By Jim Hines
Greetings Friends: It’s the 'small' things in nature.
I spent so much time in my growing up years on our family ranch north of Lake Casitas studying and learning about the wildlife and plants I saw everyday...deer, bobcats, mountain lions and black bears, giant oak trees, sycamore trees, huge rock formations and huge mountains rising above us.
But I was also fascinated by the smallness of nature around me. I would turn over rocks to see snake eggs, small insects and larvae, hummingbird nests and their tiny eggs...the smallest in nature is a teeming of life in a miniature scale.
Speaking of ‘small’ nature, our Sierra Club folks noticed this bee species at Kimball Park. Photo by Marie Martin.
I still delight in turning over rocks and fallen branches to see insects, lizards, frogs and salamanders underneath.
l marvel at life’s small mysteries, for they are big in my mind and that tiny world is not just about middle earth and hobbits but about the lichens, moss and fungi which grow beneath, this is their world too.
I am amazed at the tiny, at the small, and at the richness of the little. Just sit and watch the frond of a fern unfurl.
Water is filled with the small as well: tadpoles, little fish, crustaceans and water plants, need to be appreciated and protected just as much as the giants of nature.
The smallest among us, honeybees allow us to have food to eat and other small species such as moths, dragonflies and butterflies also make sure that plants are pollinated.
Tiny grains sustain our world, the wheat field may be big, but it is the tiny grain of wheat which gives us nutrients.
Enjoy great hawks and eagles flying through the sky, but you will also enjoy small bats which will delight you in the night sky. Bird watch in the daytime and bat watch at night.
Our natural world is not all about huge mountains, giant redwood trees or large mammals but it is inclusive of a world which is great and small.
Just get down and look.