Spring? Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. I’ve got work to do this afternoon, but I’m completely distracted by the show outside. It’s been so dry here that I had to turn on some water in the backyard. That’s drawn the birds like nutso – juncos, sparrows and house finches mostly, but I saw a couple lesser …
Birds Flee Changing Habitats (ad/sub req.): Birds and butterflies offer the earliest signs that ecosystems are changing in response to a changing climate, according to Craig Allen, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “They’re mobile,” said Allen, an expert on the effect of climate change on New Mexico’s environment. Climate has always changed, Allen …
Continue reading ‘More Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Back on the Bird Beat’ »
On my way home from a bike ride just now, I heard the ice cream truck, one of those indicators of our human phenology. Seems awfully early. Global warming? One more sign of our imminent economic collapse?
Oak Flat watering hole Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Lissa made a great discovery yesterday morning while we were walking in the woods at Oak Flat, in the Manzano Mountains east of town. The big thing in the background of the picture that looks like a UFO is a big cistern, with a flared top to …
Free Iris Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. It took about 10 minutes from the time Lissa put up the “free iris” sign this morning until the first neighbor drove up to grab a bag. The iris bed has gotten a little out of control, and Lissa and I skipped our Saturday morning walk to work on …
If I was a robin, here’s what I would do on a cool, late summer dawn in Albuquerque, as I was headed south. I’d get my friends and fly up to the highest tree in the neighborhood, that big elm over there, and flutter around a little bit to keep warm as the sun just …
So here’s my question of the day. We have two dominant Little Brown Bird types here – house finches and house sparrows. At home yesterday, I had only finches in backyard. At work, the crowd by the lunch tables is entirely sparrows. What’s different about the two ecosystems? (Note that I don’t expect actual answers.)
kids in the bumper boats at Hinkle Family Fun Center first hummingbird, sitting on the power line in the backyard (2005: April 16; 2007: May 2) first bloom on the Harrison’s rose (yesterday, exact same date as first bloom last year) first of the main purple iris bloom in the front yard, over the last …
Lissa counted 10 fish this morning in the pond, alongside the first lily pads of the spring. Me? (Sneeze) All I could see was the scum of pollen floating on top. update: I was out adding water this evening and noticed the first thin cattail leaves coming up.
This Rutishauser and colleagues have been tracking the blooming of flowers in Switzerland (can you think of a more delightful job as a scientist?). In a paper just published in GRL, they concluded that 2007 was a remarkable spring: Anomalously high temperatures led to a very early onset of plant phenological spring phases, including 98 …