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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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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Gombe

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In the Jane Goodall Institute Roots and Shoots online class I'm taking we had an opportunity to explore a Google street view map of Gombe National Park in Tanzania where Dr Jane did her groundbreaking work with chimpanzees. I was excited to see lichen in the opening screen. It looks like shield lichen from this distance. Street view is an immersive format that lets you see a 360° scene, including up and down. Roots and Shoots also offers a Google cardboard experience and additional activities about Gombe at  http://rootsandshoots.org/streetview  Maps are fascinating to me as I believe they are to all explorers. Google has brought us into a new immersive dimension with street view maps. You get to be there without actually being there. And yet, I'm always concerned about the exotic and far making the familiar and near seem less. Less interesting, less fun - and most worrisome - less important. It is none of these, of course. How do we transfer that sense of wonder ...
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