Nurturing Biophilia Feedback and Do Some Deer Actually Eat the Remains Of Dead Deer That Have Been Left Behind by Human Hunters? And Quicksilver the African Grey Parrot, Squirrel the Cat, and Tig the Basenji Check Out A Trunk

                            The late Athena of the Triborough Bridge Nest in Queens

 FROM SALLY OF KENTUCKY, regarding the importance of naming wild creatures that urban people in particular watch in various neighborhoods foster biophilia...

Agreed! Although I think that numbers might be able to have the same affect in watchers. The discussions of the recent disappearance and apparent loss of the Franklin Institute male "T2" are no less sad than those who mourn the loss of Lola or Athena or Hawkeye or Tristan. the eagle nest watchers on the IWS.org website use tag numbers as "names" for the most part, and when A27 a female that had been nesting for years at one nest went missing last year they were as upset as if hse had had a "real" name. They talk about the birds using their ID wing tag numbers as endearingly as you could want. I prefer names,I think it is easier to quickly connect to "Ziggy" or "Sabre" or "Atlas" than it is to attach to A40 and A48. But the attachment does develop in those that watch nests, whatever the bird is "named". Might be an interesting graduate thesis for someone to pursue.

Yes it would Sally.  I  wonder how one would quantify the biophilia for an animal with a number name vs a descriptive name.  Well...I have my masters and have been thinking about pursuing my Ph.D. and naming is one of my "things"...

I think it might take a little longer for an uninitiated person in a neighborhood to bond with an W712 name than say a descriptive name like Pale Male, which also helps in identification, but I might be wrong.  And certainly over time any "handle" for an animal does become a "name".

And next up long time blog correspondent Betty Jo of California--

  I loved your piece on Biophilia, Donna.  I had never heard the word before. Now I want to read Wilson's book.
Yes, Pale Male does look sweet!  Oh my--this spring he'll turn 24-- how amazing considering the dangers of life in NYC.  I too love behavior!  I don't have to see rare birds--I just love watching my backyard birds.
I even love the Monarch caterpillar's behavior--which mostly consists of eating very fast.  However they do go on "walk abouts"--sometimes just down the side walk and they can travel faster than I expected.  I don't name them because they move around too much, but I know now that they leave the milkweed and go to nearby plants and sit very still when they are ready to shed their skin.  
A casual observer may think they also eat the plant on
which they are resting.  I think they move off to suppress the urge to eat that milkweed must encourage. ?  a guess!
Anyway--thanks so much for your always interesting blog,
Betty Jo McDonald

Thanks Betty Jo. Grand to hear from you again.  Watching a creature just going about their business completely makes my day. 

Fascinating hypothesis:  They move off the plant that would distract and tempt them to eat instead preparing for the next "step".  I like it!

What would happen if they were in a huge field of milkweed with absolutely no other plants I wonder?

Would they then take a very long walk to find something else or would they just keep eating and the whole cycle would be disrupted?

Thank goodness that even if there was miles of milkweed, which is unlikely of course,  though some people have suggested should be planted to help the Monarchs to thrive again, there would be some "weeds" as no herbicides would be used the Monarch caterpillars would be able to move away from their temptation to eat and  do what they need to do.

Though many have taken phenological notes about what some creatures eat and when they reproduce for instance here is an example of why behavior study is important. The Monarch caterpillar needs another species of plant to go to shed their skin.  It is amazing how many creatures who's other behavior beyond the bare basics has not been thoroughly notated yet. 

In fact Wilson's belief is that there are still hundreds of thousands of species, most teeny in size, who are as yet unnamed scientifically let alone studied for behavior.

By the way, do you have any idea about how long they "rest" before shedding their skin?

My daughter Samantha who works at Dr. Pepperberg's Parrot Lab at Harvard, while getting her undergraduate degree, a double major...Ecological Science with an emphasis in Behavior and a second major in Theatre, (and what's theatre besides the behavior of Homo sapiens) at Brandeis has opened my eyes to just how much the "expected behavior" of those involved in science has changed in at least some quarters these days. 

 I was utterly delighted when she told me her Animal Behavior prof,  Dan Perlmann, (a former student of E. O. Wilson)  paused a slide presentation on various creatures during class one day and said, "Aren't they cute?"

I cannot  tell you how vindicated I felt.

There is no question that "Science"  now allows joy and humanity in at least some of its halls.  And let me add whimsy and a sense of humor, Perlman has also invented a water soluble "glue" to make sand castles last longer.

 But back to biophilia and Ed Wilson,  readers can stream the NOVAepisode, "Lord of the Ants" (beginning with one of Wilson's Bioblitzs in Central Park) and the Bill Moyers Journal featuring Ed Wilson on your computer at the links below.  He is brilliant enthusiastic optimistic scientist  and writer (25 books and counting) who is also pretty much a hoot. Go for it.
 NOVA
 Lord of the Ants
 http://video.pbs.org/video/98004963

 Bill Moyers  The Journal: E.O. Wilson

http://video.pbs.org/video/1415023723/ 

 AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AND ACTUALLY KIND OF  CREEPY...

 Deer browsing on the verge between a cornfield and a woods.

These deer are doing what one would expect deer to do.  When the snow melts, deer often browse in spots where field corn has collected.  Normal behavior for an herbivore.

Well, the other day I was talking to Samantha (the daughter studying animal behavior) on the telephone and she asked me if I'd heard about deer eating the remains of human killed deer that had been dressed in the field, and the innards, organs, etc. left in the woods?  

Hunters are supposed to deeply bury or carry out the parts they aren't keeping but sometimes the bad mannered and lazy don't.

I said, NO!  I hadn't heard of that.  

As it turns out there had been reports of this sort of deer behavior in recent years.  And as you might imagine these reports were originally discounted...too much Pabst Blue Ribbon. 

Come on Deer are herbivores.  Besides everything else they don't even have the teeth for the job.

Finally a study was done and yes, just in, some deer have begun to consume hunter's leavings.

As Sam said, "I always did wonder how omnivores evolved."

How could this happen? 

 Well, there are far fewer members of natures clean up crews than there used to be due to poisons, trapping, "varmit control", and lack of proper habitat.  Therefore many ecosystems are missing many of the creatures that once evolved to live in those systems and do various and sundry jobs.

It appears other creatures are now adapting to fill in the voids.

How creepy is this?

Nature is beginning to fill in.

P.S.  This is new stuff and  I've not found anything about the topic online.  If anyone does find more information on this behavior do please let me know.

And as you might have found the above disquieting...a preview of a whimsy....  Remember some time ago I went to see what "the junk man" had for possible cheap storage?   Well I'd gotten an old trunk for a couple of dollars and it had been in the garage ever since.  Today I dragged it into the laundry room to make an attempt at cleaning it. I went off to find the vacuum and now a preview of .... Quicksilver, Squirrel, and Tig Check Out A Trunk....

I hadn't been gone more than two minutes and Squirrel was already in the trunk and Quicksilver was thinking about joining in.

 Squirrel then checks out the nail sharpening capability of  vintage trunk wood....

Silver bombs down to the trunk from above and Squirrel almost leaps out but puts on the brakes.  If he had leapt out Silver would have laughed and that would be embarrassing and that's what Silver had in mind in the first place.

Silver scrutinizes and Squirrel sniffs.  Both pretending that they aren't paying any attention to the other.  Wrong...to be continued.

And last but not least in from Robin of Illinois, how prevalent were  lemmings this Snowy Owl breeding season?
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-snowy-owl-bonanza-thanks-to-a-little-stubby-legged-arctic-rodent-the-lemming/2014/02/16/57c08cfe-94c9-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html

PALE MALE. What's In a Name? Names Nurture Biophilia. And Biophilia Saves the Earth

 Photo courtesy of  palemale.com/
Beautiful sweet faced Pale Male 

He was hatched in 1990.

And as a Brown-tail in 1991 he took a young mate, there was an attempted nest built on a baseball back stop which didn't hold eggs....they fell out, according to his chronicler the wonderful writer and naturalist Marie Winn, who also gave him his name.  The pair also attempted to nest in a tree where they were mobbed by Crows and both injured... 

Thus begins the saga of one of the first Red-tailed Hawks to give up nesting "in the wild"  and raise a family on a building. 

Yes, nests on buildings are somewhat similar to the nests of  Red-tailed Hawks who nest on cliffs due to the dearth of trees out West....  that I give you... but cliffs don't have people peeking out windows at you.  

 For whatever reason, Pale Male, is remarkably amiable to the presence of people within certain bounds.  And so it began.  And as it did, worldwide love and affection for him grew too. 

It may not have happened if "that hawk" that nested on 927 Fifth Avenue hadn't had a name.

I know, just what is this naming hawks mania I have? 

If you will forgive me a digression, back in the day, when I was training in biology,  I was terrific at it but... I had the bad habit of showing my enthusiasm for birds, or animals or fungi  or plants or insects or you name just about any live thing,  loosing control, laughing out of sheer discovery and possibly saying..."Wow!  Amazing!  and even, "Aww, they're soooo cute!"

I vividly remember on one of these occasions Dr. Gross, in his white lab coat and I in mine, turning to me at my microscope and saying quietly, "Yes they are cute but you can't say it."

"I can't say it?"

"No."

"Why not?"  

"Because scientists don't."

I lost all my air, I shrunk.  I mustn't show joy in the biological.

I loved live things all of them and secretly loved the behavior of individuals even more. Though I knew the anatomy of many creatures, what really fascinated me was their behavior.  What are they doing and WHY?  I liked the whole creature and I liked them alive.  I was a behaviorist but didn't know it yet.
 
And so began the scientist mask, the submersion of why many have a love of  biology in the first place.  

 What  I had been doing was expressing biophilia,  it strictly wasn't allowed back then. 

And still isn't by some aging often male scientists.  

Or in birding circles by others who trained in something else altogether but have turned bird watcher and desperately want to be thought of  as "scientific". 

I trained in science, I've worked on research studies, and my opinion is that all resident urban hawks should be named. 

Why?

The biggest reason to give resident urban hawks names is to nurture biophilia in people, particularly children, who have never or rarely had a chance to intimately know by watching and love an individual of a wild species.  

 Biophilia literally means love of  life.  As in love of living things or systems such as Pale Male not whoopee I'm glad to be alive today.  Though that certainly can enter into it at times and often does when watching him.

The word was coined by Eric Fromm, mid 20th century, for what he believed was a psychological  bent in humans toward living systems, i.e. other life besides one's own.

Then along came E. O. Wilson who grew up in the forests and fields of Arkansas, and at 14 knew enough about ants to categorically discover and recognize that the fire ant had invaded the United States.  

Nobody else had noticed yet.  

It was Edward O. Wilson who popularized the biophilia hypothesis, in his book Biophilia (1984), which suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems.

Therefore extrapolate that further and to love/bond with Pale Male and to help others do so as well,  is to help save the Earth in it's infinite variety of creatures.

And Marie Winn giving Pale Male a name and she and all the other original Regulars standing by the Model Boat Pond with instruments of magnification, showing all comers the nest on 927 was a Biophilia Cadre on the hoof.  To say nothing of Marie, writing Red-tails in Love, which spread love for Pale Male all over the world.

Why Pale Male?  Of course he was one of the first urban hawks and he did have a talented connected group of New Yorkers watching him who were not shy about sharing him. They didn't secretly watch him for months and then let others know he existed only after they'd taken a million pictures. 

Not a chance.  They shared their discovery and their biophilia for him.

And lets face it, lest we forget Pale Male, isn't just any Red-tailed Hawk.  He is personable. He is recognizable because of his paleness.  He is human habituated.  He KNOWS people and lets them know it. 

He is WAY cool.

Plus we now know of course, as the research has been done, that most humans  have an affinity for the young of our species but also an affinity for the young of other mammals.  It is thought to have to do with large eyes, small features in proportion to head size and some say roundish heads as well.

As far as I know that research was only done on mammals but I think it crosses over to birds as well.

This is young Athena from Pepperberg's lab.  She also gives me that "Awww" feeling.  I don't know if that is because I'm into African Greys in the first place or because she in particular does it as she is only six months old.

 Photo courtesy of  palemale.com/
Now look at Pale Male, rounded head, big eyes, small features (beak).

There is savvy in those eyes but there is still a definite "Awww" factor.  And with his personality who could resist?  Only those so self absorbed they don't "see".

And we help people "see" if we give an animal a personal name.

Simple as that.

Name the hawks.  Save the Earth.


Happy Hawking! 
       D.B.

P.S. For those who asked what the new nest site at  Fordham looked like in 2013....
 Go to Rich Fleisher's Flickr hawk photos at the following link-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/profman_wildlife_photos/sets/72157632612233748/