The Urban Naturalist Getting an Update!

Almost two years ago, I posted a review of The Urban Naturalist by Steven D. Garber in which I commented that, while it was very good, it was also pretty outdated and I would like to see an update.

Today, I got an email from Garber saying that he is planning on updating it and confirming something he mentioned in an earlier comment on that review and giving me permission to place the comment in the blog proper as a shout-out, so--if you like books on urban nature, and if you're interested in seeing an update to The Urban Naturalist, here's a chance to let Garber know about your interest!

Now that it's 25 years since The Urban Naturalist first came out, I'm working on a new edition, featuring how the newest, fastest growing, most important ecosystems in the world keep on changing and growing at breakneck speed. If there are topics you want me to cover in the new edition, please let me know: stevendgarber@gmail.com

I got all excited and sent in my wish list, which I'll post below. It'd be awesome if you'd post your questions here in addition to writing to Garber, because I'm curious about what everyone else is curious about.

Wishes and curiosities

• I'd like more pictures! In color, if possible. I'm not a naturalist, just someone who walks around looking, and the book's descriptions aren't enough to help me identify chicory or know what a tree of heaven looks like. This isn't Garber's fault: no one's descriptions would be up to the task! I have to study images pretty hard to get an idea.
• Maybe a bit more West Coast stuff? A lot of the book's focus is New York, which, while interesting, is a long way from anywhere I've been. It also tends to be the default city for people who write about nature in the city, and I can't help but feel that the critters wandering around in an East Coast city might vary in kind and hapbit from the ones who wander through a West Coast area
• An updated "for further reading" list. Reputable websites would be a big help, too, because they tend to publish more recent information than books do. However, it's always a little hard to evaluate them.
• Also (and this wasn't in the email) I wonder about freeways and wildlife. On the one hand, all those cars surely kill a lot. On the other, some of the ones nearest my house have long strips of relatively undisturbed land next to them. Not wide, but long. How many animals use them as corridors? I know the local hawks hunt them. Do coyotes?

So, a good book is going to get better--which means a good day just got better.

Books That Deserve Longer Reviews Part 1

I never stop reading. It'd be almost as bad as ceasing to breathe.

I do, occasionally, stop reviewing, and this means there's a buildup of books that don't quite get reviewed. So, every now and again, I do short reviews, even though most of these books deserve nice, lavish, proper reviews. Also, the library's summer reading program is giving me a help with short-review writing. So--Here's a start on catching up!

Please note: the "Age level" note is "The age the publishers seem to think this book is appropriate for."

Cold Cereal and Unlucky Charms by Adam Rex, the first two books in the Cold Cereal Saga. So far, the series has a movie star, a pooka, a leprechaun, a unicat, an evil cereal company that is trying to take over the world. It has Merlin, Nimue, Titania, and a mechanical owl. It features two sets of siblings that have to stop the evil cereal company and figure out a way to bring magic back into our world without getting everyone killed or enslaved.

It's funny, crazy, unlikely, and sometimes heart-wrenching. Oh, and occasionally it's gross.

Yes, it's good. Very, very good.

I wish I knew how many books were going to be in it!

Age-Level: Middle grade, but that won't stop adults from liking it.
Genre: Fantasy

Superman Beyond: The Man of Tomorrow by J. T. Krul

I used to watch Batman: Beyond with my little brother, and I like J. T. Krul's work, so this one fell off the library bookshelf with no trouble.

It's a good continuation of the dystopian future of Batman: Beyond and a follow-up to the cartoon. Superman is older now, almost everyone he loved has died, and he has come back to Earth after attempting to take a vacation by traveling through the universe. It didn't turn out to be very restful--he's too used to saving people. Now, back on Earth, he's not sure what to do with himself. Meanwhile, and elderly Lex Luthor has planned to take Metropolis and Superman both with him when he dies. At the same time, criminals are fleeing Metropolis for Gotham, which doesn't have either Batman--Terry or Bruce Wayne--happy, so Terry heads out to see what can be done about the situation.

The strong friendship between Bruce and Clark is admirably shown, there's plenty of action, and, best of all everyone involved also has to think, not just punch, their way out of the situation.

In short, it's fine, fun summer reading. I need to see if there are sequels. Do you know, even now, after years of reading and remembering author names, I sometimes forget to look these things up?

Age-Level: Young Adult
Genre: Um...is superhero a genre? (I guess so. Bill Willingham thinks so. He must be right).

Homicide Trinity by Rex Stout (Editor's note: I originally had this as by Nero Wolfe!)

This was quite a discovery! I thought I'd read all the Wolfe novels, and two of the three stories were new to me. "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo," "Death of a Demon," and "Counterfeit for Murder" Archie is in top form here, sleuthing, griping, detecting, and developing a surprising protective streak for the cantankerous elderly Hattie in "Counterfeit for Murder." "Counterfeit for Murder" may be my new favorite in the Wolfe stories; it's not often the two take on a client who can match them in stubbornness.

Wolfe, of course, is busy taking care of his orchids, trying to avoid work, and eating wonderful meals.

Age-Level: Adult
Genre: Mystery

Dandelion Hunter: Foraging the Urban Wilderness by Rebecca Lerner

I like books on urban ecology and I'm becoming increasingly interested in "weeds," so this book was right up my alley in that regard. Lerner decides to live for a time as a forger, eating only the food she can find in the city. Her first attempt to do so for a week failed, but her second attempt, after more time spent researching, interviewing, and traveling with other foragers, was a success. I disagree with about 85% of her philosophy, but that didn't keep this from being a fascinating read. Also, the writing is good: Clear, strong, and often humorous--especially in the footnotes.

Now I want to find someone to teach me to identify weeds!

Age-Level: Adult
Genre: Non-Fiction

Book Review: Private Lives of Garden Birds by Calvin Simmonds

Calvin Simmonds' Private Lives of Garden Birds is a series of essays about the birds Simmonds sees all the time on his farm. He is a behavioral biologist, so he cannot be classed as an amateur, but he writes for amateurs, for people who just want to get to know their winged neighbors. In this, he reminded me quite a bit of John Crompton, who spent The Spider writing about spiders as his eccentric neighbors. Simmonds' prose is not so lavish, but the feeling of general neighborliness is the same.

It did take me a while to get used to the fact that each chapter in Private Lives of Garden Birds takes the form of a gentle essay, rather than being a straight, factual article on the bird named in the title. Up to half an essay on any given bird may be spent describing the walk it takes to reach the bird's place, musing on other birds seen in the same area, and generally taking a leisurely approach to the purported subject of the essay. For some reason, I was expecting a more clear-cut, efficient division of subject, so it took me a few essays to realize that, of course, this casual approach is part of Simmonds' point: The birds are his neighbors, and this is their neighborhood. He's not writing about the generic phoebe category, he's writing about the phoebe who lives on his farm, down near the bridge, above the river. After the first bit of disorientation, I relaxed and enjoyed strolling the farm with him.

There is plenty of detail on the birds' lives, as well as some lovely musings on crow grammar, some great bits of humor, an account of the first colonists' impression of the hummingbird ("their descriptions of them sound fantastic, like descriptions of unicorns or griffins"), an description of his and his human neighbor's differing views on blue jays, and other matters surrounding birds. The prose is relaxed and easy to follow.

Simmonds sticks to birds most of his readers likely also encounter, birds like phoebes, song sparrows, crows, hummingbirds, and other common varieties people all over the States are likely to see. That made the book all the more welcome; these birds are my neighbors, too, and it was nice to meet them in a slightly different setting and to learn more about their lives.

Highly recommended.

____

More or less an aside: I do have one complaint that is not unique to Simmonds, though the problem does show up in Private Lives of Garden Birds: A good many writers on organic gardening and on gardening for birds or bees or butterflies describe "gardens" that, to me, border on estates (or in Simmonds' case, farms), insisting on meadows, groves, and ponds. Simmonds, for example, suggests a "garden" with "tall trees that cast deep shadows...bushy thickets or dense evergreens...several different kinds[of shrub]...a place where the water stands in a pool, another place where it trickles..." I live in a city. I've perfectly nice city-sized front and back yards; there's plenty of room for me to try new varieties of tomato,to let herbs flower for the bugs, and to put in some native plants. There's even a lemon tree. Groves and thickets, however, are quite out of the question. So are out-of-the-way stands of thistle. I do wish more advocates for organic gardening and animal sanctuary would recognize this. Yes, I'm grateful for what they have done, but sometimes I'm left with the feeling that all the flowering plants in the world won't be enough if I can't include a swamp as well so why bother trying?

What I'm trying to say is: Could someone please write a book that keeps in mind the less-than-an acre gardener? The person who maybe only has a small patch of porch or windowsill?

Do you happen to know about any such book?

Also, at this point, I'm also thinking I'd like a few books that are even more local, some specifically West-Coast books that won't assure me that the yellow jackets will all die out in the first hard freeze, or that if I don't want house sparrows around, all I need to do is skip feeding them one winter and they'll leave. Not that I especially mind yellow jackets, and I'm really quite fond of sparrows, but the snowy weather won't be chasing either away from anything, not around here! Also, I suspect many of the local birds have slightly different behaviors, given the relatively mild weather. So, anyone know of any good West Coast writers?

--
Note: This review was originally written and shared on my blog, Bookwyrme's Lair. Stop by and visit for lots more reviews, photos, and general musings on the good things in life.

Wasp Farm by Howard Ensign Evans: A book review

And a very belated book review this is, too. I read Wasp Farm by Howard Ensign Evans a while ago and enjoyed it. It's not quite as charming as John Crompton's The Spider, but very nearly. How could I not like a book that seriously gives advice on how best to attract wasps:

Attracting wasps is not difficult; in fact, it is easier than not attracting them. One merely needs to be lazy. Let the weeds and brambles row up, and don't prune the roses and fruit trees or cut out dead sumacs and elderberries: the more unkempt vegetation the more insects for wasps to prey upon and the more hollow or pithy twigs the more cavities for them to nest in. Plow a garden and plant it to interesting things, but don't cultivate too conscientiously and by all means don't go overboard on insecticides: share the wealth with the insects which, after all are mostly attractive and rather amusing (even a worm in the salad provides interesting dinner conversation)

Essentially, Wasp Farm is the tale of time spent in a house chosen specifically because it had a wasp-friendly sort of yard. Evans and his family cultivate, admire, and describe wasps in a friendly approachable way. He likes insects, and he wants everyone else to like them, too.  Seldom have I so wanted to invite an author over for dinner--though possibly without the worms in the salad.

 Oh, and I love his philosophy of learning:

For every man owes it to himself to be reasonably well informed on the subjects that interests him. We should read the great naturalists and try to grasp their sense of wonderment, their mode of marshaling facts to support new concepts. The modern naturalist is better informed, for he stands on the shoulders of giants; he also has the help of technological advances such as the camera and the computer. Perhaps he will never propose a great theory or found a new field of investigation. But to gather well-documented facts which add to the sum total of human knowledge is in itself a noble thing. It need not be wasps...it might equally well be fungi, filed mice, or tardigrades. There are enough unsolved problems in an average back yard to keep a battalion of naturalists occupied for their lives.

Drawback? It is older (originally published in 1963), and the pictures are, therefore, black and white. This should not keep anyone from reading the book. It just means that instant recognition of real, live wasps is unlikely, if Wasp Farm is the only source of information available.

Now that I think of it, it's time I went and saw what else by Howard Ensign Evans is available out there.

Spineless Wonders and Every Creeping Thing by Richard Conniff, a double book review

Richard Conniff is now on my list of authors to watch forever. I recently read Spineless Wonders:Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World and Every Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife are some of the best nature writing I've read, broad-ranging, informative, and funny. Conniff is endlessly curious, asking about and traveling to see eels, tarantulas, possums, moths that live in opossum fur and feces, fire ants, weasels, and common house mice.

Thanks to the wide-ranging focus of his work, there are plenty of those "backyard biology" moments I've been looking for in addition to more exotic animals, and his writing is full of readable and memorable bits. There's the tale of the mole that dug its way out of the herring gull that had swallowed it, for example (both died), for example, and then there are bits like this from Every Creeping Thing:

Whether we like them or not, mice are a hit, an improbable success story, if only that they have distributed themselves more widely across the planet than any other mammal apart from Homo sapiens. They have done it with short legs and bad eyes, too, and with less help from us than we generally choose to think.

I kept stopping to read pieces like this out loud to whoever happened to be around.

Conniff respects his subject and he respects his audience, he knows what he's talking about, and he has a sense of humor. This is a rare and wonderful combination, and I plan on keeping an eye out for future books.

Daddy Longlegs Spiders by Jill C. Wheeler, a Book Review

A full review of Daddy Longlegs Spiders, Hobo Spiders, and Crab Spiders all by Jill C. Wheeler is up at SpiderWatch. Short version:  The books get major points for focusing on individual kinds of spiders, otherwise they are not particularly remarkable.

The World of the Spider by Adrienne Mason a Book Review

A full review of The World of the Spider by Adrienne Mason is up on SpiderWatch. Short version: Nice but not particularly memorable.

The Spider by John Crompton, a book review

A full review of The Spider by John Crompton is up on SpiderWatch. The short version: Wonderful prose, well worth reading, probably worth rereading.

Spiders by Nic Bishop

Almost forgot! The book review for Spiders by Nic Bishop is up on Spiderwatch. It's a non-fiction children's book, and it's gorgeous, truly a labor of love.

Spiders: Learning to Love Them by Lynne Kelly: A Book Review

Spiders: Learning to Love Them is one of those books that makes me realize I have been walking around half blind all of my life.

Sure, I know there are spiders around--this time of year, it's hard not to, what with running into their webs every evening. The thing is, I've never really looked at them, or their webs. There's an amazing world out there I've never seen--dozens of kinds of webs, hundreds of kinds of spiders. How do I start?

Lynne Kelly combines three qualities I love in a writer: Humor, love, and research. Spiders is, in part, an account of her own progress from arachnophobe to arachnophile, and her (new-found) love for spiders and for the world they reveal is clear in the book. The detail and intricacy of their world and the level of research Kelly has done is also clear without the book ever becoming pedantic.

The book is lavishly illustrated as well, which is always a plus. There is a nice selection of color plates, including a gorgeous section on the progress of a spider weaving an orb-web and numerous black and white photographs or drawings all through the book.

Of course, for some, this could be a drawback: My local arachnophobe refuses to pick the book up on the grounds that "spiders are evil" and there is a close-up of a spider on the front--and, to be honest, I'm not including a cover on this one because I have had aracnophobic friends scold me for springing spider pictures on them without warning in the past.

Me? I'm not terribly reassured by the news that widow spiders only attack when they feel trapped because how do I know when I'm trapping one? Believe me, I wouldn't provoke one on purpose!  All the same, I can't wait to grab my flashlight and go out spider hunting some night.  The array of webs I've already seen, just starting to look, is already fascinating.

Spiders: Learning to Love Them by Lynne Kelly, currently reading

Just thought I'd share: The batch of book I just picked up from the library includes Spiders: Learning to Love Them by Lynne Kelly, grabbed because I couldn't resist the title or that close-up on the cover (not included in the post because I have at least one arachnophobic friend who dislikes spider pictures).

So far, I've read the introduction which contains the sentence "You don't have to leave the comfort of home to start observing spiders," which is, of course, the problem some people have with them.

I'll let you know how it is.

Edit: Feb 23, 2015. I just noticed that I misspelled Lynne Kelly's name. Oops. Also, there is another Lynne Kelly out there writing books.

Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt, a book review

Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt is one of the books I've been looking for. It takes urban ecology seriously, looking at the environment most people live in and the types of plants and animals that flourish there.

In particular, Haupt watches crows. Crow Planet is a study both of crows and of people in relation to crows (I had no idea that so many people found crows sinister or even scary). Crows are one native bird that has adapted well, very well, to cities. They show an imbalance (in a truly 'natural' state, there would not be quite so many), but also a beauty. They give us all, those of us who live in cities and can only hike very occasionally, the chance to see wild animals, to watch them build nests, raise their young, and grow up in our neighborhoods.

The book is a great blend of scientific study, anecdote, and, occasionally, legend. It's an easy book to read, but also full of surprises--I more than once found myself saying "I didn't know that!"

The illustrations are pen and ink, very fun, and for once I did not find myself fussing about the absence of color plates. Edit: On rereading, I think the illustrations are actually woodcuts.

Backyard Bugs by Robin Kittrell Laughlin, a book review

I started smiling when I read the introduction too Backyard Bugs, where Laughlin writes, "Sometimes I shot an entire roll of one bug, until Ifelt that I had gotten the best view, the best angle, a particular feature lit up perfectly, an iridescent part shining, a great profile. These are, after all, portraits of bugs."   That sums the book up: It is a series of gorgeous photographs of backyard bugs taken by someone who loves them. Usually the scientific name is there with the bug, sometimes there is a brief description of its preferred food or housing, an occasionally there is a quotation from a book or poem. There is always a comment on where or how the Laughlin found the bug, and what she thought of it.

It is a work of art.

The Urban Naturalist by Steven D. Garber, a book review

I mentioned a while back that I was looking for books that would talk about the kind of creatures I found in my back yard. The Urban Naturalist isn't quite the book I was looking for--I am hoping for an actual study of animal interactions--but it's a start.

Garber describes the kinds of plants, animals, and insects that typically do well in U. S. cities, everything from mugwort to seagulls and ravens. He approaches the city as another natural environment, watching to see what lives there and in what kinds of habitats. There are brief discussions of ways that we, as humans, can make cities more hospitable to more species, and comments on ways in which, occasionally, cities are better for some animals than the country (fewer agricultural pesticides ranks high on the list).

The book is an encyclopedic list of species rather than an overall study, and some entries are more interesting than others, as he varies between a more detached tone and one of personal involvement. Garber's enthusiasm for  weeds is contagious, and there are touches of humor in some of the entries, such as the one on cockroaches--In Germany, German cockroaches are "called Russian cockroaches, but in the Soviet Union, they are called South European roaches. No one seems to want to accept responsibility for the origin of this invertebrate."

The two big drawbacks of the book are its age--there is time for quite a bit of change between 1987 and 2010--and the absence of color photographs. Many of the weeds and several of the different animal species he describes are very similar in appearance, and the occasional black and white sketch is no help at all to the amateur weeding her yard.

Worth checking out of the library but not a keeper, not unless a later, updated edition is issued.

Side note: It did answer one of my earlier gardening questions: Were the yellow jackets responsible for the fact that there were many fewer fritillaries last year? Probably they were. Yellow jackets eat both nectar and other insects.

Backyard Biology

The Mystery Caterpillar has, once again, made me aware of how little I know about my own backyard.

Thanks to nature shows, I know more about the Monarch Butterfly (which does stop here) and the African Elephant (which does not) than I do about the denizens of my own, city backyard.

Loving accounts of English hedges (nowhere near here) and the New York Central Park (also somewhat distant) are fairly easy to find.

But that isn't what I'm after. What I'm wondering about is what happens in a fairly average backyard--oddly broken up, often cement paved, but with enough flowers and herbs to attract a fair amount of small folk, bees, butterflies, wasps, moths, toadstools, small brown birds, doves, the occasional small hawk (though that was more common when we had bird feeders out).

At this point, I don't even care if the animals are native or not (actually; that's not quite true; I'd really rather not have to listen to someone's indignant account of how the little brown bird I happen to be fond of doesn't belong here, really). I want to know what they are and how they react to each other. Do wasps (and were they wasps or yellow jackets? Is there a difference?) drive off bees? Does the wasps' nest account for the fact that we had far, far fewer fritillaries than normal on the passion vine? Do fritillaries prefer one kind of passion vine over another? Does the presence of regular wasps make it more or less likely that the Orange Dog caterpillar on my lime tree be parisitized? Would they be territorial toward other kinds of wasps? Would they ignore them? What sort of small hawk hovered in the area?

Where do I even start on this mess of tangled questions?

I mean, yes, I have a couple of very interesting books on butterflies out, and one on bees, but I know from past experience that authors tend to be vastly less interested in backyards than in tropical jungles; the butterfly book I just read talked a lot more about Costa Rica than California (which did get briefly mentioned as a spot the migrating Monarch might stop in, so that's something, I suppose).

Worms!

This is one time when I can point to my sister and say "She started it!" without hearing any protest from her.

In fact, she'll probably brag about it. Several years ago, she got interested in organic gardening, took some classes, and started a worm bin. I was initially fairly neutral about the whole thing. I'd put my garbage in the pail if I remembered, but I left the tending to her.

Except, of course, she left from time to time & I ended up in charge of the garden and, thus, the worms. I got hooked. Maybe I'm easy to please, but the quiet change from apple cores, banana peels, rice-that's-been-in-the-fridge-too-long, and general gunk into rich, dark soil continues to fascinate me. I like peeking in to see what's going on, and I love having nutrient-rich soil to put on my plants.

It's usually pretty much automatic, too. In several years of worm composting--and of doing it wrong (kind of, see below)--we've had only a handful of problems.

In fact, it's our most recent "problem" that prompted this post; we've been getting too good at giving the garbage to the worms rather than dumping it down the garbage disposal and have outpaced the worms; some of the garbage has been outright rotting rather than composting--When things are in balance, it's a pretty seamless transition from scraps to dirt with little to no "yuck" in between.

So, I spent part of yesterday afternoon setting up a new bin. This is where we have the "wrong" setup: The bin is a large, plastic trunk with some holes punched into it for air and something underneath to catch drips. We're not always terribly consistent about the ratio of leaves or paper to garbage, either, which can, but doesn't usually, cause problems. Honestly, if we really *did* chop up the garbage like some of the instructions demand, the composting simply wouldn't happen. And, like I said, our arrangement mostly works quite well.

The bin layout is on the left. The smaller garbage cans are used for holding leaves & other garden waste. The worms munch on those, too.

The picture on the right is the new bin.
Both bins are usually kept covered; I've the lids off in order to arrange things and to let them get some air.


It's quite satisfying, really, sitting out in the sun, setting up a new worm-home, transferring leaves and shredded paper in, and feeling just a bit smug about doing something "good for the environment."

I don't suppose this post by itself will convert you into vermiculturists (or whatever the correct term is), but should you happen to be in the area, and happen to be interested, I've got some nice, red worms you can have to start with; don't worry, this batch is bedded down in leaves--you won't have to take our garbage home with you.

Oh, and whether or not you're interested in composting, I recommend The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms by Amy Stewart. It's a well-written, fascinating book. I suggest picking up Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, also by Amy Stewart, while you're at it. It has nothing to do with earthworms, but it's equally well-written. Try your local library before going to the bookstore to buy it; you can read a lot more books that way!