Maggie's Farm

A re-post -

In a comment on our piece about clear-cutting, a reader let us know about this book: 1491: New Revelations about the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles Mann.

Human fantasies about the Garden of Eden, like human utopian fantasies, just never give up. You might almost think we all wish we were back in the womb.

I ordered the book, but here's a quote from Charles Mann's 2002 essay in The Atlantic on the subject:

Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact.

It's a fascinating subject to me. Here's the whole essay.

Image: An early version of Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom

It's the time of year when Tree Swallows head for the coasts to assemble for their migrations. I have seen them flocking by the hundreds on Cape Cod in August (even saw an albino among them a couple of years ago), and by the thousands in places like Jamaica Bay NWP.

These fine birds bother me in the spring, when they successfully compete for the 25 Bluebird nest boxes I have gone to much trouble to clean etc.

Bugs and berries are their food, and they like to breed near water. More about them at the new, and less informative, CLO.

Photo is a male. The females are brown.

An experienced outdoorsman can identify most of the plants and trees in the areas with which he is familar - but not so much elsewhere. Like learning languages, though, he can learn a new area quickly because he has woods-sense based on the types of habitats he already knows.

An experienced outdoorsman can also predict what birds and critters are likely to be found in a given habitat. Woods-sense is one of the few talents I have. I like to attribute it to my Iroquois blood.

It used to be called Woodcraft, then Natural History, and now it's called Science: Barcoding plants by their DNA. It's sort-of cool, but it is soul-less and not woodcraft.

Photo: An Alder thicket - a common lowland and streamside habitat in the northern US. I have busted my way through more of these nearly-impenetrable things than I can count. The branches pull your hat off constantly, and sometimes you feel like you are in jail, with no exit. And if you try to raise your gun for a Grouse or Woodcock, there's always a branch to stop you. Good stuff.

Remember when Calvin insisted to his teacher that "Bats are birds"? (Correction - thanks, reader. I guess it was "Bats are bugs...". I was wrong again! That makes wrong twice in one week.)

New England is the home to around 7 species of bats, all nocturnal insectivores and most with some migratory habits.

Our most common bat is the Little Brown Bat (photo above) often found sleeping behind shutters or in crevices in sheds and attics during the summer and early fall. We had one who got into the house a few years ago. We managed to scoot him out a window. Wonderful - no, miraculous little critters, but worth keeping away from because they can carry rabies.

I noticed seeing very few bats around at twilight this year. I miss them dodging, diving, and ducking around in their bug-catching aerial antics. I checked it out. It turns out that there is a contagious bat disease in the Northeast. Whether this fungal infestation is the cause, or an effect of something else, is still not certain. It's a damn shame.

I hope their populations bounce back in my lifetime because these silent fluttering critters are one of the delights of the evening sky around here.

Marginal Revolution is a Puffin guy. 

More info about Puffins at All About Birds. Tyler Cowen linked to this Puffin video:

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One of Tigerhawk's young Bald Eagles at his place in the Adirondacks. Is he echoing the silhouette of the pump on purpose?

 

MIT atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen's short essay is rightly making the rounds today. One quote:

...all models predicting significant warming are greatly overestimating warming. This should not be surprising (though inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community).

 Read the whole thing. Related, a wamist read Prof. Ian Plimer's book, and was converted.

At the Okinawa Aquarium (borrowed from David Thompson). Note the Remoras on the Basking Shark - or is it a Whale Shark?:

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

I had no idea this sort of thing was going on. h/t, NRO

5 minutes ago. I love storms. Cameras cannot capture thunder, wind, and driving rain:

 

"Were you out there praying in the garden?" Mrs. BD asked me later. "No." I said. "I was watching ants."

I spent around a half hour on Satuday afternoon sitting in the dirt watching ants. Few things can be more absorbing. (Or maybe I should say that everything in life can be absorbing if you sit for a minute.)

In doing final garden clean-up, I had to move a big old 4X4 garden edger to another spot and, naturally, uncovered a black ant nest full of eggs or pupae - I think pupae because you could see something inside the egg-like shape.

Almost instantly, the worker ants (both the big ones and the little) and the soldier ants grabbed an egg and ran for cover, scattering in all directions. After about 5 minutes, each ant with egg in mandible headed over to the right, over a rock and into a hole in a pile of garden mulch. In about 15 minutes, every one of around 200 eggs had been carried off to safety by a line or marching ants, back and forth like Chinese coolies.

Ants are said to represent 18-25% of the animal biomass of the planet - higher in the tropics. There is nothing as adaptible as the family Formicidae. They are hymenoptera - evolved from wasps, and all still have tiny stingers.

Ant social behavior is interesting, but their specialization, their physical specialization, and their chemical communication is more so.

Here's a good brief intro to ant behavior. The Wiki entry isn't too bad.

I don't know how we missed this story. Never a bad idea to be armed in Cougar Country.

Their dog wasn't too helpful, was he?

Roy Spenser presents the hypothesis that the Pacific Decadal Oscillator, a strange oceanic and atmospheric thingy that happens in the North and South Pacific, explains atmospheric temperature changes better than anything else.

Reader LS took these photos in FL last week. Can you name them?

 

 

Except for the twitterings of some migrating warblers and thrushes, the morning bird chorus here has suddenly gone silent.

That's because the local breeders have now laid their eggs, and no longer want to draw attention to their presence with their territorial calls. 21 days for a bird egg to hatch, and then comes the long hassle of feeding, protecting, worrying over, and keeping track of the bird babies.

All parents know what that is like.

Everybody is showing this one, so we might as well too. The old guy is shameless, isn't he? A good thing he prefers elephant-style to missionary style or her riders might be in a heap of trouble.

She is a cute lil' thing, if a bit on the heavy side. They both seem to be smiling, and that's what matters.

 

We have posted many times about the tragedy of the commons here. This handy concept goes far beyond the original meaning.

It is the most basic human nature to take care of your own. Unless you have a close, small, closed society with strong affinity and who are on the same page, people will rape the commons for their own purposes.

We posted the other day about plans to try to maintain the fisheries.

John Stossel discusses Eat the Tigers! Same point. Most people need a sense of ownership to really care about stewardship.

Wizbang has a piece on the Osprey today. Can you name that fish?

 

From the NYT article:

Honeybees can tell their sisters how far away the food is up to a distance of about 15 kilometers. For good measure, they can also allow for the fact that the sun moves relative to the hive by about 15 degrees an hour and correct for this when they pass on the information. In other words, they have their own built-in global positioning system and a language that enables them to refer to objects and events that are distant in space or time.

Photos from the NYT piece.

Of the three white egrets that breed in New England (American, Cattle, and Snowy) the largest is the Great Egret, which I persist in calling by its old name, American Egret.

A reader sent in these photos of one from this weekend in salt marsh in CT. You can see some of their fancy breeding plumage, for which these birds were hunted to near-extinction through the 19th and early 20th Centuries until the Audubon Society was created to protect them. More about the Great Egret in CT here.

The populations recovered fairly well, as long as they have safe places to nest in their tree colonies - usually on small islands or the tip of a peninsula.

 

 

Out my window early this morning (35 degrees F): Two fat Easter Bunnies (Eastern Cottontails), four Grey Squirrels, one flock of Blue Jays, one flock of Grackles, one hen Wild Turkey, two Carolina Wrens, a pair of Cardinals, a number of sex-addled, amorous Mourning Doves, and a few Song Sparrows, Robins, Red-wings, Cowbirds, and White-Throated Sparrows. And one pair of lingering SC Juncoes.

Phoebe had a baby boy. h/t, LGF