ABUNDANCE AND SCARCITY

Rio Del Mar by Bill Slavin

One day as I was walking in a neighborhood, I turned a corner to find a schoolyard dotted with hundreds of robins all pecking at the ground, bringing up worms. A feast for an enormous number of birds and a remarkable experience for me. Since then, I've seen the occasional single robin or a couple building a nest, but I've never again seen a field full.

I think of the few times that I have witnessed other large groups of animals or insects together. Just after we bought our first house, we had a plague of mice in our neighborhood. They scurried across lawns, entered the house, and surprised us as they cowered in every room. They disappeared just as quickly from the neighborhood as they came, never to return in such profusion again. 

One summer in Minnesota small frogs filled the grass by the lake's beach. The boys staying in the cabins by the lake collected them in buckets, heaped one frog on top of another, stared at them in fascination as the frogs wiggled around, and then tipped the buckets over to let them go. Sometimes, we think of sizable groups as pests, sometimes they become the victims of our interest and thoughtlessness.

Blue Moon by Bill Slavin

This week within the waters of Monterey Bay, anchovies congregated in huge numbers. We couldn't see them from shore, but as we stood on the sand at Sea Cliff Beach near Santa Cruz, we marveled at the thick line of birds flying above the water. We discovered that the dark brown birds called sooty shearwaters migrate each year from New Zealand. The line of birds stretched back a long way past the marker at Rio Del Mar Beach Trail, a mile away from us. We'd never seen so many birds in one place before. Hundreds of pelicans flew in formation above the sooty shearwaters, who by their numbers created the dark, massive line of birds and with their dives churned up the water to reach the food below the surface.

According to the local paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the anchovies this year are so numerous that the city has had to put special aeration machines into the bay to keep the anchovies alive. Otherwise, their numbers suck up all the oxygen and they would die. We didn't see the anchovies, but we saw the extraordinary number of birds feasting on them. Like the mice in our old neighborhood, both the anchovies and birds will soon be gone for the year. Will they come back again in such numbers or was this a truly extraordinary event?

I marvel, just as we all do, when I glimpse abundance in nature. I think of other parts of the natural world that I will never see: the extinct passenger pigeons, the North African Elephant, or the Atlas lion both extinct by Roman times. People hunted the pigeons for food never realizing that their abundance would end. The North African Elephant became a vehicle in war and entertainment along with the lion in Rome. They all died out because of human interaction with them. We realize how destructive humans can be, but we also have groups working to make a difference in our environment. 

We noticed on our visit to the coastline that the coal-fired plant north of Monterey is being disassembled. The natural gas plant nearby constructed a long pipeline to allow the water that is circulated in the plant to cool down before it is ejected into the bay. Even small actions can have an impact. Bird-friendly coffee growers offer coffee grown using sustainable practices that don't affect the life cycle of migrating birds. Peet's Organic Yosemite Dos Sierras and Birds and Beans Signature coffees are two brands that are certified as bird-friendly.

Sketchbook by Martha Slavin

Read more about the anchovies in Santa Cruz harbor:

https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2023/09/01/anchovies-invade-santa-cruz-small-craft-harbor/

Read about migrating birds in this New York Times article:

 https://www.nytimes.com/explain/2023/birds-science?searchResultPosition=2#for-migrating-birds-its-the-flight-of-their-lives

Find bird-friendly coffee at the Smithsonian:

https://nationalzoo.si.edu/migratory-birds

More about the Moss Landing Power Plant:

https://www.energy.ca.gov/powerplant/combined-cycle/moss-landing-power-plant

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I like to look at other people's drawings. To me, they are more interesting because they show me how the artist's mind works. If you do too, watch this very short video of Jake Weidmann's unbelievable artwork:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CwxYOjHgx4X/