Time Lapse

So, I have a little treat for you guys today. I ended up buying a time lapse camera the other day, always wanted one and finally the one I'd been watching went on sale, plus free shipping. Ended up spending $168 for this Brinno TLC200, and thanks to the sale saved maybe 50 bucks, so that's cool by me.

I got excited and had to use it right away. It helps that I had the second half of the day off work. I admit it didn't come out as well as I'd hoped, but here's a time lapse (or really, a stop-motion) video of me kayaking about in a couple canals here in Cape Coral. Next time, I'll try to remember to level the camera, as well as setting the interval to 1 second rather than 2. That's as low as I can go with it, but it would clearly make a difference, cutting the jumpiness by half and slowing it down. But I'll share it anyways, just to give you a more animated view of my neighborhood. I take you with me as I explore for the first time a couple undeveloped canals I scoped out on Google Earth.

Now, I'd like to point out, most of the canals in Cape Coral or the rest of SW Florida don't look wild like this. For some reason I ended up living in an area surrounded by relatively built out areas (say, 75% built), while my actual area is probably only 20% built out. Just born lucky, I guess (ha). So, some of the canals around here have a lot of trees. Non-native, invasive trees, mainly, but trees nonetheless. And cattails, sedges, reeds, and other vegetation. Beats paddling past stuff like this all day:

First thing they do when they build a house, it seems, is scrape the lot clean of life and build a sea-wall (though a few homes have no wall), thereby eliminating the main attraction of living in the area (in my humble opinion). I mean, if all the city's canals were lined in cement walls, devoid of the strips of riparian habitat, they'd be little more than water roads and, lets face it, open sewers, what with the murky pea-soup water filled with garbage, pesticides, fertilizer runoff, and effluent from the many old and leaking septic systems that the city has yet to deal with. [[deep breath]]

photo snagged from Google Earth

Of course, in the wealthier areas of the city, mostly the south part near the Caloosahatchee River, the homes are huge and all have pools, are nicely landscaped with palms and flowering shrubs, and don't have big piles of broken concrete in the back yard as the [vacant] home on the right does in the first picture. Most will have boat docks and, in the salt water ocean-access canals, boat lifts. Pretty nice neighborhoods, really. It reminds me of bicycling with my dad back in metro Detroit; we'd sometimes get over to the richer suburbs, and he'd always say how nice it was to bike in such upscale places. Me, I don't really want to look at stuff like that. I always preferred the farm country, open spaces with greenery, or the often-wooded rails to trails. Give me nature any day. 

On The Basking Log

Making my way slowly down the canals via kayak, I spotted this basking Florida cooter ahead in the distance. I ceased paddling, and allowed myself to drift for the most part, only occasionally dipping the paddle in to keep myself straight, for the wind was coming somewhat crosswise from behind. Slowly I gained on him, taking pictures as I floated nearer. Finally, I came too close; really, it was the wind that did me in, as it was making my boat pivot. I tried to stop it with a very slow paddle, but it was too much for this turtle, and he dove at last for cover.

I'd never seen a turtle laying as he was, with his legs kicked out behind him. I am sure, however, that this is the local basking log, as there are very few other such logs in that canal; only one, actually, and for much of the day it is shaded, being mostly under the trees on the south bank.

Great Blue Heron

I saw this Great Blue Heron, one of my favorite birds, out on my dock today when I went down to the kitchen for dinner. I think this can serve as a brief example of the sort of intelligence I was talking about in the last post. Because, typically you would expect to see herons standing in shallow water and weeds, hunting fish and frogs. Certainly it seems strange that he was standing in the open like he was, especially since I noticed him at 6 PM, and he remained there, essentially motionless, until 7:30 when I went inside. I sat on the balcony, hoping to see which way he would fly off, wondering where his nightly roost would be; but he outlasted me, as nature so often does. I grew tired of waiting and went inside. It was nearly full dark by then, and he'd been there at least an hour and a half-- who knows how long he'd been there before I spotted him.

What was he doing there? Definitely not hunting. For one thing, he was not in a good place for hunting: at least a foot and a half above the water's surface, not in the productive weed beds lining the shallows. Also, he barely moved for over an hour, hardly a twitch, aside from incrementally increasing the S-curve of his neck until his head was resting nearly on his shoulders. As dusk deepened, he did some slow wing stretches, similar to how I might stretch the muscles that lie across my shoulder blades. He also did a few knee bends, lifting one leg up, then the other. I thought he was getting ready to fly off. I think he was waiting for me to leave.

I wondered about predators. Certainly not many things prey on these the largest of herons. Possibly a bald eagle, but they prefer fish. An alligator might snap one up, but this heron was mostly safe from that, given the distance it is down to the water surface from the edge of the dock. A Great Horned Owl might take one, but probably not very often. Bobcat? Maybe. Coyote? Possibly. But this was the genius of the bird's chosen location. Not only was it far from any cover a stalking predator might use, but look at his placement. He set himself up right where the fourth tie-off post would have been, had it not been broken off. I don't think this was random or by accident.

One post, two posts, three posts, fo-- HEY!

To a casual glance, and in the growing gloom of dusk, though right out in the open this bird had in a way concealed himself within a regularity of his environment. This is intelligence of a certain manner. Not mere chance, nor the determinism of a genetic behavior. He probably didn't have to think about these things, but this intelligence isn't necessarily rational or lingual; more akin to intuition. Rational thought is just a recent layer of complexification of intelligence.

He wasn't ready to fly off to roost, was probably wanting to wait for full darkness, so no hungry eyes would see where he would finally bed down for the night. Most likely he was digesting a large meal. Often, birds feed just before nightfall, to see their high metabolisms through the night. I guess this one had gotten lucky with a large fish, or several smaller fish or frogs, and was content and satisfied for the day. So what did he do? He flew off to a good place in which to rest. He would have done the Buddha proud, as he faced toward the setting sun across the water, alert, but quiet in body and mind.

I suppose it's easy to discount all of this about inner intelligence. There are always two sides to any story or issue. Here, one could say the bird's behavior was the result of an inner intelligence, but one can just as easily say it is all genetic programming, just a dumb bird in a dumb universe. Sort of like the debate between materialism and idealism:

George Berkeley put forward the contention that nothing is real, in the sense that the universe exists only in our perceptions. When asked by Boswell what he thought of Berkeley's theory that matter may not, in fact, exist, Johnson kicked hard at a stone and stated, "I refute him thus!"

Johnson felt the reality of his foot hitting the stone, but Berkeley could say that he only perceived it, and cannot prove the reality at all. It goes round and round. I posit that both are correct. That is, there is the external view of science, which talks of the material evolution, but I also think there is an inward sense to everything, not just mere mechanics and behaviorism.

I guess the point is, I'm arguing for an acknowledgement of this "two sides to everything" fact. Materialism is not, in fact, the only possibility. It is ignorance to rule out the opposite position categorically; such a ruling out cannot be done, as it would have no basis in fact. This either-or thing cannot be resolved by choosing one or the other, the solution is to transcend the question by subsuming both in to a larger answer. This, really, is why, though I've been interested in both science and religion since earliest childhood, eventually this interest led me into metaphysics. I don't want just to cheerlead for one side, a relative understanding. Like all humans, I long for absolutes.

As Morihei Ueshiba, founder of aikido, said: everything—even mountains, rivers, plants, and trees—should be your teacher. And this is what natural philosophy is all about, what materialist science has lost, and what my next post, I think, is going to be about.

(By the way, the gator to the left of the frame in the second picture is, of course, fake)

Kayaking the Canals

So I mentioned in my last post that I moved in with a coworker of mine. In addition to being in a better location for getting anywhere, centrally located in "the Cape," the house is right on a lake. Man made and pond-sized, but it connects to part of the 400 miles of canals and other lakes in the city of Cape Coral ("home of the newly wed and nearly dead"). Most connect to the Caloosahatchee estuary and are thus saltwater, but in my case all are freshwater, which works best for me; no ocean access but it feels more like home for someone from the Great Lakes State, where "the beach" always meant a lakeshore. For being in the middle of suburban sprawl, it feels remarkably like living in the country. We get sunsets over our unnamed lake most nights, there's tons of fish (though I have yet to throw a line in), and best of all, my roommate has two kayaks, and keeps urging me to use them.

Last friday I had a short day at work when my 4 hour day turned out to be only 1 hour. The paycheck will be smaller, but life isn't about money anyways. Rather than sell my life for money, turns out I had a chance to throw a kayak in the water and earn much more than cash. At first I cruised along, heading south, just trying to get a feel for this stubby river kayak. Perviously, the only ones I'd ever used were my uncle Mike's long-bodied sea kayaks, which are easier to keep straight (though less manouverable). Every stroke made the prow of the kayak waggle one way, then the other way when I'd paddle the other side. I never really got the hang of this, truth be told. A work in progress.

Digging down, I moved rapidly through the water, not really with any aim or goal, but enjoying the late morning sunshine and the water's peace. The banks are lined mostly with Australian Pines, a non-native, terribly invasive species which nonetheless is a beautiful, graceful tree. I think they were put in to stabilize the man made banks,or perhaps colonized them themselves. They do provide long strips of cover for wildlife, here in the midst of this city of houses or undeveloped lawns/fields (formerly rich forest habitat). Probably they serve a function much like the hedgerows in England do, in those otherwise heavily farmed and changed lands.

There were some storm cells moving in from the west, and though they stayed north of me, I decided to begin to return. All along I'd been looking into the trees, hoping to see some raccoons curled up in the crotch of a tree, though with no luck. But I went much slower on the way back, much to my bird-watching benefit. Now I started seeing some signs of life, starting with some strange heron-looking bird. It later turned out to be a Green Heron, a bird I've already added to my life list some years ago, not that I'm merely interested in cataloging the biggest list. Though the first one flew off after a few moments, I'd shortly get a good chance to watch one feed, down a side canal.

I was ghosting along, hardly more than drifting with the wind (there's no current in the canals), prowling up the weedy banks looking for wildlife, and spooked one out. He flew off to a dock, where I got a good look at it, finally IDing it for what it truly was (I'd been hoping it was a tricolored heron, which I have yet to see). Beautiful bird; I love the sharpness in a heron's eye, from the little Green on up to the Great Blue. He flew off then to the other bank, and I floated along, watching it creep through the weeds. It was beautiful, the way he would extend his bright yellow log forward, place it gently on the grasses, then shift gracefully forward, the perfect stalking step, like an Indian hunting deer, this bird was silent death to the minnows and snails, and I watched him catch two from less than ten meters away. He knew I was there, of course-- he looked right at me several times-- but he probably isn't used to danger from the water (though there are gators out there aplenty). I suppose I looked like a big green log. Certainly not like a human, which, the heron would have learned by now, are land creatures. Being in a kayak gets under their radar, in much the same way horseback riders have an easier time seeing birds, because they are accepted as horses, not humans.

Back out in the main canal, I watched a Red-winged Blackbird harassing a Great Egret. The blackbird (just to the left of the egret in the first photo) had fledglings nearby-- I watched them being fed for some minutes, again from very close-- and was clearly not pleased at this large bird being near his young. Just as I was taking photos, the blackbird dive-bombed the much larger bird's head and drove it sprawling ungracefully into the water, leaving a visibly pissed off egret fuming silently in the weeds, before flying off in irritation.

I followed the egret, hoping to get a better close up shot. He hadn't flown far, and was just down the canal on someone's lawn. Using the "flashburst" feature on my camera, which takes pic after pic as you hold the shutter button, I was able to catch it taking off in flight when I got too close. Here are two from the series:

About this time I realized that I'd neglected to take any photos of that Green Heron, much to my disgust. Idiot! So I returned to that side canal, ghosting again up the bank where I saw the bird last. I know most birds have deceptively small territories or home-ranges, especially in productive habitats, as these seem to be. So I figured the heron was still in the area. After about twenty minutes of sitting nearly motionless in the boat, I finally found him (could have been female, adults look alike). I had a harder time getting close this time, but was able to get a few shots from the increasingly wary bird. Eventually he flew away, when finally I got too close. 

The photos could be better, I know. It's hard taking pics from a kayak, when the wind keeps turning you around to face the wrong way, and out of prime position to somewhere with weeds blocking your view of the little bird, which keeps moving himself. And the zoom on this camera isn't ideal for wildlife photography, should have sprung for a camera where you can attach different lenses, namely, telephoto lenses. Maybe next time...