Wildlife is all around you
”
Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.
”
That was the line that propelled naturalist and wild foods
collector Euell Gibbons to fame. Gibbons, author of the 1962
best-seller,
”
Stalking the Wild Asparagus,
”
made himself famous not with his books, but with that cornball
line delivered hawking Post Grape Nuts.
Wildlife is all around you
“Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.”
That was the line that propelled naturalist and wild foods collector Euell Gibbons to fame. Gibbons, author of the 1962 best-seller, “Stalking the Wild Asparagus,” made himself famous not with his books, but with that cornball line delivered hawking Post Grape Nuts.
I was an early fan of Gibbons’ book. His father left his family to fend for themselves in the 1930s, as he traveled in a desperate search for work. With the family cupboard reduced to a single egg and a handful of beans, Gibbons set out into the countryside and returned with enough food to feed his mother and brothers and sisters for a month.
As a guide to wild edibles, Gibbons’ book left a lot to be desired. The sketches of his quarry could not be used to identify it and his descriptions were sometimes vague.
But his writing was chatty and down home, and the real message in “Asparagus” is that one needn’t travel deep into the wilderness to find things worth seeking.
Gibbons pulled bluegill and crawfish from farm ponds, asparagus from roadside culverts and elderberries from thickets of shrubs.
Food is where you find it, and you often find it close at hand, might have been Gibbons’ message.
The same might hold true for observing nature.
Only a few minutes’ walk from my office in Hollister is a small urban park that teems with birdlife. As the seasons change, so does the show, with summer the quietest time.
This weekend, we took a trip to San Francisco, and when we sought a walk and some wildlife, we did not head for Baker Beach, Seal Rock or Golden Gate Park. We went to the Financial District in search of Peregrine Falcons.
A pair of the world’s swiftest birds first nested on the 33rd floor of the PG&E Building at 77 Beale St., near Main and Market, in 2003. They returned to the same spot in 2004 and 2005, but chose this year to nest at a building across the street.
Their single chick first flew from the nest last weekend. With only a vague idea of the location of the PG&E building, we set off.
And we found – nothing.
Well, that’s hardly right. We found no falcons, but we had a delightful morning walk around the city and we surveyed the bay for a while.
How a hunt for falcons got me thinking about Gibbons is pretty simple: it’s where you find it.
Ironically, Peregrines were imperiled by humankind’s interaction with nature through indiscriminate application of certain pesticides. As they make a comeback, they find the towering canyons and ledges of urban America to be attractive places to raise young. In addition to nesting sites, cities are full of what we call pigeons, except that falcons call them food.
Pigeons themselves are great examples of animals that have benefited from the gathering of people into cities. Again, it’s nest sites and food that do the trick. There always have been wild populations of pigeons in North America, but the clouds of birds along city streets are there because the city is.
On our way home from San Francisco, the back seat contingent started to complain of hunger, so we nipped into Gilroy’s In-and-Out Burger drive through. As we waited with the rest of the mob, a small red-haired boy ran past, and a male Brewer’s Blackbird dive-bombed the kid, pecking at his mop of hair.
“They get pretty territorial this time of year. There’s probably a nest nearby,” I said.
Immediately, my wife pointed the nest out, and I was proven right.
I love it when that happens, probably because it happens so seldom.
The opportunity to watch wildlife does not have to involve malaria pills and plane tickets. It’s all around us.
Gardening outside of our home, I’ll often pause to look upward. Our yard list includes Golden Eagles and American White Pelicans, there because someone paused to tilt a head back. After watering, I recently watched Bushtits fly into a lemon tree, bathing in droplets of water as they fell from the leaves of the tree.
Tiny Bushtits are commonplace birds, but watching them go about their lives was a special privilege.
