Earth Almanac: January/February 2009

Otterly Cute 

In kelp forests—from Santa Barbara north almost to San Francisco—California sea otters are giving birth, usually to a single pup. Coveted for their fur—the densest of any mammal—all sea otters, but especially this subspecies, were victimized by the fur trade. Even the most clinical of biologists has difficulty not waxing anthropomorphic about sea otters. These are animals that, having carefully wrapped themselves in kelp, sleep on their backs, sometimes with their front paws covering their eyes or sometimes with all four feet sticking straight into the air like a family dog reclining on an easy chair. Stroll a beach on a still day and you may hear clicking as sea otters use rocks to open the shellfish they’ve placed on their chests (some prefer to leave the rock on their chest and smash the shellfish into it). They then pop the meat into their mouths as if it were one more pretzel en route to the maw of a portly, couch-bound viewer of Monday Night Football.

Pink Mist

In the wane of winter a pink mist spreads over wet meadows and floodplains from Newfoundland to Georgia and west to Texas. Diminutive spring beauties—a.k.a. fairy spuds—are blooming in staggering profusion. In “The Song of Hiawatha,” Longfellow called the plant miskodeed: “And the young man saw before him,/ On the hearth-stone of the wigwam,/ Where the fire had smoked and smouldered,/ Saw the earliest flower of Spring-time,/ Saw the Beauty of the Spring-time,/ Saw the Miskodeed in blossom.” Soon the forest canopy will leaf out, shading the flowers. The above-ground parts will wither and die, but in the rich humus the tubers, well stocked with food, hold the promise for next spring’s display. Few wildflowers are easier to transplant to yard or garden. If you can resist eating the tubers—which are delicious raw, boiled, roasted, or fried—plant them after they’ve gone dormant in shaded or sun-dappled moist but well-drained soil.

Gluttonous Gadabouts 

The bohemian waxwing—the larger, stockier, circumpolar cousin of the cedar waxwing—derives its name from its gypsylike wanderings. Driven less by cold than lack of fruit, it sometimes wafts south and east from its stronghold in Alaska and western Canada, penetrating deep into the lower 48 states. Winter irruptions are always unpredictable and often massive. A raucous, ravenous flock of several hundred may descend on, say, a crab apple tree, denuding it in minutes. The three species of waxwings—bohemian, cedar, and Japanese (which, oddly enough, breeds only in eastern Russia)—are named for the waxy droplets on the secondary feathers of adults. Waxwings frequently gorge on berries to the point that they have difficulty getting airborne. And if the fruit is fermented, they may become so intoxicated that they stagger.