Crowded songscapes: amazing poet Billy Collins reads my mind re: dawns of yore

  
Many times I've wished I could travel back through time, before so many extinctions took place a la Homo sapiens, so I could, among other things, hear the full-throated, unfettered spring dawn chorus.

When all the bird species and habitats that existed in North America in 1000 A.D. were still here, and myriad bird songs shouldered into the packed orchestra pit each morning.

The ever amazing Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate, touches on this longing in Now and Then, here an animated poem. Lovely.


One time Bear and I were impromptu camping, sleeping in bags on the ground in a coniferous forest.

At about 4 a.m. I was wakened from a deep sleep by a nearly deafening collective ROAR of TWEET TWEET, CHIRPA-CHIRPA-CHIRPA, SWEEEEEEETA, SWEEEEEEEEETA, etc.

LOUD!

I'd never heard OF the dawn chorus and it just woke me from the dead.

STUNNING phenomenon if you're in the right place.

So, you lay there, staring into the fuzzy blackness, just HEARING; drowning in birdy cacophony.

An amazing experience I hope never to forget.

Anyhow, it'd be super cool to do that soooo long ago, when there were more species and more individuals in the seamless habitat smorgasbord that was California.

And no freakin' planes muckin' up the soundscape. NICE!


Power to the peeping passerines!


bb

tree of the week--not your usual tree-identification method...

The source of this story is
http://www.globaltrees.org/, but I learned it through their Tree of the Week Facebook page, and the tree of the week is:

The Wollemi Pine, or Dinosaur Tree (Wollemia nobilis) is an ancient tree, which was thought to have become extinct about 2 million years ago until it was rediscovered in 1994 in a gorge only 150 km north-west of Sydney, Australia. Once found all over the world, the species now numbers less than 100 mature individuals in the wild.

 

First of all, I must have you re-compute "extinct about 2 million years ago." That I did not catch right away. I've been around a few species that had been thought to have been extirpated, but due to, you know, fairly recent development, like in the 1960s-1990s.

This leads to what I thought was the best part, in a comment by an administrator:

Good question Eileen, it would seem that nobody had found the trees, as some of the individuals were thought to be over 1000 years old. The tree was reduced to a few small populations in remote areas of the Wollemi national park in the Blue Mountains. One of the National park rangers discovered the species whilst out trekking and brought a sample ... See Moreback to be identified - it was then matched with fossil specimens and the species was 're-discovered'. There is lots more information at www.wollemipine.co.uk

Makes me so proud of that ranger, but what I thought was most freaky about this very exciting discovery, is the necessity of bringing your tree sample back to the office and comparing it to a FOSSIL to confirm the species id.

That. Is. Nuts.

Anyhow, made me happy on many levels. LOVE it. Nice work, folks!!

And, of course, reinforced the incredible importance of setting aside protected lands to preserve our natural heritage. You never know what you'll end up saving.

=)


biobabbler