Great Backyard Bird Count

Should Alternet readers care about how many birds there are? I think so! There are very few opportunities for us to find out how well we and our environment are doing. If a broad survey shows stable or growing animal populations, it’s reassuring. There are no coordinated continental counts of mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, or insects. Only birds – so we’ll have to use them as canaries in our mine, so to speak.

Working alone, a few ornithologists can’t cover very many places. But tens of thousands birders, even if they know the names of only a few species, can collect much more definitive data about bird populations from all over the US and Canada. Every year in February there is a Great Backyard Bird Count. This year it runs from February 12 to the 15^th, see http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/. Besides inviting everyone and describing how to participate, this website makes available the results from past years. Last year folks completed over 94,000 checklists totaling 11.5 million birds and 620 species. The raw data is available online if you want to see particular species, trends in your area, or how many from your region sent in reports. Results from past years document population shifts and noteworthy declines of specific species.

You don’t have to know every species of bird in your area. To participate you simply have to log the birds you see for, say an hour, and report them online. You can print a checklist that has the common species for your location (by ZIP Code) so you know the name to use when reporting. You submit one list for each period and location you count from. And there are checkboxes for reporting whether you counted all the birds you saw, or only the ones you could identify. There is also a photo contest associated with the GBBC and its fun to see all the submissions and the winners selected in the many categories. It’s a good way to learn the names of birds you’ve seen but didn’t know what to call them.

I don’t have an answer to the question: Has someone here made a snow barbecue? I know some folk who barbecue year round, and when it snows, would that be a snow barbecue? Or would a crowd of people made out of snow and tending a snow grill while eating barbecue fare be more appropriate?

Keeping Pond Life Healthy

We know how to make schedules and attend them. But tasks we’re not aware of won’t make the list. I’ve missed many natural deadlines because I was distracted by work and family activities. Last year, for instance, I neglected to bubble the pond.

In regions where water freezes, for some ponds it is important to keep track of snow cover on the ice. Fish, amphibians and reptiles that spend winter under the ice require enough oxygen to keep them healthy. Clear ice allows sunlight to promote plant photosynthesis, releasing enough oxygen into the water for the animals to absorb. A few inches of snow make it too dark so that diminishing levels of oxygen may threaten underwater animals.

Ponds that have oxygenated streams running into them are probably not at risk. But a pond, or even an ornamental water feature in the yard, that has heavy oxygen demands because of animal populations, or a heavy load of decaying matter (fallen leaves and other organic stuff), or both, requires a steady supply of oxygen. Under the right conditions, wind can keep the ice free of snow but if this doesn’t happen, maintaining a patch of clear ice allows plants underneath to help animals survive.

We succeeded in keeping our fish, turtles, frogs and toads in our two acre spring-fed pond alive through 25 winters. Some years wind kept the ice clear for weeks. Others had recurring thaws that melted portions of the ice, and the newly frozen ice was clear. The pond, which is 11 feet deep in places, stores quite a bit of oxygen when the liquid surface has been exposed to air for days or when sun shone on clear ice for many sunny days. Water from springs may not have dissolved oxygen because processes underground may have consumed it. We typically counted down a week to 10 days after snow covered the ice or since the last open water or clear ice event before we intervened.

Unless ice skating or playing hockey makes it worthwhile, shoveling snow off hundreds of square feet of ice can be boring. An alternative we often use is bubbling. Pumping air from four, or more, feet under the ice soon melts a 20 foot diameter hole through the ice. If the ice is a foot thick this process may take a whole day. We place the pump (1/8 horsepower) in a weatherproof box on the deck (or on shore) and run plastic tubing to a hole in the ice that we drill with an augur (used for ice fishing).  We use either an extension cord from the closest building or power the pump directly with a photovoltaic, PV, panel or battery. At the end of the plastic tube we have four air stones (the kind used to aerate fish tanks) along with a brick to make the end sink. The air stones generate very many small bubbles that directly aerate the water as they also propel warmer water from deep down up against the ice. Once a hole opens in the ice it can be readily kept open by turning the pump on for an hour every 11 hours. We use a timer for this when using a battery or AC power. When using only PV panels, the pump runs whenever the sun comes out. The pump we now use has a separate head on each end of the motor and we run two tubes to separate holes in the ice, 50 feet apart. That way if one of the tubes develops an ice plug while it’s not operating, you don’t have to wrestle with it unless the other one freezes. Very often, warm weather fixes the problem.

Last winter  we had a disaster. Periodic warm weather opened up the ice during December and January. We thought that periodic heavy rain events in February and March would transport enough oxygen into the pond but evidently it stayed on top of the ice and froze instead of bringing oxygen to the animals underneath. As the ice melted, dead fish became visible everywhere, along with a few turtles. Most sad was our 20 year old grass carp that weighed 38 pounds. The rest were primarily large bass, including some trophy size specimens. After collecting over 100 pounds of these, we planted them in raised beds in the garden, transforming them, over the summer, to bumper crops of trophy vegetables. Many fish survived, including large channel catfish and bullheads that tolerate low oxygen levels, as did populations of small fish, painted turtles and four species of frogs. This year we’re keeping an open water area throughout the winter.

A note of caution: it takes a few inches of ice to support people, pets and other animals. If you periodically create open, deep water, in cold weather it freezes over in a few hours. If it then snows even less than an inch, the area looks just like the rest of the pond that may have ice a foot thick. You have to clearly mark or create a barrier around the hole to keep animals and people from inadvertently breaking through thin ice! Or warn neighbors and keep it continually ice free. Even at night open water looks dark when surrounded by white snow and ice so that people and animals stay away.

Harvesting local resources and living in tune with nature dictate that many activities follow the seasons and weather. I’ll try and cover cogent topics so we all have time to consider what makes the “list”. If there is a topic you would like me to mention or a subject I listed in the preceding entry that you would like to see sooner than later, please let me know.

Abstinence is the practice of refraining from indulging an appetite, in this case of burning fossil fuels. This blog is not about self denial and austerity but will champion accomplishing more by utilizing natural energy flows and locally available resources. We’ve been transferring vast amounts of coal, oil and natural gas from underground to our atmosphere in order to feed engines and electric motors in manufacturing, transportation, farming and our buildings. Fossil fuels have been so cheap, and the consequences of burning them so remote, that we haven’t developed alternatives. This space will look into ways of growing food, cooking, providing water, heating, conditioning space and a myriad of other activities using primarily sunlight. While oil is still available, we should quickly wean ourselves while developing the tools we’ll need to live vibrant lives that do not emit fossil carbon.

Every day in the US and Canada we each exhaust 120 pounds of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. And we’ve been at this rate since 1970. Of course typically more than half of the coal, oil and gas, per capita, fires institutions and infrastructure that support us. It took over a century to ramp up to this level but not that long ago many of our great grandparents didn’t burn any. Probably fewer than one billion people “used up” half the available oil on the planet and there are currently almost 7 billion folk who want the other half. We should probably get familiar with ways of living well that use sunlight available today rather than expect that the buried relics of ancient life will last forever.

I’ve spent a few decades getting familiar with tools that make work easier, processes that harness available energy, and techniques that enable living well. I live in the Northeast but have travelled widely. Through the seasons I hope to cover appropriate topics that describe local activities and lessons learned. These kinds of endeavors require making many mistakes, many of them humorous. I’ll try to relate even embarrassing ones, hoping you’ll avoid similar ones.  I’m an engineer and approach problems analytically, producing a lot of data to quantify results. Here, though, I hope to explain issues in ways that are easy to understand. If you want more details, just ask or utilize a search engine to find more information.

Planned Presentations:

1.   Winter:

• Keeping Pond Fish Healthy;
• Great Backyard Bird Count;
• Including Exercise Routines;
• Heating with Wood;
• Retro Cooking with Wood;
• Top 10 Workshop Tools;
• Making Maple Syrup;
• Pumping Water;
• Root Cellar Vegetables;
• Plans for Growing;
• Solar Panels and Batteries;
• Gathering Firewood;
• Starting Seeds.

2.   Spring:

• Fruits and Nuts;
• Critter Control;
• Managing a Greenhouse;
• Storing Firewood;
• Top 10 Tools for Wood Heat;
• Practical Pets;
• Feeding Pond Fish;
• Chickens;
• Compost;
• Tracking Solar Collectors;
• Electric Tractors;
• Three Sisters Garden;
• Pruning Trees and Berries.

3. Summer:

• Top 10 Gardening Tools;
• Establishing Gardens;
• Saving Seeds;
• Lawns and Mulch;
• Saving Frogs and Turtles;
• Juices, Jellies and Jams;
• Storing Solar Energy;
• Pollination;
• Building Maintenance;
• Periodic Planting: Salads;
• Food Pantries;
• Fishing;
• Preserving Food.

4. Autumn:

• Solar Heat and Power;
• Top 10 Kitchen Tools;
• Harvest Issues;
• Birds, Plants and Mammals;
• Garlic and Chestnuts;
• Root Cellar Management;
• Fiber Arts;
• Hunting;
• Snow Removal;
• Winterizing Equipment;
• Snow Fences;
• Holiday Trees;
• Gourds and Birdhouses.