RIVER WATCHER WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR? Rex Burress Everyone is looking for something all life long. Some look for gold, and some find it, such as the recent discovery of the six pound Butte County nugget illustrates. But most miners find very little gold, even for those 49ers who traveled through unimaginable perils to reach California goldfields. From the moment of birth, the search starts, beginning with mothers milk, followed by a lifetime of seeking food and ways of supporting your system. To a child, everything is an adventure in discovery, and that time helps to set the trend toward future aspirations. Rachael Carson said it best. “A childs world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement...with true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring...I would wish that each child have a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.” Personally, I was an only child on a wooded farm, and that led to a life devoted to nature, including a long career at the Oakland Nature Center. Admittedly, hunting Missouri squirrels, rabbits, fox and the like--even hunting arrowheads in the plowed fields-- helped develop a keen eye for spotting wildlife in those early rambles...a passion that evolved into bird watching and all the rest of nature lore learning. There is a time of looking for information during school years and right on through life. At various times most people will look for jobs, mates, and homes along the stair-steps of life when specialized interests also develop. There are those who spend a lifetime looking for bird species to add to their life-lists, while others might be looking for rare rocks, or butterflies, or stamps—or ash trays! Take a look at the large Lanthrop Ash Tray collection in the Oroville Community Cultural Center/Artists of Rivertown gallery. Seemingly ashtrays would be the most undesirable thing one would want to collect, but there is a certain artistic beauty in the various designs and colors in spite of the rather ominous intentions of their intended use. So River Watching is a form of looking, just as Yogi said “you can observe a lot by just watching!” But then, if youre not properly prepared or aware of what you want to watch, you can look but not see your subject. It takes a lot of lot of learning, observation, and repetition to see with understanding. Invaluable are nature field guides, but you have to know how to use them and where what is located in the indexes. Going down to the riverside daily from my home in Oroville, just as I went down to the lakeside daily when I worked at the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge, and just as I went down to No Creek in Missouri quite often when a boy, is not only an opportunity to see something wild, but it keeps you in tune with the seasons. In autumn there is the time of migration, with salmon thrashing their way up the river from the ocean. Just as the Feather River Maidu tribe had great expectations for the return of the salmon, certain wildlife waits with anticipation, too. Once upon a time Grizzly Bears feasted on live salmon in the Feather River system, just as many other animals still eat the fish, especially vultures and gulls that cleanup the leftovers. I start looking for the migrant birds in the fall. Not only do the migratory waterfowl start appearing on the river and valley marshes, but fleets of warblers, kinglets, and sparrows fill the thickets. Deciduous trees are part of the color show, too. Winter is a cold-weather time when wildlife transitions dominate. And then comes spring...over and over again...when growing plants surge to the front. Summer is tree-green and meadow brown. “Sing a song of seasons, something bright in all...” Looking is the first step in discovery! “Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own, and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.” --Charles Dickens
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 22:43:16 +0000
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