Photo Credit: Mr.TinDC via Compfight cc

I’ve been spending more time with numbers than words lately trying to finish the taxes so I can get outside and enjoy the first days of spring.

From my desk I’ve noticed a robin hanging out at the birdbath, mostly standing on the edge, sipping, but late yesterday he waded in and had a good splash.

Anne Schmauss’s  recent column in the New Mexican had several tips to help identify backyard birds.  She advises taking the time to really observe the details—size, shape, markings— before opening the field guide.  Following her advice I spent a long moment looking at the robin, noticing for the first time his white eye ring.

Another sure sign of spring is all of the talk of basketball.  Since I don’t have a clue about any of the teams this year (I never really do) I have opted for a different bracket challenge—Mammal March Madness.  Stealing time away from my calculator I have been googling quokkas and numbats, making totally unscientific choices based mostly on cuteness.

Soon our local bears will be waking up and Albuquerque is one city where they are welcome according to this top-ten list of wildlife-friendly cities.  Austin, Texas was rated number one and New York City ten.  In between were some I might have guessed, Portland and Seattle, and a couple I wouldn’t have, Atlanta and Indianapolis.

And finally, do you know one thing that Steve Jobs and Charles Dickens had in common?  A love of walking according to this article touting the benefits not only to our physical health but also to our creativity and problem-solving abilities.

Have a great week and take a walk!

March Madness Mammals

Phainopepla Photo Credit: wplynn via Compfight cc

Sitting in the backyard, drinking hot chocolate, and watching the bird feeder doesn’t seem like it advances the cause of science, but it turns out that it can.  I wrote last month about participating in the annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC)—a citizen science project based on thousands of bird watchers recording and submitting their sightings over a four-day period.

The final results have been tallied and more than 140,000 individuals in countries ranging from the United States to Chile to Saudi Arabia to India counted upwards of18.5 million birds, almost 5100 different species.  The data will be used by researchers to determine the status and health of bird populations around the globe.

In this Yale Climate Connections segment ornithologist Caren Cooper talks about the importance of citizen science, reporting that  “roughly half of the scientific papers she looked at relied on this crowd-sourced data”.

Tiger beetles are the subject of Sharman Apt Russell’s citizen science project that she writes about in her charming story Meet the Beetles (Orion Magazine November/December 2014).  Reflecting on  being middle-aged she writes, ” . . . I do not expect now to ever become a rock star or to go to medical school or to create cool television shows.  But wait, I tell myself.  Turn that idea around.  At every point in life there is still a long list of what we can be.  This is the clarion call of citizen science . . .”

If counting birds or tracking beetles doesn’t excite you, there are lots of other citizen science projects to get involved in.  Two I have recently come across are the great sunflower project which focuses on pollinators and the monarch way station project which helps create habitat for migrating monarch butterflies.

Have a good week and spend some time outside!

I was learning that coexisting with nature in all its wild forms is one of the gifts and lessons of this life, one that takes flexibility and creativity on our part. Coyotes are as clever and as driven as any human, and are simply adapting as people pave their world.
—Shreve Stockton in “The Daily Coyote”

Photo Credit: yathin via Compfight cc

Coyotes are my neighbors.  They run and hunt and raise their young in the piñon and juniper woods just outside of Santa Fe. We all mind our own business, for the most part, but we keep a wary eye on one another.

Picking up my mail late in the afternoon a few weeks ago, I spotted one of the wild canines standing in the middle of the road—less than a hundred yards away.  He was focused on something in the trees and didn’t notice me.  I stood watching him until we were both startled by a passing car.

In New Mexico it’s legal for residents to kill coyotes without a hunting license—there is no closed season and no bag limit.  Two short sentences cover “unprotected furbearers”, a small category which includes only coyotes and skunks in the state’s 137-page hunting rules and information booklet.  This lack of regulation allows the coyote-killing contests for which New Mexico has become known.   Often sponsored by gun shops, the competitions reward the hunter who kills the most coyotes within a designated time period.

There is no doubt that coyotes can be troublesome, raiding chicken coops and preying on livestock.  In my neighborhood their primary diet consists of rabbits and rodents, but more than one house cat has gone outside to nap in the sun or to take a stroll never to be seen again.  Even so, I don’t like to think of coyotes being hunted for sport and many of my fellow New Mexicans seem to agree based on this editorial published in the Albuquerque Journal.

For a moment it looked like our state legislature might pass a bill this session to outlaw the contests.  The proposed law easily cleared  the Senate with bipartisan support, but died in the House Agriculture, Water and Wildlife Committee when, by an overwhelming margin, they voted to table the bill, effectively killing it for the year.

In a few weeks it will be spring.  The adult coyotes that saunter through my backyard in broad daylight will be less visible, busy raising new litters of pups, keeping such close tabs on the youngsters that I’ve never seen one.   But sometimes late at night when their chorus of yips and howls drifts on the breeze that flutters the lace curtains, I’ll listen closely certain I hear the high-pitched voices of the pups chiming in.

Love them or hate them, coyotes continue to adapt to our rapidly changing world, thriving in spite of all efforts to thwart them.