Tick became Snow Leopard became Peregrine Falcon became Jang-bu became Lama at Crystal Mountain

The texts arrived in succession "Mom! I got a ticket", "I got a ticket." It was 9 pm where I was which meant it was midnight where she was. I saw the three dots lining up on my phone as she was trying to say more and in those few seconds, my mind came up with golden, speeding, concert, flight - a neat little Connections group:  __ tickets. None of those turned out to be correct. She gave up on her phone's autocorrect and called me instead with panic in her voice. She had found a tick on her leg! 

The "she" is our soon-to-be 19 year old who is a rising Sophomore in a college 2500 miles away, on her first summer research stint. I knew next to nothing about ticks other than they can cause Lyme's disease, and I didn't even know what Lyme's disease was. But when she said that she will be right back as she tried to figure out the safest way to remove the said tick, my mind started racing again - tick, Lyme's disease, debilitating sickness - all in the matter of a few seconds. With help from a few friends she managed to remove the creature, trapped it in a jar as instructed, washed the leg with soap and water and cleaned the area with rubbing alcohol. She then called us back and said she will see a doctor tomorrow just to be safe and that was that - Good night!

For the next hour I went on a maddening, surfing trip on the Internet. By the time I was done, I could differentiate dog ticks from deer ticks, had identified from the hazy pic she sent me that it belonged to the dog variety, there was no Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in her state, the County's numbers for Lyme's was still very low and she had it on her leg only for a few hours, so she should be OK, fingers crossed.

I woke up after a bit of disturbed sleep last night and I thought about my meditation practice and all the lectures I listen to about mindfulness and the teachings of Vedanta and realized that none of them came to my help at a moment like this. While I was calm on the outside, my mind was racing and while I was aware of the phenomenon I found it hard to calm it down. As a rational person I knew there was nothing for me to do, she had done all the right things and now we just have to wait to see what the doctor says. 

"Expect Nothing" was the advice given to the famous writer Peter Matthiessen by his Zen master before he left for the Himalayas on a 1973 trip looking for Blue Sheep and the Snow Leopard.  It was a grueling journey, filled with difficulties - the terrain tough, weather brutal, and the governments not cooperative, to say the least. During the journey Matthiessen had numerous moments of realization, some even transcendent and all of that is beautifully captured in his book The Snow Leopard. But anyone who has read the book knows that the eponymous creature only revealed its footprints and scat to the author. At one point his fellow traveler the famous naturalist George Schaller says "Isn't that something? To be delighted with a pile of crap?" Matthiessen was able to accept that. He writes, "and in the not-seeing, I am content. I think I must be disappointed, having come so far, and yet I do not feel that way. I am disappointed, and also I am not disappointed. That the snow leopard is, that it is here, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain - that is enough."

These last couple of months, I have had my own Snow Leopard moments. I have been going to my local state preserve to observe a beautiful Peregrine Falcon family. The first time this season, I went in April with my niece who was visiting. I had charged ahead looking for the birds as I wanted to show her these beauties, while she came at her own relaxed pace with my husband. They were not to be seen and as I turned back disappointed, I saw her looking up and she asked me, "Is that the bird you are looking for?" and sure enough she had spotted the nest and the falcon! The next time I went in May with my daughter and by this time the chicks had hatched. There were 3 we could see and we even saw the mother kill a snowy egret, prepare the meal in a different part of the cliff and bring it over to her eager, hungry chicks and feed them. Since then I went back multiple times as I wanted to see the chicks fledge and train with their parents. But no luck. Each time, I let Matthiessen talk to me in my mind "that the peregrine falcons are, that they are here, that their dark marked eyes watch us from the cliffs - that is enough." 

 

This morning I was waiting for my daughter to call after she saw the doctor and instead of sitting around and waiting my husband and I decided to hike the preserve. I expected nothing and assumed the falcons must be away by now and so I didn't even carry my binoculars with me. We were at the top of the cliffs taking in the Pacific Ocean when suddenly I hear the call and sure enough I saw one fly overhead and land at a distant cliff. I have a hard time localizing sound as my left ear is practically useless so my husband turned me around and said that he heard the sound from the other side too - there was number 2 calling. And before we knew it, two falcons flew by so closely that we could see their eyes and their patches so clearly. If we put our hands out we could have touched them. We both ducked by reflex. Soon a third bird joined these two and I saw one drop something for the other two to catch. I have only seen this behavior where the parents teach the young ones to hunt in TV documentaries. We were both so stunned that we just stood still, we didn't reach for our phones. We stood there long after the birds had flown, just grateful and joyful to have witnessed that.

I was telling my husband how I could practice mindfulness in these matters but not when it came to our daughter and her tick situation. How could I get swept away in so many thoughts! In The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen narrates an incident with his porters and Sherpas. One of them was carrying his dry clothes and sleeping bag and was refusing help in crossing an ice bridge. Matthiessen gets angry because if the porter falls Matthiessen will have a very cold night ahead of him. But his mood turns "when the brave Dawa, attempting to catch Jang-bu's pack, hurled across a stream dropped it ineptly into the water. Wonderfully Jang-bu laughed aloud, as did Dawa and Phu-Tsering, although it meant wet clothes and a wet sleeping bag for the head Sherpa. That happy-go-lucky spirit, that acceptance which is not fatalism but a deep trust in life made me ashamed."  Matthiessen himself is frustrated when he realizes that despite the transformative journey that he had undertaken he was still beset by ego, emotions, irritations, what he calls as "the aching gap between what I know and what I am." 

Can I ever get to Jang-bu's state, especially when it concerned my child? Her experience with ticks took her to an urgent care with the help of a friend who is a godsend; she adulted her way out of her situation calmly and this was one more experience that demonstrated her independence and clear thinking with no contributions from me. Forget Jang-bu, I am no where near Matthiessen and his level of practice, so if even he could feel this aching gap I consoled myself saying I should give myself credit for only being worried for an hour or two, recognizing I had nothing to offer at this time, and figuring out ways to calm myself down - which included a hike this morning. Matthiessen writes "The teaching offered us by Lama Tupjuk with the snow leopard watching from the rocks and the Crystal Mountain flying on the sky, was not, as I had thought that day, the enlightened wisdom of one man but a splendid utterance of the divine in all mankind." 

What was that teaching?

Of course I enjoy this life! It's wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!

Conservation and Community - The San Diego Bird Festival (2024)

The San Diego Bird Festival of 2024 was nothing short of a triumph this year and I am proclaiming this just based on the quality of the keynotes. The outings and talks were outstanding too and the 1000+ people who had registered must be on cloud nine now. I have been attending the festival since 2013 when my daughter was 8. We only did the Family Sunday the first year, started attending a few talks the second, and then added in keynotes and trips as her interest grew. I remember we did a birding by ear workshop in 2017 which also led us to seeing the beautiful owls of Tecolote Canyon and one year we went on an amazing pelagic trip. This year was bittersweet for me as I was by myself as she is away in college but she asked me to quit moping and appreciate how lucky I was to be at the festival!

The festival's star attraction was Christian Cooper of Extraordinary Birder fame - a show that we love at our home. Parents with Disney+ subscription should watch it with their kids of all ages! (Some of the episodes are also available on Nat Geo Wild's youtube channel.) Not only did they feature some truly remarkable birds but the emphasis on conservation efforts resulted in the show featuring some remarkable birders too. Cooper's keynote at the Bird Festival delivered what it promised! It was funny, heart warming, inspiring and was a clarion call to all the groups working to protect biodiversity to expand their tent and incorporate multifactorial diversity in their approach.  The opening night keynote was by writer and birder Julia Zarankin who was very funny with a self-deprecating humor which was perfect for her messages -  it is never too late to get into birding, it is OK to make mistakes, and there is no one particular way to be a birder.

But the highlight for me this year was the keynote by Tiana Williams-Claussen who spoke about her 17 year journey to reintroduce the California Condor to the wild in the ancestral territories of the Yurok tribe and the Pacific Northwest. I think if there was ever a perfect talk this was it! It had everything - culture, chronicles, conservation, courage, continuity, and most importantly Condors. Graduating with a BA from Harvard, Tiana returned to work for her tribe and listening to elders felt that bringing the condors back would be the panacea for all things the ecosystem and her people needed. 

Condors hold an important place in the Yurok's foundational stories and their songs and feathers are an integral part of their world renewal ceremonies. The soaring Condors were said to carry the prayers of the Yurok upwards to the creator. She talked about how they were an indicator species to the ecosystem because of the important services (not just ecosystem but also cultural and spiritual) they provide and drew parallels between what happened to Condors and what happened to Native Americans.

The story of California Condors went from being a tragic one (when the birds were reduced to 27 in the wild in the 1980s) to one of conservation success  which has led to reintroduction of condors to their native habitats in the hundreds. San Diego has been at the heart of this effort with the San Diego Zoo playing a critical role in the conservation program. Tiana speaking at the San Diego Bird Festival was just perfect as she is part of the long line of conservation biologists who have worked tirelessly to bring these birds back into our landscape. Her work is by no means done. I was shocked to learn that even today DDT is having a huge impact on mortality of these birds. I mean - Silent Spring was published in the 1960s and these chemicals are still persistent in the bodies of marine mammals which become food for condors.

Condors being obligate scavengers can be seen as conjurers who create life from death and folks like Tiana are doing the same to the condors - snatching them from the brink of extinction and bringing them "back to life". The birds she shared with us were each given names according to their personality and what they meant to her people and my favorite was Ney-gem' 'Ne-chweenkah whose name in English was "She Carries Our Prayers." Tiana closed her lecture with a picture of her 5 year old and said how thrilled she was that her child was growing up in a time with condors circling the skies. I am not ashamed to admit that I teared up at that!

I left this festival with a lot of hope. Julia's keynote reminded me it is never too late to become a birder and find the sense of humor to laugh at ourselves, Tiana showed me how cultural connections forge strong links to conservation and communities and Christian asked us to expand our tent and be more inclusive as it is an all-hands-on-deck kinda moment. 

It also made me nostalgic as I looked back to 2013/2014 when my daughter and I started attending San Diego Audubon events - birdwalks, lectures, restoration events and the festival itself. We were an odd couple - my daughter and I. I was a forty year old who couldn't tell an osprey from a cormorant trying to keep up with an eight year old. We were welcomed by the SDAS community who made room for both of us and gave us our very first birding lesson in Tijuana estuary - how to tell great and snowy egrets apart! I am grateful for that and all the lessons we have been learning ever since and the 2024 festival was another step along that journey.

Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) 2024

These past few days I have been part of a worldwide event called the Great Backyard Bird Count. Organized by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology it encourages everyone to document the birds they see in their own backyard and submit a checklist to their database called eBird. All they require is that you watch for 15 mins and document what you see and if you see the same old birds, that's perfectly OK too. I have been doing GBBC on and off for many years now with my daughter. This year I had to fly solo as she is almost 3000 miles away and I had to overcome a lot of inertia to get going. But I am so glad I did it. Besides the karmic points of contributing data to one of the largest citizen science projects in the world, it also reminded me of the simple joy of seeing birds in our own neck of the woods. GBBC is also a breath of fresh air because for these 4 days people from all over the world come together united by their love for birds. As I am writing this post collectively we have documented the presence of nearly 7400 species of birds. My adopted country and the country of my birth lead in the number of checklists. We see checklists from Israel and even a few from Palestinian territory, from Ukraine and Russia.

I managed to hit 50 species by the third day today and have been rewarded with so many fantastic sightings of birds just doing their thing. I am not a photographer by any means, but I have been lugging my giant Nikon DSLR which captured all these pictures despite my lack of skill and upper body strength. Most of these are taken in the San Elijo Lagoon which is my favorite spot to bird in San Diego. 

The highlight for me has been capturing Ospreys fishing

Here are some other raptors I saw these past few days

Cooper's

Red-shouldered Hawk

A kestrel trying to chase the Red-Shouldered

The Kestrel triumphed in chasing away the bigger hawk

A Red-tailed hawk circled so close to my head

 

This time of the year we get to see a lot of waterfowl in the lagoon. Here are a few

Male Bufflehead

Female Buffleheads

Redhead

Here are some grebes

Pied-Billed

Eared Grebes

Western Grebe

More waterfowl

Ring-Necked Duck

Lesser Scaups

Ruddy duck

A pair of Shovellers

I saw a number of smaller birds too but am not quick with the camera and couldn't capture all the warblers I saw. In some cases all I heard was the song. But here are a few I managed to capture

A bushtit busy at work. Yep he is upside down!

A butter-butt (yellow rumped warbler)  

Kingbird (Cassin's?)

Recent reports on migratory species have been documenting the alarming decline of migratory species around the world. Habitat loss, pollution, over-exploitation and not to mention climate change are all disrupting the lives of countless species. To share the world with so many species is a blessing and these past few days has been a reminder of that. I only saw/heard 50 species of birds this week and that is a very small percentage of the species of birds seen in one of the most biodiverse counties in the US but this was a much needed shot in the arm for me and gave me a lot of hope.

I close this post with the song of the Red-Winged Blackbird. Let's hope he sings forever!

 

The Ethics of Extinction

 I wrapped up 2023 with the fiction book Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman which is set in a not too distant future when species are rapidly becoming extinct and the world has come up with a cap-and-trade mechanism for extinction credits. It is first and foremost a terrific work of sci-fi and has a great plot and characters and interesting ideas and could be read just for that. In some parts it is a bit didactic but for the most part it is a well told story that raises numerous philosophical and ethical questions regarding extinction.  Beauman wonders why so few humans feel anything when a species goes extinct, especially when we fully know that human activities are mainly responsible for the fate. He poses a thought experiment - Imagine that you find out someone you know has cancer. Then imagine, that you are the person who has to tell them that they have cancer. Now, he asks us to consider our mental state when we have to tell them they have cancer and we were responsible for giving them the fatal form of cancer. Isn't that how we should be feeling towards species that we have driven to extinction - from the dodo / passenger pigeons to the Hawaiian Crows? But somehow we all don't grapple with these questions. Beauman in an interview mentioned the book Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction by Thom Van Dooren as one of the books that informed him during the writing of the Lumpsucker. So I decided to start my 2024 reading with this book.

Fair warning: This is going to be a long read as there are so many important ideas in the book and I am writing this for a few friends (you know who you are) who might not be able to get their hands on the book easily or have the time to read it. But I hope everyone will at least skim the post and get the actual book. One minor point - I am personally not a big fan of the postmodernists (Foucault, Derrida). Van Dooren quotes them frequently but I was not turned off. He also quotes Donna Haraway. I am not a big fan of her Cyborg Manifesto but I have admired her views on companion species so I was OK with the constant references to Haraway.

Flight Ways is a fantastic book (and very short too) and should be read more widely! I mostly volunteer my time for conservation causes especially for birds and this book spoke to me personally. The author traces the Flight Ways of 5 species - Laysan Albatross, Indian Vulture, Little Penguins, Whooping Cranes and Hawaiian Crows. Each of these bird species is facing extinction at different rates and through each case study Van Dooren raises ethical questions and asks us to adopt new ways of looking at a species, at extinction, and even at conservation.

Van Dooren reminds us that the thing we call "species" is first and foremost an incredible achievement! To have survived against all odds and made it through generation after generation and be here at this moment is testament to the fact that "a species does not just happen but must be achieved in each new generation." When a species goes extinct it is therefore more than just the last individual of the species dying but it is in fact the loss of a complete way of life - culture, language, sounds, and meanings. Every species has an inherent value and meaning independent of their use for humans. While extinction occurs naturally just like evolution does, the pressures on other species thanks to human activity is unprecedented. Van Dooren argues for us to adopt not an anthropocentric view but a "cenocentric" one where we extend our feeling of togetherness not just to other humans but to all of us who co-evolved during the cenozoic era (following the extinction of dinosaurs) - or as he puts it "a plea for the continuity of cenozoic achievement."

Albatross - Messy Temporalities

 

Albatrosses spend almost 8 months in the air flying across open oceans. They come to the land only to breed and raise their young. It is a two-parent, full-time activity that calls for enormous dedication from the parents. One parent can incubate the egg going without food for 20 days while the other is out feeding. Once the chick hatches it takes two to feed the chick continuously until the fully grown chick can take off into the air. They have been doing this phenomenal work for millennia but now are threatened by plastic waste accumulating in the ocean which enters their foodchain. The photographer Chris Jordan documented all the plastic that can be found in the dead chicks stomach with his eerie photographs like the one above. There is an intersection of two different timescales here. On the one hand these birds have evolved and survived over millions of years but an individual chick's life is being cut short by our culture's use and throw attitude towards plastics. Plastics however remain in the environment for a long time and the persistent organic pollutants released by these use-and-throw materials has the ability to threaten evolutionary timescales. Some folks may argue that Albatrosses have failed to adapt to our modern world. But Van Dooren asks us to consider if we have "evolved" into the kinds of beings worthy of our inheritances. How can we continue to alter environments in the way it "undermines the possibilities" for other beings? 

Indian Vulture - Death woven into life

 

I cannot think of a better bird to represent India than the vulture. Ancient Hindu Vedic texts constantly call to mind how we are all food and how life is about eating and being eaten. Vultures have the unique ability to "twist death back into life." Until the late '80s/early '90s India supported a huge population of vultures unlike any other place on earth. There are many reasons for this 1) vultures are revered by Hindus (Jatayu who challenged Ravana in the Ramayana) and Parsees relied on them for disposing their dead 2) large domestic cattle population that was not eaten by humans 3) humans did not compete with the vultures for the dead cattle so they never shoot at vultures 4) humans relied on  the service of vultures for disposing off the dead carcasses of cattle. So what changed? A drug called Diclofenac used as an anti inflammatory / pain killer is frequently injected into cattle especially by the poor in an attempt to extend the life of their cows. Vultures who can digest anthrax easily are unable to handle Diclofenac and are dying out. This has so many unintended consequences because vultures are woven into the complex fabric of life in India. Van Dooren lays out this complex interconnection beautifully. Here is my simplified version:

Poverty --> cattle life extended by Diclofenac --> death of vultures --> carcasses not consumed by vultures now consumed by stray dogs --> stray dog population explode --> transmit rabies --> poor more likely to be bitten by rabies infected dogs --> anthrax spread from cattle bones that are not picked clean by vultures --> partially cleaned bones sent to fertilizer industry --> poor recruited to clean flesh off bones which might contain anthrax --> death of bread winner plunges family into poverty

The death of vultures has a disproportionate impact on the poor in India but it also raises the spectre of diseases like rabies and spread of anthrax to humans. If this is not a wake up call then I am not sure what is! Extinction of vultures is not just an extinction of one species but it "disrupts and cuts across and confuses simplistic categories like natural and cultural, biological and social, the living and the dead"

Little Penguins - Storied places in animal worlds

The third species looked at was the Little Penguin specifically the ones that come to land to breed in Manly in Australia. Their habitat is now threatened by human encroachment of shorelines. As humans want beachfront properties our wants have threatened the homes of these penguins who are now seen as "unwelcome guests" although they have been doing this for millennia and we are the newcomers.  In this chapter Van Dooren asks us to think about spaces especially shared spaces and how do humans make places out of spaces and if that is any different for other species. We make places out of spaces not just with physical alterations but also through social/ mental processes that give meaning to the space. In other words, we build our homes through stories. Little Penguins show extreme "site fidelity" even if it means facing death as this has been an evolutionary strategy that has worked well for them over so many generations. The changes we have made to their "habitats" are very recent in terms of evolutionary history that so many colonial seabird species face the same issue. They are returning home every year to find their homes invariably altered by human (and dogs and foxes) encroachment. Van Dooren argues that penguins don't just occupy habitats - "rather they inhabit experiential worlds in which a burrow might meaningfully be understood as a home." These are "inter-generationally gifted" spaces.We need to take the penguin stories seriously. In fact all shared spaces have other agents besides humans and we need to think of them as capable of narratives to come up with a strategy that is collaborative and ethical.

Whooping Cranes - Violent Care of Captive Life

One of the greatest success stories of conservation is that of the Whooping Cranes. Dedicated conservationists wearing stifling crane suits for hours together to avoid the chicks imprinting on them act as surrogate parents and help the young birds migrate by leading them on in an ultra light aircraft. This is pretty much all I knew about Whooping Crane conservation and in my mind there was nothing wrong with this picture. After all we have come a long way from Konrad Lorenz who was the first to study imprinting with some very questionable experiments. But that was those days and this is now. You can see where this is going. This chapter made me the most uncomfortable as I believe the ethical dilemmas posed by captive breeding of nearly extinct species are complicated to say the least. Here are some of the issues highlighted by Dooren that are not known outside the conservation groups

1) The violent nature of artificial insemination - the process of collecting the semen and injecting it 2) using sandhill cranes to incubate the eggs of whooping cranes 3) Quails were used as "food testers" for the whooping cranes when a microtoxin was found in the food supply 4) Canada geese and trumpeter swans were used for testing out potential hazards (like power lines) on the migration routes 5) finally, the human caregivers work long hours in sweltering heat in uncomfortable suits for many hours.

Van Dooren calls the above as "sacrificial surrogacy" where a species of least concern (e.g. quail, Canada geese) is sacrificed for the sake of the threatened species. Does the conservation of the Whooping cranes justify the violence meted out to the other species? There is no easy answer to this one and Van Dooren doesn't provide one. He just wants this violence to be acknowledged and communicated transparently.

Mourning Crows - Grief in a shared world

This was the final species covered by the book and fittingly it was about grief. The Hawaiian crow is extinct in the wild and only about 100 birds are alive in captivity. They are different from the "true crows" as these are fruit and forest specialists, but they are similar in intelligence and social structure like the true crows. With loss of the forests and increased predation from rats, mongoose and avian malaria the Hawaiian crows were driven to extinction in the wild. Corvids are often described as elephants with feathers. They are social, intelligent creatures and grieving and mourning the dead has been observed among corvids. A magpie funeral involves pecking at the dead and leaving behind some grass near the dead one. Crows gather in huge flocks around one of their dead and one hears a lot of scolding and noise at such a wake. Crows are known to avoid a place for nearly 2 years where one of them died. So maybe a crow funeral is an opportunity to learn something is dangerous and is to be avoided. Van Dooren calls this grieving as a "process of relearning the world." Extinction in this case is not just about the loss of a species or a biodiversity loss - even conservationists think of extinction only in these limited terms. But it could mean a loss of non-human languages, social ties, ways of grieving and other ways of life.

This goes back to the question raised by Van Dooren and Ned Beauman - why then is there very little mourning when a species becomes extinct? Human exceptionalism? Perhaps. Van Dooren also suggests that we have "hyperseparated ourselves from nature and reduced it conceptually" and so we don't use an ethical lens to look at the non-human sphere. He warns that this will come back to bite us as we push ecosystems to the edge. Mourning matters as we learn to live with the dead, and learn to acknowledge that these lives and their stories and cultures matter and maybe Van Dooren hopes it will motivate us to come up with new approaches if "life in its diversity is to go on."

It has been a few days since I finished the book but it has stayed with me. I have often volunteered for habitat restoration events and monitoring populations of the endangered California Least Terns. As I read the chapter on the Manly penguins I thought about the terns and how we have squeezed them onto 3 artificial dunes in Mission Bay and even those spaces are not guaranteed homes for them. I am now working on stopping a golf project next to a nesting site of these terns. Reading this book has given more weight to my arguments. It has opened my mind to thinking about these places as not "habitats" but "homes" for these birds and I am recognizing that it is my ethical duty to share these spaces collaboratively in the spirit of mutualism.