LAS VEGAS, NEV – Walking up from our hotel to the strip in search of a place to eat last night, battered by neon and flashing lights, my dinner companion commented ruefully on how distant we were from nature. I suppose you could say that in the middle of any city, but in Las Vegas …
Continue reading ‘Water in the desert, Las Vegas edition II’ »
In my second spring of actually writing down the birds I see, I’ve encountered a hole in my data. Dark-eyed juncos have been a steady and heavy presence all winter, first showing up in mid-October. But I was a slacker last March, so I don’t have data on when they leave. Through the winter, I …
It’s no Yolo Bypass, but the Albuquerque Metropolitan Flood Control Authority pond up by my work is testament to the fact that if you add water to an arid ecosystem, stuff happens. Located at the end of the concrete-lined North Pino Arroyo, the pond is a holding basin, design to trap sediments and contaminants before …
I think of our backyard as a little ecosystem, but like most such ecosystems in our 21st century world, it’s impossible to think about them without understanding the effects of human interventions, both accidental and intentional. We’ve got a pond, a metal stock tank Lissa gave me for my 40th birthday. Cattails found their way …
2009 was the first full year I’ve been thorough in keeping track of my yard birds. We always looked idly out and enjoyed them, especially since Lissa built me a pond a while back for my birthday. But in 2009, I kept lists. Sometimes it was an hour on a summer evening sitting at the …
Continue reading ‘2009: The Heineman-Fleck House Yard List’ »
It’s Science Saturday in the Albuquerque Journal. By which I mean that, when editors wander the halls looking for copy to fill the holiday news doldrums, there’s always an extra science feature on offer. (sub/ad req if you follow the links) VLA gets an upgrade: Rick Perley had a big smile on his face as …
Rio Grande from Alameda Bridge, Albuquerque Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. One of my favorite spots in Albuquerque is the old Alameda Bridge at the north end of town. When they built a new multi-lane bridge across the river, they kept the old one, turning it into a foot-bike-horse bridge. It’s about 10 miles from my …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: Ring-Billed Gull Edition’ »
More blathering from the morning paper, this the tale of the fascinating work of Blair Wolf (sub/ad yada yada) a University of New Mexico biologist who studies the water consumption of desert birds: The smaller a desert creature, the more water loss matters, and little birds like verdin are especially vulnerable, Wolf said. Sometimes, that …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere II: Birds, warming and the desert’ »
Dad watches birds Originally uploaded by Nora Heineman-Fleck. Photo courtesy Nora Heineman-Fleck, of me in the backyard geeking on a bird. As an aside, I was wearing my City Lights Bookstore t-shirt when Nora took this Saturday. Nora, by a coincidence, was also wearing hers. Probably just dumb luck, but I like the mystery of …
I’m sure there are a lot of things suffering right now because of the Texas drought. Few are as charismatic, though (sorry Michael), as the whooping crane: A drought in Texas severely affected the whooping crane’s foods of blue crabs and berries. Corn feeders were set up to supplement the cranes’ diets, but only about …