Field Notes

What I have learned is that, despite the obvious difference in weight between human brains (tipping the scale at about three pounds) and chickadee brains (similar in weight to a raisin), there are commonalities in structure and function between the two species.

Near Butte, Montana we found ourselves traveling through a boulder field. It was a wonder to behold! Seeing these boulders for the first time I had to ask myself, "What happened here?"

The binoculars revealed a silver-gray owl close to two feet in height, with patches of brownish-gray barring throughout. Its facial disc was broad with a black patch under its muted yellow beak. Just below the black patch were two horizontal white patches, which looked like a butler’s bow tie. Two whitish feather mounds created an X pattern between its eyes.

Bright red berries. Glossy red berries that gleamed like a beacon in the shade. Berries that whispered “eat me” in a hue of red so vivid it promised death. I stopped and stared. That red. Into my mind, suddenly blank of everything except those berries, a word dropped like a pebble into a still pool: tantalizing.

The chemistry professor in me can’t watch that shift from wood to ash without asking questions. Why is heat leaving the burning wood? Was the heat there all along, just waiting for me to strike a match?

Recently, I have been thinking about the food chain that sustains the wildlife here. Where does it begin? When did it begin? What if I looked more deeply than what I can see with my eye? I want to learn about the microbiome of this wonderful area.

When the queen-to-be hatches, worker bees will feed her a strict diet of rich royal jelly. After another five and a half days the larva changes into a pupa, and seven days later the new queen's cell is sealed shut to hide her from my prying eyes.

Two-dimensional sheets of transparent muscovite, a mineral in the mica family that once formed in layers on the ocean floor, adorn the cliffs and peaks of the mountains and the rocks of the Bass Creek drainage. Iron-stained schist, a coarse-grained rock made of potassium feldspar and quartz, delightedly flaunted the sheets of muscovite on its orange surface, as if they were diamonds.

It was a beautiful day for birding. There were broken clouds allowing the March sun to peek through, taking away the morning chill. A gentle breeze blew, keeping temperatures comfortable as the day progressed.

I often feel that new words come to me at the exact right moment. This fall, I had one of those moments of synchronicity, when I began to see the word "irruption" in various places - a word that until then was unfamiliar to me. (Rather than “eruption” like a volcano, "irruption" is spelled with an i and two rs.) Typically used in conjunction with the word "event," an irruption event describes birds that move southward when there is a shortage of food in their home range.