The sub­tle ways Nature sig­nals the inex­orable real­i­ty of change, are use­ful lessons for any­one try­ing  to sort out, or at least cope with the messy world of human­i­ty before it’s too late.

As reg­u­lar “perch” read­ers will have at this point already fig­ured out, my go-to exam­ple for that is loons.
Dur­ing the April to June breed­ing sea­son, the birds’ ter­ri­to­r­i­al instincts allow lit­tle tol­er­ance for oth­er loons,

Warn­ing dis­plays are com­mon and if they don’t work, loons will some­times fight to the death to defend their cho­sen cor­ner of a lake. Oth­er water­fowl and even marine  mam­mals aren’t treat­ed as wel­come neigh­bours either. More than a few gov­ern­ments whose poli­cies and nation­al aims fit the pejo­ra­tive use of “loon” as a sobri­quet. How­ev­er, as autumn and the need to migrate to warmer climes to sur­vive looms, the ter­ri­to­r­i­al imper­a­tive wanes.Groups rang­ing from half a dozen to scores begin what’s known as “raft­ing”, form­ing  uni­fied flocks for the south­ward migration.
Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, loons can fly as fast as 130 kilo­me­ters an hour.

                        THE HUMAN VERSION

Hun­dreds of thou­sand of Israelis have been in effect “raft­ing” for months on a reg­u­lar basis, demand­ing a peace agree­ment that will bring home the remain­ing hostages (alive and bod­ies) held by Hamas in Gaza.
Not hav­ing the where­with­al of a loon to realise when com­mon need over­rules self and the polit­i­cal sur­vival instinct,  Israeli Prime Min­is­ter  Binyamin Netanyahu and his reli­gious zealot enablers cling to the mis­ap­pre­hen­sion they can get through it all – and “win” — with aggres­sive pos­tures and a lot of deaths on both sides.
The Hamas lead­er­ship seems to think, if that’s not over­stat­ing the case, that sup­port from Iran and its oth­er prox­ies, while the rub­ble that is Gaza is being reduced to dust and  rav­aged by dis­ease, is a raft.
The fan­ta­sy is all the more rep­re­hen­si­ble because if they tried being gen­uine nation­al­ists and lead­ers instead of troglodytes, Hamas might see that at best it’s a bit of flot­sam that won’t keep them afloat and in charge of what­ev­er Gaza ends up being.
In the end, nei­ther they nor the present Israeli gov­ern­ment, will fare any bet­ter than a pair of loons think­ing they can go it alone through a Cana­di­an win­ter, and breed again in the spring.

                          AND ON THE CLIMATE FRONT

You don’t have to be a sci­en­tist to see that cli­mate change is real and unde­ni­able no mat­ter how igno­rant of facts you choose to be, or what pol­i­tics you worship.
Nature is paint­ing it in colour.The palette of leaves that is the quin­tes­sen­tial sig­na­ture of autumn in Canan­da and the north­east­ern U.S., usu­al­ly starts show­ing up a few weeks into Sep­tem­ber and peaks around Cana­di­an Thanksgiving.

The pho­to on the left was tak­en a week before­Labour Day, the first Mon­day in Sep­tem­ber that marks the unof­fi­cial .but wide­ly held end of summer.
Grant­ed, it’s only a cou­ple of  trees, and they’re  prob­a­bly stressed. The ques­tion is, why?
Experts cite extreme spring rain­fall and hot­ter than usu­al sum­mer days as deter­min­ing fac­tors in the arrival, dura­tion and vibran­cy or oth­er­wise of this year’s fall spectacle.

              HOPEFULLY NOT A SIGNAL

A tour com­pa­ny oper­at­ing a cruise sched­uled for Green­land and the Cana­di­an Arc­tic lat­er this ninth sent out a notice to its clients that in addi­tion to the obvi­ous cold weath­er gear, to include a “bug hat”.

The mesh head and neck cov­er­ing is what peo­ple in this much more souther­ly part of the coun­try often wear if they spend time out­doors in the spring, when the black­flies and mos­qui­toes are at their mad­ness-induc­ing peak.
I sin­cere­ly hope it’s one of those “warn­ings” com­pa­nies find it nec­es­sary to make to keep from being sued over “trau­mat­ic inci­dents” like bug bites, —  the last thing you’d expect to suf­fer on atrip to see ice,  polar bears and wal­rus­es.– and not anoth­er flash­ing dan­ger light from Nature.
Con­sid­er­ing they are, and have been from time immemo­r­i­al peren­ni­al, heed­ing Nature’s sig­nals may at this point send human capability.
But, as the leg­endary Nor­we­gian explor­er, oceanog­ra­ph­er, states­man, and Nobel Peace Prize win­ner (1922) Fridtjof Nansen said in his inau­gur­al address as Rec­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of St Andrews, Scot­land in 1925: “We all have a Land of Beyond to seek in our life—what more can we ask? Our part is to find the trail that leads to it.”
And in the case of our present tra­vails, look for Nature’s sign­posts to guide us.
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