Winter World_ The Ingenuity of Animal Survival - Bernd Heinrich [120]
Nannyberry.
Hobblebush.
Elderberry.
Beech.
When snowstorms rage outside and temperature may dip below 0°F (-16°C), the jar of twigs reminds me of the winter trees’ vibrant life. The buds on the trees outside are like runners who have prepared for a big race for more than six months and who now wait for the signal to start.
In late April or early May, a warm temperature pulse will be the “go” signal, starting the twigs and leaves on their race to the sunlight and summer. In 2002, that pulse, two days of 90°F (34°C) on April 19 and 20, was unusually early. It forced the poplars, cherries, serviceberries, and sugar maples to start unfurling their leaves, to be followed two days later by the flowering of the serviceberries and sugar maples. Two snowstoms and frosts then followed within ten days. A week later sticky snowflakes the size of miniature snowballs were plummeting down and sticking onto the leaves and flowers. It looked like the trees had made a false start—as though they had jumped the gun. If so, they would be penalized themselves. This time they seemed okay, but I think they were cutting it close. The costs involved only a few broken limbs, a few lost leaves. As in the bees’ early exits from their hive to forage, the gamble paid off.
25
THE KINGLETS’ KEY?
Kinglets are small, beautiful, and pure in their simplicity. They remind me of snow crystals. Each snow crystal is a six-cornered starlet formed according to the unvarying laws of physics and chemistry. Each one is perfect. Yet the diversity in their shapes is astounding in part because any tiny random event in their formation shapes all future events in their growth.
Similarly, in the evolution of organisms and ecosystems there are innumerable random events of history that shape outcome. Outcome is not preordained. There are no correcting factors or laws from above that specify the form of the ultimate outcome, even as the shape of the kinglets’ adaptations necessarily conforms to energy economy of life just as the snow crystals’ shape conforms to the blind energy economy of physics. Ultimately, the kinglet is to a snapping turtle, or a crossbill, or an arctic ground squirrel, or to us, as one snow crystal is to another. But to appreciate that fact requires seeing them up close.
I made my first attempt to catch a kinglet in my hand when I was about nine years old, and I remember the occasion clearly. It was in the late fall, and I was alone, walking along a woods road back from the village school, when I encountered a small group of them foraging close to the ground among some young spruce trees. I got almost close enough to touch them. They seemed oblivious to me, and I reached out to try to capture one. I did not succeed, but they had captured my imagination, as they have many others’.
In the introduction to the golden-crowned kinglet chapter in his now truly classic multivolume Life Histories, a standard reference text on North American birds, Arthur Cleveland Bent wrote: “Many years ago, a boy found on the doorstep the body of a tiny feathered gem. Perhaps the cat had left it there, but, as it was a bitter, cold morning in midwinter, it is more likely that it had perished with the cold and hunger. He picked it up and was entranced with the delicate beauty of its soft olive colors and with its crown of brilliant orange and gold, which glowed like a ball of fire. In his eagerness to preserve it, he attempted to make his first birdskin. It made a sorry-looking specimen, but it was the beginning of a life-long interest in birds, which lasted for half a century.”
Kinglets are named Regulus (“little king”) for their bright lemon yellow, orange, and red crowns. In the golden-crowned kinglet (Regulus satrapa), the females’ crown is yellow and the males have an orange-red crest of feathers within the yellow crown that is usually