THE COLOR OF NATURE
Rex Burress
Something new has appeared in my woodsy backyard and made itself right at home!
My daughter Rebecca was up Sunday for Father's Day, and we were doing some garden work before noon when a pair of Brown or California Towhees appeared, plainly upset . I suspected that they had a nest nearby, which was quite feasible with my weed patches, Trumpet Vine and unsprayed shrubs aplenty.
It was the first brown towhees I had seen in 'Jo's Memorial Garden,' and Malozone crissalis were welcome insect eaters. Swarms of birds control the insects in a once productive veg garden, and there's not a single snail or slug, as a pair of scrub jays patrol every day!
Brown towhees are quiet, permanent residents of California, not prone to migrate but are home-spun birds, happy to scratch out a living in the understory, noisily bouncing both feet at the same time to stir up quite a racket in the leaves. It's local cousin, the spotted towhee, that is also non-migratory, makes the same noisy scratching when hunting. I find it odd that the brown version is concealed in a camouflaged drabness while the male spotted towhee is boldly arrayed in bright whites and crimson enhanced with black, and has a red eye, all so revealing it seems to say 'here I am!'
Early next morning, I went hunting for the nest. I saw a shadow slip through the lemon shrub, so compact I could call it a rat, but I moved slowly and soon Mrs. Towhee was peeking at me from the grape harbor, and her mate also came diving in. Someone did some scientific observation and said the female does all the incubation, but the male helps feed the young, and they mate for life.
In the flimsy nest of grass stems was one whitish egg, the first of three or four, that take about 10 days to hatch. After the chicks hatch they develop rapidly and leave the nest at about 8 days, Audubon says. It seems almost spiritual that of countless nesting places in Oroville, they would select a lemon shrub in my garden. I wondered if they are refugees from the Camp Fire?
Towhees and sparrows typify brush birds that really need thickets to survive, and forest fires plus eradication of shrubby habitat to prevent rapid spread of fire puts the birds at a loss. Clear cutting of brush from a woodland is not good for a balanced environment, thus wildlife loses on several fronts. Having habitat islands of brush would give the birds a protective shelter, like the scattered buckbrush along the Nature Center Road.
Maybe the towhees came because the yellow cat that had plagued birds and me is gone! My lizards are returning, too. However in the night I saw a roof rat running on the chain fence top rail! It had been a welcome winter without any rats. Back to the traps.
Bright colors are used sparingly in nature, with splashes of accent color amid the more dominant browns, grays, and greens. Red is a winner, as seen in some flower blossoms, cardinal birds, red clover mites, and some insects, but very rare in mammals. Natural pigments have been a boon to the artist before new approaches and synthetics were developed. The color brown is an earth pigment made from iron oxide and manganese oxide minerals in the soil, and marketed as raw umber, and when heated, becomes the darker burnt umber. Early artists used that method about 1650.
Another natural color often used to make red is from cinnabar, [mercury sulfide,] and is poisonous! But the most brilliant crimson is made from the New World cochinea insect Dactylopius coccus. Kermes vermilio, a tiny, round, scale insect of the Mediterranean Kermes Oak, also has intense natural crimson. British Redcoats were dyed with Kermes.
“Brown is the color for me, the color of our coats and our daily lives, the russet and brown and gray of deciduous woods, the tawny of bare earth.” --Henry David Thoreau