The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

Urban sophisticates

Pier 39 on the San Francisco waterfront is an open mall, with music, performers, a merry-go-round, people who will do a caricature of you-with-an-enormous-head, and stores for the left-handed or sock-mad. There's an aquarium and a marina. You can catch a ferry.

The pier was originally for commercial shipping. Then it was redeveloped as a tourist attraction. There was an opening ceremony in 1978, at which then-mayor Dianne Feinstein wore a “discreet but attractive swimsuit because of a bet with the developer,” according to the New York Times of that era. (Sadly, I can't find a photo.)

In 1989, some small boat docks on the north side of the pier were vacant during repair work. Unexpectedly, sea lions started hauling out on these docks. They napped. They grunted. They barked.
 

Business owners and boat owners complained. Noisy! Stinky! Unsanitary! Bad for business. A permit was requested to scare them away by detonating explosive charges. Others objected to the request. The controversy made it into the newspapers. This alerted residents who didn't ordinarily go to Pier 39 about the easy-to-view sea lions. We rushed to the spot to view the pinnipeds (Zalophus californianus). It was a great angle, and the sea lions were very close, and delightfully blasé about being viewed.

Since we were there, we drank lemonade, bought left-handed scissors and gala hosiery, and were manifestly good for business. We made plans to bring our out-of-town visitors.

The permit request was hastily dropped. Pier 39 began promoting the sea lions.

Most of the sea lions leave in the summer, to catch breeding season in the Channel Islands, and return in the fall.

What are the sea lions doing here? Resting. It is said that the sea lions who hang out at Pier 39 used to hang out at Seal Rock, but moved for some reason. How mysterious. Why on earth would they do that? Why wouldn't a wild animal prefer to hang out in a wild place? Look how great Seal Rock is:


The two places aren't that far apart, but Seal Rock is outside the Bay, and Pier 39 is inside. It's  speculated that there are fewer predators inside the Bay. Fewer predators makes it easier for scrumptious types to relax.

San Franciscans pay close attention to the doings of the sea lions. Earlier this year, almost all of them vanished from Pier 39 and there was much worry and much press coverage. Were they starving? Had a shark or a killer whale scared them away? Was that them up in Oregon?

Then they came back. There was much rejoicing, especially among the merchants.

Things don't seem normal among the sea lions this year. Mothers are giving birth to pups early, and in unusual places. Five were actually born at Pier 39.

El Nino may have something to do with it, or domoic acid, or declining fish stocks. The species isn't endangered, but it's not having a good year. If there's anything I can do to help, just say the word. And I know I speak for the small-business community when I say so.

Easy birding

Ten thirty at night, driving through Oakland's Chinatown, we glimpsed a large bird perched on a sign. We went around the block and there was a black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) on the LEFT TURN ONLY sign, two more on a jewelry store awning, and another on a pho restaurant awning. We knew that night herons scavenged fish parts in local dumpsters, but no dumpsters were in view.

We pulled over and watched from the car. A heron might fly from an awning to the top of a NO PARKING sign, or shuffle along an awning. They weren't alarmed when cars drove by, or when waiters from the restaurant on the corner came out for a smoke. They flew to more distant spots once when a pedestrian appeared. (Clearly they found him suspicious – what's he doing here at this hour? Our presence in the car didn't bother the herons, though the waiters seemed to find it strange.)

Mostly they stared intently down toward the sidewalk. Odd. Night herons spend much of their working life staring intently into water looking for swimming prey. I could not see the sidewalk from where we were, because parked cars were in the way, but nothing seemed likely to be swimming there. If the restaurant had kindly put fish offal out, why wouldn't herons just go down and get it?

I speculated that the night herons were waiting until dumpsters got put out, and staring intently just because staring intently is their habit.

A heron suddenly popped into view, flapping up from the sidewalk, as if fleeing a kerfuffle of some kind. We realized there were more night herons on the sidewalk, either consuming or awaiting some fishy bonanza. The ones we saw peering intently were envious bystanders. Perhaps they were low-status birds – young birds? – wondering when it would be their turn.

The scene was one of social complexity, awaiting its naturalist, a Goodall of the dumpsters, a Schaller of the streets.

                                                                       Frankyboy5, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Don't mention religion, politics, or salmon

Yesterday we went to see salmon spawning and of course it ended in a fight in a bar.
 

We went to Lagunitas, California, to the lovely Leo Cogan Fish Viewing Area, and eventually saw a large female coho on her redd, redd being the word for the nest area she excavates in the gravel, where she lays her eggs. In clouded water, her whitish tail gleamed.

 
At St. Mary's Pub to celebrate the 800th iteration of David's Pointless Minute, I told a wildlife-aware friend about this. I used the word nest. He said the correct term was redd. I agreed, acknowledging that I had talked down to him by using simpler terminology. He alleged that he was offended. I alleged that in that case my work was done.
 
 Salmon: always a contentious subject.

Me next! Me next!

Doug Bertran, a filmmaker who made Orca Killing School, told a story after the showing at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City. This is the film about which the program cautions, “Warning: violent animal scenes.”

He was at Peninsula Valdez, Argentina, filming some orcas who've perfected a trick of lurking offshore at high tide and then suddenly shooting up onto the beach to grab a sea lion. In order to take the sea lions by surprise, the orcas don't echolocate (which creates tell-tale clicking sounds). They rely on hearing to detect their prey. Bertran's assistant was setting up a heavy piece of photographic equipment in the shallows. It occurred to no one that the sound of the eighty-pound device scraping against the beach pebbles might be a lot like the sound of a tasty sea lion pup scraping against the beach pebbles. Suddenly the assistant looked up into the faces of five orcas. They'd hurtled up for a look.

After viewing him, the orcas hurled themselves back into deeper water.

“I shot it,” said Bertran happily. It wasn't in the film, though. Is it because the sight of a photographer's assistant not being eaten lacks drama? No, according to an interview Bertran gave to The Union, it's because local authorities don't want ecotourists to get ideas.

I certainly hope you brought enough for everybody

Long long ago, people brought dingoes to Fraser Island, a big sand island off eastern Australia. The dingoes went wild and self-supporting. Nowadays, dingoes in most of Australia have had the chance to breed with more recently imported dogs. (Don't get silly. I do not speak of the dingopoo, the cockadingo, the dreaded dingohuahua.) The Fraser dingoes are among the purest old dingo stock, so dogs are forbidden on the island.

Photograph by ogwen, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Fraser Island is in Queensland. It has miles of shimmering beaches, a hundred lakes of pure fresh water, and lofty, ferny rainforest, so a third of a million people drop by each year.

Tourists, and some of the few hundred people who live on Fraser, sometimes feed the dingoes. Authorities advise against feeding dingoes. Residents say they can handle themselves around dingoes. But in 2001 dingoes killed a 9-year-old whose family was camping there. To protect both humans and dingoes, the government shot some of the bolder dingoes and built sturdy dingo fences, surrounding areas where people live. Many island residents protested, finding the fences destructive, annoying, or pointless.

Several nonfatal dingo attacks have occurred just outside the fences. In April, Mike West, of Birds Queensland, said that goannas – huge, speedy, monitor lizards, (Varanus) – are multiplying dangerously because of the dingo policy.

“We're up to our armpits in bloody great big goannas at Kingfisher Bay and Eurong because there's no dingoes inside the fences to chase them off,” West told the Courier-Mail. (I found this story on the comprehensive website herper.com.)

Goannas can get nearly seven feet long. They can harm people, although they are unlikely to try to eat us because they cannot swallow us whole. Their bite may be a little bit venomous. Apparently, many people who are not bothering goannas get injured while watching someone else bother a goanna. The goanna lashes its huge tail, and bystanders suffer. That's not all. “Alarmed goannas can mistake standing humans for trees and attempt to climb off the ground to safety, which is understandably painful, as well as distressing for both man and beast,” according to Wikipedia.

John E. Hill, GNU Free Documentation License 1.2

West told of being personally menaced by goannas. “I got chased by one and had to drop an Esky on it. It's the same problem as dingoes. They are not frightened of people.” (An Esky is a cooler, sometimes even an Eskimo brand cooler.)

In lots of places goannas have learned that people have food, either food which they will give a hungry lizard, or which a hungry lizard can just help itself to. Authorities advise against feeding goannas.

Frank P. Mahoney

West says the dingo fencing has been a failure, and should be scrapped. Inevitably, he says, a tourist will get bitten by a goanna. “Are they going to start shooting goannas next? They've already shot kookaburras for pecking people and they are trying to trap a crocodile off Fraser. Where's it all going to end?”

Authorities say they are reviewing dingo management strategy. In the meantime, they advise against feeding wildlife. Recently, a litter of dingo puppies was discovered underneath the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service headquarters. They are insanely cute. Malcontents suggest the rangers are... feeding them.

I long to travel to Fraser Island to view wildlife. I will join the other tourists balanced on top of the sturdy government fence, with dingoes eyeing us from one side and goannas from the other, and all of us keeping an eye cocked to the sky for flocks of killer kookaburras. Look for me there! I'll be wearing body armor and a NO DINGOHUAHUAS T-shirt, and I'll be carrying a picnic basket.