The Natural Patriot

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

After years — decades even — of resentful servitude to the Bill Gates colossus, after years of barely suppressed ridicule from my spouse who has been a Mac user from the beginning, I have at long last achieved escape velocity. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a historic moment:

I am posting this from my brand spanking new, cool-as-all-get-out MacBook Air! Yes, the one that you can fit into an interoffice envelope. The one that stopped Charlie Rose (or somebody) dead in his tracks at airport security because the thing is so cool, the TSA guys didn’t believe it was a real computer (they eventually let him through, you’ll be relieved to know). I have become . . . the guy on the right. Or at least, I no longer have to worry, in my darker moments, that I have become the guy on the left.

I don’t mean to rub it in about the Air. I’m just excited to be starting a new life on the sunny side of the street.

The transition has, however, made me realize that the format of the website here is showing some signs of age, now that I can see the light in the new, wider format. The Natural Patriot’s crack engineering department will be on that soon, certainly within the next decade . . .

I refer not to a panicked entreaty from a ship at sea, nor to the planned March in MacArthur Park, LA, regarding immigrants’ rights.

Instead, I return to the original usage of the term, and offer warm wishes for the festival marking the beginning of the fertile season of the year.  May Day is approximately equivalent to the festival of Beltane in the old Gaelic tongue (which indeed is the word for the month of May in that language), one of the eight festivals marking the turning of the wheel of the year in the ancient earth-centered traditions, and revived today among Neo-Pagans, who generally celebrate it on April 30th.  Specifically, Beltane is one of the cross-quarter holidays, midway in the solar cycle between the spring equinox and the summer solstice.

For the ancient Celts, who were primarily herders, Beltane marked the beginning of the warm months of the year, when the cattle were brought out to their summer pastures, and crops began to grow.  It was celebrated with bonfires and (evidently rather bawdy) dancing around the Maypole, the significance of which in a fertility celebration is not difficult to guess.  At least these are some of the traditions that have survived into recent centuries and even to the present day in various countries of the Celtic fringe of Europe. 

So: This is an opportunity to step back from our electronically saturated indoor lives, open our eyes and other senses to the world waking up around us, smell the fresh earth, and remember where it all comes from.   

Good wishes to all for a fertile season and a happy harvest to come.

I’m excited to announce the inauguration of the Timberneck Creek Biodiversity and Habitat Restoration Project, Phase I. Although it has also been called, more prosaically, “cleaning up my yard”, I prefer to think about it in a larger context as one small step in the goal of world domination of suburban backyards in the service of facilitating native wildlife (of all sizes), battling the spread of invasive species, and promoting truth, justice and the American way generally.   

So far, the project has one unpaid employee (me), though I have received additional in-kind matching support from Liz, who has agreed to free a portion of my time that would otherwise be devoted to folding laundry so that I can hack weeds and grub around in the dirt instead. 

History 

A bit of background may be in order here.  In 1995 we bought this house, a modest Virginia farmhouse built in 1920, on 1.6 acres of land along Timberneck Creek, a tidal creek bordered by salt marsh cordgrass and marsh elder bushes.  It is by general agreement a beautiful spot, which explains why we bought the place despite the absence of a driveway, a stove, or central heat and air conditioning, a palpable breeze around the edges of the closed windows in winter, and an appalling abundance of shed snake skins in the attic.

But I digress. The place had been bush-hogged shortly before we saw it, doubtless to show off the panoramic view of the adjacent creek to best effect, but over the ensuing years, the exuberant vegetation of the area had sprouted up again with remarkable vigor.  A few years ago the scales fell from my eyes and I realized that we could not even see the water any more — in its place, our panorama had become deepest darkest jungle.  This was partly due to strong recruitment of sassafras trees, which can easily grow 2-3 feet in a year in this neck o’ the woods, but was primarily the fault of the diabolical duo of privet, an infernal invasive alien shrub, and greenbrier.  Greenbrier is a native vine that resembles barbed wire except that it’s alive. It seems to prefer the company of privet, and grows with it in impenetrable thickets.

This would not do. 

The first campaign

I have always aimed to maximize native diversity on the property.  Over the years I had planted various trees and shrubs, and ripped out bits of greenbrier and privet here and there, mostly haphazardly.  Sought out, for example, the only sweetgum on the property and cleared the vines and surrounding saplings to give it a little breathing room.

But a couple years ago I decided to get serious.  I declared war on the jungle and went at it with hedge clippers and a bowsaw, which required no fossil fuel, exposed me to fresh air (as well as thorns and the occasional attack by angry yellowjackets trampled underfoot), and most importantly, allowed me to be selective, axing the bad guys and nurturing the good, such as little volunteer dogwoods.  I have now almost eliminated privet from most of the property and cleared out a substantial part of the greenbrier.  We can now see the sunshine glinting off the little waves on the creek, and the leaves of trees (as opposed to solid jungle) fluttering in the breeze.  The azaleas are beautiful in spring.  The dogwoods and redbuds have reached the age where they are beginning to produce big masses of flowers.  Ma and Pa can sit on the porch and survey our domain with a lemonade.  Or, more often, a martini.

Back to the future

The next phase began after I chanced on a piece about Doug Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home in the NY Times (see my previous post).  I bought the book and read it.  I cannot say enough about this book — it fundamentally changed the way I think about my yard specifically, and American suburbia generally.  Here at last is something of substance — something practical — that we as individuals can do to stem the receding tide of biodiversity where we live.  And by becoming intimate with the plants and creatures and ecosystems to which we are connected, we gain a lot more besides.  I enthusiastically recommend the book to any homeowner, gardener, educator, or for that matter anyone simply interested in the natural history of their surroundings (albeit the details are focused on the mid-Atlantic region of the USA).  

The basic premise of the book is that we should actively promote vegetation native to our particular areas because it supports native (beneficial) insects, which in turn support a variety of native wildilfe.  In contrast, the introduced plants that have escaped and gone feral all over the place are mostly (with exceptions, of course) less hospitable to native wildlife because they lack a shared evolutionary history.

Shortly after I began reading the book, I took my weathered old green clothbound copy of A Field Guide to Wildflowers of Northeastern and North-Central North America and went out into the yard.  I have always been perversely proud of the fact that there are no more than perhaps a dozen shoots of grass in my yard.  The rest is a motley meadow of various wildflowers (the polite term for weeds).  But I was disturbed to find, as I looked up one plant after another, that virtually every plant in my lawn was an alien.  The problem, according to Tallamy, is that many such weeds do not support insect herbivores, and thus their production is not transferred up the food chain to bluebirds and warblers and frogs and box turtles and what not.  And that’s the lawn.  Then there is the ground cover under those trees where I had pulled out all the privet and greenbrier.  It’s mostly covered now by a tangle of alien honeysuckle.

I resolved then and there to transform our property into a model of structurally complex, diverse native vegetation explicitly designed to support native wildlife.

So: first, the jungly understory.  The challenge here is what to use for a native groundcover.  Two falls ago, I planted a bunch of azaleas on the site of the former privet thicket by the driveway (turning up two burrowing worm snakes in the process, much to 9-year-old Conor’s delight).  The interstices have since filled in with honeysuckle and various fast-growing (alien) annuals.  This is the spot shown in the photo at top right.  I started ripping this stuff out, which was relatively easy.  By a happy coincidence, just as I was cogitating on all this, I heard that the local chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society was having a sale nearby. So I bought a bunch of stuff.  For ground cover in this shady spot, I planted several “sensitive ferns” (Onoclea sensibilis, above left), which are supposed to spread and form colonies. 

In another part of this shady area I planted several mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum, at right in pots), which are also supposed to form colonies, and of which I have very fond evocative memories from high school days backpacking in the Appalachians, where one periodically sees big swaths of them among the trees. 

Interspersed among the azaleas in here I planted fern-leaf bleeding hearts (which flowered a few days later!) and various other species. You get the picture.

Bring in the bugs

By this time I was on a roll.  The following weekend (last), on my way back from EarthFest, I returned to the VNPS sale and bought another bunch of native plants.  These are, primarily, for a butterfly garden, which is something I have always wanted to have. I came home and dug out a square yard or so of turfy “grass” (and alien weeds) at the corner of our frontwalk and planted ‘em all. Last summer we bought a butterfly bush which indeed attracted a lot of butterflies, then senesced, after which we left it to fend for itself through the winter in a pot on the patio.  It’s still hanging in there, so I planted that in the middle of the butterfly patch.  Ditto for some little sprouts of black-eyed Susan in another feral pot.

It rained long and generously after both planting episodes, which I take to be a favorable omen.  Everyone appears to be thriving. Last night, as we came home in the dark after Conor’s baseball game, there was another favorable omen: I heard the call of the great horned owl that I had not heard around here for perhaps a year. 

Stay tuned for Phase II. 

 

OK, not exactly live – It’s a day after the fact.  But who would have paid attention if this read: Yesterday from EarthFest!

Yesterday I participated in EarthFest 2008, sponsored jointly by NASA Langley and Christopher Newport University here in Tidewater, Virginia.  I was part of the “Ask a scientist” panel, answering questions from the brave-hearted studio audience of about 20 people who had forsaken the fabulous spring weather to sit in a darkened lecture hall and ask questions such as these of scientists.

And a shout-out to the VIMS Green Team and the Williamsburg Climate Action Network, among the many other organizations represented there.  I’m told that parts of our panel discussion will evntually be posted in YouTube - stay tuned.

Following is the text of the two-minute presentation with which I began my part:

 

“What makes Earth different than any other body in the known universe is the presence of life. From space, life appears only as an impossibly thin green film on the rocky surface of the planet.  Yet life has changed everything about this planet profoundly—creating the oxygenated atmosphere that allows us to live here, regulating its temperature within narrow bounds that make it comfortable for us, and so on.     

Locally, for you or I standing here on the ground, life is not a thin green film. It’s a fantastic variety of plants and animals and microbes that have become linked in complex networks of interactions that we call an ecosystem.   

We usually take the ecosystems around us for granted because we are so much a part of them that we don’t even think about it.  But we need to. 

Ecosystems are like nature’s factories. Living organisms provide the natural infrastructure that creates natural products and services essential to our comfort and even our survival—food, clean water and air, favorable habitat in which we can live, and of course the stable climate that we hear so much about these days.

We’re now at a critical turning point in earth’s history.  For the first time in the 3.8 billion years of life’s tenure on this planet, a single species literally controls the fate of all the others, and of the biosphere itself.  That species is of course us.  It’s a mind-boggling responsibility. 

 

 

And — sad to say — we’re dropping the ball. When we dump our wastes into the air and water, when we destroy natural habitat, and harvest animals faster than they can reproduce, we are throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of Nature’s factory and its parts get broken.When that happens the machine stops working, and the products and services disappear. 

But that doesn’t have to happen.  Humans are incredibly ingenious.  We’ve sent people to the moon.  We’ve invented the internet, and cars that run on french fry oil.  We need to harness that ingenuity to make the world safe again for our fellow creatures.  Because, in the end, we literally cannot live without them.”
 

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!

 

See also here to get involved. The US House of Representatives’ Education and Labor Committee is currently considering the No Child Left Behind Act (summary of the Act here, complete text here), which would promote environmental literacy and education integrated into an environmental context (as shown in the video).  Write your Congressperson and help raise the next generation of Natural Patriots!

[Editor’s note: This just in — and in time for Earth Day (barely). I reprint below an extract from the new, second edition of Richard Louv’s classic and inspirational book, Last Child in the Woods.  The new edition is expanded and contains more practical suggestions (here are a few more), as described below. I intend to use them since this week is my son’s “TV turn-off week” (this also includes computers) suggested by his school. I sure had a lot of fun with dirt when I was a young’un.]

BEYOND NATURE-DEFICIT DISORDER
It’s Time to Turn Consciousness into Action
By Richard Louv
Author of Last Child in The Woods

Got dirt? “In South Carolina, a truckload of dirt is the same price as a video game!” reports Norman McGee, a father in that state who bought a small pickup-load of dirt for his daughter and friends.

McGee is turning consciousness into action. So is Liz Baird, who keeps a “wonder bowl” available for her children.

When Baird was a little girl she would fill her pockets with natural wonders — acorns, rocks, mushrooms. “My Mom got tired of washing clothes and finding these treasures in the bottom of the washer or disintegrated through the dryer,” Liz recalls. “So she came up with “Liz’s Wonder Bowl”, and the idea was that I could empty my pockets into the bowl. I could still enjoy my treasures, and try to find out what things were, and not cause trouble with the laundry.”

McGee and Baird are among the thousands of parents who have joined — and are leading — an international children and nature movement. Sometimes known as Leave No Child Inside, the effort is bringing together people from all walks of life, who are creating grassroots regional campaigns, state and national legislation, and changes in their own families to help children become happier, healthier and smarter.

An emerging body of scientific knowledge links nature time to longer attention spans, better cognitive functioning, reduction of stress, and strengthened family bonds. What better way to enhance parent-child attachment than to walk in the woods together, disengaging from distracting electronics, advertising, and peer pressure?

Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at Centers for Disease Control, recently describes the clear benefits of nature experiences to healthy child development, and to adult well-being.

“In the same way that protecting water and protecting air are strategies for promoting public health, protecting natural landscapes can be seen as a powerful form of preventive medicine,” he says. He believes that future research about the positive health effects of nature should be conducted in collaboration with architects, urban planners, park designers, and landscape architects. “Of course, there is still much we need to learn, such as what kinds of nature contact are most beneficial to health, how much contact is needed and how to measure that, and what groups of people benefit most. But we know enough to act.”

If you’re a parent who missed out on nature as a child, now’s your chance. Indeed, all the gifts of nature that come to children also come to the good adult who introduces a child to nature.

Young people are acting, too, by becoming natural leaders in the movement. For example, a seven-year-old girl in Virginia rounded up her friends and enrolled them in her own Girls Gone Wild in Nature Club. Together they organize backyard campouts and bug hunts.

In Mississippi, teenager Josh Morrison founded Geeks in the Woods for his friends and fellow geeks everywhere. He defines “geek” as a “gaming environmentally educated kid,” and says he and his friends are “tired of being labeled” tech addicts ” can have their PlayStations and their outdoor time too: “We could be the generation that makes a U-turn back to . . . a balance between virtual reality and what sustains all life . . . nature.”

FIVE ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE TODAY

1. Go for a family walk when the moon is full. There’s a whole new set of animals, sights and sounds out there. Listen to animals calling. Owls and bats are looking for prey. Watch for things glowing, like worms and fungus on trees. And look up at the stars.

2. Help your child discover a hidden universe. Find a scrap board and place it on bare dirt. Come back in a day or two, lift the board, and see how many species have found shelter there. Identify them with the help of a field guide. Return to this universe once a month, lift the board and discover who’s new.

3. Tell your children stories about your special childhood places in nature. Then help them find their own: leaves beneath a backyard willow, the bend of a creek, the meadow in the woods. Let it become their intimate connection with the natural world.

4. Revive old traditions. Collect lightning bugs at dusk, release them at dawn. Make a leaf collection. Keep a terrarium or aquarium. Go crawdadding — tie a piece of liver or bacon to a string, drop it into a creek or pond, wait until a crawdad tugs.

5. Invent your own nature game. One mother’s suggestion: “We help our kids pay attention during longer hikes by playing “find ten critters” — mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, snails, and other creatures. Finding a critter can also mean discovering footprints, mole holes, and other signs that an animal has passed by or lives there.”

Adapted from LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS by Richard Louv, copyright 2008. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

In our families and our communities, it’s time to take action. That’s why the new, expanded 2008 edition of “Last Child in the Woods” contains a “Field Guide” with 100 Actions that families and communities can take, along with discussion questions, a report on the movement, and other resources for parents, educators, conservationists, business people and community leaders.

For more information, see the Second Edition of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder“. To help build the movement, please join the Children & Nature Network.

Richard Louv, recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal (and an honorary Natural Patriot!), is the author of seven books. The chairman of the Children & Nature Network, he is also honorary co-chair of the National Forum on Children and Nature.

“The written word is weak.  Many people prefer life to it.”

Annie Dillard

That’s my excuse.  I’ve been living life, rather than recording it.  Ye gods, it’s been over a month.  And here’s my little secret: It feels great!  I’ve been learning a lot as I’ve meandered along, feeling my way, with the Natural Patriot.  But I cannot tell you how refreshing it’s felt to just forget about it for a while.  I don’t want to say that blogging has been a monkey on my back, but, well . . .

People often ask me: “Where do you find the time to blog?”  I answer them honestly: “I don’t!” Time spent doing this is stolen from something else.  Generally sleep, interactions with real humans like my family, and/or productive work.  And deficits of all of those things take their toll.  Recently I’ve been reminded of the value of doing all those things. Hence the long silence.  I don’t mean to whine or anything.  But there it is.

Right.  I am posting this partly in order to quell any fears among faithful readers that I have experienced some sort of tragedy that’s kept me from my rounds here. I haven’t. And the Natural Patriot will be back in the saddle again soon. 

But I also feel I’ve learned an important, small lesson that may be worth sharing.  Based on my experiences of the last month, I can strongly recommend the following general approach.  I will propose it a as three-step program:

1) Turn off your computer. After reading this of course. 

2) Go outside.  Adjust your vision to a world that spans more than 20 inches diagonally and that exists in three dimensions.  Wave some smelling salts under your other four senses and wake them up.  It may take them a while to get going again.  Listen to the spring peepers — I heard them tonight, while planting spindly little tomatoes in our new naked little garden plot in the last few photons of the day (more about that later). If you don’t hear spring peepers, listen to something else, anything — crickets, pigeons, wind. Silence. Stay out if it starts to rain, or if you get a chill.  Feel your body begin to cope with the shiver.  

And here is the key:

3) Keep doing this for a while.  The real world works on a very different time scale than the virtual one. Seeds need time to grow and all that. Sleeping outside for several nights in a row helps a lot.

There’s a lot I could tell, and I may yet do so, about recent activities.  Backpacking with the lad was good, for example.  I may return to that.  For now, however, I want to get back in the queue (is that the correct spelling?) because Earth Day is this week and I feel some sort of mystical Naturally Patriotic duty not to allow this most sacred of occasions to pass without comment of some sort.  Even if I am listening to spring peepers with the computer off. 

For now, I will close with only one item of news related to both my activities of the last week and the upcoming Earth Day, primarily for my local homies.  As many of you know, Governor Kaine of Virginia has established a Commission on Climate Change and charged it to hold a series of meetings to figure out and advise him on what is going on in this state, where we are headed, and what we can do about it. 

The third meeting of the Governor’s Climate Change Commission will be held on Earth Day, 22 April (day after tomorrow), and is open to the public.  I strongly encourage all Virginians who can attend to do so, and to make your voices heard on this critical issue.

The meeting will be held at the University Center of The College of William and Mary.  The agenda, presentations, location, and other information can be found here. The meeting runs from 10:00 Am to 5:00 PM, with public comment at the end.  I will be one of those making a presentation, in my case on impacts of climate change on coastal ecosystems and living marine resources.  I’ve been told that the last meeting in Charlottesville attracted a strong student presence and the Commission took their comments very seriously.  This is a chance to make democracy work — please do your part if you can.

Thank you for your attention, and your patience.  Y’all come back. 

[Editor’s note: This week’s entry comes from Johhny Cash.  That’s right, the Man in Black. The song itself is, of course, an old traditional whose author has been lost to us.  The poetry in this piece comes in the prayer of Johnny’s spoken-word introduction. I don’t know if these are his own words, or those of the anonymous cowboy. But they send shivers down my spine every time I hear them. They are written in the plain Christian idiom of his tradition, but they also speak more broadly to the spirit of natural patriotism. Sixth in a series.]

Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie
Traditional, interpreted by Johhny Cash

Lord, I’ve never lived where churches grow.
I loved creation better as it stood
that day you finished it so long ago
and looked upon your work and called it good.
I know that others find you in the light
that sifted down through tinted window panes.
And yet I seem to feel you near tonight
in this dim, quiet starlight on the plains.
I thank you, Lord, that I’m placed so well
that you’ve made my freedom so complete
that I’m no slave to whistle, clock or bell,
nor weak-eyed prisoner of Wall or Street.
Just let me live my life as I’ve begun
and give me work that’s open to the sky.
Make me a partner of the wind and sun
and I won’t ask a life that’s soft or high.
Let me be easy on the man that’s down.
Let me be square and generous with all.
I’m careless sometimes, Lord, when I’m in town
but never let them say I’m mean or small.
Make me as big and open as the plains
and honest as the horse between my knees,
clean as a wind that blows behind the rains,
free as the hawk that circles down the breeze.
Forgive me, Lord, if sometimes I forget –
You know about the reasons that are hid.
You understand the things that gall or fret.
Well, you knew me better than my mother did.
Just keep an eye on all that’s done or said
and right me sometimes when I turn aside.
And guide me on that long, dim trail ahead
that stretches upward toward the great divide.

 

       

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

The NYT has a great article about Doug Tallamy, a fellow ecologist at the University of Delaware who studies insects.  He and his wife are on a mission to reclaim their farm from aggressive invasive plant species and make it hospitable again for . . . maggots.  Why maggots?  because chickadees love to eat them. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the frightful scene that develops in your fetid garbage can, but rather the larvae of native flies that burrow into goldentod stems and other plants in the yard. And not just maggots but the menagerie of inconspicuous creeping and crawling and flitting creatures that metamorphose into butterflies and that nourish the birds. 

Theirs is a personal project of ecological engineering to support biodiversity.  It resonated with me immediately since, in the warming weekends of spring, I like to go out and whack back the vines and pull out the invasive privet thickets that sprout up everywhere, and clear patches around native saplings that are struggling under honeysuckle, and so on. 

“Restoration ecology” is not quite the appropriate term since some of the plants they foster are not native to their specific region.  On the other hand, they do support native insects, and therefore higher levels in the food web.  And in any case, as climate change and other environmental impacts progress, we need to shift our focus to “emerging ecosystems”.  While remaining (or becoming) aware of the sometimes forgotten baselines of how nature used to look and work, we also need to incorporate the reality that geographc ranges of species are shifting, some invaders are here to stay, and some natives are disappearing inexorably.  How do we maintain biodiversity and functional, resilient ecosystem in this new world order? 

The answers are not yet clear.  But efforts like those of the Tallamys are  small experiments toward finding the answers. Doug has written a book about this, “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens“, which I very much look forward to reading.  His basic thesis is deceptively simple: bugs are the key link in the food chain.  And bugs tend to be extremely finicky eaters.  Many are strict specialists on one or a few types of plants.  This means that yards and gardens filled with ornamental plants introduced from elsewhere often support only invasive pest species and not the native insects adapted to local conditions and enjoyed by local birds and other animals.  Encouraging native plants — and insects — is a concrete way to restiore ecological balance to the patches of land over which we personally have stewardship. 

And that is an exciting and hopeful message.  We often feel helpless when confronted with all the bad news about environmental degradation.  Here is something we can do personally to sustain biodiversity.  Nurture native plants and the creatures that depend on them.  One yard at a time. Power to the people (and other organisms)!

It happens gradually, of course, so there is no bright line that marks the beginning of the new year.  Crocuses come up through the snow sometimes, long before anyone else would say it is spring.  Daffodils are in full bloom around here.  The small scarlet flowers of the ubiquitous red maples that haze the late winter woods are actually beginning already to fall and collect in drifts around the porch.  Traditionally, robins have signalled the beginning of spring, although in this neck of the woods we seem nowadays to have a few around for most of the winter. 

Sometimes you just feel it in the air, something you can’t quite put your finger on, like that warm, portentious wind that Pliny is said to have believed impregnated the mares prancing in the spring pastures. 

But for me, the real turning point, the signal that always fills me with the excitement and beauty of the world waking up again is the first evening when I hear the unmistakable chorus of spring peepers in the woods (you can listen here).  Generally it’s a warmish night shortly after a good strong rain.  The frogs have emerged from their winter torpor and are looking for love, so to speak, and a good little pond to lay their eggs in.

This year, spring began two nights ago, when we came home from work a bit late and suddenly the chorus emerged into consciousness from the background noise.  Winter is gone!

Pseudacris crucifer (formerly known as Hyla crucifer) are tiny little frogs only an inch or so long as adults.  The genus name comes from the Greek meaning “false locust”, presumably because they sound like a cricket or locust (and are not much bigger than one, for that matter).  The species name crucifer comes from the cross-shaped marking on its back.

I can vividly remember seeing them for the first time in my life — maybe the only time, though I’ve heard them many times – when I was maybe eight or nine at Bull Run Park in Northern Virginia and being mesmerized.  As a suburban kid this was real, exotic wildilfe to me. Complete animals, so tiny and beautful.

A year or two ago, I heard them calling during daytime, strangely enough, from a drainage ditch near the dump.  It gave me a surge of hope that, even in this tired landscape, Nature remains resilient.  Many happy returns, little friends.