HOMEbound Nature News - ISSUE 1
Happenings in the Substack Ecosphere || Marbled Murrelet
This month’s issue (our inaugural!) of the HOMEbound News is brought to you by the Marbled Murrelet.
This exquisite seabird (Brachyramphus marmoratus) lives only along the western coast of North America, from California to the tip of the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. It’s a seabird that’s also a forest bird, a rare tiny auk that nests in big trees. Critically endangered, they are truly birds of two worlds, and both of those worlds are deeply damaged by human activity. First loss: old-growth coastal temperate forests. Second loss: clean cold oceans with plenty of little fish and crustaceans to go around. They “fly” underwater like puffins, and can go quite deep, but they also zigzag with great aplomb through the forest canopy.
These small, rather round birds — which though challenging to spot as they dart through the high canopy at dawn, are often described by bird surveyors as “flying potatoes” — have among the most dramatic and taxing life histories going.
They nest in trees up to 50 miles (80 km) inland. The parents take it in 24-hour turns to warm the egg: at dawn, when one returns from the ocean — where they’ve fished up to 125 miles (200 km) offshore — the other cries “tag” (which sounds like keer to human ears), springs off the nest, and zips through the misty canopy and out to sea. In every 48-hour period, each parent can fly hundreds of miles round-trip.
They also have among the most darling of nesting habits, in my unbiased opinion. Like seabirds the world over, they’ve evolved pointy-ended eggs that roll in a circle, rather than off the edge. And they don’t really “build” nests. Instead, they select a nice wide evergreen branch, a horizontal one that’s high in the canopy and wide enough for them; thus, the requirement for old-growth trees. Near the trunk, where the branch has accumulated epiphytic moss and lichens, the mother squashes the padding a bit and lays her one speckled, olive-green egg. It rests there for 30 days, tended, of course, by the parents on their daylong incubation shifts.1
Upon hatching, the (extremely fuzzy and round) nestling needs breakfast and dinner, so the parents are in for another 30-45 days of fishing trips. They come from the ocean one at a time, typically at dawn and dusk, to bring food. Except for these brief visits, the little one sits alone. At fledging, the young bird flies directly to the ocean, perhaps dozens of miles away, to begin a new life as a seabird.
The name HOMEbound News occurred to me when thinking about what nature writers and artists do best: they convey the awe of this place, our only planet home. It’s the one we and our fellow nonhuman space-travelers have, the only place that has ever evolved this particular, glorious, and kaleidoscopic diversity of miracles. Part of what I believe our community is here to do is to awaken the love for our planetary home (and its more-than-human inhabitants) that I truly think resides in the hearts of all humans, though it may be buried more deeply in some than others.
We must love our planet Earth and care for it better than we have done, because it’s who we are, at the most profound level. We are bound to this place. So: HOMEbound.
The name implies a “journey home” too, of course. That can mean many things to us in this context, but maybe the one I’m thinking of is a return home to right relation with life.
For me, that love for Earth is what I lead with. It’s how I’m made. I imagine for many (most? all?) of the people listed in this directory, love for our home is a big part of who they are and how they show up in their lives and communities.
I am admittedly a little scarred from my decades of standing alone or with the tiniest scrappy group, arguing against ecological destruction on paper and in court, in lobbying the government and in testifying before the public. Every argument we make on behalf of a woodpecker’s nest hole, a fungus’s damp habitat, a stream’s right to flow free, is met by an army of well-paid lobbyists and lawyers with their constant drone of “The economy. Jobs. Houses. People.” In a nutshell, human supremacy.
It can feel like our voices are small, standing like a mother sparrow defending her nest against the bulldozer flattening her hedgerow home to build the next round of office parks or shopping strips. (“The economy. Jobs.”) We are a group of human voices standing athwart the juggernaut of global capitalism and the attention economy.
And so, I think what we are doing here is something like a sacred duty. There are not a lot of us, but we are enough, and growing. So, keep writing, keep drawing, keep photographing, keep noticing. The world needs your voice. And always:2
🍃 Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Okay, that’s enough from me. Without any additional ado, let’s launch into our first issue of HOMEbound News!
This will be a packed issue, as there’s a lot of info to share. Future editions will be less text-heavy (promise).
(1) A few fun stats to get us started:
There are already 217 publications listed here.
They represent 12 countries and every continent except South America (c’mon, Latin America, come find us!) and Antarctica (surely there’s a biologist at McMurdo with a Substack??).
All of our publications are in English. Three publications also share their work in additional languages: Catalan, French, and German.
I’ve created a sub-directory for these publications and others not in English that will join us in future.
The thematic/genre category with the most pubs is Observe: Field Notes, News, & Essays.
The least-populated category (for now!) is Dream: Fiction.
(2) New category! Contemplate: Nature Philosophy, Wisdom, & Spirituality
Thanks to the suggestion of several of our writers here, I’ve added a theme that is meant to encompass, among other things, human thoughts about nature and our place within it.
🍂 If you have a publication that you feel should be added to this section, get in touch and I’ll do so!
(3) For those who’ve submitted this Google Form to have an enhanced listing, would you take a few moments to check your listing across the various directories you expect to find it in, based on your selections in the form?
🌿 Does it look correct? Are you listed where you expected to be listed? Is anything weird with it? Let me know if anything needs attention!
(4) If you have a nature-based publication and you haven’t submitted this Google Form for an enhanced listing (in more places), then what are you waiting for?! It’s free!
(5) I have made a start on a page listing nature books published by writers listed in the directory. It’s a work in progress, but feel free to click over and check out the first few listings I’ve added, and maybe find a new summer read.
Have you written a nature book that should be listed? Let me know!
📚 Nature’s Bookstack ~under construction~
(6) I will never charge for any services provided by this directory. No content will ever be paywalled. That being said, I have spent approximately eleventy zillion hours of my life force putting this directory and newsletter together so far, and I can already predict that it is going to be a rather large time sink in years to come.
(Which, I might add, is fan-frickin-tastic. There is almost nothing else I’d rather be doing. I started a newsletter and student directory for my elementary school when I was in the fourth grade, and now in my fifth decade, I have finally found work that feels like play, here. Probably should have listened to my 10-year old inner child sooner!)
Still and all, nonprofit environmental lawyers don’t exactly bring home the big bucks, which is why I am especially grateful to the generous folks who’ve supported this work by becoming my first two paid subscribers ever!
🪺 A nest of arboreal moss within which one tiny speckled green egg rests to you, Michela Griffith, for your kind words, your linking of others to this network, and your unwavering support for this idea. Michela publishes FLOW : Letters from the moss from Scotland, which shares “small beauty noticed at the intersection of wood and water, nature and place, art and photography.” It’s gorgeous.
🌲 An ancient tree where thousands of beings can make their homes to you, Lainey Cronk, for your beautiful note and your kind support of this nature community. Lainey publishes scratchpaper, which shares “Space between trees. Ordinary paperclip poetry. The work of seeing people” — the words and photography are truly lovely.
🌊 And the keer call of a potato-shaped seabird to you fine folks who supported this effort with a bit of cash in the tip jar:
Michelle Berry Lane, who publishes Coming to Ground
Richard Gregson, who publishes 1001 Species - Naturally About Nature
Heidi Zawelevsky, who publishes Conversations with Critters
Ren Powell, who publishes Acts of a Recovering Drama Queen
My heart is full. Thank you all.
(7) Want to find more directories like this one? Check out my “Directory of Directories” over on Fearless Green. It’s a list of lists, sure, but they’re great lists!
(8)
at will be launching a nature journal on Substack. According to her recent announcement, she’ll be “rolling out a monthly journal to feature great writing on nature and culture, guest posts, interviews, news, and creative community-building.” Julie “will donate 35% of paid subscriptions to our favorite nature and/or climate charities.” Keep an eye on her page for updates. I can’t wait to see where she takes this.
(9) Okay, let’s work out the kinks!
💃 What’s working? What’s not? What else should I know? Suggestions? Comment away, please — let’s make this thing as useful as we can.
Browse around — it’s most user-friendly when viewed as a website on your computer rather than on a smartphone.
(10) For next time: I’d like to share a list of new directory members, links to newly published pieces outside of Substack written by directory members, and news about upcoming book launches. News of other creative endeavors, writing or photography competitions you want to share, other craft-related tidbits of interest to the whole community? Writer or artist meetups? What else?
📨 Please send relevant news items to me at ourhome@substack.com for next month’s edition.
(11) And share away, too!
💌 Send to a friend, share on your site, put a link in Substack Notes or another social media outlet. Let’s give this community a little compost to help it grow.
See you in June, and until then, be well.
💚🌲🦉
Depressing footnote alert: Unbroken expanses of forest are particularly important to marbled murrelets, because they need to take evasive maneuvers against corvids who sight them at the edges and know quite well the murrelets are off to deliver fish to diminutive partners sitting on delicious eggs and later, unattended nestlings. And unbroken expanses of forest are exactly the opposite of what industrial logging has left our wee friends. I apologize on behalf of my country for not being able to better protect these world heritage treasures — the forests and the enchanting creatures within — from our rapacious economy. Although it has been projected there’s an 80% probability we will lose these birds in California and Oregon this century, we can perhaps hope they will endure in their northernmost range in Alaska. There, it’s been reported they’ll nest in cliffs and rocks like “normal” seabirds. So, maybe they can hang on up north until time has passed sufficient to regrow our old-growth forests here, and will remember their habit of nesting in the mossy branches of ancient trees.
HRH Mary Oliver, of course, from her poem “Sometimes”.
Perky little bird!
A friend of mine went out swimming once and encountered a pair of birds bobbing on the water that curiously came to check her out. They were marbled murlets and the experience remains one that she still speaks of in awe.
Please, add my publication to the new category, I believe I only picked two others. Much appreciated! Thanks for all your hard work on this project.