Methow NaturalistTheA Quarterly Journal of Natural History Summer 2020 V25 N2 $2.50

Spiritual awakening is nothing more than awakening from the dream world of constant thought. Eckhard Tolle

Also:Wildlife SightingsJuniper Waxwings

Planetary Mass ExtinctionsThe Care & Feeding of Viruses

Life on a Dangerous Planet

The Missoula Floods: more water than flows in all the rivers of the worldart by Steve Ominski

The larger universe is not conducive to supportinglife. For one thing, it can get very hot out there. Forexample the surface of the Sun is about 10,000º F,and the center of the Sun is roughly 27,000,000º F.Organic, cellular functions, such as membraneoperation and metabolic activities, only work in arange of about 32-100º F. Just a mile underground inthe Earth's crust the temperature is about 500ºF. Thelower mantle is roughly 8000º F, and the Earth'score—remember, all of these are right under yourfeet--is about 10,000º F. On the other hand, theaverage temperature of 'outer space,' out in the solarsystem and beyond, is -455º F. The World HealthOrganization offers the helpful advice that acomfortable temperature for human habits is 64ºF.Good luck staying within that range.

You may feel like you have been under a lot ofpressure lately, and indeed you have, about 14.7pounds of atmospheric pressure per square inchpressing down on you on all sides. It could howeverbe worse, much worse. The atmospheric pressure onthe surface of Venus is 92 times that of Earth, or13,500 pounds per square inch. While the surface ofthe sun has only 1/100th the pressure on Earth, thecenter of sun is one hundred billion times the pressureof the Earth’s atmosphere. The mammalian body cansurvive for short periods of time under as much as 50times atmospheric pressure (as in scuba diving);surprisingly the primary gases in our atmosphere,nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%) become narcoticand then toxic at higher pressures. While less pressure

might seem better, liquids boil at lower temperaturesas pressure decreases. At about 6% of sea levelpressure, water and blood would boil at roomtemperature.

The fact that energy arrives at Earth from 'space'is not surprising, given that the energy photonsarriving from the Sun make life possible. There ismuch more energy traveling through space thansunlight, however, and much of it is damaging ordeadly to living tissue. Cosmic rays are high-energy,charged particles that originate from the Sun and fromoutside the solar system; they move through space atnearly the speed of light. Cosmic radiation isdangerous because it has sufficient energy to changeor break DNA molecules, which can damage or kill acell. This can lead to problems ranging fromimmediate health impacts to death.

Cosmic rays constantly rain down on Earth, andwhile the high-energy 'primary' rays collide withatoms in the Earth's upper atmosphere and rarelymake it through to the ground, 'secondary' particlesare ejected from this collision and do reach us on theground. Cosmic radiation has so much energy it canliterally knock the electrons out of any atom it strikes,altering the atomic structure in living cells. This isone reason that what we call 'death' has evolved; thedestructive impact of cosmic radiation accumulatesover time, and living cells need to be reborn andrenewed regularly. The community of life on Earth

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Life on a Dangerous PlanetBy Dana Visalli

Greenland from the air; this is what the Methow looked like just 16,000 years ago

Dana Visalli is the editor of The Methow Naturalist

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Continued on page 10....

would not be possible if 99.9% of all cosmic radiationarriving from space were not blocked by the Earth'satmosphere and magnetic field.

There is a harder rain thatfalls on Earth as well, that ofmeteors and asteroids. About25 million meteors enter theEarth's atmosphere every day.Most burn up when theyencounter the atmosphere, andabout two million pounds ofcosmic dust per day settles tothe Earth's surface.

Asteroids are larger thanmeteors and less abundant, atleast in our corner of the solarsystem. About once a year, anautomobile-sized asteroid hitsEarth's atmosphere, creates an impressive fireball, andburns up before reaching the surface. Every 2,000years or so, an asteroid the size of a football field hitsEarth and causes significant damage on the ground.Asteroids with a diameter of about a mile strike Earthevery 500,000 years on average. Larger collisions,two to five mile diameter objects, happenapproximately once every twenty million years. Thesecollisions throw so much dust up into the atmospherethat they block sunlight, curtailing photosynthesis,and cause small or large extinction events.

The Earth creates its own challenges to theintegrity and continuity of the life, not the least ofwhich are volcanic eruptions. On average, there areabout 50-70 volcanoes that erupt every year. Some ofthem erupt multiple times, while others only have oneeruption. There were for example 73 confirmederuptions at some point during 2019 from 70 differentvolcanoes.

One of the largest volcanic eruptions in history

occurred 28 million years ago in what is now theUnited States, at the La Garita Caldera insouthwestern Colorado. The eruption blew 1200 cubicmiles of rock and dust into the atmosphere. When itfell back to Earth, it created the Fish Canyon Tuff,covering at least 11,000 sq miles, and averaging 330feet thick! Obviously living organisms would be hardpressed to survive under 330 feet of ash. Incomparison, the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption ejected½ cubic mile of volcanic ash and tuff.

If that's not impressive enough, 15 million yearsago the Earth cracked open in what is now southernWashington and 90,000 cubic miles of basalt pouredout onto the ground (over several million years),covering 60,000 square miles of land-- the ColumbiaRiver basalt.

Not satisfied with covering the landscape withthousands of cubic miles of molten rock, the forcesthat shape the Earth and the life upon it sent forth the

ice ages; rivers of ice as muchas two miles thick that repeatlyflowed from the north (in theNorthern Hemisphere) into thetemperate regions, extirpatingor exterminating all life in theirpath.

There have been at leastfive major ice ages in theEarth's history. Outside theseages, the Earth seems to havebeen ice free even in highlatitudes; such periods areknown as greenhouse periods.The oldest ice age, called the

Huronian Period, dates to 2.4 billion years ago. Thenext well-documented ice age, and probably the mostsevere of the last billion years, occurred from 720 to630 million years ago (known as the Cryogenianperiod) and may have produced a Snowball Earth inwhich glacial ice sheets reached the equator, withmost of the surface of the Earth being frozen.

One of Earth’s daily dose of 25 million meteors

Comparing large eruptions: Yellowstone Lave Creek eruption 600,000years ago (y/a), Yellowstone Huckleberry Ridge 2 million y/a, Toba

75,000 y/a, La Garita 28 million y/a.

The Earth’s magnetic field blocks 99.9% of all radiation from space

Throughout Earth history, the continual emergenceand extinction of species has propelled the evolution ofour biosphere. To evaluate recent reductions inbiodiversity, biologists first estimate an average, orbackground, rate of extinction before humans cameonto the scene. Scientists estimate a background rate ofextinction as the number of species that would beexpected to go extinct over a period of time withoutsudden detrimental environmental change. Comparisonof the background rate with the current rate ofextinction can help biologists understand themagnitude of human impacts on our biosphere.

But the fossil record clearly shows that throughoutEarth’s history actual rates of species extinction haveregularly fluctuated above (and occasionally below)the estimated background rate. Another measure, then,of human impact on biodiversity is the comparison ofpresent rates of extinction with the many episodes inEarth’s history when species extinction occurred muchmore rapidly than thebackground rate.

Five of thoseepisodes of rapidextinction wereespecially severe.These five so-calledmass extinctionsresulted in major

transformations in our biosphere. In each massextinction, a majority of the then-existing species diedout, and after the extinction event, the remainingspecies rapidly diverged into a new suite of species thatrepopulated the Earth.

The most severe of the five mass extinctions, andtherefore the greatest mass extinction in Earth historywas the end-Permian extinction (‘The Great Dying’)when over 90% of marine species and more than 70%of terrestrial species went extinct. But the most famousmass extinction of the five is undoubtedly the end-Cretaceous extinction that marked the demise of thedinosaurs that had ruled the Earth for the previous 135million years. We’ll discuss this extinction in moredetail later, but first let’s ask: Why did these massextinctions occur?

Clearly, only a major and comparatively suddenenvironmental crisis could cause such large-scalemortality. The extensive list of suggested causes

includes gamma-raybursts, UV radiationincreases, toxic metalpoisoning, oceanacidification, large-volume volcaniceruptions, meteoriteimpacts, geologicallyrapid sea level

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Mass ExtinctionsBy Art Campbell

Major extinctions through Life’s history

Art Campbell is a professional geologist & regularcontributor to The Methow Naturalist

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changes, and cigarette smoking (this last suggested bythe cartoonist Gary Larson). Of the many suggestedcauses, two have risen to the top of the list: large-volume volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts.

When we say large-volume volcanic eruptions, weare not talking about a Krakatoa- or Mt. St. Helens-type of eruption, but rather much more voluminouseruptions, such as the series of flood basalt eruptionsthat produced the Columbia River basalts in the PacificNorthwest. Geologists have noted the coincidence intime of most large extinction events with large-volumevolcanic eruptions. The figure above dramaticallyillustrates this coincidence. The eruptions with theirvolumes indicated by the length of the associated thickline are shown along the top of the figure. Theextinction rate through time is shown by the jaggedgraph in the bottom half of the figure.

How can large-volume eruptions cause massivemortality? Particles and gases injected high into theatmosphere from erupting lavas may have causedreduced sunlight, intense short-term cooling, and acidrain. Massive releases of CO2 and other gases fromerupted lavas and underlying soils may have caused,over a longer-term, climate warming, oceanacidification, and ozone depletion. But these effectscertainly varied eruption to eruption, and this variationwould explain why, as shown in the figure above, notall known large-volume eruptions are associated withextinction events.

In 1980, Walter and Luiz Alvarez and compatriotsproposed that iridium-enriched sediments deposited atthe end of the Cretaceous Period are clear evidence ofa meteorite impact that probably caused the end-

Cretaceous extinction. Then, in 1991, researchersproposed that a large, buried 95-mile diameter crater inthe Yucatan Peninsula, named Chicxulub, was thelikely site of the end-Cretaceous impact. And with that,the Chicxulub meteorite impact entered the popularimagination as the ultimate dinosaur terminator.Geologists began to wonder if meteorites could also bethe cause of other mass extinctions. Subsequentresearch and computer modeling indicated that theeffects of a large meteorite impact could be similar tothose associated with large-volume volcanic eruptions.And geologists have found evidence of other meteoriteimpacts that may coincide in time with other massextinctions.

So now, let’s take a closer look at the end-Cretaceous extinction. As we’ll see, the cause of thatfamous extinction is probably not as simple as a singlemeteorite impact or just a series of large-volumevolcanic eruptions.

First, we need to recognize that the end-Cretaceousextinction, like other mass extinctions, was notinstantaneous, but was a protracted affair lasting tensof thousands of years. The fossil record, whileincomplete, suggests that some species, especially inthe marine realm, were in decline or had gone extinctas early as 500,000 years prior to the end of theCretaceous Period. And the geologic record indicatesthat substantial warming of 3-4°C, a resulting rise insea level, and ocean acidification all occurred over a200,000-year period prior to the end of the Cretaceous.

As for the Chicxulub meteorite, recent dating ofthe Chicxulub crater indicates that the impact actuallytook place about 200,000 years prior to the end of the

Major extinctions (lower spikes) correlated with known major outpourings of lava (black bars at top showing volume of lava emitted)

Continued on page 11....

Viruses are surprisingly ubiquitous, abundant,and important to the dynamics of life on Earth. Theyare virtually everywhere: in the air, in the water, inthe soil, in all living things. There are about onehundred billion virus particles in a liter of sea water;what are they doing there? There are an estimate300-400 trillion virus particles in each human body,along with 40 trillion bacteria, and 30 trillion humancells. In terms of the numbers, it could be arguedthat we are each at least as much a community ofvirus particles as we are individuals.

It turns out that most viruses are bacterio-phages--they prey on bacteria. That is why there areso many in the oceans, and in all living things. Mostof that multitude of bacteria inside of us and on ourskin are either beneficial to us or at least notharmful, and the same is true of the even greaternumber of virus particles. But the viruses are criticalto restraining the growth of bacteria in all organismsand in all ecosystems.

What is a virus? It is packet of genetic material,DNA or RNA, surrounded by a protective shell.That's it. A virus particle has no metabolism, nosenses, no organs, no locomotion, no brain; it is justgenetic material. But, the genetic material is codedin such a way that once it is inserted into the cell ofa host (which could be from any of the six kingdomsof life, archaea, bacteria, protists, animals, plants orfungi), it is able to take over control of the activity ofthe cell to produce more of itself; more virusparticles. The organelles in the cell, the ribosomes,

mitochondria, the cytoplasm, all become slaves tothe virus. The attraction between the host cellmembrane and the virus shell is simply electro-chemical; the virus is attracted to the cell membranelike a magnet to iron.

Are viruses alive? The answer depends on one'sdefinition of life, one could say 'yes and no.' We likeclear-cut, black or white distinctions in ourunderstanding of life, and viruses reside in a morenuanced realm. They are definitely organicstructures, formed by the chemistry of life, and theyare evolved structures, products of natural selectionand community relationships. Viruses exist in tightco-evolutionary relations with their host specie orspecies, just as bees live in a tight co- evolutionaryrelationship with flowers. So they are intimatelybound to and a part of the dynamics of life.

Virus particles are small, very small. Thesmallest are 20 nanometers (nm) in diameter. Ananometer is one billionth of a meter, so 20 nm is 20billionths of a meter. That's only about 100 timeslarger than an atom. They are invisible in lightmicroscopes, and were unseen until thedevelopment of the electron microscope in the1930s. You could line millions of them up on thehead of pin. Put one grain of salt on the table; youcould line up about ten skin cells along one side ofit. You could line up about a hundred bacteria.

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The Care and Feeding of Viruses

Available online here: https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/the-care-and-feeding-of-viruses/

By Eddie Torr

Continued on page 12....

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My introduction to cedar waxwings occurred someyears ago through the unfortunate circumstance of find-ing three dead birds on the county road on the outskirtsof Winthrop. I stopped and picked them up, broughtthem home, and marveled at the astonishing velvety tex-ture of their plumage, the intimidating black face-mask,and the bright yellows and reds of the tail and wing-tips.I saved all of the secondary wing feathers with the redwaxy tips, and for years would send one or two in everyletter I sent to a friend. No one ever knew what birdthey came from, because as a culture we do not knowmuch about the world we are born into.

The high point in my experience of cedar waxwingscame--again some years ago-- when someone found ahalf grown waxwing on the ground, fallen out of a nest,at farmer’s market in Twisp and bequeathed it to me. Ibrought the bird home and raised it on chopped earth-worm steaks and strawberries. Ten days later when fullygrown it could not be contained in the house and I set itfree outside. For several weeks afterwards it wouldcome flying to me from the nearby aspens and land onthe top of my head. There is no greater joy in life thanhaving a cedar waxwing land on your head.

Last year they were poking holes in my strawber-ries, so I covered the plants with row cover cloth--whichinevitably has a few holes in it. The waxwings went inthrough the holes and--they were trapped! I crawleddown the tunnel to the end and grabbed several of them,reprimanding them for eating my berries and tellingthem to stop doing so; then throwing them up in the air.It is hard to face down a waxwing however, that blackmask across their eyes creates an aurora of power.

The ‘cedar’ portion of their name is mildly prob-lematic because it is based on their affection for the ber-ry of a tree on the east coast called ‘red cedar,’ which isactually a juniper, Juniperus virginiana. So the speciesmight more accurately be called the juniper waxwing.The eat juniper berries in the west just as enthusiastical-ly as in the east, but they do not eat cedar cones.

There is no question that their wings, or at leasttheir wing tips, are waxy. A bright red waxy substanceis exuded from the adults’ secondary wing feathers. Thecolor of the droplets comes from the carotenoid pig-ments that are found in the birds' diet of fruit, and can-not be synthesized by the birds directly. The samepigments produce the red coloration in the feathers ofCassin's and house finches, but no other bird sequestersthe pigments in droplets such as those seen in the wax-wings. The deposits of a bright red carotenoid are con-centrated in flat, expanded extensions of the rachis thatproject beyond the feather vanes. Immature waxwingshave few or no droplets, which increase in size over thefirst years of life.

The brightly colored wingtips serve as a signal ofthe age and social status and is useful in pair formation:second-year birds lack entirely or have very few waxytips. Older birds pair preferentially with each other andhave greater nesting success than pairs of young birds.Life in Earth is dangerous, and studies have shown thatonly 50% of waxwings that reach adulthood surviveeach year. Thus ‘fitness,’ having the genetic and learnedabilities to survive and reproduce, is of the greatestvalue in mate selection. The oldest recorded cedarwaxwing was a male and at least seven years, 1 month

Cedar WaxwingsBy Dana Visalli

Continued on page 13......

June 21‘Solstice’ is derived from two words: ‘sol’ meaning sun, and ‘sistere,’ to cause to stand still. Summer solstice is, tohuman perception, the day that sun stands still, at least in so far as it ceases its journey to the northern skies, buthesitants before turning southward. In our area the solstice is a portal into the dry heat of summer, and all organismsthat live here are adapted to this condition. Annual plants have finished their active cycle by the solstice, and pass thenext nine months as dormant seeds. Perennials, such as our balsamroot and lupines, retreat back underground in to theform of rootstocks, bulbs and tubers. Woody plants can close the openings in their leaves, called stomata, that exist forgas exchange, to prevent water loss, although this also slows or stops photosynthesis. Many reptiles and mammalsbecome nocturnal, most birds are active at dawn and dusk, and spadefoot toads dig their way back into the cool earth,sometimes to a depth of two feet, to escape the heat. To every thing there is a season, and to every season there isaccommodation made by living organisms.

JulyEverything changes, nothing stays the same. In the water world, the Methow River, which peaked this year on May 31stat about 11,200 cubic feet per second, is now falling rapidly towards 1000 cfs. Temporary ponds along the river and inthe uplands are beginning to dry up, while our permanent ponds and lakes are warming appreciably. Even the soil in thelowlands is drying out. Animal life has long co-evolved with these changes and adjusts accordingly. Many of the insectsthat live in temporary ponds metamorphose into an adult form with wings that can fly away as the water evaporates.Spadefoot toads have evolved to specifically use temporary ponds—their eggs hatch in only three days, and the tadpolesare among the fastest maturing in the amphibian world. Adult spadefoot toads, and the emerging toadlets, spend the hotsummer months (and the cold winter months) underground. Our salmon have solved the problem of reduced summerflows by spending most of the lives in the ocean. While both the spring and summer chinook return to the Methow in thesummer months, they are no longer eating, and can hold in the cold, deep pools in the river until the time is right tospawn.

AugustEmperor Augustus Caesar named this month after himself, in all humility, because one year in mid-summer he celebrat-ed several triumphs, having reduced Egypt to ruin and squashed a couple of internal rebellions. Poet Henry James had acertain affection for this time of year; ‘Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in theEnglish language.’ But long before him, the Greek poet Hesiod cautioned, ‘It will not always be summer: build barns.’Many plants and animals are building up food reserves in late summer, in preparation for the ‘energy bottleneck’ of win-ter. A few bird species, such as the Clark’s nutcracker, build up reserves by caching food; most birds cannot afford tobuild body fat because of the weight requirements for flight. Among Methow mammals, rodents tend to be too small tostore adequate energy as body fat, and so mice, voles, gophers, chipmunks, squirrels and beaver all prepare food caches.Our largest herbivores, white-tailed and mule deer, and our few elk and moose, all increase their weight by about 25%through the summer and fall, building fat reserves for winter. Their presence opens up a niche for predators—coyotes,cougar, and wolves—to find adequate fresh food all winter long, and so they neither build fat reserves nor create long-term food caches.

SeptemberSeptember is ‘mushroom month.’ If we get rain, ur forests fill with fungi, but most often they are hidden from the eye,underground or in decaying wood. It has been estimated that if all of the fungal threads in a teaspoon of soil were laidend to end they would stretch for fifty miles, and weigh four thousand times more than the bacteria in the sameteaspoon. Many of the fungal species present are in mutually beneficial mycorrhizal relationships with forest trees inshrubs. In September, as moisture levels rise in the forest and soil temperatures begin to drop, many fungal species‘bloom’- they send their reproductive organs, mushrooms, up into the light of day where the atmosphere can catch andscatter their spores.

September 21September 21st is the fall equinox. The sun is directly over the equator on this day, and most of the planet receivesapproximately 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of dark. If you live in the alpine zone you will want to have yourwinter plans finalized by this time, as the lengthy season of snow and cold is not far off. Most mammals that over-winterin the alpine zone have stockpiled some of the solar energy of summer initially captured by plants either as body fat(Columbia ground squirrels and hoary marmots, which hibernate) or as stored food reserves (pikas, voles, gophers,chipmunks, which do not hibernate, although the latter sleeps a lot). The montane shrew, which has a heart rate of up to1000 beats per minute, and must eat its own weight in food every day, remains active through the winter. People whostudy such things have yet to determine how this creature survives the alpine winter.

Nature’s Calendar

The Tuft of FlowersRobert Frost

I went to turn the grass once after oneWho mowed it in the dew before the sun.The dew was gone that made his blade so keenBefore I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,And I must be, as he had been,--alone,`As all must be,' I said within my heart,`Whether they work together or apart.'

But as I said it, swift there passed me byOn noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,Seeking with memories grown dim o'er nightSome resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,As where some flower lay withering on the ground.And then he flew as far as eye could see,And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;But he turned first, and led my eye to lookAt a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had sparedBeside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,By leaving them to flourish, not for us,Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to himBut from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,That made me hear the wakening birds around,And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my ownSo that henceforth I worked no more alone,But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,And weary, sought at noon with him the shade,

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speechWith one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.`Men work together,' I told him from the heart,`Whether they work together or apart.

Sea to Shining SeaBruce Springsteen

Where are the eyes, the eyeswith the will to  see?Where's are the heartsthat run over with mercy?Where's the lovethat has not forsaken me?Where's the workthat will set my hands,set my soul free?Where's the spiritthat will rain, rain over me?Where's the promiseof from sea to shining sea?Where's the promiseof from sea to shining sea?

Family TiesEugene Debs

Your honor, years agoI recognized my kinshipwith all living beings,and I made up my mindthat I was not one bit betterthan the meanest on earth.I said then, and I say now,that while there is a lower class,I am in it.While there is a criminal element,I am of it.While there is a soul in prison,I am not free.

(Deb’s statement to the court duringsentencing for opposing US participationIn World War I in 1918. He was sentencedto 10 years in prison immediately afterwards.)

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Dangerous Planet, continued from page 3

The Ice Age began 2.5 million years ago, andincludes twenty to forty glacial periods in that time,with ice advancing andretreating on anapproximately 100,000 yearschedule. One of the lesserglacial advances, the 'LittleIce Age,' only ended in about1900, 120 years ago.

Not satisfied with fireand ice on the ground andcosmic radiation andasteroids from space; naturethen served up the mostmassive floods known in thegeologic record. At the endof the last glacial advance,roughly 15,000 years ago,huge glacial lakes formedbehind glacial dams of ice. When the ice dams broke,enormous floods poured out of the glacialborderlands. The earliest Missoula Floods (nowthought to number at least 40 discrete events) sentmore water coursing through central Washington atone moment in time than flows today in all the riversof the world. This phenomenon was not unique to thePacific Northwest; evidence from the Altai region incentral Russia suggests a slightly larger ice-dam floodoccurred there at the end of the last glacial age.

There is a curious dimension to all of thedestructive dramas mentioned above, and that is thatlife on Earth might not be possible without theexistence of each and every one of them. Cosmicradiation not only damages cellular structures andDNA, it also drives the evolution of life, whilephotons of light from the sun energize all livingorganisms on Earth (almost all). The bombardment ofthe Earth in the early eons of the solar system by

meteors, comets and asteroids are thought to be thesource of much of the water on Earth, while larger-scale impacts (such as the K-T asteroid strike)dramatically altered the course of evolution. Volcaniceruptions are (or were) the primary source of carbondioxide in the atmosphere, a sine quo non of life onEarth (most organisms are composed primarily ofCO2) and a necessary portion of the atmosphericblanket that keeps the Earth well above -455º F. Theice ages grind up igneous rocks and release elementsand nutrients necessary to life..

All the dangers to life mentioned so far have beenlarge-scale phenomena. There are some minisculehazards lurking out there in the shadows as well, inthe form of bactera and viruses. In fact theseorganisms and organic structures are pervasive: it isestimated that the human body is made up of about 40trillion human cells, 80 trillion bacterial cells, and 400

trillion virus particles.Recent studies indicate thatthe human genome owesperhaps 30% of its makeupto DNA transfer facilitatedby viruses. The vastmajority of the 80 trillionbacteria calling your bodyhome are not only notinimical to you in any way,but are necessary to yourwell-being. No livingorganism is an island, entireof itself, every living thingis a part of the dynamiccommunal whole of thebiosphere.

It is really quite astonishing that fragile livingtissue can come into existence and survive in such anunaccomodating universe. Life seems to hang by agossamer thread, surfing on the crest of improbability,born into endless beauty and intermittant destruction.

Mt. St. Helens, one of the most dangerous--and productive--volcanoesin the country.

The Columbia River basalts poured out of the ground 14-17 millionyears ago, covering most of southern Washington and northern Oregon.

The Missoula Floods could ruin your day-- as much water flowed in oneplace as in all the rivers of the world. Map is clearer in color at the web site.

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Cretaceous Period, so, if the dating is correct,Chicxulub is not the large meteorite impact responsiblefor the iridium enrichment in sediments deposited atthe end of the Cretaceous. A current alternative site forthe end-Cretaceous impact isa massive buried crater, threetimes the diameter ofChicxulub, located in westernIndia and dated at about 65million years in age.Appropriately named Shiva(the Destroyer in the Hindutrinity) the meteorite impactthat caused this huge crater isthought to be so catastrophicthat it probably affectedtectonic plate motions in thatpart of the crust and couldhave led to widespread globalecosystem collapse.

So how do the pieces ofthe end-Cretaceous puzzle come together? Manygeologists favor a scenario involving a several-hundred-thousand-year deterioration of environmentalconditions, caused primarily by large-volumevolcanism and exacerbated by one or more largemeteorite impacts, before the Shiva impact deliveredthe final coup de grace at the end of the CretaceousPeriod. It’s perhaps only coincidence that the large-volume volcanism (labeled Deccan Traps in the figureabove) and the Shiva impact both occurred in present-day western India, but this coincidence has led somegeologists to suggest that the Shiva impact caused amajor eruption pulse of Deccan volcanism. The impactand subsequent increase in volcanism would havecombined to truly catastrophic environmental effect.

What happened after the end-Cretaceousextinction? Sediments deposited on top of (i.e. after)the end-Cretaceous iridium layer reveal a short-livedincrease in fungi followed by a more gradualdevelopment of a fern-rich flora. This sequence is

taken to indicate a wholesale dieback of photosyntheticflora at the end of the extinction, followed rapidly by alarge increase in fungi that process decayed organicmatter, followed more gradually by the re-establishment of a photosynthetic flora initiallydominated by ferns.

After the end-Cretaceous extinction, mammals, arelatively minor component of the Cretaceous fauna,rapidly diversified and became the most dominantgroup of large animals. And, as part of thatdiversification, primates arose about 10 million yearsafter the extinction, leading eventually to theemergence of a new agent of extinction 300,000 yearsago.

As human populations expanded throughout theglobe, species extinctions have followed in our wake.A question frequently asked is: Are we currently

experiencing a 6th massextinction? Many scientistsreply, ‘not yet, but we arewell on our way.’ In the pastcentury, extinction rates areestimated to have beenbetween 10 and 10,000 times(depending on who’s doingthe estimating) thebackground extinction rate,and many species that havenot gone extinct havenonetheless sufferedsubstantial declines inpopulation. For example, byone estimate, the worldpopulation of vertebrate non-

human animals has declined by about 60% in just thelast half-century.

Manicouagan Crater in Quebec, Canada. About 212 million years agoan asteroid 3 miles in diameter struck this site. The crater is 46 miles

wide. It is the Earth’s 6th largest known impact crater.

Extinctions, continued from page 5......

Trilobites (early arthropods) existed for more than 250 million years,then disappeared during the Permian extinction.

Ammonites existed for more than 300 million years, only to go extinctduring the K-T (end-Cretaceous) event.

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Compared to viruses, however, bacteria are giants.You could line up ten thousand viruses alongsidethat same grain of salt.

Virus particles are small, but what they lack insize they make up for in numbers. Globally, thereare an estimated 1e31 virus-like particles. That is a 1followed by 31 zeros (10 nonillion, in case youwondered). That is more than the estimated numberof stars in the universe (1e24), or grains of sand onthe Earth (1e22, these are estimates, the counting isnot yet completed).

What are all these virus particles up to? Mostlythey are consuming bacteria, taking over the geneticmachinery of individual bacteria to producemultiple copies of themselves, and then 'lysing' thebacterial cell (breaking it open) to spill both theorganic matter of the bacterium and the newlyhatched viral offspring into the environment.

Much of our knowledge about the roles ofviruses in natural environments comes from studiesof marine microbial communities. In the world'soceans, about half of the organic matter producedby photosynthestic organisms (these producerslargely composed of diatoms and dinoflagellates,both considered forms of algae) supports bacteriathat feed on these organisms. To repeat that: half ofthe biological productivity of the ocean feedsbacteria. not fish or whales. The innumerableviruses in the oceans then feed on the bacteria. Thusviruses are an integral component of the ecology ofthe oceans. The bacterial cells lysed by the virusesbecome dissolved organic matter which can be usedby other heterotrophic ('other feeding,' notphotosynthetic but feeding the products ofphotosynthesis, just as you and I do) bacteria.

Microbes are the planet's great geoengineers.Algae and photosynthetic bacteria churn out abouthalf of the oxygen we breathe. Algae also release agas called dimethyl sulfide that rises into the air andseeds clouds. The clouds reflect incoming sunlightback out into space, cooling the planet. Viruses killthese geoengineers by the trillions every day. As themicrobial victims die, they spill open and release abillion tons of carbon a day. Some of the liberatedcarbon acts as a fertilizer, stimulating the growth ofother microbes, but some of it sinks to the bottom ofthe ocean, where it can be removed from thebiosphere for millions of years. What controls thismassive geoengineering project? The activity ofviruses.

Most viruses are either critically important tohuman well-being (through ecological engineering)

or have no impact on human biology. But virusesare opportunistic and genetically adaptable to newfood resources. The human population hasexperienced an explosive increase in the pastcentury. It took 200,000 years for humans to reachtheir first billion (in 1800), 130 years to reach thesecond billion (1930), 30 years to reach the thirdbillion (1960)..... and the human population is nowincreasing by one billion every fifteen years.

Viruses do not single out Homo sapiens for afeeding frenzy, it's just that we are so abundantlyavailable. Humans and their livestock now accountfor 96% of all mammals on the planet; we haveeffectively taken over the world. 'If you look at theworld from the point of view of a hungry virus,' thehistorian William H. McNeill has noted, 'or even abacterium-we offer a magnificent feeding groundwith all our billions of human bodies, where, in thevery recent past, there were only half as manypeople. In some 25 or 27 years, we have doubled innumber. A marvelous target for any organism thatcan adapt itself to invading us.'

There is a limitless reservoir of viruses in thenatural environment. The current corona virusoutbreak (one name for it is SARS-Covid 2) is justone of a number of 'zoonotic' (from the Greek,'animal disease') viruses that have transferred fromthis limitless reservoir of other lifeforms to humansin recent history; some others include Ebola, SARS-Covid 1, HINI 'Swine Flu, and HIV (AIDS). It isworth remembering that viruses have nolocomotion of their own; they can only spreadthrough some form of external transport. Both thetransmission of viruses to humans from otherspecies and the transmission from one person toanother is contact and density dependent.

The larger the human population grows and thegreater the density of human communities, themore virus particles will be passed through thepopulation, and the greater the potential for viraldiseases. From this ecological perspective theincreasing density of the human population of theplanet is akin to a death wish, initiated by thebiological urge to reproduce, but carried out inignorance of the ecological basis of communities oflife. It is estimated that in the oceans roughly 1e25(25 zeros) microbes, or about 100 million metrictons, die every 60 seconds due to viruses. Denseaccumulations of living cells on land are alsoultimately under viral control.

Viruses, continued from page 6

13

old when he was recaptured and rereleased duringbanding operations in Maryland in 2014. He had beenbanded in the same state in 2008. Cedar waxwings are largely frugivores; 70% oftheir diet over the year is fruit. This is why it is notuncommon to see flocks of them in our towns in the falland winter; many of the domestically planted trees andshrubs bear edible fruits. One of the favorites amongthese is the mountain ash; a flock of 100 cedarwaxwings can strip the red ash berries from a tree in afew minutes. In fact if cedar waxwings were human teenagers,they would be considered uncultured and badlybehaved. They are known to be gluttonous, eating somany berries at once that they can scarcely flyafterwards. They are also partial to fermented fruits inthe winter, and will become so inebriated from thealcohol content that they start crashing into theirsurroundings. Cedar waxwings are parasitized by cowbirds, whichlay their eggs in the waxwing nests and then expect thefoster parents to raise them. Waxwings sometimesrecongize the alien egg and throw it out of the nest, buteven if the cowbird egg hatches the nestlling often diesdue to the high-fruit diet of what is fed to the young. In summer cedar waxwings feed primarily oninsects, including small moths, caterpillers, and variousbeetles, and on outbreaks of insects like sprucebudworms. They often 'hawk' for flying insects overopen water, and certainly it is a source of considerabledelight to see them launching out from the top of a tallcottonwood and darting almost franetically over thesparkling waters. While typically these forays are brief,I saw one dance over the water for serveral minutes lastyear, catching mayflies and stoneflies as they emergedfrom the river during a hatch. The breeding season of waxwings is among thelatest of North Americcan passerines and is apparently

cued to the midsummer ripening of fruit. The birds layeggs from early June through early August; active nestshave been reported as late as October. Cedar waxwingsoften nest twice in a summer. During courtship, males and females hop towardseach other, alternating back and forth and sometimestouching their bills together. Males often pass a smallitem like a fruit, insect, or flower petal, to the female.After taking the fruit, the female usually hops away andthen returns, giving the item back to the male. Theyrepeat this a few times until, typically, the female eatsthe gift. The food item is taken as evidence of, if nottrue love, at least the capacity for the male to providefood for the nestlings. But the black mask around the eyes; can someoneplease explain to me why natural selection from aninfinite number of possibilities chose that design? Thedark mask makes the bird look daunting, adorable anddaring all in one fell swoop.

If only human relationships could be so simple; passing a berry back andforth cements the bond.

Cedar waxwings get around; their range includes all of continentalUnited States and Mexico, and parts of Canada and Central America.

A waxwing after a few fermented berries, imagining it is superbird.

Waxwings, continued from page 7

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Wildlife Sightings

Fishers were extirpated in Washington State in the1930s, so why did Lincoln L. see and photograph theone above in the Mazama area in the middle of May?Almost certainly because the Washington Departmentof Fish & Wildlife has beenreintroducing fishers in thestate since 2008. Betweenthat year and 2010 90 fisherswere imported from Canadaand introduced in OlympicNational Park, where theirnumbers have increasedsomewhat since. In 2015-2018 81 fishers were re-leased in and around RainierNational Park, and in 201885 fishers were released inNorth Cascades NationalPark. Like wolverines, fish-ers are considered to be ani-mals of ‘untouched wilderness.’ In a sign of the times,all of the fishers released have a locational transmitterimplanted under the skin, and are monitored by biolo-gists in airplanes. So much for untouched wilderness.The name ‘fisher’ seems to come from confusing thisanimal with mink, which consume mostly fish.

The male hooded merganser at right is tryingchoke down quite a large fish. It is in the ponds alongthe westside road to Carlton. The bird worked the fisharound in its mouth for a considerable period of time,and at one point I could see that the fish had ‘barbels’(whiskers) in its chin; it is a brown bullhead, a sort ofcatfish. It is a non-native, introduced species, with anatural range along the entire east coast of the conti-nent. Large fish will readily eat small ducks, and largeducks will readily eat small fish, and apparently medi-um-sized ducks will try to eat medium-sized fish.

Scott S. encountered a third dead great horned owlthat had died in a collision with a barbed wire fence.An image of the second owl he encountered is shown

in the previous issue of The Naturalist. Barbed wirefences are deadly to many forms of wildlife, includinggrouse, raptors, waterfowl and deer.

Scott S. took the picture in the middle of the page,on May 19th. It looks like a dust storm stretching fromWinthrop to Mazama, but is in fact ponderosa pinessimultaneously releasing trillions of pollen grains atthe same moment on the same day. This coordinatedaction of probably thousands of trees in a given geo-graphic area is known as masting, from an Old Ger-man word meaning ‘to fatten’ (that is, to fattendomestic animals on seeds and nuts falling on the for-est floor). Many tree species produce an abundance ofseeds only occasionally, not annually, an evolved traitto prevent the buildup of a large population of seedpredators. Plant phenology in the Methow varies bythe mile; how so many trees over such a large areacould coordinate their fertilization effort to occur si-

multaneously is unknown.Eric B. Reports that four

male harlequin ducks haveregularly been seen in LostRiver near the Lost Riverbridge in late May. Harle-quins spend most of the yearalong the Pacific coast. Theyarrive in the Methow inApril, and the males departby the middle of June. Thefemales raise their young inthe white-water rapids of theMethow and other mountainstreams, and then return tothe ocean in September. The

young often make the trip on their own, without everhaving seen or knowing there is an ocean that they areflying towards.

Craig O. had a rose-breasted grosbeak at his homenear Twisp on May 28. The only previous records thatI have for this species in the Methow are several sight-

Wildlife Sightings

ings in the years 2000 and 2001. Birds of Washingtonlists it as ‘a very rare late spring and summer visitor,’but it is not quite the foreigner that it seems to be. It isseen every year in Oregon and California, and itsbreeding range, mostly to theeast, extends into British Co-lumbia. Not only is it a‘congener’ (in the same genus)as our common black-headedgrosbeak, but the two specieswill hybridize where theirranges overlap.

Victor & Libby found theavocet pictured above at TwinLakes in early May. Theavocet’s primary range inWashington is in the Colum-bia Basin well to the south ofthe Methow, where they nestin wetlands. There are only four sightings in my re-cords for the Methow over the past 20 years, all ofthem in May.

Here at home, out of 12 available birdboxes, ‘my’western bluebirds chose the box I walk by most often,on a garden post. They went so far as to build a nestand lay three eggs, but we were all becoming nervouswrecks, as they would fly away a great distance everytime I walked by. Then I noticed they had taken overa box claimed by tree swallows and were building anew nest. What would become of the three eggs? Ichecked a week later and they were gone; I am surethe parents moved them. Few other birds can get inthose boxes (swallows, house wrens), and none wouldbe capable of removing the eggs. A fine example ofbluebird pre-natal care, I would say.

And, a new bird for the Methow! Bruce M. AndKaren J. Were at the base of Mill Hill, on the edge ofTwisp, when they heard a racket coming out of the

hillside shrubbery. The loud vocalist then flew up intoan old apple tree and showed himself: a sage thrasher!It is a bit surprising that one has not been seen in theMethow previously (on our watch), as they are list ed as‘fairly common’ in the shrub-steppe of eastern Wash-ington, and they breed in the nearby Okanogan Valley.Birds of Washington says they are ‘sagebrush obligates,‘ except when they breed in bitterbush. Large stands ofsagebrush are few and far between in the Methow,while bitterbrush dominates the shrub-steppe. The booksays that they will next in fragmented habitat-- a goodskill to have in this day and age.

This addition brings the cumulative 25-year Meth-ow bird list to 278; I will post a copy at The Naturalistwebsite from whence you can download it or print itout.

John A. found a dead pocket gopher stashed fivefeet up in a tree. Instead of taking a photograph of it hiswife Caryl a sketched picture--just the way all natural-

ists shared their sightings be-fore there were cameras. Whatpredator stashed it there? Anowl is the most likely creature.

And lastly, as Pat L. notedwhen she shared the image be-low, a flotilla of ducklings!These are common mergan-sers, seen in the Methow Riverat the suspension bridge nearMazama. Mergansers will layup to 17 eggs, so the 14 duck-lings seen below are probablyall the female’s offspring (theother possibility is ‘egg dump-

ing,’ females laying in another bird’s nest). Mergansersmost often nest in holes in trees, made by woodpeckersor natural decay. It must have been extremely cozy inthat nest hole with a big adult bird and 14 eggs for the30 day incubation period.

Methow NaturalistPO Box 175Winthrop, WA 98862www.methownaturalist.com

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TWISP, WAPERMIT NO. 14

Living on the WindScott Weidensaul

The truth about migrationis that birds are conjuredfrom the soft April air of a Gulf Coast sky.The blue is rolled up to makeindigo buntings and cerulean warblers,the fog folds in on itself to birthgray catbirds and gnatcatchers,while the orange clouds at duskgive of themselves to create orioles.And the liquid gold of the afternoon sunis out drop by precious drop,to form male prothonotary warblers.Once the sky is full to burstingwith these new-made wonders,it lets them fall like snow on the land.