Paintings by BRENT SPINK

My good friend and neighbor, Brent Spink, is exhibiting a large collection of his work this Thursday through Sunday (April 28th - May 1st) at 309 North Burdick, right next door to Sarkozy's bakery.

Brent is a master painter of the natural world and has an uncanny ability to capture the sublime, ephemeral beauty of a landscape, whether it's a pristine wetland or a bulldozed wood lot. He's exhibiting works from huge to small, new to old, surreal to real, and epic to everyday.

If you want to open beautiful, new horizons in your home, now is the time to invest in a Spink*. 

So, come take in the stirring visions of one of Michigan's finest painters. He's also a great guy to talk to. He'll be there.

Hope to see you,

Matt

Click here to see his Gazette article and get the specific times.

*If he sells enough work, perhaps he won't move out West as planned.

Idelle

Karen Cleveland of the DNR was able to identify our female falcon using the band identification on her leg. And no, HP does not stand for Hewlett-Packard.

Her name is "Idelle". She was born on May 24th, 2009 at Gold Rock Point, in the Split Rock Lighthouse State Park in Lake County, Minnesota.

All the way from the gorgeous Lake Superior lakeshore - she's a city girl now. Amazing.

Idelle.

Peregrines In Our Future...

Around this time last year I wrote a post about falcons in Kalamazoo, inspired by a rare sighting of merlins that appeared to be nesting on the west side of town . At the end of that post I mentioned the periodic sightings of peregrine falcons in downtown Kalamazoo and how it would be great if they decided to make our little downtown their home. Well, sometimes in life our wishes are fulfilled.

Hi atop the 5/3rds Bank Building, just inside a rain trough on the 15th floor, rest three peach colored eggs with little reddish-brown specks. Sitting on top is a female falcon, expanding her breast feathers to envelop and protect her precious clutch from the cold spells of a capricious April, or pilfering crows. Periodically, the male, or tiercel, swoops up to the ledge with a dead bird offering and is met with a cry from his hungry mate. Their falcon chatter rings out like the familiar cry of a coopers hawk and is quickly becoming the tell tale sound of our resident pair of nesting peregrines.

For the past two years, people in town have observed peregrines perched on buildings, lamp posts, towers, and soaring the open sky, but never before have we had them nesting. It's well known that peregrines have been nesting in Grand Rapids, Detroit, and other larger, urban centers, but it remained in doubt--at least for me--whether peregrines would deem Kalamazoo suitable habitat. I've always perceived Kalamazoo as a baby city, with only one, maybe two buildings barely qualifying as sky-scrapers. I always wondered whether we were "big" enough for the largest of falcons.

It appears as though we are.

The old, American National Bank, with it's 1929 art deco designs carved into the limestone facade, serves as an urban cliff, looking out over the city and the vast territory of the Kalamazoo River valley, rife with falcon prey: the ubiquitous rock pigeon, the mourning dove, starlings, and countless other birds, including an occasional water fowl (one construction worker noted a duck head on one of the ledges of the building).

Peregrines have adapted beautifully to the rise of a new and almost entirely manufactured landscape: the city-scape. All across the country, and even the world, peregrines are nesting on buildings in our cities, as well as on bridges, smoke-stacks, power plants, radio towers, and any other man made structure that affords that aerial perch to survey the skies for food.

But, let's not count our falcons before they hatch. Our birds chose a questionable spot for nesting: a copper-lined rain trough with nothing to cradle the eggs and fully exposed to rain water, making a successful hatching pretty dubious. Karen Cleveland, all-bird biologist at the Michigan DNR, says it's not unusual for a rookie pair to try nesting in these less than perfect places. A rain trough will of course have water moving, and even coursing through during a torrential downpour, and that's not good for incubation. It can sometimes take successive, annual failings for a couple to attempt a new, successful location. Eventually they get it, and with a bird that can live up to 15 years in the wild, they have some time before they can make a contribution to the overall population of peregrines.

If the birds fail this first attempt, the Bank will hopefully put in (at the request of the DNR), a layer of pea-stone, or install a simple nest-box for either a second round of breeding this year or a completely fresh start next year. A little assistance from the human kind can go a long way, and if you're familiar with the plight of the peregrine over the last 50 years, you know humans have been instrumental in restoring the endangered peregrine population. Which is only appropriate considering it was human-made pesticides that decimated peregrine populations during the middle of the last century. I'll talk about this in a later post.

So, let's root for our resident pair and their first, vulnerable clutch. One way or another, I think they're here to stay. And soon enough, we should have a positive ID on each parent's bands. That way we'll be able to identify each bird and know exactly where they were born! In fact, there's an entire website dedicated to tracking and following the lineage of peregrines in the Midwest. You can find it at the Midwest Peregrine Society.

Although we're by no means the first city to be graced by peregrines, this is our first pair, and for that reason they're special. The fastest animal on the planet now resides on East Michigan Avenue. I'd say that's pretty cool.

I'll be posting more photos and writing about our new celebrity couple. So stay tuned, and either look up for the falcons, or look down on the ground around 5/3rds Bank - you just might see the leftovers from a falcon lunch.

PEREGRINES!

PEREGRINE FALCONS...

IN DOWNTOWN...

KALAMAZOO!

MORE TO COME...

Why did the swan cross the road?

All loss of life is just that, a loss. Sometimes it fits neatly into the circle of life, and sometimes it stands out like a tear in the fabric.

A freshly killed mute swan, only a hundred yards down the road from my house, makes you wonder where it fits into that equation. Clearly a tragic fate for a grand and beautiful bird, but if you're familiar with the problem with mute swans as an invasive species, muscling out the more timid, native, trumpeter swan, I found myself thinking of it as a tipping of the scale, even though I realize road-killed mute swans have absolutely no bearing on the real balance of populations.

It's funny how our feelings towards a species change when we have backstory about their character and role in ecology. People who know nothing about mute swans adore the animal, where as people who are ecologically informed often despise them. It's kind of like discovering a well loved sports figure beats and kills dogs in his spare time.

Perhaps the most telling fact to come out of my discovery of the dead swan was how motorists responded to the situation. First of all, it was a motorist who hit, and killed, the swan, and didn't stop to remove the animal from the road. Secondly, the whole time I was laying on the ground filming the swan, not a single car stopped to pull the swan out of the road. The only person to stop, did so because they thought I was injured on the side of the road. Like human road kill.

It took a 911 call to usher in a Kalamazoo Township officer who arrived on the scene and finally dragged the carcass off the road. The caller reported seeing a "suspicious looking package" in the middle of the road.

BACKYARD ANTLERS

With the blanket of snow now dissolved into the earth, another white now stands out against the dull browns of late winter: the bone white of antlers on the ground. It's shed season.

In that spirit, I'm posting a deleted scene from ANIMALS AMONG US of a family that shares their first, exciting encounter with antler sheds right in their backyard.

I deleted this and a number of other scenes involving people's thoughts and stories involving urban wildlife. I opted to go with my own personal journey of discovery in the film for thematic simplicity. It was a tough decision, but now I have a chance to finally share some of those scenes with you. Enjoy.

The Star of the Show

I want to thank all the people who came down to the Nature Connection last Friday to see me and the animals. It was a never ending stream of people and conversation, with wildlife and the environment dominating the airwaves. Just the way we like it.

I had a great time and am grateful for old friends showing up, as well as many new friends introducing themselves and sharing some kind of affinity for animals, photography or the environment.

My greatest joy was being able to explain exactly where and how the photographs were taken, especially since most people knew the exact locations. People were dumbfounded to find out that the buck pictured above was photographed at WMU's Research Park, and that the church in the background was a couple hundred yards away, with Highway 131 running between the two. That fact elicited a number of "aha's". And from now on, I bet they'll see that spot on the highway in a completely different light.

Based on feedback from people, as well as sales, the clear favorite for the night was the gray fox photo, which didn't surprise me since it was probably my favorite as well. I love that photo because it's the quintessential "urban animal" (although playgrounds are just as easily sub-urban or even rural). And with the fox so small in relation to the bars of the jungle gym, it perfectly represents that "little piece of the wild".

New Work at the Nature Connection

I'm proud to announce that I'm the featured artist at the Nature Connection for the months of March and April. The opening reception will be the March Art Hop, Friday, March 4th from 5-9pm.

I'm unveiling a new series of photographs, including the "Holy Buck", a glorious picture of a 9 point buck in front of a church (the photo reminds me of the Jagermeister logo), the rough-legged hawk pictured above, a beautiful shot of a doe on an old railroad bed, a little carolina wren, and many others, including a few favorites from my show at Water Street Coffee Joint last Fall.

I'd also like to mention that nearly all the animals were photographed in Kalamazoo, making the majority of the animals truly "native". This is a continuation of my urban wildlife theme that began years ago with my wildlife documentary, ANIMALS AMONG US.

So come on down this Friday for some good cheer, conversation, and of course, the splendor of the natural world.

The Hot Months of Winter

For wildlife organizations, Valentines Day is an opportunity to shed light on the mating habits of animals: how the wild things hook up, mate, "love" one another (although the scientific ilk will shy away from the word) and stay together - or not. And for good reason, it's pretty intriguing stuff.

In our own neck of the woods, this final stretch of winter is actually a hot period for a number of species. Fox and coyote are pairing up and mating; the coyote being a little later than fox. And with their sex-drives engaged, I'm hoping to exploit their lust and lure some in for a photo by impersonating a female (this is done vocally - not visually). Howl like a female in estrus and a male just might come running in.

Another notorious winter breeder/nester is the great horned owl, pairing up in January/February. Although the screech owl is a little later in March, I included a photo of a lone male who moved into a friend's wood-duck box. He's waiting for a female to come along in search of a mate with a home. I think this guy's got it going on; I Hope she finds him.

BIG HEART - BIG LOVE

A model of a blue whale's heart.