I had lots of trouble with yesterday’s post, especially the photo. In case it did not come through on the first email you received, here is the link.
9 Hours 53 Minutes 3 Seconds
Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake.
—Timothy Steele
Photo by: Paula Nixon
Before this shortest day of the year is over I’ll share these lines from Timothy Steele’s poem Toward the Winter Solstice and my shot of the L.A. sky, taken yesterday afternoon.
Here’s to a joyful and peaceful holiday season. There will be lots of work to do in the new year.
Coyote about Town
On a Saturday morning in November I was out running errands driving on Paseo De Peralta, the closest thing Santa Fe has to a loop. As I approached the Capitol, I was surprised to see a coyote crossing the four lane street.
Given New Mexico’s ongoing persecution of coyotes, I imagined she was on her way to the office of Animal Protection Voters (apvnm), just across the street from the Round House, perhaps to take up the issue of killing contests or trapping on public lands but, of course, she had her own agenda.
She looked a little scroungy with her beat-up half tail, but she knew where she was going as surely as I knew the way to the grocery store.
Before I had time to reach for my camera she had disappeared.
Coyote
Photo By: Paula Nixon
Back in my yard I’ve been fussing with my camera trap trying out different locations, each for a few days at a time, checking to see who passes by. In the last year we have added walls, stairs, and an iron gate. I was curious if all of the changes had caused the bears, bobcats, and coyotes to abandon their old trails across our lot.
Finally, after my most recent attempt with the camera trained on the driveway (a pathway down the mountain long before we showed up) I found this photo–a coyote on the first Friday of December about 4 o’clock.
No way to know for certain, but she looks a lot like the one I spotted in town last month.
Too Many Words
I have been trying to figure out what to write since Tuesday night. I finally decided—not much. It’s been a loud, long campaign and now it is finally over. We all need a break, a little peace and quiet.
I will share a couple of brief comments from two of my favorite writers who inspired me this week.
From Terry Tempest Williams on election night:
I am trying to stay calm and listen to the river with one ear as I… https://t.co/Rz6CfFncSQ
— TerryTempestWilliams (@TempestWilliams) November 9, 2016
A couple of days later from Sherman Alexie:
https://twitter.com/Sherman_Alexie/status/796830747084455936
And finally, from Hillary Rodham Clinton in her November 9th speech: “Make sure your voices are heard going forward . . . Fighting for what’s right is worth it.”
Good night. Don’t forget to go outside and take a look at the full moon. EarthSky says it will be “equally awesome” tonight and tomorrow night (November 13th and 14th).
Bathsheba: A Long Island Oyster
To define nature as the wild things apart from cities is one of the great fantastic American stories. ~Jenny Price
When I pulled up a barstool at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York City on a recent Monday I was famished. The lunch hour was long past and I wanted something quick and local. I selected the Lazy Mermaid oysters from Long Island to go with my Mermaid pilsner, brewed in Brooklyn. But my mermaid-themed lunch was not to be—that particular oyster was sold out. My second choice, Bathsheba (misspelled on the menu as Bathseba), another local oyster, was available.
Photo by: Paula Nixon
It took me a good long time, but once I learned to appreciate oysters they reminded me—in a way that no other fish or shellfish does—of the ocean. The best ones, like the Bathsheba, taste fresh and clean and briny.
Back at a home, a few days after savoring those oysters, I reread Jenny Price’s essay Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A. and thought about my stop at the oyster bar. Grand Central Station sits in the heart of Manhattan and seems about as far removed from the natural world as one can get, but Price challenges us to consider nature in a new way—as a part of life no matter where we are.
So, I wondered, where exactly did those oysters come from. After all, Long Island is just a short train ride away from midtown Manhattan.
A Google search turned up a 2008 map of Long Island and some of its oysters, but a lot has changed since then. This 2014 New York Times story describes the resurgence in more recent years of oyster farming on the island. Overfishing, pollution, and Hurricane Sandy (2012) had all taken their toll, but Crassotrea virginica, the eastern oyster, was, and still is, making a comeback.
It was Friday afternoon and not thinking I would reach anyone I called and left a message at the Long Island Oyster Company. Steve, the proprietor and ‘oyster guy’, called me right back, but was also stumped by the Bathsheba. He promised to see what he could find out and by Monday I had my answer. The Bathsheba comes from the Great South Bay, a long narrow body of water bordered on the north by Long Island and the south by Fire Island, the original home of the famous Blue Point oyster, known for its mild, but salty flavor.
So now I know a little bit more about my lunch, but find I have a lot more questions. What role does the oyster play in the health of the bay? How much risk is there of another hurricane destroying the new oyster beds? How exactly does a Bathsheba oyster make the journey from the floor of the bay to the ice-filled trays at the Grand Central Oyster Bar?
Those questions will have to wait for another day, another afternoon at the oyster bar, maybe even a trip out to the Great South Bay of Long Island.
An Abundance of Pinon
Photo by Paula Nixon
Most of the piñon trees around my house have open cones this year, some with the dark brown pine nuts still ensconced within. I hadn’t noticed them until I talked to Rick Winslow, a wildlife biologist with the NM game department, about a bear scat filled with piñon shells I found in the yard–turns out bears love the buttery nuts as much as the squirrels and jays. Winslow mentioned there had been lots of piñon in the area for the last couple of years, which didn’t fit with what I thought I knew about New Mexico’s state tree.
I had heard the piñon pine produced once every seven years, but it really depends on the weather, how much moisture we get. The recent years of drought have killed some of the trees, another setback. But in the last couple of years with closer to normal rainfall, they have responded by putting on cones.
Bumper crops are few and far between (that explains the seven year theory), but this year it’s a “bull market for piñon in Northern New Mexico” according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The last big crop we had was in 2005. I remember being surprised that autumn by a flock of boisterous Clark’s nutcrackers appearing out of nowhere, taking up residence in the pine outside my kitchen window. The sleek white birds with black wings crashed the party, scaring off the piñon jays, usually the bossiest birds in the trees. Once the cones were empty, they left as quickly as they came. No sign of them yet this year.
Last week I started to gather a few of the nuts in a small bowl and spread a bedsheet on the ground and shook the branches to release those still in cones. I was hoping to accumulate enough to roast for my sister-in-law, Kelli, who is an aficionado. The few I cracked open with my teeth (not recommended) were dried out and brown, not the plump, light-colored nuts I was expecting so I abandoned my efforts.
Maybe there are some good ones out there, but I’ll leave those for the industrious chipmunks to discover. I’ll be checking out our local roadside vendors or ordering from New Mexico Piñon Nut Company‘s online store. Sold unshelled, it’s a challenge to extract the tasty nuts. Wiki-How offers a few different techniques. The one that looks most promising involves a can opener. I’ll let you know how it works.
Backyard Bears
If you live in those wild land urban interfaces you’re going to have wildlife and if you complain about it we don’t have any choice but to do something about it. That usually ends up with a dead animal. Maybe not the first time, but the next time.
—Rick Winslow, NM Department of Game and Fish
Bears have been walking through my backyard for decades. They were here long before I arrived and have likely been making adjustments to their peregrinations ever since the first folks showed up here sixty or more years ago: cutting down trees, putting up small block houses, planting roses and apricot trees.
My House, 1995.
For a long time I didn’t realize they were passing through—it took two mangled suet bird feeders to convince me. The bears are discreet, keep their distance, cruise by looking for a tasty, no-hassle meal: a feeder filled with sunflower seeds, a bowl of kibble intended for the cat, a half-eaten pizza tossed in the trash. Once I discovered their presence, I took away all enticements that were within my control.
Other things are more difficult. Acorns, apples, piñon nuts. The last one I didn’t realize was an attraction until a couple of weeks ago when I found a pile of scat a few feet away from the house in a little clearing surrounded by pine trees. The scat was dried out and full of small brown shells.
I reached Winslow, the game department’s bear and cougar biologist, by telephone and assured him I wasn’t complaining, just had a few questions.
He told me that bears do eat piñon nuts and the scat I found was probably from last year, although it’s hard to say for certain since local trees produced the tasty nuts both this year and last. With all of the rain we had over the summer, there’s also plenty of natural food up on the mountain and not many bear sightings have been reported, another reason to think that the calling card I found was left months ago.
Over the summer we made changes in the backyard: walls, stairs, and a gate, but I have no doubt our local bears know exactly how to get to the old apple tree, near the original house. It was probably planted fifty years ago and has been left untended, but is loaded with an abundance of small pinkish-yellow fruit this fall, a bumper crop. I picked as many as I could reach yesterday and am hoping the bears are satisfied with the bounty in the forest and don’t discover my apples before they go into hibernation for the winter.
Appointment with a Wolf
Spring 2018 Update: I visited the zoo in late April and got a chance to watch Kawi and Apache loping around their enclosure, but no sign that they were caring for pups. Lynn Tupa, the zoo manager, confirmed that it was still early in the season, but when I followed up with her a month later still no pups. Sometimes it takes a couple of years for a pair of wolves to produce a litter, so maybe next year.
Lynn also told me that F638 was euthanized a few months ago. Sad news, but the female wolf lived a long life, seventeen years. She was suffering from kidney failure and an oral tumor at the end of her life. RIP Jasmine.
F638 or Jasmine as she is known at the Albuquerque BioPark lives ‘off exhibit’ and is not visible to the public so it took a special request to see her.
Jasmine in her living area.
Photo courtesy of Albuquerque BioPark
But before I get ahead of myself. . .
Back in 2013 I wrote my first post for this blog about a family of endangered Mexican gray wolves called the Bluestem Pack. By then they had lived in the wild for eleven years. They were on their second alpha female and third or fourth alpha male and had raised lots of pups that went on to find mates and establish new packs. To this day the Bluestem Pack still runs in the White Mountains of Arizona.
The original members of the Bluestem Pack were born in captivity. The near-famous (at least in wolf circles) F521, the alpha female of the pack, was born at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs in the late 90s. In 2002 she and her mate along with seven of their offspring—five new pups and two juveniles–were released in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. The juveniles were born into F521’s first litter of four pups in 2000 (at the Sevilleta Wolf Management Facility), but only two of them were released with the family. One of those wolves not released was F638.
It was a hot August afternoon. The zoo was quiet, the kids back in school. I arrived early so I could visit the public wolf exhibit before my meeting with the zoo manager. The Albuquerque BioPark or Rio Grande Zoo as it used to be known has participated in the species recovery plan for more than thirty years. Sixty-nine wolf pups were born at the zoo, helping reestablish the nearly extinct population of lobos native to the southwestern U.S. and Mexico. But it has been almost ten years since the zoo had a new litter of pups.
That could change next spring. The zoo has two new residents, Kawi a two-year-old female and Apache a five-year-old male. Their enclosure, visible from above, is large with pine and cottonwood trees, boulders and logs, wild grasses. It can be hard to spot them, but on this day the two were chasing each other around the perimeter with Kawi pausing for a brief belly flop in the horse trough.
Back at the zoo’s administrative office I met Lynn Tupa, the zoo manager, and we returned to the wolf exhibit, this time walking on the backside of the animal exhibits—even quieter than the front of the zoo.
Lynn unlocked the gate to access the wolf habitat, a secured area with access to the public exhibit and two other, smaller naturalized habitats. The wolves have minimal exposure to humans, so they are wary, but Lynn had told me Jasmine is curious and she approached the chain link fence, stopping a few feet back, when she heard us. Long legs, big paws, a multi-colored and grizzled coat, inquisitive eyes—a rare up-close look at a lobo.
Jasmine is sixteen years old—ancient in wolf years—and will live out her life here. She was never released in the wild, but did have one litter of pups in 2006, her contribution to the survival of endangered lobos. She is past the age of breeding and lives with a much younger male wolf. They keep each other company.
Within moments my visit was over.
I thought about Jasmine and Kawi and Apache as I drove away. Jasmine’s family has contributed much to the growth of the small wild population, but too many of the lobos running in their native habitat are now related to the Bluestem Pack. New blood is badly needed if they are going to continue to survive and thrive.
That’s where Kawi and Apache come in. Winter is mating season and if all goes well they may have a litter of pups in late April—a new wolf family with the potential to run free in the pine forests and grassy meadows of New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness, back where they belong.
Note: Many thanks to Lynn Tupa at Albuquerque BioPark for providing access and answering my questions. Also thank you to Peter Siminski, the official studbook keeper for the Mexican wolf recovery project, for filling in the blanks about F638’s history.
For more information about the current status of the wild population of Mexican gray wolves check out these two recent articles: Cornered by Elizabeth Miller in the Santa Fe Reporter (June 15-21, 2016) and Line of Descent by Cally Carswell in High Country News (August 8, 2016).
Autumn and the Brown Bears of Katmai National Park
Hello, Autumn! The days are getting noticeably shorter and I swear the leaves on the trees next to the Santa Fe River turned yellow overnight.
Photo Credit: Max Goldberg via Compfight cc
The last few weeks I have been watching grizzlies grab sockeye and silver salmon out of the river at Brooks Falls in Alaska. They are preparing for the coming winter, packing on the pounds. The park’s website says the best month for bear watching via the live feed is July, but I’ve seen lots of action in September. Most evenings (I usually tune in while I’m fixing dinner) I see three to four bears at the base of the falls employing their different fishing techniques: dashing and grabbing; sitting and waiting; snorkeling; pirating (stealing another bear’s catch).
It didn’t take me long to identify a favorite—bear 480, also known as Otis. I swear Otis is the size of a mini-Cooper. He patiently stares into the rushing water, employing the sit and wait strategy. I learned more about Otis listening to one of the play-by-play segments by Ranger Dave. Most of the other bears look the same to me (Ranger Dave talks about identifying them by their size and behavior and once in a while you see a mother with her cubs), but Otis is unmistakable. His fur is blonder than the others and he has a floppy right ear. Sometimes it doesn’t seem that Otis is very successful, but his size and an anecdote related by Ranger Dave tell a different story. He and another ranger once watched Otis, over the course of seven hours, snag and snarf 44 salmon. One salmon, according to the ranger, equals nine cheeseburgers. I’ll let you do the math.
I just checked; Otis is out there tonight on the far side of the Brooks River, fishing. But I know that one day soon he will lumber off and find a spot to hunker down for a big sleep. I’ll miss him.
Note: I tried, but was never able to get a decent screen shot of Otis to include with this post.
Green Chile and the End of Summer
Whether you are Hispanic or Indian or Anglo, the land belonged to the corn and chile before it belonged to you.
—Huntley Dent in The Feast of Santa Fe
Roasting chile.
Photo by Paula Nixon
Vendors have staked their claims in parking lots along Cerrillos Road. Their pickup trucks are filled with burlap bags stuffed with freshly-picked green chile hauled up I-25 from Hatch and Socorro. They appear in Santa Fe every year in the final weeks of summer, gas-fired roasting cages primed and ready to blister batches of chile on demand.
I bought a bushel of Hatch, medium hot, from Octavio in front of Jackalope. We’ll eat it through the fall and winter in the traditional ways, but will also use it to add pizzazz to a pot of corn chowder or to gussy up a cheeseburger. I’m hoping I stashed enough of the little baggies in the freezer to carry us through until the next harvest makes its way north.
A few years ago I had lunch at the San Marcos Café and Feed Store on the Turquoise Trail—a burrito topped with a simple, but divine green chile sauce. Back in my kitchen I tinkered until I came up with the recipe below that comes close to theirs. With a little adaptation it also works with dried red chiles.
Quick and Easy Green Chile Sauce
1 tablespoon oil (I use canola)
1 tablespoon flour
2 cups water or chicken stock
2-3 green chiles, roasted, peeled, and chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt, to taste
Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan. Add flour and brown, whisking constantly. Add water or broth, chile, garlic, and salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for twenty minutes, or until sauce thickens, stirring frequently.
Delicious on enchiladas, chalupas, huevos rancheros. Buen Provecho!