The Seventh Planting

Because of COVID restrictions, we were only allowed 2 households to volunteer at the project site at a time, so I recruited my older sister Aileen to help me. We planted 55 milkweeds, and scattered 1 lb. of California Poppies, at Burrowing Owl Billows for both the monarch butterflies and the burrowing owls. We focused on milkweeds because California counted fewer than 2,000 monarchs in 2020 [source], so news outlets nationwide declared the species in danger of becoming extinct. (SPOILER: So far this year (2021), there are more than 100,000. [source]) Milkweeds are the required host plants for caterpillars of the monarch butterfly and thus play a critical role in the monarch's life cycle.

The "jumping shot" has become a tradition after completing plantings at Burrowing Owl Billows. Most phones can capture "bursts" by holding down the capture button when taking a photo.

Sometimes practice is required, which adds hilarious results and memories to the experience of capturing the ULTIMATE JUMP, especially when you try to coordinate a high-5!

When I first started this project, many volunteers made the suggestion to have a camera in the burrows so we can watch what the burrowing owls are doing up close.

The San Diego burrowing owl exhibit fulfills that desire. During the season, more often than not, if you tuned in, you'd see the characters of the owls up-close and personal.

In these next screenshots, that's a mouse's tail sticking out of the chick's mouth.

Later I returned for a data collection with Phil. You can see all the data collected for the project thus far here in the tracker, and you can see it all laid out on a graph on the Progress tab here.

Overall, the site was determined to be healthy despite the drought (so far). Many plants have become stable and taken to propagating on their own.

The insect count reveals a healthy, budding ecosystem.

This time, I decided to try and be extra communicative via email, which was more work, but it paid off!

In an email thread I'd started with the volunteers, I also got to see photos they took of various critters they ran into while weeding. I hadn't really thought about how important any exposure, especially alongside a trained specialist, to wild animals could have such a impactful positive effect on the volunteers.

Here, Ryan Phillips, also a trained biologist employed by the City of Mountain View, shows the group a gopher snake. Apparently one of the volunteers' daughter had been obsessing over snakes so seeing it up close was really magical.

The greatest thing about Googlers, IMHO, is how much they love to learn. It really is a joy for them and a unique quality they share.

Here Sushmita is with a preying mantis she came across. She shared it with the other volunteers, who also delighted in seeing it.

Volunteering to "weed" may sound distasteful, but a weeder isn't just interacting with weeds at the habitat, but coming across all sorts of crawlies while also getting to learn from the city's trained biologists and to interact with each other in the outdoors, while benefiting their community.

This project also allows repeat volunteers to see the fruits of their labor first hand!

For the third of the three weedings, I did the bare minimal in terms of communication. Around the same number of volunteers attended and, judging by the photos, about the same amount of impact was achieved, but I did miss the anecdotes and additional photos shared by the other volunteers because I'd gone above and beyond to connect with them via email. As such, moving forward, I will lean towards the way I remotely organized the second of the three weedings.

In 2020, I signed up for Amazon's "Amazonsmile" program where, if you go to smile.amazon.com to make your purchase from Amazon, Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchase to the approved charity of your choice.

Since I signed up on 9/9/2020. Between then and the end of 2021, Aisha with an Eye has received $5 from Amazon.

Is this greenwashing at its best or should any donation amount, despite the effort required to gain it, a generous amount?

If you're going to be shopping at Amazon anyway, why not take advantage of their donation program? Right?

Instagram added a new feature where you can fundraise for an approved nonprofit organization of your choice. I submitted my organization and, after getting approved, set up a $100 fundraiser for it on the @savetheburrowingowl account and on my personal @aishawithaneye account. I donated $20 to each to seed both fundraisers, like adding your own money to a tip jar to seed tips.

Surprisingly, when the fundraisers concluded, @savetheburrowingowl only got $5 in donations while @aishawithaneye got $95!

Because @savetheburrowingowl owl has ~4x as many followers as @aishawithaneye and is specifically targeted for burrowing owl lovers and photographers, I'd assumed fundraising with it would've been more successful than my personal account.

It goes to show that personal connections are the most powerful.