At Home in the Supermarket

So, I got to thinking, do any birds take advantage of the fact that some trees (oaks and beeches, particularly) hang on to their dried leaves in the fall?

I did a Google search, and found that some birds to favor certain species of trees, but they like trees with features that support their particular type of nest – a strong fork, say, or the likelihood of it providing a hole.

Then I realized that, duh, by the time the leaves dropped not only have the birds in this area already raised their young, but most of them have already headed south for the winter.

Stubborn as I am, I started wondering about mammals, and if they might show favoritism to a certain tree, since they stick around. Gray squirrels, for example. Do they tend to build their nests in oak trees so that they stay hidden well into early winter?

Plus, a gray squirrel nest in an oak tree would be kind of like setting up a home in the supermarket.

I live at a high enough elevation that there aren’t many oak trees around here, nor many gray squirrels. I turned to my handy Stokes Nature Guide to Animal Tracking and Behavior for an answer.

Donald and Lillian Stokes say that gray squirrels tend to use their “leaf nests” (those wads of leaves and twigs stuck up high in the branches of trees) in the summer. They tend to retire to tree-hole dens in the winter.

So even squirrels don’t take advantage of the superior autumn camouflaging traits of some trees over others.

Nature’s Striptease

It was a slender tree, and yesterday I didn’t notice it. But today it stood out, because a melon-sized birds’ nest is balanced precariously at the end of one of its small branches.

Yesterday, the tree had leaves. Today it doesn’t. Take it all off, baby.

But no one is interested in seeing a naked tree. Here in Vermont crowds gather to ooh and ah over the trees’ finery, but they are gone by the time that finery hits the ground.

Suddenly, though, the season’s birds’ nests are revealed. I find out that I walked directly under a birds’ nest on my way to the mailbox all spring and summer. I see a huge nest in that big tree on the top of the hill. Does it belong to a crow? And I see that modest trees, like beeches and oaks, that hold on to their dead leaves in fall, keep the birds’ secrets longer.

The Peak Experience

My road has been discovered. Every day last week, as I drove my children home from school, there have been at least two cars parked on the side of our quiet country road. Often the cars’ occupants are nearby, taking pictures of the view.

Last week the foliage was at its peak in this part of Vermont.

I remember when I thought of foliage as simply leaves. After 13 years in Vermont, it has come to mean the changed leaves of autumn. Tourists come from all over to see it. Columbus Day weekend is one of Vermont’s busiest tourist weekends.

I will not deny that it is breath-takingly beautiful. Sugar maples turn amazing colors in fall. Sometimes pure orange. Sometimes a spectrum of yellow to orange to red in a single tree – or even a single leaf.

Centuries of logging, and a variety of habitats in close proximity give Vermont, not only plenty of sugar maples, but a diversity of tree types that is found in few other places. That makes our hills particularly colorful.

I wonder, though, how many of our leaf peepers go home with a new appreciation for trees in their own neighborhood? A single sugar maple, even one on a busy street corner, contains all the wonders of a Vermont October in miniature.

Does anyone go home inspired to spend more time in their local park? To discourage the development of that vacant lot, that contains the only stand of trees for miles?

As I see the cars parked along the road, I worry about that craving for the peak experience. I’m afraid it is one of the things that is driving our society away from true nature in all its variety and toward an ever-smaller collection of natural places, kept separate from everyday life.

Supercalifragi-phosphorus

I pick out my dishwasher detergent by the percentage of phosphorus in it. I didn’t even know what brands I bought, I just knew the lowest level was 1.6 percent. This information is in tiny print on the bottom of the label on the back of the bottle.

I am so used to flipping over dishwasher detergent bottles that I can flip through a shelf of detergent like pages in a book.

Recently, though, there was no 1.6 percent detergent on the shelf in two subsequent trips to the supermarket. I went to the customer service desk.

“And why is phosphorus important to you?” the woman at the desk said very kindly, very gently and with a slight smile.

“Well, ya know, it pollutes the water…” I stammered. “It makes a lot of algae grow…” I was trying my best not to say “eutrophication.” I managed not to say eutrophication, and I’m proud of that.

Eutrophication is the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of this conversation. If I said it loud enough, I’d surely sound like an insane person with an overly-large vocabulary.

Eutrophication is when too many nutrients get in to a body of water. A layer of slimy green algae grows. The algae can use up the oxygen in the water, meaning fish and other water creatures can’t breathe. It blocks the light so underwater plants can grow, and underwater animals can’t see.

Basically, phosphorus is a fertilizer. Sewage treatment plants can take it out, but that’s expensive. And it’s hard to get all of it out. That’s a lot of money and a lot of trouble for something that stops glasses from spotting and little bits of food from sticking to your dishes. Apparently, there are other chemicals that can do the same thing without so much damage to water quality.

I should have practiced my explanation, because the Colgate-Palmolive customer service rep at the 800 number asked the same question, in the same way. (Yes, it turned out I had been buying Palmolive all this time. Who knew?) She went further though. When I mentioned the algae and the water pollution, she asked, “And why is that important to you?”

I hope you are imagining the witty come-back to that one, because I played it straight. And I really hate playing it straight.

You can read a lucid explanation of what phosphorus does to bodies of water from this clean water campaign in Minnesota.

There are also some great statistics on how what happens in your dishwasher translates into pollution in your local water body from Vermont.

And Grist’s Umbra will surely have you buying phosporus-free dishwasher detergent. As I may be soon.

BTW, Word’s spelling function includes “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (which I had spelled wrong), but not “eutrophication.”