5b•The birds & the bees, life and death, natural causes, and comedy
Relativity, realities, and perspectives from nature photography
Part 2
All images by LensAfield
This part will primarily be about looking at death and its role in the life of the animal types discussed previously in part 1. We will start by returning briefly to reproduction and the start of new life.
There was a time when the scientific consensus was that only the human female, among all female animals, could experience the pleasure of orgasms and La Petite Mort. That assertion is now suspect, but for the males of some animal species, there is a near-certainty of Le Mort Finale.
It is unlikely we equate sex with death, but there are times in the animal kingdom when sex is not just the beginning of life but also results in its end. Male praying mantises are highly likely to lose their heads and become fast-food for the female immediately after providing sexual service. Male spiders of some species will likely meet a similar demise. Salmon spawn and die. The reproductive strategy of having a singular, usually fatal mating in a lifetime is called semelparity.
Some males in some species actually appear to **** themselves to death, in a variant frenetic suicidal reproductive strategy. (This is a PG-rated post. The correct answer is ‘mate.’ Thanks for playing).
Death-by-sex is an interesting side-note and bridge between life-and-death-and-life. It is a relatively rare occurrence in the totality of the animal kingdom so let’s move on to what is not.
Perspectives on death to sustain life
Natural relationships and processes result in exponentially larger numbers of those lower on the food pyramid dying for the benefit of a much smaller number above. When you consider all the meals you have eaten containing various chicken parts, how many chickens have you likely consumed in the course of your life? How many cows, pigs, lambs, or goats? How many shrimp, clams, or mussels in just one meal?
And let’s not forget that all those plants we eat, be they fresh and eaten raw and whole, or cut and cooked, or as products like wheat converted from cereal grains to flour to bread, were living things, too.
Death sustains life. After years of studying and photographing many lower animals, I came to realize the term ‘food-cycle’ could be used almost interchangeably with the term ‘life-cycle.’
In their tiny macro worlds, these interactions are just ordinary and predestined parts of their life-cycle. Certain species prey only upon other certain species, maybe only one. Like humans, some are more general in their predatory practices. In higher animals, there seems to be an inborn taboo against eating one’s kind and limitations as to what is acceptable for consumption. Not so much in some lower forms.
Human consumption of other animals involves a process: There is a slaughter to bleed the animal out, then butchering, distribution, more butchering, packaging, selling, buying, possibly storing, then preparing and consuming at our leisure.
We think of the predatory process in the wild as the hunter killing the prey and then quickly consuming what it can before the kill attracts unwanted competitors for the spoils.
Now we will consider some common means of dispatch and processing for the kinds of animals spotlighted here, specifically insects.
What do you see?
What do you see now?
The bald-faced hornet usually dispatches its catch by decapitation, but here has split the head (the other half is off to the right) and is expertly butchering the fly into parts which it will gather up and carry back to the nest.
In this life-and-death drama, this time around, it was hornet 1, fly 0.
Cicada killers are large wasps, harmless to humans, that eat nectar and lead solitary lives. The female is a prodigious excavator. She will dig a nest of multiple chambers. Into each, she will put from one to three cicadas she has caught, paralyzed, flipped onto its back, and carried back to the nest (despite being up to twice her weight). She will place one of her eggs on top of a particular spot on each cicada underbelly. About three days later, the larvae will hatch. Each larva eats its own immobile cicada in such a way as to keep it alive for the two weeks it will take to consume it.
As common as internal, intra-oral or direct-ingestion is, many species do not have anatomies for that type of feeding.
And a reminder that perspective is relative.
Sometimes it is linearly progressive:
Small fish get eaten by bigger fish, who get eaten by even bigger fish.
Sometimes it’s circular:
One minute the hunter has successfully captured and assimilated its prey into itself to sustain life…
…and in the next becomes the prey.
It is but one sequence of an infinite number occurring in the natural world we rarely see or think about.
Perspectives on other means of death in nature
As humans, we tend to think of death from a perspective associated with ourselves: The result of “old age” or diseases and conditions, all couched under the phrase “died of natural causes.” We tend to ignore, through blissful ignorance, what death by natural causes is in much of the animal world we generally don’t see and don’t care about much, if at all.
Nature vs. nurture strategies are realities based on where in the pecking order a species is situated. Those at the top produce fewer offspring but nurture them for a relatively long period to a level of maturity that gives them the best odds of survival. Those at the bottom do not nurture offspring, instead produce sheer numbers to assure that a few survive to reproductive maturity.
There are times when even the best care is not a guarantee of a successful outcome.
A large 10ft-tall sticker bush close to the house is a favorite nesting site for many local bird species. Over the years, I had successfully documented the nesting activity within.
I could observe activities outside the bush from the living room window. Getting shots inside the nest was not easy. I could manage to get in close using a ladder, pick my moments, get my photos, and get out without causing much parental stress or me getting ripped up by those thorns.
All seemed to be proceeding well in the nest for its three newly-hatched cardinals. On the morning of their third day, I observed the parents making their endless rounds of procuring food and feeding the hatchlings. While they were both away on a foraging session, I quickly got my shots to document daily development and then had to leave to run errands.
When I returned, I looked out the living room window and observed the father in another nearby bush. He was looking intently at the ground at the base of the sticker bush but not appearing to be agitated, simply observing something I couldn’t see from my vantage point. I did not see the mother.
I went outside and carefully approached the scene. The father flew off to a new perch. Looking on the ground, I saw two of the hatchlings slowly writhing, eyes still closed. Both were bloodied from wounds in their thin translucent skin over various parts of their tiny bodies. They were doomed.
At this early stage of their development, there is no way the hatchlings were energetic enough to have pushed themselves out of the nest. All signs suggested a marauder had invaded the nest.
But this outcome was unexpected and made me pause — for the first time ever — to consider whether this action was the result of one or both parents pushing them out of the nest. There are reasons why this might happen, including the detection of physical handicaps or diseases that would prevent a successful development into the world. Or the possibility the parents did this because of the continued threat of another marauder attack. Some experts might contend that my actions around the nest were seen as a threat to hatchling survival, causing the parents to terminate the process. Parents of some species have been observed eating those they have jettisoned from the nest. However, there was no sign of the third hatchling, intact or in pieces.
So were the observed wounds the result of being pecked and tossed about by the parents or invader, then falling seven feet through a dense sticker bush, having their delicate skin and developing organs stabbed and ripped by the thorns during the fall to the ground? And where was the third hatchling?
I had been doing this for years. Until this event, every nest, in every shrub, every year, has had 100% success of all hatchlings fledging despite my careful intrusions. But I couldn’t shake the sense that I may have some blame for this outcome.
We see so many living birds. Have you noticed that we rarely find them dead? Has that ever made you wonder where birds go to die?
[Addendum: see this post]
One winter day, I looked out my window and observed the disturbance of a large shrub in the next-door neighbor’s yard, about 20 yards away. I assumed it was some squirrels playing. After a minute, a magnificent goldern hawk emerged with a bird in its talons. It flew to a clear spot of snow in my yard about 10 yards away from my window. It took a look around as it held down the grackle, methodically ripping out feathers and randomly tossing them around the area. Then I watched it use its hooked beak to rip open the belly of the bird to disembowel it. It tossed the bloody guts around the area of what had been a pristine blanket of fresh white snow.
It took its time ripping out hunks of flesh and consuming them as it casually looked around. I stood there mesmerized but not once thinking to get a camera.
Its meal completed, the scene strewn with feathers, guts, and blood, it flew up into a nearby tree where it rested for a good hour as it digested its meal.
This story will not have photos either, simply because I didn’t take any:
I had a project to do outside that involved laying down paving stones. When I finished, I sealed the approximately half-inch deep and wide spaces between them with a self-leveling caulk that doesn’t completely cure for about 24 hours.
The following day, I went out and found a pile of feathers strewn around my work area. I also saw a single bird leg stuck in the caulk, severed off above the knee. The feathers told me the bird was — had been — a mockingbird. I haven’t a clue why it was on the ground and got stuck in the hardening caulk. There were little bits of bird, now covered in ants, mixed in with feathers, as well as some bloodstains, scattered about on my pavers. I’m sure I uttered something quite expletive to vent my anger over the callous disregard for my labor.
As I cleaned up the mess, my sense of perspective changed as I began to visualize what happened. Next, I considered the cat’s perspective, crouched under the car a few feet away, surveilling the scene as it comprehended its good fortune just before striking. I then considered the state of mind and the raucous noise the bird likely made as it panicked over its predicament and foresaw what was about to occur. After attacking, the cat was probably a little perplexed by what was preventing it from dragging the bird away. The visual evidence suggested it settled on consuming most of it where it was stuck, eventually gnawing through the leg to separate the carcass to take elsewhere.
I came out of the house, headed for the garden shed when I noticed something dark in the grass. As I got closer, I could tell it was a bird, not standing up but squatting.
This was very unusual. It wasn’t moving. It made no effort to escape as I approached. Was it alive? On closer examination from only a few feet away, I could see it was holding its head up, eyes open. I could imagine the fear it felt being in the open, on the ground, vulnerable, apparently incapacitated for reasons not obvious. It made no effort to move and made no sounds of alarm.
Fifteen minutes later, the head was no longer held up. The eyes are open, as they appear to have been the whole time but had dulled. The bird now appeared to be dead.
I reached down and picked it up. There was no movement and no perception of a heartbeat, no sign of trauma.
I placed the bird on a nearby shrub so I could monitor it as I worked, just in case it appeared to revive. It never did.
Had it been sick? Was it dying of old age?
Was it aware of its impending demise?
Was it in pain?
I pondered these questions for a few moments.
Would I have these kinds of questions and empithetic concerns about things not furry or feathery?
I tossed the carcass in the trash with the rest of the yard debris and continued with my work.
I am continually watching shrubs in the yard for evidence of mockingbirds building nests. When they are happy, they constantly sing, starting very early in the morning. They make it hard to sleep. When agitated, they screech and emit other vile noises from hell that get more prevalent during the mating-nesting season. I do not want mockingbirds nesting on the property.
They can produce nasty warnings if you get close to where they are building a nest or have one just completed but tend to do their venting from a safe perch nearby. But linger when eggs or hatchlings are present, they become screaming banshees or will appear out of nowhere and stage multiple flybys of your head, so close you can feel the throbbing air pressure oscillations as the wings beat past your ear. If you simply walk by a shrub that has a nest with eggs or hatchlings, you will likely get tag-team flybys past your head for the duration of the nesting period.
I must prevent them from becoming established; otherwise, I can’t garden. I can’t even mow without constant harassment.
So this one morning I am out working in the yard when I see a mockingbird on top of shrub. As I approached the shrub to search for a nest, I noticed the bird was not flying away, nor was it attacking me. It was also a juvenile so there was no reason to suspect a mate would be nearby to harrass me.
As I got to the shrub I it simply moved away from me to the opposite side. Very strange. Then I got a glimpse of it out in the open and could see there was a problem.
For whatever reason, this bird was unable to fly.
The following image was taken eight days after the ones above. It is not the same bird. Given their proximity and state of development, they were likely nest-mates. These excrescent maladies could be xanthomas, feather cysts, or signs of a parasite. But regardless of the nature of the affliction, it prevented the bird from flying and otherwise function normally, probably leading to its premature demise.
I’ll admit I probably never think about it until I see it: Wild animals are prone to their share of physical problems, most resulting in certain death, including bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections, tumors, and broken limbs.
The death-by-cat was gruesome — Christians vs. lions gruesome — not the usual way cats find, capture, and dispatch birds. Hawks don’t usually look at other birds as their preferred prey, but those stories are also not that uncommon. The bird in the grass was an unusual and unresolved scenario. Obviously, to this day, I’m still pondering its stoic death. And only once before, a few years back, do I recall ever seeing a bird with an obvious physical issue that would likely impact its survival.
Anthropogenic death
All of the above scenarios were natural, even if somewhat unusual. Other causes of massive bird deaths are not.
In Philadephia, on October 2, 2020, as reported by numerous sources, over 1,000 birds died due to crashing into buildings, well over the 30-per-day average. The reasons speculated in the reports all had to do with the glass facades. The reflections of cloud cover, city lights, and the night sky celestial landmarks possibly distorted the birds’ navigational abilities, especially during seasonal migrations.
The problem isn’t just with sky-scrapers, but with all kinds of buildings and things such as wind turbines, power lines, even automobiles. Published studies I found dating from the 1990s claimed bird mortality from building collisions alone is between 100-million and 1-billion per year — and that’s just here in the US. More recent studies put the median figure closer to around 600-million. According to one study, building collisions are the second most common cause of bird deaths, behind feral and pet cat kills, said to be up to four times greater.
Poisoning from toxins we have introduced in agriculture and the general environment are another concern.
These examples do not answer how, why, and where billions of other birds go to die. It will likely remain one of the great natural mysteries of life and death on Earth.
I was out in the yard shooting bees and flowers when out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a fairly large fly landing on the stonework next to me. I glanced at it and then did a double-take.
It had no abdominal section. It was severed clean off. How? The wings were nearly intact. There are two small but very clean slices taken off the inside back edges of both wings with the same angle. Whatever happened was incredibly quick, probably while its wings were spread as they would be in flight so that the cut clipped all three body parts on the same plane perpendicular to its flight. Perhaps it had been trapped and resting between the back door and the screen door. Maybe as I came out, and as the screen door began to close, it began to fly to daylight and got cleanly clipped in its wing cycle as the screen door slammed shut behind me. Sounds plausible, but who knows?
I kept shooting the flowers and bees, checking on the fly every few minutes. It was alive and doing fine. Perhaps 45 minutes or so later, I saw it walk into the grass a few feet away. When I went looking for it a few minutes later, I couldn’t find it. This was undoubtedly a fatal injury, but I have no idea when or how it happened or how long the fly survived.
Did this qualify as an anthropogenic death?
We’d rather not think about creatures that tend to be out and about in the dark. From our perspective, they may seem mysterious, secretive, nefarious, villainous, inherently foreboding, and dangerous — to us.
We have little awareness, recognition, thought, understanding, or respect for the final act in the lifecycle of these decidedly uncuddly lifeforms. Most are innocuous. Many are directly beneficial. But if they occupy our space and invade our psyche, they have to go.
It is quite common for the female cicada killer to dig her nest near edges of sidewalks, driveways, and walkways. She must have been on the sidewalk, working just outside of her nest that afternoon when two neighborhood teenage thugs were passing by.
My neighbor, who saw the entire episode and was aware I was doing a series of shoots based on the activities around the nest (lying on the sidewalk tends to make people curious), said they took turns stomping on her before he could run them off. Why? Did they do it just for thrills, just because it was there and they could? Who cares, right? Or were they scared and decided this was an opportunity to prove their bad-ass manliness?
Our fears and phobias can be detrimental to all concerned. We have this perspective of fear despite the reality of many being beneficial to us. These benefits tend to be indirect and thus unrecognized and un- or under-appreciated. The consequences of this ignorance appear to be of no concern — to us — and may not be, if limited to small numbers of casualties. At least not until enough have been destroyed to have an impact we can now detect that directly affects us.
Perspectives on Conservation
A less obvious connotation of dying is a process in a critically or mortally damaged state of existence. I’m talking about reduced numbers seen of individuals of a species. Or realizing I haven’t seen some species in years. The issue is of diminishing or destroying ecosystems about which we are not likely to notice or care.
This year fewer butterfly species were attracted to the property, despite new plantings specifically to attract them. I had two patches of milkweed, the preferred food source for Monarch butterfly development. I saw them visited by various butterfly species, including Monarchs. Still, not one caterpillar of any kind was seen on the milkweed or any other plants that other species utilize. Compared to recent years, the hibiscus hedge was home to a better-than-average number of aphids, but the number of ladybugs drawn by them was way down.
I didn’t see a single cicada killer (perhaps because there were also very few cicadas).
There were fewer dragonflies, damselflies, lightning bugs, and no blue bottle flies. From my photographic perspective, there were (almost) no cucumber beetles; from my gardening perspective, that was was great! I had a terrific cucumber season because of their absence.
Many arachnids and insects that usually inhabit my grapevine were not seen at all or in reduced numbers (except the damned Japanese beetles trying to destroy the canape).
But, luckily, I also have not yet seen a Spotted Lanternfly. This colorful, damaging pest, recently introduced from Thailand, attacks grapevines and has been seen here in NJ. [Ed. addendum: That all changed in 2021.]
I tot I taw a hummingbird, but no, it was just an imposter clearwing moth.
One.
Slugs and snails? They have been decreasing steadily for years. Flower flies were down in species count, individual numbers, and physical size despite no change in attracting plants. I didn’t see a single praying mantis.
There were fewer common orb weavers, jumping, and other spiders, although basilica orb weavers seemed to be holding their own.
Maybe the only increase I noticed was the number of bee species and individual numbers, a pleasant surprise. But that wasn’t clear until certain new, long-blooming, broadly attractive plants added this year jacked the stats up as the season continued. (I assume the reader is aware of the severe problem of decreasing honeybee populations and potential consequences. Hopefully, as some have suggested, the new threat of the newly-introduced giant Asian “murder” hornets who attack their nests might not be as devastating as first feared.)
They’re just bugs, you say. Why should I care? You see a bug; you swat the bug, spray the bug, step on the bug, and don’t give it a second thought. We often fail to remember their role in breaking down the remnants of death, recycling them back into the biome to be assimilated into a new life. Or, in the case of bees and other pollinators, their necessity for the viability of our food supply. Or just reminding ourselves of the complexity and necessity of these organisms, figuratively and literally, below us as we continue to destroy habitat.
We don’t think about and therefore don’t much care about, such things living and dying all around us. They don’t matter compared to our inflated sense of self-importance and dominance. Most are disappearing. Search using the phrase “where have all the insects gone” for more sources. [addendum: See also this Wired article.]
[A superb, highly pictorial article on the disappearance of insects]
Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, the author of The Diversity of Life, once said, “If all humankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
There’s that perspective thing again. Here’s a couple more:
The size of creatures results in structural complexity involving specialized tissues, organs, and systems. These are the latent seeds of inevitable disease, corporal decay, and ultimate demise. Robins have a three, maybe four-year lifespan. Domesticated geese have lived for 30 years. Some tortoises and other reptiles have been documented to live at least 150 years.
Most bacteria reproduce by simple mitosis, splitting into two identical iterations. That genetically defined single one-cell organism — the simplest of all organisms — theoretically has lived, could live — as an infinite extension of itself — forever — backward and forward in time.
Natural causes
As we have seen, on individual levels, the relativity of reality can change in mere moments. There are broader, more complex changes that will not become obvious for years, but we should become more aware of them now.
I’m sure you have at least heard of conservation groups such as The National Audubon Society, World Wildlife Fund, Birdlife International, and others like them. Their purpose is to raise awareness and advance animal conservation, often of “flagship species” — usually mammals and birds presented as being oh so adorable.
I’ll bet you never heard of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (named after the extinct Xerces blue butterfly). Invertebrates are those creatures (other than politicians) with no cerebral column, more commonly known as a spine. These include insects, arachnids, mollusks, crustaceans, corals, worms, among others. There are approximately 1.3 million invertebrate species which may constitute 95–99% of all living animal species. About 80% are insects whose numbers alone are estimated to be around 10-quintillion (10 followed by 18 zeros). [added 9/26/22: A recent article states the number of ants alone is 20 quintillion.]
A million insect species have been identified, but some say there may be at least 4 million more. They are major components of the food chain and also provide ecological balance, as noted by Wilson. Included in their numbers are those responsible for pollination and decomposition, among other vital functions necessary for life-in-general — our lives, in particular — and biodiversity on the planet.
We at the apex of the ecological and food pyramids need to have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the critical biology of those at the base who support us. This is one purpose of my photography. Most of my images are not the kind people want to buy and put up on the wall, but about things we could all benefit from knowing more about if we were just a little more aware of the world we dominate. I have spent a lot more money in that pursuit than I have made in selling its products.
Mind-bending nature comedy
If you think about it, comedy takes reality perceived “normally” and twists it into a new potential reality, often presenting something commonly recognized one way, redirected onto another unrelated situation.
As for the “that leg’s gotta hurt” line…not an issue. Do you recall the image in part 1 of the bees mating with legs up? From your experience and human perspective, you probably assumed the legs-up were hers. Look again. I’ll wait.
She’s not on her back, and those aren’t her legs! I have many photos of males assuming this guard position to prevent other males from getting into a position to challenge, as well as examples showing that same posture as a simple self-defense mechanism:
And now a truth-reveal regarding the midnight meeting of the cicada killer and nightcrawler photo:
Let not your heart be troubled for the poor nightcrawler. Know that
1) this was a natural shot of the nightcrawler.
2) I added the cicada killer later.
3) the scene would never happen naturally.
4) the male cicada killer has no stinger, and despite what looks like an aggressive demeanor, is harmless.
Sometimes I twist perspective by tapping into human perceptions of what could seem likely, reinforcing an expectation of certain inevitability:
How about twisting iconic movie characters?
A final perspective and reality check
Death as the cessation of life is observable, inevitable part of living. I have often joked that the indisputable leading cause of death is birth. From the perspective of these creatures, life is a competition that depends heavily on the certainty of death-by-violence. They tend to have a predestined alpha and omega. The only question is how that demise is likely to happen and for what purpose.
Such is the constant relative churn and balance of life and death in the natural world around us.
Relativity.
Reality.
Perspective.
I hope you will give yours a quick audit. And then kindly pass this along to someone who might benefit froming doing the same.
