Mary Patrick Green Acres April 7, 2019

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Garret Mountain April 6, 2019

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missing the obvious

A little friendly criticism taken to heart

Got me to reconsider the impact of humans

If your point of view looks from a bird's eye

At habitat seeing loss but also seeing gains.

Nature preserves set aside on compromised land

Eventually recovering returning to a natural state

Creating an incidental island of habitat suitable for wildlife

That people can cultivate to encourage to thrive.

However it's the developed terrain that matters most

Not intended as habitat but recognized as such

When feathered wings with brains examine it

Finding food and nesting sites there for the taking.

Here in South Florida what was swamp has been replaced

Excavating a landscape leaving it littered with borrow pits

To mound up the margins as foundation to build upon

Catching water in the pits as pond or lake soon colonized.

Behind this house the little lake attracts the birds

Gallinules, spoonbills storks, ibises, limpkins, ducks all feeding

Cormorants, grebes, herons, egrets,, anhinga, osprey and eagles fishing

With squawking flocks of seagulls swooping down to drink and bathe.

As I watch them every day how could I miss the obvious

The abundance of these birds depends on all the pits

Constructed for real estate business but nevertheless

These birds have found a happy home here.

There are so many power lines and poles and structures

It seems especially in parks that mar the view I think

But the birds decide we are providing good places for nests

Caring not at all about my pristine nature esthetics.

For the birds that lived in the original swampland

The transformation of this place was a catastrophe

No doubt killing off most of the native species

Even while creating opportunity in a new ecosystem.

This is the story everywhere I think in a changing world

Some species will adapt and expand their range

Others will come to the end of their time to exist

People we hope will be among the former and survive.

Garden to Taylor to Chesnut March 30-31, 2019

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