naturalists-from-the-united-states

"As soon as the 's is completed, it begins to accumulate trash and mud. In a little while, usually, it is covered with a mass of soil, shrubs of begin to grow upon it, and after a few years it is a strong, earthy, willow-covered dam. The dams vary in length from a few feet to several hundred feet. I measured one on the that was eleven hundred feet long. The influence of a beaver-dam is astounding. As soon as completed, it becomes a highway for the folk of the wild. It is used day and night. Mice and porcupines, bears and rabbits, lions and wolves, make a bridge of it. From it, in the evening, the graceful deer cast their reflections in the quiet pond. Over it dash pursuer and pursued; and on it take place battles and courtships. It is often torn by hoof and claw of animals locked in death-struggles, and often, very often, it is stained with blood. Many a drama, picturesque, fierce, and wild, is staged upon a beaver-dam."

"When Anna Botsford Comstock 1885 died in summer 1930 at the age of seventy-five, the pioneering naturalist left behind not only an ailing husband—famed entomologist , who was severely debilitated by a series of strokes and would pass away just half a year later—but a 760-page manuscript chronicling their decades of marriage, travel, teaching, and scientific study. It would be nearly a quarter-century until that memoir reached a wide readership, in the form of a book compiled by , Anna’s second cousin and the couple’s closest living relative. Published in 1953 by a division of , The Comstocks of Cornell was in fact just part of Anna’s original manuscript. It had been heavily edited by Herrick, also a professor of entomology on the Hill—not only to de-emphasize events and characters he considered irrelevant, but to streamline the language, remove any hint of controversy, and shift the focus toward John Henry’s august accomplishments, including his role as founder of Cornell’s entomology department."

"Perhaps half the falsehood in the world is due to lack of power to detect the truth and to express it. aids both in discernment and in expression of things as they are."

"Most insects have enemies to bite them. The spreads death among injurious grubs. Efforts to control forest-enemies will embrace the giving of aid and comfort to those insects that prey upon them. Bugs will be hunted with bugs. Already the in the is being fought in this way. Many species of birds feed freely upon s, borers, and beetles. Of these birds, the s are the most important. They must be protected and encouraged."

"It is almost a marvel that trees should live to become the oldest of living things. Fastened in one place, their struggle is incessant and severe. From the moment a baby tree is born — from the instant it casts its tiny shadow upon the ground — until death, it is in danger from insects and animals. It cannot move to avoid danger. It cannot run away to escape enemies. Fixed in one spot, almost helpless, it must endure flood and , fire and storm, insects and earthquakes, or die."

"... the only way to become a connoisseur of honey is to keep s, for thus only may one learn to discriminate between honey made from and that gathered from ; or to distinguish, at first taste, the product of in bloom from that drawn from vagrant blossoms, which, changing day by day, mark the season's processional."

"A real is never contented with maps of places and pictures of things, but always desires to see the places and things themselves."

"Mills gave occasional talks which led to a career as a speaker. His reputation and influence as a writer provided him with the audiences he needed for lecturing on things he believed in. His career as a lecturer assumed a life and momentum of its own. He would talk about his unique life in the , his devotion to the , and and forest preservation. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the position of Government Lecturer on Forestry, a position he held from 1907 to 1909. During that time he gave 2,118 addresses. His talks awakened interest in trees, , and ."

"Next day on returning I found him dead in the snow with his head on the sill of the door — the door of his puppyhood's days; my dog to the last in his heart of hearts — it was my help he sought, and vainly sought, in the hour of his bitter extremity."

"A lion shorn of his strength, an eagle robbed of his freedom, or a dove bereft of his mate, all die, it is said, of a broken heart; and who will aver that this grim bandit could bear the three-fold brunt, heart-whole? This only I know, that when the morning dawned, he was lying there still in his position of calm repose, his body unwounded, but his spirit was gone — the old King-wolf was dead."

"This is a time when the whole nation is turning toward the outdoor life, seeking in it the physical regeneration so needful for continued national existence — is waking to the fact long known to thoughtful men, that those live longest who live nearest to the ground, that is, who live the simple life of primitive times, divested, however, of the evils that ignorance in those times begot."

"Not Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Astor together could have raised money enough to buy a quarter share in my little Dog Snap."

"Crows know the value of organization, and are as well drilled as soldiers — very much better than some soldiers, in fact, for crows are always on duty, always at war, and always dependent on each other for life and safety."

"The importance of every fact relating to the natural limits of animals and plants is felt in its bearing on the great question of the day—the ."

"... precisely how we shall educate the coming woman, is still an open question. Much that has been written has been purely theoretic. Facts, however, are multiplying. Four different experiments are now in process: University Examinations, the , Mixed Colleges, and . For a great University to condescend to examine female candidates and grant certificates, is a step forward; but it does not furnish the means of education."

"The recent addition of a specimen of this rare bird to the , is an event worthy of record. There are now three specimens in the United States; the one just mentioned, another in the , and a third in the Giraud Cabinet in Vassar College. The last is the most perfect specimen, and certainly possesses the greatest historical value, as it is the one from which Audubon made his drawing and description. It was caught on the banks of . The or Gare-fowl … was about the size of a goose, with a large head, a curved, grooved and laterally flattened bill; wings rudimental, adapted to swimming only, approaching in this respect the s of the southern hemisphere. … It was an arctic bird, dwelling chiefly in the , Iceland, , and Newfoundland."

"... and coffee plantations, vast in extent, arrest the eye. Passing these, the steamer brings you alongside of broad fields covered with the low, prickly pine-apple plant; the air is fragrant with a rich perfume wafted from a neighboring grove of and s; the spreads its dense, splendid foliage, and bears a golden fruit, which, though praised by many, tastes to us like a mixture of tow and ; the exotic waves its fig-like leaves and pendent fruit; while high over all the beautiful lifts its crown of glory. ..."

"The Ornithological in the Vassar Museum, contains nearly twelve hundred distinct species, of which seven hundred are North American, and the remainder South American. Among them are several s and others of historical interest as the originals of ."

"The of mountain regions is very limited, for the number of species diminishes rapidly as we ascend in altitude or latitude. The reptilian life of any district, however, is highly interesting, as it is more natural and well defined than that of other vertebrates, because reptiles have a limited range ... and are less likely to be forced out of their original s or introduced by man. It has been supposed that in order of altitudinal range, lizards go highest, snakes next, and s and s last. There are no chelonians in the valley as far as we know; but we found frogs as high up as , and no lizards there. Gibbon found no snakes at ."

"The age is demanding a broader, deeper, truer, . Unreasonable prejudice is hiding itself, along with the effete and narrow views of our fathers; and the world has come to the consciousness, that the culture of both sexes must keep pace with the ever-changing sphere of personal activity."

"There is no section of our country that may not reward a diligent search for precious or useful s. The rocks, however, between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic and between the and the Pacific furnish the greater variety and abundance. Here are found the best ores. Gold and silver seem to abound more on the western than eastern sides of both mountain-chains. A trap-region, like the shore of and the , is likely to be a good locality for copper and iron. The , or the region of , furnishes chiefly iron and lead; gold, silver and copper are seldom found. In general, where the layers of rock lie level and contain fossil shells, it is a locality good only for , ( excepted), , and salt. The regions of , , , , etc., offer the greatest inducement to search for useful minerals."

"Fran was a very influential biologist in Wisconsin. She worked under and was very instrumental in prairie chicken research and habitat preservation. … she flew and hunted with eagles in the 1960s and 1970s, as a woman. … An Eagle to the Sky .. where she chronicled her adventures with several different eagles, was hugely inspiring to me in pursuing that niche of falconry."

"A long time ago, thousands of prairie chickens lived in Wisconsin. But as cities grew, the prairie chickens lost their nesting grounds. By 1850, the prairie chicken population began to decrease. In the 1950s, only about 2,500 prairie chickens still lived in Wisconsin. But 2 scientists helped to save them. Those scientists were Frances "Fran" and Frederick Hamerstrom."

"In those days, we did a good deal of camping in abandoned houses. spent the first night up in this part of the world in a house. We had him sleep in the living room, because the roof didn’t leak there. And we slept in the kitchen, and we had pans put on the end of the bed. And we could hear the water beating in all night, falling into the pans by our feet."

"Fran loved wild birds. She always had an owl flying in her house. She was always rehabilitating eagles and hawks in her barn."

"The s mark where they have been and once one has learned to read sign, as woodsmen and professional ornithologists do, one can study food habits. Meat and fishing-eating birds pass conspicuous white urates, commonly called whitewash, and they regurgitate pellets. The splashes of whitewash under a perch suggest that a bird of prey may have used the perch. s, for example, also pass their urates in the form of whitewash, but if the perch is far from a body of water or from a heron rookery, the whitewash was probably passed by a hawk, an owl or a crow. The whitewash of hawks is rather splashy and falls in spatters and streaks. That of owls is far more solid, chalky in texture and tends to form little heaps. Owls tend to gulp their food in big mouthfuls, swallowing many bones—large and small—along with meat. The bones, only slightly digested, persist in the pellets of adults. One can learn a great deal about what owls have eaten by examining the contents of pellets carefully."

"When I was a small child I longed one day to become so famous that I did not have to hide how odd I was—how unlike other people. Few people really held my attention. It was birds and mammals, reptiles and insects that filled my dreams and eternally whetted my curiosity."

"If you are aware of the actual nest location, it is best to approach it on a path which would lead past the nest. When you are adjacent to the nest, you should turn at right angles to your path of travel, walk directly to the nest and band the nestlings. Once you have banded the nestlings, retrace your steps to your original line of travel. On the return trip from the nest, sprinkle your trail with liberal quantities of crystals. When you reach your original trail, you should again turn at right angles and continue in your original direction of travel ... Thus any predator who picks up and follows your original trail would be discouraged from turning off and following your side trail to the nest. He would be more likely to continue following your trail in your original direction of travel."

"Natural systems are like those hollow Russian dolls, layer nested within layer within layer, always hiding a new riddle beneath the last one. Figuring out how they work as a herculean task, one with which humans have been grappling for a relatively short time. If you want clear-cut problems and need solutions, try geometry. This is ecology and it doesn’t get any more complex and messier than this. But we’re learning."

"Some of these observations of “prairie pigeons” were made incidental to blasting them out of the sky; curlews, golden-plovers, godwits, and other shorebirds were treated much as passenger pigeons back East had been, with no-holds-barred slaughter. There are a number of accounts of gunners filling wagon beds with heaps of dead birds—then dumping the birds out to rot and filling the wagons all over again because the shooting was too good to stop."

"To a layperson, this ebb and flow of scientific opinion, the flipflop of theory over time, the occasionally fierce and public disagreements between viewpoints, is as mystifying as it is frustrating… This isn’t a sign of science’s weakness, though, but rather its strength, always testing assumptions, making challenges, drawing new conclusions based on the latest evidence. It may err too far in one direction, then too far in the other, correcting as it goes, but every step eventually brings us all a little closer to the truth."

"Scientists have called the arc of maritime live oak and pine that once rimmed the Gulf from east Texas to west Florida the most important migratory stopover area in North America, but it has been fractured into pathetic slivers—consumed by vacation home developments, grazing cattle, strip malls, and, most recently, even an explosion of casino construction. Further inland, the rich, diverse forests of longleaf pine and hardwoods that once supplied the birds with food before the next leg of their journey north or being clear-cut, the trees being ground into wood pulp by portable “chipping mills.” Elsewhere, the land is replanted with a sterile monoculture of fast-growing junk pine that offers little in the way of sustenance to a weary migrant."

"Of course, for environmental havoc, no organism can quite compare to humans."

"You won’t find the cerulean warbler on the federal Endangered Species list; it is not so far gone as to rate that kind of last-gasp governmental life support, which is usually withheld until it is too late to do much good."

"Birds are metabolic dynamos, requiring food at regular intervals and in significant amounts; few old sayings are as completely false as to claim that a finicky person “eats like like a bird.” If I ate, by proportion, the same amount as a chickadee, I would have to consume about fifty pounds of camarones every day, and even raptors, with their somewhat slower metabolism, must eat about 10 percent of their weight to stay alive."

"Stone makes a statement as true today as it was then, the reason why conservationists can never let down their guard: “As one menace is disposed of, another seems inevitably to develop.”"

"—A Manx shearwater, a small, stocky seabird resembling a gull, was taken from its nest burrow on Skokholm, off Wales, and moved to Boston. It completed the trip home in just twelve days—one day faster than the airmail letter sent from the United States confirming the bird’s release."

"Because we humans don’t notice changes that take place slowly, incrementally, we tend to underestimate their cumulative effects, even within the span of one or two lifetimes."

"Mexico affords legal protection to raptors, but it is a paper law only, poorly enforced and widely ignored in the field."

"It is a prairie’s gentle deceit that you think you see everything there is in a single, sweeping glance, when in fact you see very little at all, even if you spend a lifetime looking."

"Unstoppable collapse... These extinction level tipping points... thresholds that are already in the rear view mirror. Loss of the world's ice... I consider Dahr Jamail's The End of Ice... my favorite book on climate change. If you only read one book on climate change this year, read that..."

"[H]opium is a comforting vision of the future that requires breaking the laws of physics, biology or ecology, such as thinking that we can slow, stop or reverse The Great Acceleration of Gaian Collapse."

"When most of the ice is gone, the serious global warming begins. ...[L]earn about phase change and ... [W]hen you've got a glass of water, as long as the ice is in there, even if the sun's beating on it, it stays at 32°. Once the ice is gone the temperature goes skyrocketing!"

"Any measurement, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide... We're losing all of the ice of the world... The oceans, the plankton, the corals, the fish, , oceanic dead zones and deoxygenation... and , the amount of soil, the fertility of the soil, the moisture of the soil, and permafrost is releasing tons of methane... unstoppable."

"The 's health has been in decline for one or two centuries, and in runaway collapse... for decades... The Great Acceleration of Gaian Collapse."

"[W]e are now in a mass extinction... [T]here's only been one mass extinction in the past that we've lost the insects and the forest, and we're now adding carbon dioxide, methane and notrous oxide faster than then..."

"Methane belching from the permafrost, the deep and shallow seas, hydrates and clathrates, tropical wetlands.. as well as the millions of wells."

"At any measuere, absolutely everything that humans rely on... is now in precipitous free fall, unstoppable."

"Collapse is when a gradual downward trend in biophysical health and wellbeing goes into unstoppable decline; runaway, out of control; etc., it's... abrupt climate change... like 10,000 years of climate change in half a human lifetime. ...This is known as "The Great Acceleration" of Biospheric Collapse."

"[I]f you Google "Great Acceleration" you see all these wonderful charts... socioeconomic trends and earth system trends... everything going up. ...[W]e naturally think going up means better. Oh no, because the things... are ecocidal trends... and earth system collapse measures [respectively]."