The Hummingbird Effect

I'm no scientist, but if I correctly understand the Butterfly Effect -- which is really just an elaborate metaphor to describe a principle of Chaos Theory -- it says that something as seemingly minuscule as the flapping of a butterfly's wings can, over time, grow in magnitude to cause something as monumental as a hurricane.

I don't know about that. I do know that when the ruby-throated hummingbirds begin their annual northern migration around this time of year, I can, in my more whimsical moods, imagine the furious beating of their tiny wings setting in motion a pattern of cause and effect that will eventually dispel the despicably cold weather of a day like, well, a day like today, where the temperature didn't make it above freezing.

Lanny Chambers has been marking the migration of ruby-throats on his website, hummingbirds.net, for over ten years. Usually around late February you'll see the first little blip, representing a sighting reported by one of his loyal followers, appear in Florida or the northern rim of the Gulf of Mexico. The blips are color coded into two week periods, with the date of the sighting marked to the side. To hummingbird geeks like me, who hang up their feeders in mid April, those blips are as sure a sign of the turning of the season as crocuses and daffodils.
And remember, hummers typically return each season to where they were born or spent the summer before -- the same backyards, the same porches, even the same feeders. So consider this -- one of those blips might be on his way to visit you.

Saylor's Grove

Roughly triangular in shape, the three acre island of parkland know as Saylor's Grove is defined by Lincoln Drive, Wissahickon Avenue, and Rittenhouse Street. High-rise apartment buildings loom overhead, and traffic whooshes around its perimeter constantly. And if you're jonesing for a cup of coffee before stepping down into this fragile basin, the shiny Sunoco-cum-QuickieMart abutting the eastern border of the park will suffice.

Nonetheless, Saylor's Grove stands as an example of natural restoration within the urban environment. Described as the city's first storm water-treatment wetland, the five year project that converted the largely abandoned park into a vital natural oasis was an answer to growing concerns over the contamination of the Monoshone, or Paper Mill run, which flows into the Wissahickon.

I don't know what the success metrics are, or what, if any, studies are being conducted to determine if they are being met. But I imagine that if the City does not continue to support this project, Saylor's Grove will soon revert back into a neglected backyard of the park system, and the half million dollars spent on it's refurbishment will have been wasted.

On the particular day in late February, however, when this photo was taken, there was no real reason to presume that Saylor's Grove would not continue to be a success. Given the quality of light, and the ducks and the cattails in the pond, it was probably best not to presume at all, and just enjoy the day.

Not corn dogs

Cattails, Saylor's Grove, Monday afternoon.

Children at Play

Detail from the sculpture Children at Play, Saylor's Grove, near Wissahickon Avenue and Lincoln Drive, Monday afternoon, February 25.

The plaque accompanying the sculpture reads:

CHILDREN AT PLAY
GIVEN BY
EDWIN DAVID WOLF
1938-1976
SCULPTURED BY HIS FRIEND
PETER ROCKWELL.

A poplar topic

We tend to call them tulip poplars around here, but they are also commonly known as yellow poplars or tulip trees. Reaching heights up to 120 feet, they are the tallest trees native to Pennsylvania, and they thrive in the Wissahickon.

The odd mixture of wild and urban that characterizes the park, gives us access not only to the great ramrod-straight trunks that crowd the slopes of the gorge, but from the higher bridges that span the Wissahickon and its tributaries, the vast spread of their upper branches. This time of year, cross the Walnut Lane or Henry Avenue Bridges, or in the case of this photo, the McCallum Street Bridge, which spans the Cresheim Creek, and you will find yourself amidst bare branches and twigs studded with the tree's strange fruit, reminiscent of the tulip shaped blossoms from which it gets its name.

Not a butterfly

Only a deflated Mylar balloon caught in the branches of a sycamore tree. Thursday afternoon, February 21, near where the bicycle path crosses Ridge Avenue.

Up and down

These are known as the One Hundred Steps, built in the early 1900s, and they will take you from the Wissahickon neighborhood of Roxborough down to the bicycle path that parallels the lower portion of the Wissahickon Creek; or vice versa.