Some random notes arising from cleaning off my desk and related spaces in my brain. Not sure this hangs together, but I need to put it somewhere so I can get on with my afternoon:
- Walking this morning with Lissa and Sadie along Embudo Arroyo, a concrete arroyo in Albuquerque’s Northeast heights, saw squirrels living in PVC pipes that drain into the arroyo.
- Visited some friends a week ago who live in a neighborhood near our own. They have a beehive in their backyard. They “smoked” the bees so they would become docile and we could look inside the hive. Few things I’ve seen as cool as that tightly organized frenzy. It’s 1.75 mi. (~3 km) from our house, so very possible that the bees in our backyard come from that hive. Bee stung me on the nose.
- Peter Kareiva’s piece in the June 29 Science on “Domesticated Nature: Shaping Landscapes and Ecosystems for Human Welfare.” Key bit:
“Conservation has often been framed as the science aimed at protecting nature, and especially protecting nature from people. We restate here what others have already emphasized: There really is no such thing as nature untainted by people. Instead, ours is a world of nature domesticated, albeit to varying degrees, from national parks to high-rise megalopolises.”
- Julio Betancourt’s 1981 Chaco pinyon-juniper paper. Key bit:
“Instead of climate, Anasazi fuel needs may explain the drastic reduction of pinyon and juniper after 1230 years ago.”
- Pigeons sitting on the power lines above the Embudo Arroyo as we walked this morning. Lissa noted that this was an ideal setting for them – water trickling down the floor of the concrete arroyo, out in the open, safe from predators (most likely cats).
- Sadie, walking with us, noticed neither the pigeons nor the squirrels.