Legacy

I recently went to a breakfast meeting in Bakersfield which presented information about John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club and the man that helped convince Teddy Roosevelt to start the National Parks. In 1976 California historians named him the greatest Californian. (I'm sure that he'd still be near the top today.) But despite being an important Californian, he wasn't born here. He was born in Scotland.

Urban Coyote

Now that's not some re-imagined movie starring John Travolta. But it is in fact, “a thing”. I have been looking at some articles on animals (and other things) for a project I've been fiddling with on the natural history of the area. And one of the things I've been reading that has been of special interest is that of coyotes in an urban environment.

If I Had A Hammer

Back in the 1980s observations of a layer of sediment right when the dinosaurs went extinct led to a hypothesis of an asteroid or comet impact being the cause of the extinction. Like many hypotheses that are fairly radical, it took a while to gain acceptance, yet now it is considered the likely cause of the extinction.

Cranes

Often when someone says they saw a crane, what they actually saw was an egret or a heron. And all are often found around water. But herons and egrets are typically more solitary. Oh, you might see several at the same place, but usually not too close together. And cranes come in flocks.

Out of This World

The recent strong winds from out of the west help generate some very impressive lenticular clouds. These are the “flying saucer” shaped clouds that form from time to time around Tehachapi. OK, they can form elsewhere, but we do get our share.

Splitting Up

I recently spent a day out at Joshua Tree National Park. I was participating in a writing workshop. But they include a Ranger in just about every activity and they always tell some interesting facts about the Park. This time the Ranger had some information about Joshua Trees. One of the first items was that the biologists are splitting the Joshua Tree in to two species.

Totally Eclipsed

Recently (April 15th), we had the first of four total lunar eclipses that are going to occur in the next several months. And the media kept calling it a “blood moon”, apparently from the red color of the moon when the eclipse was total. I’m not sure when this started to be done. When I was young and we watched lunar eclipses, the Moon turning red was how we could tell the eclipse was total. It was just part of the deal.

Wild Kingdom

I have some weird adventures with wildlife at times. A few years back I was back for a visit in Oklahoma and my brother dropped me off late at our parents house. I come in and my mother is shouting at me to get in the living room. I go in and turn on the light to see that she had been sleeping on the sofa and one of the dogs had brought in a small opossum. Well, I stomped my foot and it fell over (playing possum). I picked it up and took it outside.

A couple years later, when I was back for another visit, my nephew came out of the laundry room shouting about a snake. Not believing it I went and took a look. Yep, a 3 to 4 foot long black rat snake. In the laundry room. I had him bring me a coat hanger and I bent it to make an improvised snake hook and took it out front.

Zippy the front yard snake. (Western Yellow-bellied Racer).

Well just this week at my house, the local snake was waiting for me on my front mat. We'd had sightings of this snake for the past few years. (Actually I'm assuming it is the same snake, though haven't any way to be sure.) Well, being a Racer, this snake moves very fast so has been named "Zippy". We try to encourage him since he probably likes to eat lots of the things we don't like to have around. (Though he doesn't seem to eat any of the garden gnomes that are infesting my yard.)

A sack of small bunny.

Then this morning I came out of the bathroom to see a small brown shape run across the bedroom. Small, leaves out Moonpi. Brown, leaves out Bill (the Cat). Then I see the cat chase the shape under the bed. And I realize the ferocious feline has brought in a young rabbit. I make a call to get back up and after removing both Moonpi and Bill from the bedroom, the rabbit round up began. You can surely imagine a more dramatic or comedic version.  (And I think I will.) Since it took only a few minutes to guide the bewildered bunny into a paper bag. It didn't seem to be in bad shape, just drooled on a little. And after a few pictures it was released into the field behind the house.

So there you have it. My own wild kingdom adventures. Now I just need to find a sponsor. Oh and a camera man. Maybe I can get myself on Animal Planet. Or maybe not.

Are You Still Here?

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.

 On February 15^th, assuming you're reading this, an asteroid came close to the Earth without hitting it. In the past several years astronomers have been keeping track of asteroids that come close to the Earth. And 2012 DA14 will come closer to the Earth than any of the others they have tracked before. Just a little over 17,000 miles. That means it will be coming within the orbit of geosynchronous communication satellites.

Mistletoe

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With the recent holiday season mistletoe was everywhere. I ended up with a couple pieces that had been gathered here locally. Now as most of us know mistletoe is a parasite. Of course what most of us know is usually incomplete. Mistletoe is actually only a hemi-parasite. You'll notice that it is green. After all that's typically when we see it, in the fall and winter as a big patch of green in an otherwise denuded tree. And green plants perform photosynthesis. So mistletoe is producing some of its own food. So it isn't a complete parasite.

But it does parasitize its host for water and some nutrients. And especially in dry areas can cause significant damage to it's host. Though most naturalists will point out that for a healthy plant a little mistletoe is not a significant risk to the plant's health. And there might be some that will claim that large amounts a mistletoe is a symptom rather than the cause of a plant's poor health.

However our view of mistletoe's role in the ecosystem is beginning to change. Back in 2001 Australian scientist, David M. Watson, reported on an experiment he performed. For a patch of forest he took all the mistletoe out. Which was a fairly monumental task. It took many months and they removed tons of mistletoe, then went back the next year and removed a bit more. 

And the result? Well individual trees might have done a bit better, but the health of the forest, at least in terms of biodiversity went down. Over a third of the bird species previously found there were gone. Now perhaps you might suggest, this was due to birds that ate mistletoe berries being unable to find food and had left. There are birds that are significant eaters of mistletoe, like our own desert phainopepla. But that wasn't the case. The bird species that were missing were often insect eaters.

His paper reported that mistletoe, not having to do much in the way of conserving its resources, since it was stealing the resources of the larger tree. Was rather free with dropping its leaves which left generous amounts of highly nutritious material on the forest floor. Which would decay and provide food for insects, which in turn fed the birds. So removal of all the mistletoe in an area had a significant impact on the number of different species that the forest could support.

This is an example of what in ecology they call a keystone species. A keystone as you may, or may not know, is the stone at the top of the arch that locks the whole arch together. And a keystone species is similar. There may not be many of them, but they have a large influence on the biodiversity of an ecosystem.

For example, in 1966, the idea was first put forward when an ecologist, Robert Paine, noted that when starfish were removed from an area the mussels quickly push almost all other species out of the area. Biodiversity is gone. 

While many keystone species are predators (starfish are ferocious predators), not all are. In some areas the prairie dog is a keystone species due to their extensive tunnel system having an impact on the environment by providing habitat for other creatures.

We are always modifying our environment we can't help that. But we shouldn't treat it like a game of Jenga® where we go about removing whole blocks and hoping that the whole structure doesn't come tumbling down. So to have the world that we want, we might have to have a few things in it that we don't really like. Our forest might be a bit better off with some mistletoe in it.

Smoke and Mirrors

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I've just been learning some things about smoke detectors. Were you aware that most actually have a small amount of a radioactive element in them? Any that use ionization will have some kind of radioactive source. (Now there are also optical detectors which use light to detect the smoke, but these are more expensive so you're not going to find them as often.) Now checking out Wikipedia the most common radioactive element used is americium-241 (which denotes the isotope of americium with an atomic weight of 241). This element doesn't occur in nature and was first created in 1944.

Stuck in Lodi

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Being well away of the danger (thanks, Credence Clearwater Revival) I went to Lodi for the Sandhill Crane festival. They have had a festival for the Sandhill Crane for the last 16 years. Their goal is to bring awareness to this large but little known bird.

Death Valley Days

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I've been doing a lot of thinking about Death Valley lately. I've been working on a big writing project dealing with Death Valley in the early 20^th Century. Actually it's a musical (working with Gary Mazzola) which I'm going to be working on for a while yet. And I've got another project I'm getting ready to start which will deal with a fictional event taking place in Death Valley in the 1930s. 

Historical

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

Things have been happening here on Earth for around four billion years. Most of the things that have happened during that time were unobserved. And for most of the things that have happened that have been observed, no one has bothered to note them down.

Resolution

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.  

 

It's that time of year again. Time for New Year's Resolutions. Popular resolutions include: losing weight, saving money and managing stress. But I'm making slow progress on the first two and the last one doesn't apply to me too often. Only when one of Tehachapi Community Theatre's shows takes over my life. And that's generally short term and voluntary.

Citizen Science

  This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

A while back I wrote a little about the Nobel Prize. Where some of the big discoveries, that change our understanding of the universe, are recognized. Though it does have some blind spots. Only three sciences are included (Physics, Chemistry and Medicine. I'm still refusing to include economics as a science.) So there are many fields that don't have any hope of getting a Nobel Prize. 

But science isn't always about the big ideas. There are lots of smaller problems. So many that scientists ask for help from the rest of us.

Invasive Species

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

Today I met Zippy, who is a juvenile Yellow-bellied Racer. (That's a snake for those needing a translation.) Zippy was named due to his or her speed. The term “racer” in the name is a good indication of that. Zippy may have been living in my front flower bed for some time. The snail population seems to have dropped in that area.

Botany 101

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.  

 

Humans have always been affected by the plants in our environment. As our ancestors moved out of the trees and down onto the ground, the plants we ate changed. Anthropologists can look at the teeth of the ancestors and determine what those people were eating by the wear patterns. And when our ancestors settled down with agriculture the plants we used changed again.

Getaway

Now I like spending time here in Tehachapi, but sometimes, when it's just too hot here, I'll make a break for cooler climes. And just recently I spent a day up in the Sequoia National Monument. This is a section of the Sequoia National Forest that has been set aside to protect several small groves of Sequoias. 

Panorama Experiment

On Saturday I was at the Trail of 100 Giants in the Sequoia Monument. And I decided to try an experiment with doing a vertical panorama to give a better image of one of these big red trees. The experiment shows some success, but clearly needs more work before a good picture is created. But here's what I was able to get this time.