Maggie's Farm

This very large crested Woody Woodpecker-looking bird was extremely scarce in New England during the 50s and 60s, but they have become more common in recent years as the farmlands return to woodlands. Their numbers have always been stable in the South, I believe.

I often see them hanging around dead trees where beavers have flooded woods. The loud kuk kuk kuk call announces their presence, and the large rectangular holes they chip in trees, looking for bugs, lets you know that they are around.

More about the wonderful Pileated here at CLO. Image borrowed from the excellent CLO website.

I have rarely seen a tree with as many Pileated holes as the one below, from this photographer's website.  Interesting to see the old, healed Pileated holes in the Hemlock immediately behind.

On rainy days like today, our local Box Turtles come out of hiding and gather 'round. I throw them strawberries or tomatoes, and they are grateful. Such cheerful, gentle, pleasant reptiles. They even look up at you, as if to ask for more. They go nuts over a nectarine, but who doesn't?

Jones Beach, on the south shore of Long Island (Atlantic), receives more visitors annually than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined.

Humans do like beaches. It's a big one, and a fine birding spot during the fall and winter. It's New York City's beach - the people's back yard, and one of the world's great beaches.

And no condos and no shops - the narrow barrier island is a 2400-acre NY State Park. It has some remarkable heron and egret rookeries. In winter, it's good for Snowy Owls, Rough-legged hawks, Gannets, Bonaparte's and other interesting or rare gulls, the occasional alcid (murres, razorbills, and auks), and plenty of Harbor Seals in the surf, which, at first, you think is someone's Lab taking a swim - until they dive. Plenty of Myrtle Warblers over-wintering on the bayberries.

But in the summer, it is Coppertone time - time to strut your good stuff - and no-one is stalking through the scrub and poison ivy looking for birds of the feathered variety.

Photo from the above link.

The Downy Woodpecker comes to mind today because they have a nest outside my front door, in a hole in a big old sugar maple, and the endless and almost annoying, rhythmic squeak squeak squeak of the hungry babies sounds exactly like a bad fan belt.

Found across the entire US and most of Canada, these cute little bug-eaters are far more common than the Hairy Woodpecker, its big brother, and is non-migratory.

More about the Downy here, at CLO. Photo borrowed from CLO.

Maggie's Farm remains a "Marauding Marsupial" in the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem. We'd love to move to the next step up to reinforce our fragile egos, but I am not certain that we deserve to. Maybe we are destined to be an elite, boutique blog for our discriminating high IQ, irony-minded six few readers, but there is a mass-market dream hidden deep inside of us.

The Wombat can be a marauding marsupial at times, but he tends to be fairly agreeable unless he feels attacked or happens to be in a grumpy mood. A charging wombat can knock over a man and tear a big hole in him. Maybe Maggie's Farm is a Wombat.

I hear a song in my head: "Wombats in the Snow," to the tune of "Strangers in the Night."

Anyway - do us a favor. Send our blog to all of your friends, relatives, colleagues and enemies. We want - and deserve, 100,000 readers per day - visitors, not hits. We have tons of "hits," and do not need more "hits" looking for Farm P*rn: we are a clean-cut blog and not one of us has ever had a mean, ugly, dirty, angry, perverted, lascivious, schadenfreudenous, illegal, adulterous, covetous, larcenous, or mean-spirited thought - ever. We are as pure as the driven snow upon which the Wombat poops in the Australian winter which, perversely, arrives in the summer. (What a mixed-up country they are, down on the bottom of the planet, where their floors are roofs and vice versa. How can they think, standing upside-down? And how come they don't fall off? Do they wear magnets in their shoes? Keep those magnets on your boots, Aussies! You are the only sane friends left in this crazy world.)

We all learned about it in High School, but we can easily forget, when we see the amazing blooms of early June, that we are looking at the personal, private, and always fascinating sex organs of angiosperm plants. They do not hide them in shame or modesty, do they? Not at all: like lovely young women, they just want to be fertilized. Details here. (Every time I label something as "Farm P*rn", we get a ton of hits from perverts around the world. I find it amusing. No doubt I add to their frustration. On the downside, it gets us blocked by the Merrill Lynch censorship system, so our Merrill friends cannot catch up with Maggie's Farm at work.)

I rely on the guys at Junk Science, who have no axes to grind, to detect the flaws in the ways in which scientific information is presented. Here are his conclusions in an excellent piece on climate and air chemistry:

What are the take-home messages:

• The temperature effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic, not exponential.
• The potential planetary warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from pre-Industrial Revolution levels of ~280ppmv to 560ppmv (possible some time later this century - perhaps) is generally estimated at less than 1 °C.
• The guesses of significantly larger warming are dependent on "feedback" (supplementary) mechanisms programmed into climate models. The existence of these "feedback" mechanisms is uncertain and the cumulative sign of which is unknown (they may add to warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide or, equally likely, might suppress it).
• The total warming since measurements have been attempted is thought to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade. At least half of the estimated temperature increment occurred before 1950, prior to significant change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Assuming the unlikely case that all the natural drivers of planetary temperature change ceased to operate at the time of measured atmospheric change then a 30% increment in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused about one-third of one degree temperature increment since and thus provides empirical support for less than one degree increment due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
• There is no linear relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide change and global mean temperature or global mean temperature trend -- global mean temperature has both risen and fallen during the period atmospheric carbon dioxide has been rising.
• The natural world has tolerated greater than one-degree fluctuations in mean temperature during the relatively recent past and thus current changes are within the range of natural variation. (See, for example, ice core and sea surface temperature reconstructions.)
• Other anthropogenic effects are vastly more important, at least on local and regional scales.
• Fixation on atmospheric carbon dioxide is a distraction from these more important anthropogenic effects.
• Despite attempts to label atmospheric carbon dioxide a "pollutant" it is, in fact, an essential trace gas, the increasing abundance of which is a bonus for the bulk of the biosphere.
• There is no reason to believe that slightly lower temperatures are somehow preferable to slightly higher temperatures - there is no known "optimal" nor any known means of knowingly and predictably adjusting some sort of planetary thermostat.
• Fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide are of little relevance in the short to medium term (although should levels fall too low it could prove problematic in the longer-term).
• Activists and zealots constantly shrilling over atmospheric carbon dioxide are misdirecting attention and effort from real and potentially addressable local, regional and planetary problems.

Read the whole thing: link above.

The names of warblers have been changed like crazy over the past few years. This little guy with his raccoon-eyes is now the Common Yellowthroat - not to be confused with the Yellow-throated Warbler, which is rare.

We are now at the end of the warbler migration, as these tiny jewels illegally migrate from Central and South America to their breeding grounds in the north. This common warbler loves to skulk in thick underbrush, especially near water, but his loud, penetrating song gives him away.

Song, and info, here at CLO.

North America's Northern Harrier, aka Harrier, aka Marsh Hawk, is one of my favorite birds, because he dwells in my favorite sorts of places. I am happy wherever the Harrier is happy.

He likes vast marshes and fields, where he tilts around very low, hunting small birds and rodents. He is never in the woods. 

Many a duck hunter has had one silently swing over their duck blind, six feet over your head, and reflexively raised the gun before making the ID. Never shoot one: forget illegal - it's plain wrong. For fun, you can draw them in by making a squeaking sound - like owls, they can hear well. And while you are busy fooling with the Marsh Hawk, no doubt a flock of Bluebills will pass over your decoys while you are distracted - it never fails.

The males and females are very different in coloration, but the white rump, and the behavior, are the easy diagnostic points.

With draining of marshes, and the reduction of farmlands in the East, their numbers are down. But in Britain, the essentially identical bird was almost extinct, but now happily making a comeback.

More about the Northern Harrier here at CLO. I still call them Marsh Hawks.

Photo courtesy of P. LaTourette.

When Lincoln, with his son Tad, was taking the Presidential train back from Richmond following the fall of Richmond in April, 1865, shortly before his assassination, he saw a Box Turtle sunning near the tracks. He had the train stopped, and went out and played with the turtle with Tad for a while before re-boarding the train.

Anyone who likes Box Turtles is OK with us. They are coming out of hibernation now, hungry, and looking for mates. Don't run them over, and help them across the road. And don't take them home - they don't work as pets, and they like their home territory.

How do I know they are awake? Saw my first one of our local colony, taking the sun yesterday morning. Funny how they always look cheerful.

America's favorite ground cover, second only to asphalt. It sure does beat grass, because it doesn't get weeds, doesn't need watering, is happy with deep shade, is evergreen, is tough as hell, and doesn't need to be mown. It is an import from Japan.

It's coming into bloom right now, around here. The early-waking bees love those flowers.

Why a curse?  Did you ever try to remove a bed of pachysandra? It's like cleaning terrorists out of Baghdad, except they don't shoot back.

It is the beginning of Forsythia season in Yankeeland.

Last chance to put in your orders:

   A great source for native plantings on a large scale: Musser Forests
   A great source for fruits and berries, and miscellaneous: Miller Nurseries
   The premier place for perennials: White Flower Farm
   Great source for unusual varieties: Wayside Gardens

I suggest he read this at National Review( http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/haislmaier200601271110.asp ), and realize many of his objections are met, and many of many others' are met, including why someone else should be responsible for his family exceeding his means to pay, and including that limited (more toward what he calls catastrophic) policies will be available at a more affordable cost.

 

I was very fortunate to have my camera handy yesterday when I came out of my house in North Attlebury, MA, and was amazed to see an extinct  Passenger Pigeon passing by. The size and the prominent white marginal tail feathers mark it clearly as a PP and neither a Rock Dove nor a Mourning Dove. It's mid-photo, on the right. The picture is not the best because I tripped over a bag of peat moss in my excitement.

As further proof of my sighting, here's a photo of the peat moss that I tripped over:

And, as final, incontrovertible proof, here's my girlfriend with a hearty endorsement: "If he says he saw something, he probably maybe did, but I wouldn't swear to it. He is full of it, sometimes."

The Song Sparrow may be the most common sparrow in the Eastern US, but is found across the country and Canada. He is on my mind because I have just begun to hear his spring song last week, which will continue throughout the summer (unlike most songbirds who sing territorially in the spring, and then keep quiet).

He is an easy sparrow to identify, with the streaked breast with the big blotch in the center. And, perched on the top of a shrub branch, head tilted to the sky, pouring his heart out, he is hard to miss.

Interestingly, his song has many regional accents, but the basic format remains the same.

More about the exhuberant Song Sparrow, with sample of his familiar song, at CLO.

Photo courtesy of P. LaTourette.

The Sharpie is one of the most commonly seen
small hawks in the US. He is our smallest member of the Accipter family of hawks, which are designed to catch smaller birds.

In winter, they are known to hang around bird-feeders, where they have good sport with the sparrows and finches, and fine dining for them at the end of the game.

You will see their flap-flap-glide flying pattern at woodland edges, or more often see them perched in an open area, surveying the landscape for likely prey and just enjoying being alive.

Diagnostic issue: If you can tell a female Sharpie from a Coopers Hawk, you are a pro birder. I cannot.

More about Sharpies at CLO.

Photo courtesy of Bill Horn.

I have read about 100 articles about climate over the past year, from the scientific to the pop science. That doesn't make me an expert. But it's enough to throw out a few facts and opinions.

Facts:

Climate changes over time, with or without humans.

Since the beginnings of agriculture, humans have impacted climate.

We live in an interglacial, during a time of retreating ice sheets - but still in what is technically an ice-age - meaning polar ice caps. During most of the planet's history, there have been none. We are in a cold spell.

Short-term variations and swings of climate mean no more that short-term swings in the stock market.

Carbon material in the air probably does contribute to net warming.

In the past week, YARGB has done a post on the hockey stick graph - often used to inspire climate terror. And yesterday, Libertarian Leanings posted Sound the Alarm...Again, in response to the newspaper's hysteria about Greenland ice sheets. Michaels, who has been a real scholar in this area, points out that the articles on the glaciers fail to mention that ice is accumulating in Greenland faster than the glaciers are melting.

Opinion:

Climate and climate-modeling are incredibly complex, and if carbon material in the atmosphere plays a role in the current interglacial warming, so be it. It won't be enough to prevent the return of the next glaciation. It hardly matters what we do in the US anyway - that hybrid car might make you feel virtuous but it does nothing...the manufacture of the batteries spills tons of CO2. And countries like Russia, China, India and developing countries are dying for the chance to burn oil the way the US and Europe do - and they will. Thus nothing meaningful will be or can be done, except maybe some very expensive, feel-good cosmetics. Eventually, nuclear power will replace carbon sources, but climate is not the main reason to do that. Energy independence, and economy, is the reason to do that. At some point, oil power will look the way horse power looks to us today. I refuse to worry pointlessly about it, nor will I worry about an asteroid hitting the earth. As long as there are billions of people on earth, we will effect climate, and everything else, somehow.

(Image: Wooly Mammoth in New Jersey, summertime, a few thousand years ago, by paleo-artist Moravec.)

By way of follow-up on our piece yesterday on flooding and flood insurance, a piece came out yesterday by the AP's Bridges noting the increase of development in flood zones:

Concentrated development in flood-prone parts of Missouri, California and other states has significantly raised the risk of New Orleans-style flooding as people snap up new homes even in areas recently deluged, researchers said Saturday.

Around St. Louis, where the Mississippi River lapped at the steps of the Gateway Arch during the 1993 flood, more than 14,000 acres of flood plain have been developed since then. That has reduced the region's ability to store water during future floods and potentially put more people in harm's way, said Adolphus Busch IV, a scion of the Anheuser-Busch brewing family who is chairman of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance.

Similar development has occurred around Dallas, Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Omaha, Neb., and Sacramento, Calif., said Gerald Galloway, a professor of engineering at the University of Maryland.

Read the whole thing in the Houston Chronicle. Wish we could get some congressmen interested. Who wouldn't have a chat over a free Bud with Adolphus?

The National Flood Insurance Program is bankrupt. Not recently. That means that taxpayers are subsidizing building in flood zones, flood plains, and areas with high risk of natural water disasters - and thus encouraging, rather than discouraging, stupid behavior by making it economically risk-free to the individual.

For reasons of principle, conservation, and common sense, this subsidy should end. If you chose to live in such a high-risk place, you should carry the risk, not me.  Flood Insurance should be a purely commercial enterprise, the same as any other aspect of homeowner's insurance. Not retroactively, but in the future. Somehow, I doubt anyone in DC cares about this every much, but the Katrina costs should be a chance to reconfigure this insurance/subsidy scam.

From Burnett at TCS:

When people own property and are fully responsible for losses due to their poor land use or development decisions, they are less likely to build or rebuild in areas regularly prone to flooding or erosion. This link -- between a person's property ownership and responsibility for their land use decisions -- disciplines people who use their property badly.

Unfortunately, a host of government programs break this link by subsidizing unwise development. All too often the result is lost lives, destroyed property and diminished livelihoods. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) flood control program and federal flood insurance subsidize construction in flood-prone areas and encourage high-risk development by shifting the cost of insurance and physical protection against floods from property owners to taxpayers. The result: more construction in high risk areas. Its economics 101 -- if you subsidize something you get more of it.

I guess politics trumps logic, every time. Read entire. (Image from New Orleans)