Robin Watch

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Autumn Elm

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You can live a long time in one place and still make discoveries. Yesterday's discovery was just how many American elms there are around here. American elms used to be common as they were the preferred tree for city planting in the 19th century due to their shape and color. And they are beautiful trees, large, majestic, everything a tree should be. I assumed for quite a while that elms were pretty much a threatened species  well on their way to being extinct thanks to Dutch elm disease which ravaged the population. Dutch elm disease and the monocultivation of elms is Exhibit A in why diversity of planting is a good thing. Diversity provides built in resistance. I was both surprised and pleased to discover about a year ago that on the grounds of the science center where I work there were not one but two large elms. Outside my window. That I looked at every day. I just assumed they were cottonwoods, the other large, beautiful majestic tree in my ecosystem. It wasn't till...
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Climate Change Is Still Worse

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 My city is a municipal utility, which means the city owns the electric utility that provides the electricity to the community. An insert in our recent electric bill caught my attention. Apparently, there is a possibility of controlled energy outages which means under energy emergency conditions we would have to take assigned turns using electricity until demand goes down.  The city's explanation of contributing factors to the need for controlled outages was a deep sigh moment.  For someone who isn't familiar with our national electricity grid (no shame, it's generously described as arcane) this reads as if renewable energy and closure of coal-fueled energy generation were the definitive reasons for the controlled power outages. This is an oversimplification. The more technically precise reason for the controlled power outages is the lack of energy storage capacity on the grid. In other words, we have to store electricity made by renewables when they are producing for tim...
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Ant Struggles Are Real

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I read Thoreau's essay  ant war  in high school, or maybe it was first year composition in college— more than a few years ago—but the essay topic was sticky enough that throughout my adulthood I have stopped and watched ants whenever opportunity and time presented themselves.  I had a happy confluence of both on a walk yesterday. I came upon many ants, Harvester ants, huddled around the hole with a few busily scurrying in and out carrying small pebbles. I don't know what the huddlers were doing (beyond huddling, though I doubt that is the proper ant behavior term), nor why. I suspect it had something to do with this being early days of ant activity and just coming out of whatever dormant state they enter during the winter. The huddlers while interesting were not as interesting as this stalwart little ant in the video who was determined to cut down a sprout of vegetation. Harvester ants clear the areas around their holes of any vegetation and I imagine th...
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