges extend north-south for over 600 miles, more than two-thirds the length of the state. The variety of elevations, rock types, and climate zones in this group of mountain ranges supports a remarkable diversity of plant and animal life. Through an illustrated lecture, John (Jack) Muir Laws will lead us on a virtual walk across the Coast Ranges, exploring delightful relationships between plants and animals as we go. Along the way, we will learn a three-step process that will help us see more and think like naturalists. Jack will also discuss some of the conservation challenges in the region and what stewards of nature are doing to confront them. Whether you’re a botanist, birder or hiker, don’t miss this great opportunity to enrich your next exploration along the coast!

Nature in the City’s founder Peter Brastow shares his vision of how we can more meaningfully interact with the wild in our city: restoring natural areas in our neighborhoods and backyards and through projects like the Twin Peaks Bioregional Park and the Green Hairstreak Corridor.

Peter Brastow founded Nature in the City in 2005 with the idea of connecting urban people to where we live. Doing this would help the growing movement to conserve San Francisco’s natural areas and biodiversity, helping to carry ecological restoration and stewardship further. Peter had previously served as the Presidio’s National Park Service Ecological Restoration Specialist.

You can read more about Nature in the City and their projects at natureinthecity.org.

Beach Below Cliff House 1865

Sutro was apparently one of Greg Gaar’s childhood heroes, only later did he realize the damage that the huge groves of tree have done. To highlight these he contrasted a Eucalyptus forest in Australia to one here. The one here was dominated by one tree and two ivys, it looked nothing like the Australian forest.

The story is as much a social one as a natural one: with tales like Sutro’s, but also involve cemeteries, grazing, private water companies, railroads, laundries, butchers, and now restorations. Greg also gave us a tour of the 32 Natural Areas that are spread through the city, and while there are many challenges they is also hope. The restoration of Heron’s Head with its recently spotted Clapper Rails being a highlight, but overall it is an exciting time: we now know how to repair biological systems — and can repair them.

There is also a hopefully growing appreciation of nature: when the sea lions first appeared at Pier 39, people wanted to get rid of them. It’s hard to imagine that mindset now.

Greg encouraged us to imagine other possibilities, no matter how seemingly outlandish. We cannot site back and let the planet go to ruin at our hands.

Greg Gaar will present over 100 historic images of the evolution of SF’ s native plant communities over the last 200 years. Greg will show the transition of our oak woodlands, sand dunes, coastal prairies, tidal marshes, lakes and creeks and efforts to preserve our natural heritage.

If you’ve seen any number of photos of San Francisco through history, chances are you’ve seen photos from Greg Gaar’s collection.

You can find many of them online, but also some also in a book San Francisco: A Natural History

People knew of the Farallon Islands. Russians had hunted seals there. Russians at least were fond of the bird eggs. And they were plentiful. The islands are a fecund little spot sitting as they are on the edge of a great ocean precipice, the islands and its waters and the creatures therein and on fed by a great upwelling from the deep.

All it took was one enterprising person, and egg problem “solved”. That person was “Doc” Robinson. He and his brother in law went to the islands and poached (as in stolen, not as in cooked) $3,000 worth of eggs. At $1 for 1-12 eggs, that was a lot of eggs. And the pair had actually lost half their eggs in the rough waters of the Farallones.

The eggs were the eggs of the common murre. They are  2-3x the size of a chicken egg. They had a fiery red yolk, and although they did not keep to long, people liked the taste.

Robinson took his money and started a theater (Eva referred to him as the John Stewart of his day, as he wrote satires, and was often lampooning people), but others quickly took up his idea and the egg trade began.

The common murre eggs had two other things going for them: the shells were very tough so they could be stuffed into a vest safely, and the murres were easily driven off (unlike other residents of the island – western gulls and tufted puffins). That’s not to say the job was easy: Western Gulls were equally adept at thieving the eggs, and used the men to their advantage, often attaching the men. The poachers covered head to toe in guano often had to scale the cliffs of the island, and quite a few men fell–and although sharks tended not to be in the water when birds were nesting, the waters themselves are cold and dangerous enough.

The dominant force in the trade was the Pacific Egg Company (it had several aliases), but there were plenty of independent poachers, plus pirates, plus the Federals. The Federals were there trying to build a lighthouse, partly to save ships from shipwrecks, but also to lay claim to the island so Joseph Limantour couldn’t. The lighthouse keepers were often in conflict with the poachers (one lighthouse keeper, Amos Cliff, wanted the trade for himself).

The most famous conflict was in 1863 with a skirmish between independents and the Egg company that left 2 men dead. The company kept its upper hand until finally they were kicked out for attacking a lighthouse keeper. The poaching went on under the independents.

There have been some claims that the egg poachers were Italian mafioso, but Eva put those claims to rest. Not only were there not alot of Italian names in the Company rosters, most of the Italians were from Northern Italy, many political refugees and supporters of the great Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Regardless eggs were harvested. At the peak 500,000 Murre eggs were taken of the islands in 1854. The numbers fell through the end of the century, with 100,000 being taken in 1896. The biggest factor in the decline might be the growth of the chicken industry in Petaluma, starting in 1875.

But Leverett Loomis (the first director of the California Academy of Science) deserves the credit for putting a final end to it. Although he had a great respect for the workers, he didn’t like the work. It wasn’t until he reached the ear of Teddy Roosevelt that the poaching stopped for good (more or less, some small numbers were poached in years after)

[the Farallon Islands] are hereby reserved and set apart for the use of the Department of Agriculture as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds. It is unlawful for any person to hunt, trap, capture, wilfully disturb, or kill any birds of any kind whatever, or take the eggs of such birds within the limits of this reservation, except under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the Secretary of Agriculture.

This is Executive Order 1043 signed by President Theodore Roosevelt February 27, 1909. Chalk another good one up for Teddy as well!

Even with this long post, I can’t do the talk full justice. You can read some more about the topic in numerous places, but try here and this piece in Bay Nature by Juliet Grable. Stay tuned for more about Eva Chrysanthe’s book, Garibaldi and the Farallon Egg War.

The Farallon Egg War
Guest Speaker:  Eva Chrysanthe
7:30pm, Thursday, August 18th, 2011
FREE at the Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, San Francisco, CA 

Writer and illustrator Eva Chrysanthe will present a re-examination of the political and market forces that led to mass poaching on the Farallones and the bold and ultimately successful efforts by 19th & 20th century scientists to preserve the island’ s ecology.

You can see more of Eva’s engaging illustrations on her blog.

Railroad Map Of The City Of San Francisco

If were to rewind the Mission Bay area of San Francisco a few hundred years, we’d find a large shallow inlet of water, with Mission Creek flowing into it. Tidal marshes and 100 foot dunes would stand in what is now SOMA.

Vanished Waters tells the story of how that changed to what it is today. Chris Carlsson edited the second version of the book originally written by Nancy Olmsted for the Mission Creek Conservancy. He led us through the history of the area.

Of course, people have been there for thousands of years. The coastal area provided well for the Native American tribes who lived there. But in the last two centuries it changed rapidly from marsh, to agricultural land, to an industrial zone. The bay became smaller and smaller, the dunes pushed into the area as fill.

The Mission became a tourist attraction. The agricultural changed to gardens. Racetracks came about, then disappeared. Steamboats were built, all sorts of shipping from hay for city horses. The largest whaling port on the west coast was there.

The creek became a horrible place as industries moved in. There was corruption from railroads. There were property booms, and violently suppressed strikes. All in all, like many places it has a complicated history!

It wasn’t of course until the 60s that a lot of people started to take a second look at the bay, and what remains of Mission Creek and the Mission Bay. The Mission Creek Conservancy worked hard to move development of the Mission Bay into better directions from what originally were planned.

The last 10 years has seen the area fill with new development and new life. New parks, new people, and restoration. The creek, as the people living in the houseboats along it can attest, has now slowly come back to life with all sorts of life: birds, fish, invertebrates, seals, and more finding their way into the channel.

It will be interesting to see what the next few hundred years bring.

For many of the details, check out the book. It is full of wonderful pictures and maps. Find out more about the Mission Creek Conservancy.

You can follow and write about what happened and happens in the Mission Bay at Chris Carlsson’s ShapingSF.org.

Vanished Waters and the History of Mission Bay
Guest Speaker:  Chris Carlsson
7:30pm, Thursday, July 21st, 2011
Randall Musem, San Francisco, CA 

Chris Carlsson, Director of Shaping San Francisco, will tell the story of the gradual filling-in of a vast tidal cove. Mission Bay once was a tidal salt-marsh fed fresh water from meandering Mission Creek. Learn of the would-be settlers, speculators and visionary planners it has attracted over the last 130 years.

Find out more about Shaping San Francisco, at their website:
http://www.shapingsf.org/
You can find out more about Chris Carlsson on his sites:
http://www.chriscarlsson.com/
http://www.nowtopians.com/