Color on wing(s)

A wide variety of brightly colored birds are visiting Hennen Conservation Area these days, and it appears that at least some of them have decided to call the park home for the time being!

On a daily basis at the birdfeeder, we are seeing at least three pairs of goldfinches, an indigo bunting (pictured at left), at least one pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks, a pair of cardinals, many house finches and three varieties of woodpecker: hairy, downy and red-bellied.

And, one cannot walk back by the pond without hearing the Belted Kingfisher that has been resident for about two months now. It's very sharp "squawk" seems to be a warning, but perhaps is just a greeting. As far as we can tell, it is a single bird, not a pair, so he (or she) might be lonely.

The Kingfisher is a large, blue bird with very striking markings (pictured at right), so is hard to mistake for anything else. The fact that he or she is staying by the pond leads me to believe that the pond must have fish in it.

So, if you stop by Hennen, be sure to look & listen for the Kingfisher as you walk by the pond. And keep an eye open for the other colorful birds that call this place home.

Weeds Are Us

Well, that's what Michael Pollan, author of Botany of Desire, says. He makes a compelling case.

He points out that plants we call weeds are those plants that tend to do well in areas that have been disturbed by humans - farm fields, urban areas, any suburban lawn, for example...

Add to that the fact that people have moved plants around the planet for pretty much as long as humans have been moving themselves, and one can see that weeds and people are inextricably linked.

In some cases, we have even planted the future noxious weeds ourselves. This is the case with both multiflora rose and reed canary grass, which were promoted for planting by the federal government as recently as the 1960s! Today, there is not a natural area manager around who does not curse those plants on a regular basis.

Multiflora rose, with its thorns and long, twining vines, has ripped clothes, snagged skin, and made many walks through the woods unpleasant for decades now. Cutting it and treating the cut stalks with herbicide is about the only way to get rid of it. And that is tedious, unpleasant work!

Reed canary grass (rcg), which was recommended to farmers as a forage plant for low-lying areas, has now moved on to invade nearly any wetland area. Too many wetlands that were dominated by native plants just a decade ago are now dominated by reed canary grass. Rodeo (R) is an herbicide that will kill the grass, but because rcg produces so many seeds, it can take years just to exhaust the seed bank. And, if the area has any water draining into it, there is always the likelihood that seed will flow in from infested areas upstream.

It's daunting, isn't it?

So, what can one person do?

Well, the best thing to do it to plant only native species. Red Buffalo Nursery in Hebron has a nice feature on its website that allows one to get a list of native plants that fit certain criteria (amount of sun, soil conditions, and type of plant -- grass, forb, etc)

The second best thing to do is plant only species that are not invasive. The Chicago Botanic Garden has a nice feature available to help people choose plants that are not invasive - weedy - for most every situation.

Making different choices about what we plant will help stop the increase in invasive plants crowding out our local natural areas.

If you'd like to do more, you can volunteer to help at a restoration work day!

Feeding a hungry planet?

An article in Grist caught my attention today. It is about a recent NPR Marketplace piece touting the need for getting poor, rural farmers around the world using synthetic fertilizer & other chemicals if we are ever going to produce enough food to feed 9 billion people by 2050.

The problem with the story was that it relied on one man's opinion, and did not include any other perspective. The story did not mention that the chemicals and fertilizers are too expensive for poor, rural farmers in 3rd world countries to buy. Nor did it mention that there are other, low cost ways that rural farmers can boost productivity without becoming dependent upon petroleum-based fertilizers.

Finally, the story failed to mention a groundbreaking study about the future of agriculture that was conducted by the UN, World Bank and others, and completed in 2009. The 400 agriculture experts from around the world who worked on the project for 4 1/2 years, concluded that the planet must move away from chemical & fossil-fuel dependent agriculture if we want to have a sustainable future to feed a growing world population. In fact, the study recommends using an agro-ecological type of farming at a small and mid-size scale "that does not deplete natural capital."

No question that having enough food for everyone as the world population grows is an important issue. And, synthetic fertilizers and large-scale agriculture has worked well for some in the United States to generate amazing crop yields. But one has to ask if our way of doing things is a sustainable system with the cost of fuel rising & a growing interest in local food. Plus, is the US agriculture system even the right model for other parts of the world with vastly different cultures, transportation systems, soils & climates?

Greening Your Eating?

Did you know that 15-35% of municipal waste is a combination of food and paper that is soiled with food? In California, where landfill space is extremely tight, and towns are required to divert up to 75% of their waste from landfills, they actually provide special bins to residents for kitchen scraps.

The bins are picked up each week and the material taken to commercial compost facilities. The resulting material is spread on farm fields as a valuable soil amendment. Shoot, in some places, the compost is bagged and sold in stores!

We may not have curbside compost service in our area, but that is no reason to toss vegetable scraps in the trash. Rather, more folks could be composting them!

Kitchen compost can be added to the backyard compost pile, where it will decompose along with the grass and leaves from the yard. Avoid placing meats and fats in the compost bin, but all manner of vegetable and fruit material is fair game. Egg shells, corn cobs, pineapple rinds will all break down eventually, but the smaller they are chopped up before going into the pile, the faster the microbes and other decomposers can do their work!

And composting isn't limited to residential folks. Think about restaurants, and the amount of food waste that is generated just during the food preparation process. If the vegetable and fruit waste materials were kept separate, and placed in their own disposal container, they could easily be collected for composting.

One Woodstock restaurant is already doing just that: Expressly Leslie's on the Woodstock Square - a vegetarian restaurant that specializes in Middle Eastern food - separates all their compostable material. A local vermicomposter (person who composts food using worms) picks up the food scraps for his worms. Well, except for the lemon rinds -- his worms don't like lemons. Leslie even switched to compostable materials for serving the food to dramatically reduce the waste the restaurant generates.

So, what's keeping you from composting your kitchen scraps?