So here's your word of the day: phenology. It's the study of biological phenomena that happen in response to seasonality and climate, like when flowers flower and when birds migrate.

I was first exposed to the word last summer in the excellent climate blog of Roger Pielke Sr.. He was talking about a workshop in Tucson organized by the ubiquitous Julio Betancourt, who's trying to set up a National Phenological Network. This sort of data is incredibly relevant to understanding the effects of climate change writ large, but Julio and others say we haven't been very systematic about collecting it.

If I have time today, I'll call down to the Bosque del Apache and see if I can find out whether the cranes really are early this year. I bet they've got the data to back up our anecdotes.

The big machines were out this morning beginning their anual scooping of the dirt, cleaning it out to bare concrete. As a journalist by both inclination and profession, I can of course make the argument for the other side in this: the boys at the flood control authority have a mandate to prepare the city for a 100-year-flood, so they have an engineering design specification for the channel's capacity. The dirt that piles up at the bottom, enabling the lovely wetland, reduces that capacity.

But that knowledge made the plaintive cries of three killdeer this morning, standing helplessly on the concrete bank as their home was bulldozed, no less heartbreaking.

Sunday, a flock of bushtits blew through. David Sibley describes them as "a disheveled-looking, long-tailed ball of fluff," and I think that's apt. There were eight of them at one point all perched on the stalk and leaf stems of a single sunflower in our front yard, picking off the aphids.

This morning, I pulled up the bike along the flood control channel after hearing the cry - Sibley uses the words "agitated" and "strident" to describe it, which is also apt - of killdeer. I had to look hard to find them, wading ankle-deep in the water on the channel's bottom. I love the way the flood control channel is an accidental bit of nature, in between the rusty busted shopping carts and other urban detritus.

(Image courtesy National Park Service.)

He had a lovely rust back with a bright red throat - matched the orange flowers. We may have had more of them at our feeders, but I usually see them backlit in silhouette, so I'm not sure. Big fat guy, though, as hummingbirds go. Lissa said they usually show up around this time. Sure enough, in the margin of the rufous entry in our Sibley is a notation in Lissa's handwriting: "Our house, Aliso, 7-20-04".

My bird is a little less rare but I hope none the less delightful in a modest sort of way:

(Image courtesy USGS)

That's the killdeer, which tends to show up about this time every year in the urban wetland created in a big bend of the concrete flood control channel near my house.

Lissa and I were sitting on the front porch snacking. The little guy zoomed up to the hummingbird feeder hanger. No feeder yet, but he was makin' the rounds. Think about it. This guy has been to Central America for the winter, all the way back, no Mapquest, no Google Maps, and a very small brain as well. But there he is.

Lissa immediately went in and filled the feeder, then began calling friends and family to report.

We saw, in no particular order, Sandhill cranes, a sparrow hawk (now apparently to more correctly be called the American kestrel), a golden eagle, a bunch of American coots, a Northern Pintail duck, a few red-tailed hawks, and more than a few snow geese.

And a great blue heron.

That's a page from our old family heirloom copy of Roger Tory Peterson's Field Guide to Western Birds.

We are by no means serious birders, but we always take our Peterson on trips, and when we see a bird we can identify, we jot a note in the margin. It has thus become a sort of narrowly defined family diary.

The oldest entry seems to be under the great blue heron: "11/86 - sat on tiny island in Colorado River all morning, picking at its feathers." Lissa and I were camped on the Arizona side of the river down south, near the Mexican border. The "island," as I remember it, was little more than a rock big enough to snag some driftwood. The heron just sat.

We've since seen the big herons in Wyoming, near Thayne; on the San Juan River downstream from Sand Island where they kept following our boat; at the Bosque del Apache with Lissa's late sister Ginnie. That last is particularly precious now.

We have a couple of whooping crane listings (a handful used to winter in New Mexico with the sandhill crane flock), including the time my sister and I saw one in flight.

And then my favorite listing, under "mallard": "Coyote kills a female mallard at Bosque del Apache 11-3-97 N, L, J and Uncle Bill." The flock of ducks was at the edge of a field, and we watched as the coyote crept up on them. The ducks fluttered and moved away as the coyote moved toward them, uneasy. Finally the coyote bolted, the ducks took to the air in a flurry, and the coyote got the slowest one. Evolution in action.

We've got the new Sibley Guide to Birds now, which is a terrific book. We write in it now too. But we still tote along the Peterson's, and we still scrawl in the margins.

It was hunkered down against the morning chill, standing in shallow water, when I saw it reach down and snag a fish - big white breakfast, maybe a foot long. It was a great blue heron. It spread its wings and took flight north up the river, looking for a place to land and have breakfast.

Later in the ride, a coyote darted across the trail in front of us, dropping down into the drainage ditch and up the other side, on a loping radial away from us, casual but attentive, headed into the neighborhood no doubt to eat someone's chicken. Or cat.

I know all this because I received in the mail a survey from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish regarding my views on the Lesser Prairie-chicken and the efforts underway to save its sorry ass. The survey assured me I was scientifically selected, and that my views were important. I take my survey-responding responsibilities seriously. I filled it out.