The Natural Patriot

[Editor’s note: Spent the last week in Jamaica, stalking the elusive social shrimp for an ongoing biogeographic study supported by the National Geographic Society.  “Irie” is a Jamaican, and more specifically Rastafarian, general purpose word that is said to refer to “high emotions and peaceful vibrations“.  Our team resolved to name the first new species we found on the trip Synalpheus irie.  Following is an entry from the journal:]

Man, how I love working in the Caribbean.  The escape from routine, the healthful vigor of the work for body, mind, and spirit — working in the open air, in the water, wiithout shoes for days on end, focusing on a single goal for a week at a time — unheard of in splintered everyday life where concentrating on one task for even a few hours seems a luxury.  The opportunity for quiet reflection is worth more than any lesson from a master, any  drug, any expensive therapy — merely being able to live simply for a while.

The last day, at dusk, after sitting hunched over the picnic table picking sponges and curating the specimens all day, we got in the water for a break.  I was tired and uninspired, and joined only for a little exercise and to be a good sport. The water near the dock was characteristically blurry and very cold due to mixing of fresh groundwater that flows down through the porous limestone of the hills and up out of fissures in the coral-rock pavement just beyond the shore.  I paddled around in the shallows and grassbeds and over to the backreef, killing time mainly, looking at a sea hare undulating in the grass here or an anemone there.  It was a beautiful, very placid evening and the atmosphere took on the magical quality that comes over water at this time of day in calm weather.  Suddenly it occurred to me that the Sea was quiet enough that I might make it through maze of the very shallow reef crest, which is normally impassably pounded by surf.  Charged with a little adrenaline by the swell rolling over the treacherous outcrops, even as lazy as it was, I pumped through a little channel in the reef, working gingerly but quickly, hand over hand, along the brown seaweed-covered rock, chest nearly scraping bottom in places, and finally shot out the other side. 

Even after reading for years about Jamaica as the poster child of coral reef ecosystem collapse, the scene shocked me.  It literally looked like the scene of a bombing — the place was littered with slabs of broken coral lying everywhere, the sense of desolation heightened by the nearly complete absence of any macroscopic life. Very little live coral, almost no algae, no sponges or soft corals.  It was a striking picture of a wasteland.  And this is nearly three decades after Hurrican Allen dealt Jamaica the final blow that knocked the teetering ecosystem out. By now the grazing sea urchins have come back with a vengeance and are bristling from every cervice and overhang.  The algae are accordingly scarce, which bodes well for the return of live coral, but I still saw little sign of coral recovery.  Quite unsettling. 

But the darkening ocean seemed to invite me and I swam on over the deepening reef.  The water was very clear, at least 50 feet of visibility, and seemed to hold the light with that indescribable, intrinsic luminosity found at dusk underwater.  The rocky spurs sloped away steadily and soon I floated like one of the light motionless frigatebirds over an expansive reefscape, maybe 30 feet deep, with canyons of white sand going blue in the fading light between the dusky bulwarks of encrusted coral rock.  Here and there were big flat plates of living mustard-colored coral, and a few other species in the deeper water, which gave me a seed of hope.  There is still life, and it is still kicking.  A small shoal of electric blue Chromis flitted above a coral head, and algae and soft corals swayed rhythmically in the gentle swell, back and forth, back and forth.  This, I realized with sudden certainty, is why I come, why I continue to come back to the reef.  I was filled with a powerful sense of calm and gratitude and harmony.  I realized also that this was a gift, dropped in my lap when least expected, after climbing into the water for the last time in a rote way, preoccupied and without awareness.  I hovered there for some time, then swam back in the dusk. Everything looked different on the way back.

If you were an alien arriving on earth for a visit, what would you see?  If you came in over one of the mega-cities that increasingly cover the earth’s surface, roughly a third of your field of view would be rooftops.  And beneath them would be a lot of concrete, asphalt, glass, and metal. 

Now I am a big fan of all these materials.  They allow me to live in a level of comfort and ease that would be unimaginable to our forbears of even a few centuries ago.  But as the planet becomes increasingly dominated by human influence and built environments, a pressing challenge is how to construct those environments in ways that are not only comfortable and convenient for us, but also maintain as much harmony as possible with the rest of the global ecosystem on which we depend, in terms of energy use, waste production, and suitability for other life forms.  An especially critical frontier is achieving this harmony in urban environments, which are likely the way of the future for humanity.  Although the human imprint is most intense in cities, they actually create a lower per capita ecological footprint than sprawled-out suburbia because of the concentration and efficiency of services, reduced per-capita resource use on travel, etc.

So back to the visiting aliens.  One of the interesting recent trends toward greening urban habitat has been the proliferation of “green roofs”, i.e., roofs planted with live vegetation (check out the gallery of varied and very cool green roofs at Eco-geek).  The basic idea is far from new — roof gardens were popular among rulers of ancient civilizations.  Indeed the hanging gardens of Semiramis, in modern-day Syria, were considered one of the seven wonders of the world. These people were only a handful of human lifetimes away from a life of hunting and gathering, and perhaps were the first humans to experience the vague discord of separation anxiety from nature. 

But why focus on roofs now?  One reason is that, because roofs make up such a large fraction of the horizontal surface area in cities, they are important mediators of the heat and water budgets of urban environments. As summarized in a recent paper by Oberndorfer and colleagues, such roofs provide a variety of ecosystem services in cities, including more effective management of storm-water runoff, regulation of building temperatures, reduced urban heat-island effects, reduced vulnerability to fire, sound insulation, and better habitat for plants, insects, and animals that might otherwise be excluded from highly urbanized areas. If built with sufficient load capacity, they can also increase available living and recreation space in cities (see photo at top).

For example, the graph at right shows how retention of storm-water runoff was enhanced in a green-roof test plot in Canada. The green roof had 15 centimeters of growing medium (soil, approximately) and was planted with plain old lawn grasses (I wonder if it needs mowing).  In every month other than June, the green roof retained a large fraction of the water that would otherwise run off, as compared with an adjacent conventional roof of the same size.

Green roofs also provide insulation that buffers buildings from temperature fluctuations.  The graphs at left show heat flux across roof membranes for different roofing systems in Canada (positive and negative values are flux in and out of the house respectively). The graphs show results for a summer (top) and winter (bottom) day.  The green roof strongly reduced temperature fluctuations, especially in summer.

Germany led the way in modern green roof use, beginning in the early 1900s for the specific purpose of reducing exposure damage to roofing materials. Today, the German government provides incentives for green roof construction and it’s estimated that about 14% of new roofs under construction there will be vegetated. There are course many challenges to growing such gardens in thin soil atop buildings where they are exposed to harsh conditions of desiccation and wind.  Ideal candidate species are native stress-tolerant plants that are already adapted to local conditions.  One of the most ambitious green-roof projects in the US is the recently built roof on the California Academy of Sciences building, which mimics the natural hilly contours of the San Francisco Bay area and is planted with native vegetation (see a cool video of the roof being built here).  

But green roofs are more than engineering projects.  Oberndorfer and colleagues look at them as mini-ecosystems and emphasize how understanding the ecological interactions among the soil, microorganisms, and vegetation (and even goats?!) influence the ecosystem’s functioning and the benefits provided to us, one of which is that they help maintain habitat for other species:

“Green-roof habitats show promise for contributing to local habitat conservation. Studies have documented invertebrate and avian communities on a variety of living-roof types in several countries (Coffman and Davis 2005, Brenneisen 2006, Kadas 2006). Green roofs are commonly inhabited by various insects, including beetles, ants, bugs, flies, bees, spiders, and leafhoppers (Coffman and Davis 2005). Rare and uncommon species of beetles and spiders have also been recorded on green roofs (Brenneisen 2006, Grant 2006). Species richness in spider and beetle populations on green roofs is positively correlated with plant species richness and topographic variability (Gedge and Kadas 2004). Green roofs have also been used by nesting birds and native avian communities (Baumann 2006). Rare plants and lichens often establish spontaneously on older roofs as well (Brenneisen 2006, Köhler 2006). These findings have mobilized local and national conservation organizations to promote green-roof habitat, particularly in Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Further-more, these results have encouraged discussion of green-roof design strategies to maximize biodiversity (Brenneisen 2006).” (References to cited literature are available in the original paper, see below)

Like many “environmentally friendly” technologies, green roofs tend to have higher up-front costs of installation than conventional roofs.  On the other hand, they can be cheaper over the long run because their roof membranes generally last longer, not to mention the potential savings in heating and AC costs.  And besides, which would you rather look at as you enjoy a martini on the balcony in Manhattan?

[Original source: Oberndorfer E, Lundholm J, Bass B, et al. 2007. Green roofs as urban ecosystems: Ecological structures, functions, and services.  BioScience 57: 823-833.]

[Editor’s note: Walt Whitman – a cosmos, of Mannahatta the son –  was the first poet that got through to me.  Back in the day, when I was a young Philistine with no sense of art and the sophomoric sense of superiority characteristic of a certain age, I came across Leaves of Grass, picked it up and started browsing (no pun intended) through this curious and unique work, with its stilted yet proletarian language, its blend of reverence and unabashed physical exuberance. I was soon hooked.  I remember well, shortly afterwards, walking along the autumnal brick paths of the University in Chapel Hill, strewn with sweetgum pods, surrounded by the bodies electric of which the Bard sung, and feeling that I had discovered the door to a new world. Here I offer a sample from an anthemic poem by the original Natural Patriot.]

A song of the rolling earth (Excerpt)
Walt Whitman
[from Leaves of Grass)

I swear the earth shall be complete to him or her who shall be complete,
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth,
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth,
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth.
I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love,
It is that which contains itself, which never invites and never refuses.
I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words,
All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth,
Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the earth,
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch.

[Painting by Thomas Cole, “In the Catskills”, 1837, Metropolitan Museum]

Dear friends, colleagues, family members, sparring partners, lost souls, and passers-by,

I am proud to say that, as of this day, the Natural Patriot has survived its first perilous year in this world (I’m referring to the blog, not myself.  I of course also survived the year but that’s probably less newsworthy). As is true of most species, the early days and months are the most dangerous stage of life history, and a newborn blog, all dewy and wide-eyed, emerging tentatively from the womb or wherever it emerges from to find its way in the world, is no exception.  There are apprehension, missteps, risk of starvation, fear of predators, fear of exposure. And of course the constant siren song of tossing it all in (”Why on earth am I spending my non-existent free time doing this?”). 

The vast majority of young animals, alas, don’t survive their first year, and I gather that the same is true of blogs, though I can’t locate the stats at the moment. Somehow we muddled through.  Makes me want to stand up and belt out an Aretha Franklin song — but that would surely kill my visitor stats so I’ll spare you.

So, in lieu of actually writing something new and compelling and worthwhile, I hope that you, gentle reader, will grant me the indulgence just this once (or perhaps once a year, if we beat the odds and survive another) of a retrospective exhibit.  Here then are some of the posts I am most fond of (Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!):

It all started with The Nature of Patriotism, an idea that I think is underappreciated but key to living a long and harmonious life as a global society.

I don’t want this to be just another partisan blog (though my colors undoubtedly show through).  Which is why I remain intrigued — and heartened — by the question: Is purple the new green?

Natural patriotism, like anything worthwhile, is not easy.  Which is why it is worth pondering The nature of natural, and its implications.

Holding that thought, it may be that long-term sustainability requires an evolution in our approach to our relationship with nature, namely one of Reconciliation ecology.  

But with all the other problems we face, Can we afford to save the world? Well, can we afford not to?  Addressing this most important question of the new millennium requires that we focus on The real economy.  

The root of Natural Patriotism is the intuitive understanding that the natural world is essential to our physical and spiritual life. Every once in a while, I slow down long enough to remember my Ocean soul and realize this. And now, even the scientific approach supports the idea that, to be melodramatic, Biodiversity is a secret to inner peace.

How to share that love?  The most inspirational and hopeful message I’ve read comes from Richard Louv, a true Natural Patriot.

Lest there be misunderstanding, a harmonious relationship with nature is not only an issue of esthetics or even spirituality, it is critical to our material well-being: Trees save lives.  Again, saving both trees and lives will require hard choices, which in turn requires recognizing that Economic growth is the opiate of the people.

So there you have it.  Sorry I can’t throw a wild birthday party — I’ve learned a surprising amount of HTML and other arcane geekana in the last year, but haven’t yet figured out how to do that online.  But if you happen to feel inspired about a birthday gift, there’s no need to send cash, baked goods, or expensive merchandise (although I will surely not turn them down).  Instead, it would warm the cockles of the Natural Patriot’s heart if you simply tell a friend about the site (something good, I mean), subscribe by RSS if you haven’t already, and . . .

Sign in below with a comment! (just hello is fine)

Thanks, as always, for your support!

The list (of 50) is out at the Guardian.  There are a number of obvious choices (Al Gore, Wangari Maathai), a few oddballs (Cormac McCarthy? Say what? Leonardo di Caprio? Honestly.), and various ordinary and a few extraordinary unknown individuals with inspiring David-and-Goliath stories. Always good to see Amory Lovins on these lists. We need more like him.

And then, of course, the Guardian’s shameless gimmick to sell papers and generate buzz with a lame contrarian tossed in for “balance”: Bjorn Lomberg. 

Note to Guardian: Bjorn Lomberg is about as likely to save the planet as Jack Abramoff is to clean up Washington.  Unless, that is, he can eventually get a clue and learn to stop deliberately lying distinguish credible evidence from think tank effluent. Interestingly (perhaps this was exactly the Guardian’s plan), Lomborg’s inclusion was the single biggest item of (overwhelmingly negative) discussion in comments on the piece.  Probably sold a lot of papers.

But let’s not get too far off track. I spent some time trying to pick someone on the list to feature as my favorite but couldn’t decide.  Worth reading yourself. 

The Ecological Society of America, the Nation’s leading body of professional ecological scientists (of which I am a proud member), has released a position statement on biofuels sustainability.  The full text is here.  Because these are highly important issues and the ESA’s position is authoritative and well stated, I quote much of it here verbatim. The paper makes three central points, of which the second is of particular interest to natural patriotism:

“1. SYSTEMS THINKING.  A systems approach is crucial to assess the energy yield, carbon neutrality, and the full impact of biofuel production on downstream and downwind ecosystems.  It should take into account all of the flows, controls, and storage of materials and energy. 

2. CONSERVATION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES. A focus on ecosystem services will provide the foundation necessary for win-win scenarios. It is easy to design systems for maximum crop yields; over a century of agronomic research has shown that this can be done very successfully. Managing for other ecosystem services also provided by agricultural landscapes is less common but equally necessary.  Lower yields from an unfertilized native prairie, for example, may be acceptable in light of the other benefits provided by native plants in an agricultural landscape. These include:

• A complete and closed cycling of nutrients;
• Minimized flooding and increased groundwater recharge;
• Enhanced  carbon sequestration in the soil because tilling would be unnecessary;
• Fewer pests because habitat for insects and birds that prey on them is left intact;
• Genetic diversity;
• Reduced nitrogen and phosphorus runoff because no fertilizer is needed;
• Reduced soil erosion due to continuous soil cover;
• Reduced nitrous oxide production; and
• Pollinator habitat and resources.

These benefits, in turn, would help ensure ecosystem services such as better water and air quality, crop pollination, flood mitigation, runoff reduction, and food and fiber production. [Note: For a bit more detail on the potential advantages of diverse native prairie plants as a biofuel crop, see my earlier post here]

3.  SCALE ALIGNMENT. Explicit consideration of scale in policy and management is necessary to achieve sustainability goals.”

Details can be found in the original document linked above.  With specific regard to the current mania for corn ethanol in the USA, the ESA has this to say:

“The current focus on ethanol from corn illustrates the risks of exploiting a single source of biomass for biofuel production. A growing percentage of the U.S. corn harvest – 18 percent in 2006 – is directed towards grain ethanol production. This has not only resulted in record-high corn prices, it has produced strong incentives for continuously-grown corn, higher-than-optimal use of nitrogen fertilizers, the early return of land in conservation programs to production, and the conversion of marginal lands to high-intensity cropping. All of these changes exacerbate well-known environmental problems associated with intensive agriculture:

• Continuously-grown corn is more susceptible to insect damage and allows weeds to become more persistent, requiring more insecticides and herbicides.
• Nitrogen fertilizer is the principal contributor to nitrogen pollution of groundwater, surface waters, and coastal zones, and a major source of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.  
• Placing previously fallow land enrolled in conservation programs back into production reduces wildlife diversity, requires irrigation, and releases carbon dioxide.   
• Converting marginal lands to agriculture or farming them more intensively creates new sources of agricultural pollution and, in many cases, disproportionately increases nutrient loss and soil erosion; many of these lands are marginal to begin with because they are on sloping, sandy, or wet soils particularly susceptible to soil and nutrient loss.”

Other position papers from the ESA, on topics ranging from the Endangered Species Act, to GMOs, to forest fire management, to sustainable water use, to links between biodiversity and ecosystem services, can be found here.

[Editor’s note: There appears to be a growing trend among bloggers featuring some theme on Fridays, which I find an attractive idea. Therefore, on Fridays, the Natural Patriot will be featuring . . . poetry.  Why? Because poetry gets closer to the heart and soul of what we really value in Nature than the science and wonkish policy that we spend so much time discussing, important as that is. This will have to be experimental because, alas, the computer interface has a certain unfortunate dissonance with the spirit of poetry, which is best kindled in a state of slow, quiet reflection foreign to the web.  Nevertheless, it’s the medium of our day.  I can’t guarantee a contribution every week because, well, I have a day job. So here it is, the first installment.  If you like this piece, I highly recommend the book — one of my favorites (which, unfortunately, appears to be out of print).]

Wang Wei lived in the high Tang dynasty period (8th century AD) and is considered one of the greatest of the many great poets from that distinguished period of Chinese history.  This haunting poem (excerpt) seems prophetically to foresee the tragic loss of the once edenic landscape, which will soon be submerged forever behind China’s Three Gorges Dam. The dam has been intensely controversial from the beginning from a variety of environmental, social, and safety perspectives, and has been much in the news lately.

Song of Peach Tree Spring (excerpt)
Wang Wei (699?-761)
[translated by Barnstone, Barnstone, and Xu]
   . . .
   They came here to escape the chaotic world.
   Deathless now, they have no hunger to return.
   Amid these gorges, what do they know of the world?
   In our illusion we see only empty clouds and mountain.
   I don’t know that paradise is hard to find,
   and my heart of dust still longs for home.

   Leaving it all, I can’t guess how many mountains
   and waters lie behind me,
   and am haunted by an obsession to return.
   I was sure I could find my way back, the secret paths again.
   How could I know the mountains and ravines would change?
   I remember only going deep into the hills.
   At times the green river touched cloud forests.
   With spring, peach blossom water is everywhere,
   but I never find that holy source again.

Not so long ago, biofuels seemed like the holy grail we’d all been looking for.  After the euphoria came the hangover, including a pounding headache about the side-effects of cultivating corn and oil palm. And now we’re faced with trying to shake the new corn addiction that we took on to cure the oil addiction.

But perhaps there is still hope.  There’s always been the sleeper biofuel cruising under the radar of corn and oilpalm and sugarcane: algae.  Yes, the humble pond scum.

The Guardian reports that Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, a start-up in New Zealand has succeeded in extracting biofuel from sewage, via algae, and then running a car with it.

This is not just a flash in the oilpan, so to speak.  Shell is also getting up on the bandwagon. Their algal biofuel operation, in collaboration with HR Biopetroleum, involves a demo facility on the Kona coast of Hawaii where, they say, culture of fast-growing algae can produce much more oil per hectare than rapeseed or other oil crops (Greenpeace was quick to point out, however, that boutique dabbling in biofuels by Shell and other oil giants is a sideshow to their main efforts focused on strip-mining Canada to extract old-fashioned oil from the tar sands there).  The highly efficient production, and ability to grow in areas that don’t compete with cropland, is a major plus for algae:

“And they need less space than other biofuels. While corn produces 60 or so gallons of ethanol an acre annually, algae can provide up to 10,000 gallons of biofuel, says Dave Daggett, research chief at Boeing.”

There is no silver bullet of course.  Fueling cars (and even jets) with algae on a grand scale will not be easy, as those familiar with the history of algal biofuels will appreciate.  Hurdles include finding the right strain of alga (”alga” is the singular of algae, which as an academic pedant I feel I must point out.  Slip that into your next cocktail party conversation) to grow under your particular conditions, growing it abundantly, separating algae from the water, extracting oil from the algal biomass, and of course, converting it into something you can pump into your car. 

But it can be done, at least on the level of a demonstration project.  This past October saw the first jet flight powered entirely by biodiesel.  And there is lots of new excitement — and, more importantly, venture capital — flowing in to the field. 

One of the things that I find cool about these new projects is the growing interest in “wild algae”, that is in encouraging nature to do more of the work with natural diverse algal communities in open systems as opposed to basing the operation entirely on highly controlled single-strain bioreactor technology.  The Guardian quotes Kelly Ogilvie, co-founder of Blue Marble Energy in Seattle, which aims to harvest algae from sewage outflows, lakes and rivers, mining ponds and algal blooms caused by pollution:

Those who advocate algae monoculture believe ponds or bioreactors, closed systems that manipulate growing conditions, will do the trick eventually. But wild algae believers reject both methods as costly and unproductive.

“If the future of biofuels is algae, and I believe it is, you’re never going to get enough volume in bioreactors or ponds,” says Ogilvie. “It has to be something with greater volume.” He says the best approach is to mimic nature by creating algae farms, or by harvesting algae blooms. “Why try to out-engineer nature?” he asks.

 

. . . is now online at “I’m a Chordata, Urochordata“.  Lots of food, sex, death, and more — what’s not to like?!  The history of the COB is written there, including last months’s episode, proudly hosted here by the Natural Patriot.  Dive in, and get the blues!

What could be a more iconic zoological symbol of the transformation of the environment into a thoroughly human construct than the feral pigeon?  To a modern human cliff-dweller in the canyons of the world’s metropoli, this humble creature is by far most familiar vertebrate, bobbing amongst the park benches with its deliberate, comical gait, searching for stale potato chips and other such urban flotsam, defiling the noble bronze heads of olden-day heroes in the public square.  Their familiarity has bred our contempt.  That and their astonishing capacity to turn urban garbage into bird biomass and guano.

But it was not always thus.  Look closely and you can see the ghost of a beautiful and noble bird beneath the grime and worn feathers.  The iridescent sheen of the nape, the soft gray plumage, the handsome wing bars.  The lowly pigeon was among the very first animals to be domesticated by humans, appearing in the first known written documents in Mesopotamia more than 5000 years ago, and has a fascinating history.  In primeval times the “rock dove”, as our pigeon’s wild ancestor is known, lived in colonies on rocky sea cliffs — and still does in some areas such as the island of Sardinia (see painting at left).  This is of course one reason it has adapted so well to our cities, roosting in the baroque marble excrescences of neoclassical buildings, on the ledges of skyscrapers, and under bridges.

One would have thought that nothing could kill these legendary survivors.  After the nuclear war, one expects to see, among the smoking rubble, only cockroaches, pigeons, and maybe Keith Richard (”Hey man — where is everybody?”).  

But there may be trouble brewing for metropolitan pigeons, at least in the suburbs of the UK.  It appears that their rustic country cousins are muscling in on their territory.  The BBC reports that the wood pigeon, formerly a bird of farmland and woods, has appeared quite suddenly in suburban gardens.  The British Trust for Ornithology, who keeps track of the birds that people record seeing in their gardens, says that a decade ago, wood pigeons did not even make the list in London.  Now they are the fourth most common bird seen there, occurring in 46% of urban gardens, whereas feral pigeons are found in only 26%. 

The new order appears due to changes in farmng practices, including a shift to planting cereal crops in autumn (hmmm . . . climate warming connection?), and increased production of oil seed rape.  And feeding by Mary Poppins and her ilk. The enhanced food supply, particularly during the otherwise lean winter months, has produced a population explosion of wood pigeons. Like the Huns that poured into Europe off the steppes in medieval times, the new arrivals are invading cities and competing for food and nesting opportunities with their urban relatives.

The old adage uses the canary in the coal mine as a barometer of impending danger.  It seems unlikely that pigeons could really be in much danger, even under this new competition, given the long strange trip of their assocation with humanity over the last 6000 years or so.  Still, who would have thought that anything could beat a pigeon– even another pigeon?  Regardless of whether pigeons are endangered, this is surely prophetic of profound changes in our ecosystem.  Perhaps, contra the ancient wisdom, there is something new under the sun.

[Painting of rock doves on sea-cliffs by Dietrich Bornham, Celle]