Report 346 from the Destroyed Nesting Area: Visibilities Resume at the Destroyed Nesting Area

Principal raconteur: Bob La Trémouille.

Update, July 5, 2007. The number 600 referred to below is actually the number of reports, approximately. The number 345 is very certainly an accurate count of visibilities at the Goose Meadow.

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In the six years starting the beginning March 2000 and ending February 24, 2006, Friends of the White Geese conducted more than 600 visibilities at the Destroyed Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese.

After each visibility, I would put out an email newsletter. The newsletters were numbered consecutively. Newsletter distribution at one point reached about 1300, but Yahoo made such newsletters more and more difficult. Distribution time went from about an hour each after writing to four days each after writing. We finally were worn out.

My count of 600 visibilities is based on 345 reports in the regular series reported as they occurred and ending December 1, 2003, and 260 reports in the Evil series which responded to evil on the Charles River. This is the series which ended February 24, 2006.

Plus there were visibilities reported in different series. So we had quite a bit more than 600 in six years.

I initially published this report as Evil Report 261. On thinking things over, we never abandoned the Reports from the Destroyed Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese. We abandoned the visibilities.

Since we are resuming the visibilities, we are resuming the reports. Thus this is Report 346.

With the good materials I told you about in the last report, Marilyn resumed the visibilities on Tuesday, June 26, from 5 pm to 6:45 pm. Marilyn reports:

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Flyers said Friends of the White Geese and were
visible.

I had photo boards showing Magazine Beach that I'd
used at Dana Park and the River Festival.

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Response to the visibilities has always been good. We would stand either at the entrance to the Destroyed Nesting Area or on the traffic island. We would leaflet people walking or driving by. A lot of materials went to drivers. I was doing a visibility on the day Bumpy was killed.

Thank you Marilyn.

Visibilities, New Fliers

Bob La Trémouille reports:

Friends of the White Geese have published two new documents:

1. A flier announcing the forthcoming destruction at Magazine Beach UNLESS either the governor or nine city councillors change sides on environmental issues to the side they claim to be on.

You have to realize that the Cambridge pols have their own SECRET definition of environmentalism or to understand their reprehensible record to realize the difference. They keep on using that secret definition of environmentalism. It is silly to describe this secret definition as other than flat out lying since their secret definition is at dramatic conflict with the definition used by responsible human beings.

The secret definition was announced by one of their insiders and published in these pages under the title, "Exchange on Cambridge views of environmentalism."

2. A fact sheet in two sides. One side has a lot of graphics and briefly describes environmental low lights in Cambridge. The other side gives a blow by blow (but brief) summary of 10 years of attacks on the Charles River by the City of Cambridge and its bureacrat and pol friends.

Marilyn distributed the flier and the front of the fact sheet at a neighborhood potluck last Sunday, June 10. Saturday, June 16, the back side of the fact sheet was ready, so she distributed the flier and the double sided fact sheet at the Riverfest celebration on Memorial Drive between Western Avenue and John F. Kennedy Street.

Marilyn tells me that the response was excellent. That is the normal situation when dealing with normal human beings. Regrettably, the situation with regard to Cambridge pols and bureacrats is based on this fake definition of "environmentalism" which translates as white-washing environmental destruction.

If you would like either of these documents, please give us a ring at boblat@yahoo.com or onblueriver@yahoo.com. Thanks.

If you would like to volunteer to help, please contact onblueriver@yahoo.com or call 617-792-7738. Thanks again.

Wildlife Report from Porter - Davis Squares

Karen lives a few blocks in either direction from Porter and Davis Squares. She reports (passed on by Bob La Trémouille):

I have possum and racoons that come in my yard, skunk too. Bluejays and Cardinals sometimes too. I think also a few other species of bird, Marilyn mentioned Grackels, something like that when I described some before. Hope you are well.

Sometimes when the racoons are rolling around playing on my back porch they sound like cats screaming.

At times last fall the possum, I dont know if there is more than one still sits in my lilac bush waiting for the food to be put out, and hangs by its tail on one of the trees. My mother thought she was hallucinating at 530am. Just before sunrise.

White Geese, wildlife to the West on the Charles, Brush Fire

1. Teddy K with good photos.

Hi,

I am resident of Watertown MA and just found you great site. I would just like to let you know, that I put a link to your site in the blog roll of my site. I usually discuss sports and politics on my site, but I also post a lot of pictures of Birds and other wild life along the Charles River when I see the while riding my bike to work.

http://blog.sportspoliticandrevenge.com/2007/05/22/pictures-of-a-crane-near-the-charles-river.aspx
http://blog.sportspoliticandrevenge.com/2007/05/02/pictures-white-geesedog-chase-on-the-charles-river.aspx
http://blog.sportspoliticandrevenge.com/2007/01/28/pictures-swans-on-the-charles-river.aspx
http://blog.sportspoliticandrevenge.com/2007/03/25/pictures-stone-markers-painted-bird-foot-prints-and-swans-along-the-charles-river.aspx
http://blog.sportspoliticandrevenge.com/2006/05/31/the-charles-rivers-newest-invader-with-pictures.aspx

Keep up the good work

Teddy

2. Marilyn Responds.

Hi Teddy,

Thanks so much for the kudos and the link. Your photos are beautiful.

The swans were down around the boat kiosk near the Eliot Bridge about two months ago. This is the third or fourth year they've showed up, then disappeared. Do they go back upriver, do you know, or are they off to parts unknown? The photos of them with the ice are really very fine.

The cormorants and all the other waterfowl show us how much the Charles has improved. A couple of years ago by the Weeks footbridge I watched one take five minutes or more to wrestle and swallow what seemed like a very, very long rope but must have been an enormous eel. I thought the bird would choke but it got the thing down--amazing.

Someone commented that nature goofed with cormorants because they don't have oil on their feathers like ducks and geese, and have to dry out their feathers after diving. Then I read that the reason they don't have oil is that the buoyancy they'd get would keep them from swimming as long and far as they do when hunting.

As for the goose droppings, why not think of them as nature's own lawn fertilizer? Geese are vegetarians, so it's grass in, grass out. Their shit doesn't attract flies, is water soluble, and goes right back to the grass itself. A state biologist told me he doesn't recommend it, but you could eat several handfuls of the stuff and it wouldn't hurt you.

As an athlete you may have noticed the new regulation ball fields at Lederman Park in Boston near MGH. The unprecedented algae bloom there last August and September followed the DCR's installation of 6 acres of commercial sod last spring.

You may know that grass for such fields needs very intensive care: lots of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, and, in this case, fungicide. The DCR made a big point that the fertilizer used would be "organic," but nitrogen is nitrogen, and runoff from it and the other chemicals caused the algae bloom. In August the algae count shot to astronomical levels the day after the DCR applied "Tartan," a fungicide whose label says not to use it near bodies of water, and the algae count went up again after the reapplication of "Tartan" September 1.

All of this is by way of suggesting you reconsider your opinion of goose shit!

Thanks again,

Marilyn Wellons

3. Marilyn: Brush Fire.

PS: Do you know what's happening on the Watertown side of the river just downriver from the Arsenal St. bridge? I've seen what looks like a bit patch of clearing and burning in the reeds there.

4. Teddy with details.

There was a brush fire there a few weeks back. Here is the link to video of the news report about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jC1vAyxcg