We’ve been trying to Green Up around here.  In addition to starting up a composting system for garden waste and kitchen scraps, as well as having plans for an herb and chile garden to use the compost on, we recently went to a mesquite-pod milling event.

Left: dried mesquite pods

Mesquite pods and seeds are really hard.  Really really hard.  The seeds especially.  So hard that not many animals, even hungry desert mammals with sharp teeth and strong jaws, eat them — despite the seeds’ high protein content.  Rock squirrels, coyotes, and gray foxes are among the modern Sonoran species that use the copious pods for a food source.  Often, pods are chewed briefly and swallowed whole for the animals’ stomach acid to take care of, and the hard seeds are pooped out later on, germination-enhanced, ready to sprout into fast-growing hardy trees.

Southwestern mesquite tree species evolved at the same time as large Pleistocene grazers like Mastodon and Ground Sloths (below), whose massive grinding molars and powerful digestive systems propagated the seeds efficiently. The trees’ fast growth habit could keep pace with major inroads of hungry megafauna, and the animals spread the seeds far and wide (cattle have largely replaced these extinct giants in the modern system).  People are prodigious users of mesquite, too, for food, furniture, and firewood, and browse for livestock. In some seasons and years, mesquite kept people alive, both indigeños and pioneers. Indigenous people milled the pods for gruel, atole and cakes, but the seeds are almost too hard to grind by hand with a mano and metate, which often were of wood.

This is where the Desert Harvesters come in.  They are a group dedicated to using food sources native to the Sonoran desert, including mesquite meal, which is nutritious, naturally sweet but with a low glycemic index, and gluten-free.

Right: The Desert Harvesters hammer mill rig

To get mesquite meal, the pods must be ground quite fine, so they use a generator-operated steel hammer mill on a trailer, which they tow to various locations around the state for milling events.  The one we attended was sponsored by the Phoenix Permaculture Guild at Roadrunner Park Farmer’s Market.  For $5 per 5-gallon bucket, they will grind your clean, dry mesquite pods into fabulously tasty, nutritious meal.   We toasted our pods in the oven first, so our meal seems particularly sweet and nutty.

Right: the steel “hammers”

Collecting the pods is easy, but time-consuming.  If you’d like to mill your pods, collect whole, dry, brown pods just as they begin to drop from the trees.  In the Phoenix area, this is roughly mid-summer as the monsoon rains are really beginning to get underway.  Dry the pods thoroughly, or toast them in a warm oven until they’re slightly brown.  Then store them in an insect-proof bucket until the hammer-milling event is in your neck of the woods, usually the end of October or the beginning of November.  (If you live in the Tucson area, you have a few more date options, since Tucson is Desert Harvesters’ home base, but all around the same time of year.)

Standing on line waiting for the millers to put your beans in the machine gives you ample time to shop around the Farmer’s Market or talk to other mesquite-bean collectors, and swap mesquite recipes and chat.  We talked to Jean, who also had carob pods to grind.  The process is not rapid — only a handful of pods goes in at a time, with the mill operators keeping a sharp eye out for rocks and debris, even though everyone’s pods are inspected once already, since hard objects in the steel blades would be hazardous and damaging. The millers often stop to remove the “chaff” from the hammer chamber: even with the powerful steel grinders, the seeds and tough fiber don’t pulverize, and has to be vacuumed out with a shop-vac every few minutes.  The chaff is saved for composting, brewing beer or tea, or feeding goats.

Left, our beans going into the hopper; note dude’s ear-plugs.

The meal-collection bin is emptied after each person’s pods have been ground, so the meal you end up with is from your own pods.  We brought two 5-gallon buckets of beans, and ended up with several pounds of meal.

Since there’s no gluten in mesquite meal, it can’t replace wheat flour 1:1 in most recipes, but you can use mesquite meal for up to 1/3 of the total flour amount, including gluten-free recipes.  This morning, we enjoyed mesquite pancakes sweetened with agave nectar for breakfast. Native Seed Search is an excellent source for info about mesquite meal, or for the meal itself, if you don’t have mesquite trees where you live.  But if you do, when you see the price, you’ll definitely want to collect and grind your own.

Right: our mesquite meal being poured back into our bucket

(All photos A or E Shock)

On last weekend’s trip to the Oregon coast, E and I noticed the beaches were festooned with unsupported sea-foam, churned up by the waves.  This might have been the slimy foam that’s currently causing major problems for sea birds along the Oregon coast.  The foam, a result of an off-shore algal bloom, coats the bird’s plumage as they dive or float in affected seawater. This destroys the water-proofing loft of down feathers, the warmth-holding space under the countour plumage which keeps the birds warm in cold water.

(Above: Foam-coated beach, Fort Stevens State Park; photo E. Shock)

Hundreds of hypothermal seabirds, including loons, murres, grebes, and puffins, are washing up on shore on along the northern beaches of Oregon. Extraordinary efforts are being made to save these animals at wildlife rescue centers both in Oregon and California.  The Coast Guard is helping evac the feathered patients from Oregon to a high-tech rescue center in California which is designed to help victims of oil-spills — read about it here and here.

(Right, unsupported sea foam, photo E.Shock)

We didn’t encounter any of the suffering birds, fortunately, but we did see a number of loons, grebes, and  sea-going ducks like scoters cruising the near-shore waves on beaches covered with blowing clots and rolls of sticky foam.

(Left: Red-throated loon, photo E.Shock.  Note that there’s a small wavelet behind the bird’s beak that’s making the bill look thicker than it actually is.)

International Vulture Awareness day is Sept. 5

Vultures and condors are really useful in your niche or ecosystem.  What to do with that pesky roadkill, thawed winterkill, shot-winged quarry, victims of natural disaster, contagion, or warfare, or any other squishy, odiferous and past-its-prime meaty object?  Just leave it to vultures — it’s easy, quick, FREE, and All Natural.

Recommended by ornithologists, epidemiologists, jhatorists, and vultures worldwide!

(Not available in perpetually frosty environments)

For more about International Vulture Awareness Day, click here.

(Photo:Turkey vulture; A.Shock)

The Telegraph website of the UK has posted a short column hastily summarizing a research paper concluding that Birding Is Not Green, especially competitive birding and twitching.  The Telegraph article is not very in-depth, refers mostly to Britain (although the issues are largely common to the US as well, and the primary author is at University of Illinois, and is a birder himself) and takes a bit of a snarky tone — you birders aren’t as green as you think — but it’s still worth a glance.

The author of the study points out that while chasing rarities, twitchers (the mostly British term for avid birders who mainly are interested in checking off bird species from their lists) log many gasoline-hogging hours in their vehicles, or taking long flights to see hard-to-find species or vagrants. A case in point from my own experience: many years ago a pinkish Ross’s Gull — usually an arctic bird — showed up near the Alton Lock and Dam on the Mississippi River north of St. Louis.  People were coming from places as far away as Italy and South Africa to see that bird, because it was closer and easier to get to than the high arctic.  And local birders made the drive twice or more, to log the bird in two separate years (it was at the New Year), and in two separate states, since it was at times visible from both the Missouri and Illinois side of the river!  A much more recent Ross’s gull at the Salton Sea created a similar scene.

(The photo above of the Salton Sea Ross’s Gull is by Henry Detweiler from the Southwest Birders website.  I’ve used it here because it’s a very nice photo of a ROGU, not because Southwest Birders are involved in any way that I know of in the debate about greenness and birding.)

These Ross’s Gulls chases would be cited as examples of fuel being used profligately, although the opposite argument could be made as well: visiting the Salton Sea or Alton, Illinois — closer and less pristine habitats than, say, Churchill Manitoba — actually represents a greener way of seeing the gull. In addition, the Telegraph article leaves out the fact that many birders (in the States, at least), regularly carpool to spot their targets.  Also ignored is that some eco-tours offer carbon offset opportunities for their trips.  And that many “birdwatchers” bird greenly in their yards, or nearby hotspots they access on foot or by bike.  Gilbert Water Ranch in Phoenix is a great place to bird by bike.  Some competitive birding activities, such as Big Days or Christmas Bird Counts, make useful contributions to what’s known about seasonal populations and ranges of birds, which for some might mitigate fossil fuel use to some degree.  No one criticizes the Family Roadtrip Vacation for being a fuel-wasting chase to bag National Parks: instead, people talk about broadening the kids’ horizons, engaging in “quality family time” and bolstering local economies. Traveling birders spend money in local economies, too. I would question why birding has been singled out for this criticism in the press.

(Left: Birding from the car in NZ: who’s birding who?  Cheeky Kea!  Photo: A.Shock)

There’s also a seriouly confusing and confused bit of content in the article that seems to quote the researchers as blaming birders for un-environmental practices because birders ignore pollution problems in bird-rich areas because birds tend to thrive there.  Not enough time to sort that one out in this post; I suspect the original study states it more clearly.

However, I didn’t set out to write a defense of the Greenness of Birding: most birders are aware that their passion has some not-so-environmentally-friendly aspects, and try to offset them.  The concept of Green Birding (like BIGBY) is not new; there are sites and posts all over the web — just plug “green birding” into your search engine and check a few of them out.  But, the Telegraph article does provide a reminder that some birding practices are fuel-consumptive or carbon-emitting, and we need to be aware and pro-active to make birding as green an activity as possible.

This might be one of those times it’s best to read the source article for yourself.  Here’s the reference:

Spencer Schaffner. Environmental Sporting: Birding at Superfund Sites, Landfills, and Sewage Ponds. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 2009; 33 (3): 206.

I couldn’t access more than an abstract online without a subscription to the online reference service.

Here’s a link to an interview with the author of the study, from Science Daily. This has more detail than the Telegraph article, and perhaps better summarizes Schaffner’s conclusions.

…just passed within a block of our house!

Turns out the street at the edge of our neighborhood — two houses away from ours — is a convenient north-south thoroughfare for Leaders of the Free World on their way between Sky Harbor Airport and resort row up on the shoulders of Camelback Mountain.  George W. Bush used to pass by every time he was in town en route to his favorite Phoenix digs, the Royal Palms, and on this trip the Obamas are staying at the Phoenecian.

Yesterday afternoon, we missed President Obama by a middle-aged minute — we were still hurrying over the front garden wall when the shiny black limos, trailed by mysterious subdued gray vans, zipped past the end of our street.  How disappointing!  I’d even made a polite sign about health care reform, with markers and a box to brandish, but we were too late.

So as E left for work this morning, he called home to say the police units were once again positioned along every side street, including ours.  Determined not to be so lame this time, I waited until I heard the chopper overhead, then grabbed a camera, a hat, and my sign and went out to wait at the corner in the shade of a mesquite tree. On the other side of the street a bunch of kids from the local parochial school were already out baking in the sun, and there was a sweaty pink cop who told me to stand back from the road. In just a few minutes, flashing lights could be seen up the road. Then steadily rolling down off Camelback Mountain towards us came a phalanx of motorcycle officers, some vans, two or three black limos with tiny side flags whipping, just like in the movies, white vans with clear windows crowded with Secret Service agents, Press Corps, and others, the mysterious gray vans again, an ambulance, and other serious-looking vehicles deemed necessary to keep POTUS safe on his way to a Stimulus Support speech at the Convention Center downtown.

Did I see the Prez or First Family?  Nope – just heavily tinted windows.  I was waving, so I didn’t even get a picture of their limos (if they were in them!), just some of the auxiliary vehicles.  But to me the important thing was that I was there with my mild little message, and for a split second in time, the President of the United States might have seen it.

That, and now I can add Presidential Motorcade to the Yard List.

(All photos A.Shock)