Phillip's Natural World 3.0

Lone Wolf in California

2012-02-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

A Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) makes it to California.

Lone Wolf Commands a Following

By MALIA WOLLAN

SAN FRANCISCO — On the Chinese calendar, this week ushers in the year of the dragon. But here, it feels a lot more like the year of the wolf.

On Dec. 28, a 2 1/2 -year-old gray wolf (Canis lupus) crossed the state line from Oregon, becoming the first of his species to run wild here in 88 years.

His arrival has prompted news articles, attracted feverish fans and sent wildlife officials scrambling to prepare for a new and unfamiliar predator.

“California has more people with more opinions than other states,” said Mark Stopher, senior policy adviser for the California Department of Fish and Game. “We have people calling, saying we should find him a girlfriend as soon as possible and let them settle down. Some people say we should clear humans out of parts of the state and make a wolf sanctuary.”

Route traveled by Wolf OR7

The wolf, known to biologists as OR7, owes his fame to the GPS collar around his neck, which has allowed scientists and fans alike to use maps to follow his 1,000-mile, lovelorn trek south from his birthplace in northeastern Oregon.

Along the way, OR7 has accrued an almost cultlike status.

“People are going to get wolf tattoos, wolf sweaters, wolf key chains, wolf hats,” said Patrick Valentino, a board member with the California Wolf Center, a nonprofit advocacy and education organization.

John Stephenson, a biologist, measured the stride of the gray wolf known as OR7 in Crater Lake National Forest, Oregon, in December 2011.

In Oregon, students participated in art contests to draw OR7’s likeness and a competition to rename him (the winner: “Journey”). This month, people across the country attended full-moon, candlelight wolf vigils organized by groups with names like Howl Across America and Wolf Warriors.

As with seemingly all wayward and famous animals these days, the wolf has a lively virtual existence on social networking sites like Twitter, where at least two Twitter accounts have been posting from the wolf’s perspective.

“Left family to find wife & new home. eHarmony just wasn’t working for me,” read one Twitter profile. Another account, which describes the wolf’s hobbies as “wandering, ungulates,” recently had in a post: “Why is everyone so worried about my love life?”

Wolf OR7 whose image was captured by a remote trail camera in Oregon.

The wolf’s presence has also set off more practical responses from state wildlife officials, who are hustling to prepare for what they now see as the inevitability of wild gray wolves here.

In mid-January, the California Department of Fish and Game put up a gray wolf Web site that includes a map of OR7’s trek and a 36-page explainer on the species. The department has already begun a series of public meetings with local governments in the state’s northern counties, where wolves are most likely to take up residence first.

Biologists say that OR7 is unlikely to survive long hunting alone without a pack and that it could be as many as 10 years before wild wolf packs roam northern California. Still, state and federal wildlife officials met Friday to discuss a strategy for wolves.

Next month, state biologists will get training by the Agriculture Department to identify livestock killed by wolves.

Once widespread across much of the country, gray wolves were nearly extinct in the contiguous United States by the early 20th century, killed by government trappers, ranchers and hunters. In 1974, the gray wolf was listed as endangered under the newly established Endangered Species Act. Then in 1995 and 1996 wildlife officials released 66 Canadian wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho, an area that is now home to nearly 1,700 wolves.

Wolves have been remarkably successful in reinhabiting their old terrain. In recent years regulators removed wolves from the endangered list for much of the northern Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes regions. In Idaho and Montana, they can be legally hunted.

In California, gray wolves remain protected under federal law, and the recent appearance of one has flared up large predator agita among ranchers.

“I’m afraid somebody will step up and take this wolf’s life in their own hands,” said Darrell Wood, a cattle rancher. “There are huge state and federal penalties for killing a wolf.”

Mr. Wood’s family has been raising cattle in Lassen County — where OR7 is now and where the state’s last wolf was shot in 1924 — for six generations. “I just hope it wasn’t a relative of mine who shot him,” said Mr. Wood, 56.

Other area residents seemed more interested in the wolf’s place in the mythological pantheon. “What’s next, sparkly vampires?” asked a commenter on a Lassen County Times article about the wolf, an apparent reference to “Twilight,” the vampire and werewolf series.

Ardent wolf fandom and ire do not surprise Ed Bangs, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service’s recently retired wolf recovery coordinator. “When wolves come back, one side says it’s the end of civilization, our children will be dragged down at the bus stop,” he said. “The other side thinks nature is finally back in balance and can we all have a group hug now.”

California will see the same divisions, said Mr. Bangs, who in his 30 years in gray wolf management attended hundreds of contentious meetings with residents, ranchers and environmentalists.

“I like to say wolves are boring,” he said, “but people are fascinating.”

Finding a Middle Ground for the Gray Wolf

Ranchers moved cattle on their allotment in the Deer Lodge National Forest outside Deer Lodge, Mont., in September. Some conservationists and ranchers are beginning to work together to try to manage the wolf population.

Credit: Rich Addicks for The New York Times

Dean P. Peterson, a fourth-generation cattle rancher, has found himself acting as a grudging mediator between the two groups. Working through Mr. Peterson, a new nonprofit group, People and Carnivores, promotes “coexistence,” and has built a five-mile, $15,000 electric fence adorned with flags to protect new calves on a neighbor’s property.

Credit: Rich Addicks for The New York Times

“A lot of my neighbors think I am wet behind the ears to take money from these people,” said Mr. Peterson, left, who has not yet accepted financial help for himself. “But the wolf is here to stay now, and my feeling is that those people who want it here should share the costs.”

Credit: Rich Addicks for The New York Times

The conflict between conservationists and ranchers dates back generations, but tensions soared in 1995 and 1996, when the government reintroduced 66 gray wolves in Idaho and in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The goal was to restore the balance to the regional ecosystem: after the wolves died out, elk and coyote populations had increased alarmingly.

Cattle grazing outside Jackson, Mont., at the foot of the Bitterroot Mountains, where wolves have been a problem in the past for the area’s cattle ranchers.

Credit: Rich Addicks for The New York Times

Bryce Andrews, manager of Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch, is a passionate advocate for finding a way for cattle ranchers and wolves to coexist.

Credit: Rich Addicks for The New York Times

Pro-wolf protesters in downtown Bozeman, Montana

MONTANA KILLS WOLVES DESPITE PROTESTSMontana set a quota of 220 wolves to be killed this season, or 25 percent of the state’s total population. The hunting tags sold swiftly, which some attributed to pent-up rage among the ranchers.

After Years of Conflict, a New Dynamic in Wolf Country

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

JACKSON, Mont. — As a fourth-generation rancher, Dean B. Peterson has a complicated relationship with wolves.

In the 1880s, they preyed on his family’s livestock after his great-grandparents arrived as homesteaders along the Big Hole River. By the 1930s, wolves were nearly extinct as a result of traps and poisons. By the time Mr. Peterson was born in the 1960s, the traps had given way to nostalgic tales about how clever the wolves had been.

Growing up, he thrilled to the sight of any wolf and to the sound of an occasional nighttime howl. But as an adult, witnessing a rebound in the gray wolf population, he did not hesitate to shoot one when it passed behind his sons’ jungle gym and headed for the cattle pen.

“I do not dislike or hate the animal,” said Mr. Peterson, who calls wolves “an unreal species that God created.”

Instead, he resents the conservationists who pressed the federal government to reintroduce the gray wolf to the Northern Rockies in the mid-1990s. That decision was shoved “down our throat with a plunger,” he said.

Yet the dynamic between ranchers and conservationists has begun to change, and Mr. Peterson is surprised to find himself acting as a grudging mediator.

The turning point came early this year as lawmakers from some Western states were demanding that the government remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list, and cede control of the animal in Montana and Idaho to state governments. In April, they succeeded by attaching a rider to a budget bill.

Aghast, some environmental groups had a moment of reckoning. Had they gone too far in using the Endangered Species Act as a cudgel instead of forging compromises with ranchers?

So a handful began reaching out to ranchers, offering them money and tools to fend off wolves without killing them. And some ranchers, mindful that tough federal restrictions could be reimposed if wolf numbers dwindle again, have been listening. Tentative partnerships are cropping up, and a few that already existed are looking to expand.

Working through Mr. Peterson, People and Carnivores, a new nonprofit group that promotes “coexistence” has, with help from the Wildlife Conservation Society, built a five-mile, $15,000 electric fence adorned with flags to protect calves on a neighbor’s property. This summer, it helped pay for a mounted rider to patrol 20 square miles of grazing land shared by three ranches near Mr. Peterson’s as a deterrent.

“A lot of my neighbors think I am wet behind the ears to take money from these people,” said Mr. Peterson, who has not yet accepted aid for himself. “But the wolf is here to stay now, and my feeling is that those people who want it here should share the costs.”

The conflict dates back generations, but tensions soared in 1995 and 1996, when the government reintroduced 66 gray wolves in Idaho and in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The goal was to restore balance to the regional ecosystem: after the wolves died out, elk and coyote populations had increased alarmingly. Elk herds were destroying large tracts of vegetation, and coyotes had reduced second-tier predators like badgers.

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service set a minimum population goal of some 150 wolves, plus 15 breeding pairs, in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. To their surprise, the wolves hit those targets in just seven years and spread beyond the wilderness areas.

Livestock kills began to climb, and the ranchers grew angry. They even blamed the wolves for cows’ weight loss. “They come off the pasture on average about 100 pounds lighter than before there were wolves in the area,” Mr. Peterson said. “They spend so much time looking around, they don’t have time to eat.”

By 2007, the total number of wolves in the three states was 1,513. Surveying the evidence, the Fish and Wildlife Service sought that year to have the animal “delisted” under the Endangered Species Act. But conservationists sued to block that move, saying Wyoming lacked an adequate management plan. A federal court in Missoula, Mont., agreed.

In 2009, the Fish and Wildlife Service tried again to remove wolves from federal protection in all areas except in Wyoming. The court would not allow it, setting the stage for a revolt by lawmakers and this year’s unusual Congressional vote. The Interior Department then brokered a similar compromise in Wyoming.

Wolf hunts began in Idaho and Montana at the end of the summer. Montana set a quota of 220 wolves to be killed, or 25 percent of the state’s total population; the hunting tags sold swiftly, which some attributed to pent-up rage among the ranchers.

The backlash led some environmentalists to question their approach. “I personally look back and say there were a number of things that conservationists did that were not effective and which blew up on us,” said Lisa Upson, executive director of Keystone Conservation, a Montana-based nonprofit group that offers ranchers help with nonlethal control measures. “Now we have to live with this horrible precedent.”

So her group and others are pouring energy into training mounted riders to fend off wolves. They are promoting husbandry techniques that allow calves to grow stronger in penned areas before grazing on the range. Drawing on a folk wisdom that dates from medieval times, they have hung lines of red flags along pastures to deter wolves from approaching.

Most acknowledge that such measures are not a panacea. Michael D. Jimenez, the wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service outside Jackson, Wyo., says federal and state agencies have tried guard dogs, noise aversion (cannons or sirens set off by motion detectors) and “scent aversion,” or placing wolf urine and scat on trees, for years. “Each works in some circumstances,” Mr. Jimenez said, “but are not necessarily a match for a robust wolf population.”

And ranchers may not embrace such tactics. Once, after Ms. Upson thought she had talked some ranchers in the Upper Ruby Valley in Montana into sharing half the cost of a mounted summer rider, she found that they had used the money to pay for fuel for helicopters dispatched for wolf shootings.

Tensions between conservationists and ranchers in the Big Hole area have run especially high. Two summers ago, wolves took about a dozen calves from Mr. Peterson’s herd as it grazed in the mountains. He complained to the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services agency, which responded by shooting only one wolf.

In Mr. Peterson’s view, that was hardly a solution. He says the government’s response has been hampered by too many rules and too little money. Ranchers are often asked by wolf hunters to pay up to $350 an hour for the helicopter fuel, he said.

If wolves are going to be part of the landscape,Mr. Peterson decided, he wants ranchers to get their share of the money “the people in Los Angeles and New York send” to conservationists to find solutions.

So he will continue to work with environmentalists and try to persuade his neighbors to do the same.“I think I should be able to shoot on sight on my land, no questions asked,” he said, but “I am willing to do my part to try and adapt.”

No Stars Out Tonight

2012-02-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

Last night the clouds were moving in as we had our last look at the Snow Moon of February 2012. The temperature was a balmy 70° F (21° C) at midnight.

The thickening clouds gave the moon a blue hue.

A break in the clouds revealed the moon in much greater detail (and with a longer lens on the camera).

More thick clouds and contrails (to the left of image).

By 1:00 am the moon was looking really blue. . . and disappearing into the thick deck of cirrus clouds moving in from the southwest. Even the fence lights appear brighter in the bottom of this image.

As the clouds thickened the sky turned orange, with the clouds reflecting the lights of Orlando. This was a 30 second exposure.

The complicated weather system bringing the clouds last night and this morning is a double cold front with trailing low pressure system. This weekend this system will likely bring blizzard conditions to parts of New England. . . and a bit cooler weather to Florida. . . if only for a couple days.

The current forecast calls for numerous showers and isolated thunderstorms to develop across east Central Florida this afternoon as the storm develops in the Gulf of Mexico. We're hoping that the forecast storms will finally bring an end to the months of nothing but a hint of rain.

Some of the other sights in the night sky you might have missed recently. This (above) is Aldebaran, a red giant star located about 65 light years from Earth in the constellation of Taurus. With an average apparent magnitude of 0.87 it is the brightest star in Taurus and one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky. This image was made with a 10 minute exposure using an 820 mm lens.

Above: Alnitak (brightest) is a triple star about 800 light years from Earth in the constellation Orion. It makes up part of Orion's Belt along with Mintaka and Alnilam. The pink cloud behind the stars is an emission nebula named the Flame Nebula. It is about 900 to 1,500 light-years from Earth.

Above: Pleiades or Seven Sisters in a 20 minute exposure with an 820 mm lens. The Seven Sisters are also located in Taurus. It is the star cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the nighttime sky. The Pleiades are prominent in the Northern Hemisphere winter sky.

Above: Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. What the naked eye perceives as a single star is a binary star system consisting of a white main star and a faint white dwarf companion. Sirius appears bright because of both its luminosity and its proximity to Earth. It is about 8.6 light years from Earth. Sirius' white main star is about twice as massive as our Sun. Sirius is also known as the Dog Star because of its prominence in the constellation Canis Major (Greater Dog).

Above: Bellatrix, also known as Gamma Orionis. Bellatrix is the third brightest star in Orion and the 27th brightest star in the nigh sky. This is a massive star with about 8.4 times the Sun's mass. The star is about 250 light years from Earth.

Note: Light years are a unit of length equal to just under 10 trillion kilometers, or the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days).

Light and Color = Art

2012-02-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

Click on any image to enlarge.

All of these images were created with a lot of sunlight, a little ice, some bubbles and some common household items.

I can't decide if this is art. It evokes LeRoy Neiman or Jackson Pollock.

. . . or maybe Willem De Kooning

SPOILER ALERT. . .

the next image shows the household items used to make these images. . .

For more art photography and news from the world of science visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

Websites we're following today:

SAVE MEDICARE

Following the Republican assault on Medicare

Keystone Conservation

Working to protect and restore native predators

and their habitats in the Northern Rockies

Grizzly Bear Outreach Project

Promoting an understanding of large carnivore

heritage through education and community outreach

Defender's of Wildlife

Tell President Obama that you do not support the killing

of America's wolves (click the link above).

Little Ice Age

2012-01-30T09:23:00.000-08:00

Kilauea Volcano on the island of Hawaii

Volcanic origin for Little Ice Age

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News

Plants trapped under Iceland's icecaps store a record of ancient temperatures

The Little Ice Age was caused by the cooling effect of massive volcanic eruptions, and sustained by changes in Arctic ice cover, scientists conclude.

An international research team studied ancient plants from Iceland and Canada, and sediments carried by glaciers.

They say a series of eruptions just before 1300 A.D. lowered Arctic temperatures enough for ice sheets to expand.

Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, they say this would have kept the Earth cool for centuries.

The exact definition of the Little Ice Age is disputed. While many studies suggest temperatures fell globally in the 1500s, others suggest the Arctic and sub-Arctic began cooling several centuries previously.

The global dip in temperatures was less than 1C, but parts of Europe cooled more, particularly in winter, with the River Thames in London iced thickly enough to be traversable on foot.

What caused it has been uncertain. The new study, led by Gifford Miller at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, links back to a series of four explosive volcanic eruptions between about 1250 and 1300 in the tropics, which would have blasted huge clouds of sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere.

These tiny aerosol particles are known to cool the globe by reflecting solar energy back into space.

The Little Ice Age saw an increase in cold winters in parts of Europe, but a small global change

"This is the first time that anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age," said Dr Miller.

"We have also provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time."

The scientists studied several sites in north-eastern Canada and in Iceland where small icecaps have expanded and contracted over the centuries.

When the ice spreads, plants underneath are killed and "entombed" in the ice. Carbon-dating can determine how long ago this happened.

So the plants provide a record of the icecaps' sizes at various times - and therefore, indirectly, of the local temperature.

An additional site at Hvitarvatn in Iceland yielded records of how much sediment was carried by a glacier in different decades, indicating changes in its thickness.

Putting these records together showed that cooling began fairly abruptly at some point between 1250 and 1300. Temperatures fell another notch between 1430 and 1455.

The first of these periods saw four large volcanic eruptions beginning in 1256, probably from the tropics sources, although the exact locations have not been determined.

The later period incorporated the major Kuwae eruption in Vanuatu.

Aerosols from volcanic eruptions usually cool the climate for just a few years.

When the researchers plugged in the sequence of eruptions into a computer model of climate, they found that the short but intense burst of cooling was enough to initiate growth of summer ice sheets around the Arctic Ocean, as well as glaciers.

The extra ice in turn reflected more solar radiation back into space, and weakened the Atlantic ocean circulation commonly known as the Gulf Stream.

"It's easy to calculate how much colder you could get with volcanoes; but that has no permanence, the skies soon clear," Dr Miller told BBC News.

"And it was climate modelling that showed how sea ice exports into the North Atlantic set up this self-sustaining feedback process, and that's how a perturbation of decades can result in a climate shift of centuries."

Analysis of the later phase of the Little Ice Age also suggests that changes in the Sun's output, particularly in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, would also have contributed cooling.

Tweaking Binomial Nomenclature

2012-01-28T23:56:00.000-08:00

Flora, Now in English

By JAMES S. MILLER

BOTANISTS long thought the tallest trees on Madagascar all belonged to only three species of the genus Canarium, but two scientists have now determined that there are actually 35 species of the genus there, of which 29 are new to science.

To make this startling discovery, Douglas Daly of the New York Botanical Garden and his Malagasy colleague Jeannie Raharimampionona hiked through rainforests for months in 2006 and then toiled in scientific collections to sort out all of the species. Only then did they start the laborious process of formally describing each of the new species in Latin for publication in scientific papers, a requirement for making a new species public.

Considering all the work involved, perhaps it’s no wonder that, despite centuries of research and exploration to create a complete inventory of the world’s plant life, there may be as many as 100,000 plant species that are not yet known to science, waiting to be cataloged — if we can find and describe them in time.

The requirement to use Latin — which has been in place, officially, since 1908, and in practice since the 18th century — doesn’t make this process any faster. At a time when deforestation, the spread of invasive species and climate change are putting as many as one-third of all plant species at risk of extinction in the next 50 years, we don’t have time for traditions like these. That’s why, as of Jan. 1, the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature no longer compels botanists to provide a Latin description of a new species. Perhaps even more significant, the code now recognizes publication in online academic journals as equally valid as print publication. Both changes will help to speed up the race to catalog the world’s plant life.

No longer will botanists have to write sentences like: “Arbor usque ad 6 m alta. Folia decidua; lamina oblanceolata vel elliptica-oblongata, 2-7 cm longa,” as I did in 2009, describing a new species from Mexico. Instead, I could simply write that Bourreria motaguensis was a six-meter-tall tree with deciduous leaves that were 2 to 7 centimeters long.

Simplifying the process for describing and publishing new species will undoubtedly help, but cataloging all our planet’s plant life will require much more than that. Plants are a vital source of materials and medicine; they are the basis of the food chain; they produce the oxygen we breathe. If a species becomes extinct before it is found — a phenomenon known as “anonymous extinction” — there is no way to explore its potential. We must prevent that from happening.

That will take concerted efforts to conduct research expeditions to the parts of the tropics that still remain unexplored, to generate financial support for the scientists needed to do the work and to train a new generation of botanists. They will have enough to do without having to memorize Latin declensions.

James S. Miller is the dean and vice president for science at the New York Botanical Garden.

Blogger's note: I think it will ultimately be deemed a mistake to substitute modern languages for an ancient universal language (Latin) that does not bear the stamp of cultural dominance.

History of Botanical Nomenclature

Naming plants is of such international importance that it is regulated by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, which directs the procedures to be followed for determining or selecting the name of a particular plant. These terms were first fixed by Linnaeus. In a letter to Haller in 1737 Linnaeus wrote: "If you were to collect all the generic names that have been changed from the time of Tournefort to this present day, they would exceed a thousand, though insensibly introduced. What is the cause of all this innovation: I can perceive no other, than there having been no laws laid down, by which names could either be made or defended."

The global goals of Linnaeus’ early classifying work also lives on in taxonomic projects such as Flora of North America and Species Plantarum. Flora of North America provides information on the names, taxonomic relationships, continent-wide distributions, and morphological characteristics of all plants found in North America north of Mexico. A broader project is Species Plantarum: Flora of the World, a long-term project undertaken by the International Organization of Plant Information to record essential taxonomic information on vascular plants worldwide. It includes accepted names and synonyms with places of publication and types, short descriptions of all taxa from family to infraspecific rank, keys, distributions, references to literature comments, etc.

As established by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, to be considered valid, the name of an organism must be published and its description based on a specimen, if possible. In the absence of a preserved specimen, the species may be typified by a description or a figure.

Although Linnaeus’ classification fell into disuse, today’s scientific literature is inconceivable without his starting point for a consistent binomial nomenclature for plants and animals. Similarly, his system of uniform description is echoed in today’s descriptive practices. His influence lives on in the continuing literature of taxonomy or systematics, which is written in all modern languages and has been accumulating for over two centuries. Use of two-word names and descriptive protocols is universal in this sampling of books and periodicals from the Hunt Institute’s library.

Return of the Snowy Owls

2012-01-24T23:33:00.000-08:00

Bird-Watchers Revel in Unusual Spike in Snowy Owl Sightings

By JIM ROBBINS

HELENA, Mont. — From coast to coast across the northern United States, a striking number of snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus) have been swooping onto shorelines and flying over fields this winter, delighting bird-watchers and stirring speculation about the cause of the spike.

The white, two-foot-tall birds, which live in the Arctic the rest of the year, are known to fly south in large numbers every few winters in what is known as an irruption. But this year, the numbers are unusually high, said Denver Holt, director of the Owl Research Institute in Charlo, Mont.

“There are so many across the country, everywhere, by the thousands,” Mr. Holt said. “It’s unbelievable. They are being seen from Boston, to the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, Kansas, Vancouver and Seattle.”

“One showed up at the airport in Hawaii, and they shot it,” he added in astonishment. “It’s the first ever in Hawaii and they shot it!”

The owl was killed on Thanksgiving by federal officials who feared that the bird would interfere with landings and takeoffs.

Why so many more of the birds are showing up is largely a mystery, Mr. Holt said. “We do know they had a really good breeding year, and there was plenty of food last year,” he said. Instead of no chicks, or one or two, a single nest will produce five, six, seven or more fledglings in a good breeding year, he said.

The owls’ Arctic diet is 90 percent lemmings, although the birds, which are powerful hunters, also eat mice, voles, ducks, hares and even fish when they migrate south. Some ornithologists speculate that lemming populations crashed recently after a boom, which could have led to the push south, but researchers have not confirmed such a decline.

The irruption started in late fall and is expected to end by March or April. In few places are people as excited as in Kansas and Missouri, where snowy owls are exceedingly rare. Ninety have shown up in Kansas this winter and 40 in Missouri. Until this year, the highest number counted in Missouri had been eight.

“It’s a massive movement,” said Mark Robbins, the ornithology collection manager at the University of Kansas.

When five of the birds took up residency at Smithville Lake, near Kansas City, Mo., it created an “owl jam,” Mr. Robbins said. Thousands of people have driven there to see them, he said, and hundreds of owl seekers have shown up at Clinton Lake near Lawrence, Kan.

Unlike many owls, the snowy variety are diurnal, or active during the day, which accounts for some of the hubbub. Their blinding white coloring, sometimes with brown barring, and piercing yellow eyes are a magnet for birders and nonbirders alike.

Adding to the allure for children, the owls are of the same species as Hedwig, the faithful companion of the fictional wizard Harry Potter, which perished defending him in the final book of the series.

Geoff LeBaron, director of the Audubon Society’s Christmas bird count, said that it was hard to estimate how many snowy owls flew south in this irruption because the latest data has not been tallied, but that the overall number was probably a few thousand. Despite the surge, the society says, snowy owls are thought to have been in decline since 1945.

There is far more data on the scope of this migration than in years past, thanks to a citizen science project based at Cornell called eBird, which is run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society. Bird-watchers around the country call in sightings, which are plotted on a map that shows precisely where the birds are wintering.

“A lot of people who have never seen one before have rushed out and seen multiples,” said Marshall Iliff, an ornithologist at Cornell and the project’s leader. “And photographers are having a field day.”

Additional hot spots include the mouth of the Columbia River in Washington State, with 10 to 13 birds; 20 at Lake Andes National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota, and 30 in Boundary Bay, near Vancouver in British Columbia.

The owls are even showing up in urban and suburban areas, along highways, on signs and fence posts, and in other places where people can more easily spot them. It has been a good snowy owl year at Logan Airport in Boston, too. Because the airfield looks like tundra, snowy owls tend to flock there, and they must be trapped and removed.

“We’ve removed 21 so far this year, and the average is six,” said Norman Smith, who works for the Massachusetts Audubon Society and traps the birds. The most ever trapped was 43 in 1986, Mr. Smith said, “but the year’s not over.”

Mr. Holt, who has journeyed to the Arctic tundra to study snowy owls and their food and nesting habits for the last 20 years and is one of world’s leading experts on the bird, said he had seen no evidence that the owls, most of them young, are stressed. “They are not all here starving to death,” he said. “The birds appear to be in good physical condition.”

But Mr. Robbins said he had seen some evidence to the contrary. Of five dead birds he examined — three hit by cars, one hit by a train and one that was electrocuted — there was “no question” that “some of these birds are starving to death,” he said, probably because they have been unable to find enough food.

Whatever the causes of the irruption, owl watchers are making the most of what they suspect may be a unique opportunity.

Mr. Holt suggests that the draw of the snowy owls may be partly a fascination with the birds’ coloring. “White wolves, polar bears, white whales, white buffalo — there is something about white plumage that signifies innocence or purity,” he said. “People don’t flock to see any other animal the way they do white ones.”

Balmy Florida. . .renovations

2012-01-22T00:15:00.000-08:00

It was another balmy day in central Florida today. . . with high temperatures reaching the low 80°s F (27° C). The warm air over relatively cooler water surrounding the state led to some high clouds from time-to-time. . .but a nice sunset nonetheless. Later, dense fog rolled in over parts of the peninsula in response to the temperatures.

BATHROOM RENOVATIONS: TILES

The bathroom renovation continues. This is an in progress shot of the

tiles laid out around the new shower stall. The floor tiles

tuck underneath the face tiles so they all have to be measured and laid

before they are cemented in place.

The toilet will go about where the step stool is sitting.

There is a lot of measuring and lining up and tedious work that goes

into laying tile. It has to be cut and filed and sanded . . . and it takes a lot

of time to get it perfect. The plastic round devices are spacers to

keep the tiles evenly spaced while awaiting grout.

Here the shower stall is about 1/2 tiled. . . the walls are painted

a light green. The medicine cabinet and vanity will be white.

Measuring. . .

The stone used to file down the rough edges of tiles after they are cut with a wet saw.

Filing down a tile.

A complicated cut for a tile that will go near the bottom of the shower

area and over the water guard.

More complicated cuts were required to get the tiles

cut and in place around the new faucets

At the end of the day it is looking a lot more like a modern bathroom. . .

quite an amazing transformation from where we started a few weeks

ago. See Bathroom Remodel 101 to compare.

The wet saw under a canopy on the back porch. The dogs don't like the saw

nor the activity. . . they've made quite a mess in response to the disruption of their routine.

Tomorrow will be more tile measuring, cutting, cementing, . . .

the bathroom floor is also going to be ceramic tile.

FOG

While across the country another severe weather setup (more typical of spring) takes shape on Sunday. . . the Florida peninsula will remain very warm and calm with no chance of rain.

A low-pressure system will charge eastward from the central states and tap into the warmth coming off the Gulf of Mexico setting the stage for severe thunderstorms over the lower-Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.

In Florida we'll only have to deal with more evening fog, which isn't so bad. At least its some moisture for an otherwise parched landscape.

Read about our wildfires and the destruction of our oldest tree at PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

The foggy evenings scenario

Fog and smoke from wildfire make for some interesting shots

Phillip's Natural World

Renovations: Drywall Installation 101

2012-01-20T23:39:00.000-08:00

The extremely warm weather continues here in Florida. It is to be in the

low 80°s F (27° C) for the foreseeable future.

RENOVATIONS: DRYWALL INSTALLATION

We continue with the renovations that we hope to have complete

before hot weather arrives. . . by hot we mean temperatures in the 90°s F (32° C+)

Over about 90° it becomes too difficult to achieve much.

In the bathroom we found some 2 x 6 support beams that

had been almost completely hacked through to make room for a

cabinet in one of the previous renovations. Those support beams had to be fixed

before we could start installing new drywall.

We also found some rather unusual wiring that had to be repaired.

The drywall was precisely measured and cut to fit the plumbing.

A few dogs helping with the measuring and cutting of the drywall. . .

Moyte has to be in the middle of everything. . .

The drywall is screwed into the support beams then drywall tape is applied to

the seams. The seams are then covered with joint compound or drywall mud. . .

and then sanded. . . then more compound applied. . . then more sanding. . .

until the surface is suitably smooth.

Here a layer of joint compound has been applied

and sanded and a second layer is being applied. Notice

the electrical wires sticking out of the drywall where the

new light fixture will be installed.

Applying a 3rd layer of joint compound. . . before more sanding. . .

The woodwork (including the door) have to be removed for

sanding, painting, and repair. Every time we think we've

embarked on a small task it turns into something more.

The ceiling was sanded smooth and then wall texture was applied

to give it the consistency of orange peel.

Another little helper -- Mr. Claxton -- with some drywall pieces.

This new drywall installation took a couple days.

And a little diversion to the Bahamas for a few days. . .

High pressure is keeping the Florida peninsula very warm and very dry while

the rest of the continent deals with winter. Even the Florida panhandle is getting

some rain . . . there is no rain in our forecast, unfortunately.

The next step in renovations is priming and painting all the newly erected drywall.

More photos of that to follow another day.

We've also been working on rebuilding the fence at the lake house -- at the same time --

those images are at: PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD 2.0

For more images and stories from the

scientific world visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

Pleasant Weather Renovations

2012-01-20T23:19:00.000-08:00

Its been very pleasant weather for renovations. . .and fires. This is a 30 second

exposure of the fire pit across the street. The oak tree above the fire is perhaps 60-feet tall.

The Queen Palms in the foreground are now at least 30-feet tall.

BATHROOM RENOVATIONS: DRYWALL

We continue with the bathroom renovations.

We couldn't decide what to do about the drywall which had been

repaired many times over its 50-year life. . . so we decided to rip it all out.

Above: We had tried to sand and smooth the drywall with little success.

To remove the drywall we used a utility knife to cut the wall at the seam

along the ceiling. The ceiling was smooth (had been replaced) so we

wanted to save it.

This is a difficult task. . . keeping the knife straight.

It doesn't help having dogs in and out to investigate. Here Clax and Moyte

are helping out. Claxton stands next to the hammer.

Once the top seam was cut we started ripping out the drywall and

bagging it up to be taken to the dump. This would seem a simple task for a

small bathroom. Not so. This was a day-long project.

As we removed the drywall we found some rather disturbing remnants

of prior renovations like this 2 x 6 support beam that had been cut nearly

through to make room for a cabinet.

In progress. . .

Dell-Roy Jackson doesn't like his afternoon nap being disturbed by all the

banging and hammering. . . and cursing. He is king of the castle.

Behind the toilet we found a lot of mold from old leaks.

We also found some funky wiring.

. . . and a lot of debris that had fallen down into the walls in previous

renovations. . . this is the scene we found behind the sink.

The old drywall was installed with hundreds of little nails. They all had to

be removed. Today we use long screws.

On one wall we discovered 20+ butterfly screw anchors where

someone had attempted to install something into the drywall.

More help from the little guys. . .

The drywall from one bathroom filled the bed of the truck. . .

I was surprised by the volume of debris from this small room.

Next. . . we had to install new drywall. . . which took another day. . .

(see next post). . .

Another long exposure of the fire pit. The straight white lines

are airplanes that flew into the frame while the shutter was open.

At any given time there are dozens of aircraft flying overhead. . .

we're in the north-south flight path of perhaps 500 jet airlines/day. . .

if I take pictures at peak flight times -- like 7:00 pm -- I can sometimes

capture 5 airlines at once moving north-south over the Florida peninsula.

La Niña may encourage flu pandemics

2012-01-16T23:31:00.000-08:00

La Niña may encourage flu pandemics

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News

The theory centres on birds and the changes that climatic patterns bring

La Niña events may make flu pandemics more likely, research suggests.

US-based scientists found that the last four pandemics all occurred after La Niña events, which bring cool waters to the surface of the eastern Pacific.

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they say that flu-carrying birds may change migratory patterns during La Niña conditions.

However, many other La Niña events have not seen novel flu strains spread around the world, they caution.

So while the climatic phenomenon may make a pandemic more likely, they say, it is not sufficient on its own - and may not be necessary either.

La Niña is the cold cousin of El Niño - the two collectively making up the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

"Certainly ENSO affects weather and precipitation and humidity around the world," said Jeffrey Shaman from Columbia University in New York.

"But the effects are very varied around the world - there's no coherent picture."

Nevertheless, the last four pandemics - the Spanish Flu that began in 1918, the Asian Flu of 1957, the Hong Kong Flu of 1958 and the swine flu of 2009 - were all preceded by periods of La Niña conditions.

What pandemics have in common is that they all feature novel strains of the virus to which people have not developed immunity.

Typically these are created when two existing strains infecting an animal such as a bird or a pig exchange genetic material.

La Nina conditions emerge as a tongue of cold water (purple) in the eastern Pacific

The link to La Niña events is not clear. But recent research has shown that some wild birds' patterns of flights and stopovers during migrations, or moulting times, differ between El Niño and La Niña years.

"Our best guess is this brings together birds [in La Niña conditions] that don't otherwise mix, and that allows the genetic reassortment to take place," Professor Shaman told BBC News.

Yet the fact that many other La Niña periods have not been followed by a pandemic indicate that other factors must also be involved.

If the swine flu pandemic of 2009-10 was part of this pattern, the crossing of viral strains must have had something to do with birds as well as pigs.

As wild migratory birds will sometimes visit farms and as domestic flocks of ducks or chickens often live alongside pigs, especially in developing countries, this is quite feasible.

Professor Shaman cautions that the link is far from being firm enough that it could be used as a tool to forecast pandemics.

But the monitoring of birds, pigs, people and the genetics of the influenza virus have all been stepped up in response to recent outbreaks of both swine flu and bird flu.

And this, he believes, should in time show whether the theory is correct.

"Now we can look at viral gene flow in a number of birds, pigs and people - and we might be able to get something more statistically robust, to get a better sense of the mechanisms."

Follow Richard on Twitter

Greenland Becoming Less Reflective

2012-01-14T23:33:00.000-08:00

In the past, the bright surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet reflected well over half of the sunlight that fell on it. This reflectiveness helped keep the ice sheet stable, as less absorbed sunlight meant less heating and melting. In the past decade, however, satellites have observed a decrease in Greenland’s reflectiveness. This darker surface now absorbs more sunlight, which accelerates melting.

The map above shows the difference between the amount of sunlight Greenland reflected in the summer of 2011 versus the average percent it reflected between 2000 to 2006. Virtually the entire ice sheet shows some change, with some areas reflecting close to 20 percent less light than a decade ago. The map is based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aquasatellites. It was produced as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card.

Climate scientists have long expected that Earth’s polar regions will become less reflective as global temperatures rise. Rising temperatures melt snow and ice, and the uncovered terrain—water, vegetation, bare ground—is darker and absorbs more sunlight. The loss of reflectiveness then amplifies the initial warming.

Most of the patterns on the map fit expectations. Warmer, lower-elevation areas of the ice sheet have darkened more than the colder, higher-altitude interior. Each summer, winter snow retreats from the edge of the ice sheet. Dark pools of melt water form on the surface of the ice, and windblown dust and other particles also collect near the surface, making it even less reflective.

But the darkening in the interior is just as remarkable as the changes at the margins, according to Jason Box of Ohio State University, who analyzed the reflectiveness data. The interior is the high point of the ice sheet, nearly two miles above sea level, and there is no visible melting in the summer. So why is the area becoming darker?

The darkening, says Box, is due to changes in the shape and size of the ice crystals in the snowpack. As temperatures rise, snow grains clump together and reflect less light than the many-faceted, smaller crystals (see lower image from a scanning electron microscope). Additional heat rounds the sharp edges of the crystals, and round particles absorb more sunlight than jagged ones.

References
NOAA ClimateWatch Magazine (2011, December 1) Highlights of the 2011 Arctic Report Card. Accessed January 9, 2011.
NOAA (2011) Arctic Report Card: Update for 2011. Accessed January 9, 2011.

Map by NOAA’s climate.gov team, based on NASA satellite data processed by Jason Box, Byrd Polar Research Center, the Ohio State University. Scanning electron microscope photos courtesy the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service. Caption adapted from a story by Rebecca Lindsey, NOAA ClimateWatch.

Snake Tongue

2012-01-13T23:59:00.000-08:00

While some snakes spend the winter gathered in dens, they disperse widely the rest of the year, making it difficult to find food or mates. To survive, snakes have evolved the forked tongue. They use it to collect scent molecules, which they process within special organs, to discern whether they are nearing a food item or a deadly foe. Male snakes can also judge whether a female snake is of the same species, how ready she is to mate, and—from the intensity of the scents on each fork—in which direction she is moving.

Florida Moves to Outlaw some Snake Species

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

MIAMI — To live in South Florida is to make peace with flying cockroach behemoths, brigades of lizards that dart across walls (bedroom and otherwise) and frogs the size of cannonballs that loiter on driveways.

But even in a state as hospitable as this one to scaly, slithering creatures, enough is enough. Florida has the highest number of nonnative amphibians and reptile species, according to a recent University of Florida study, and some of them are obliterating native Floridian creatures.

Florida’s Congressional delegation is now trying to yank the welcome mat from at least some of these “exotic” species, namely nine kinds of large constrictor snakes. Setting aside their quarrels, Democrats and Republicans have jointly written to President Obama to get his administration to ban the importation and interstate trade of these snakes, which include the Burmese python, the boa constrictor and the green anaconda.

A federal Fish and Wildlife Service rule that would list the snakes as an “injurious species” has lingered for three years and still requires the approval of the Office and Management and Budget.

The snakes, particularly the large and powerful Burmese python, have proliferated in the Everglades, a trend that began in the 1980s but worsened after Hurricane Andrew destroyed several reptile houses in 1992. There are thousands of them in South Florida, although precise numbers are elusive. Today, the snakes are often sold by pet stores or online. They typically make it into the wild when they escape their homes or when owners release them because they can no longer care for them.

“South Florida has been invaded by nonnative wildlife, which disturbs our fragile ecosystem and preys on native species,” said the Nov. 22 letter to Mr. Obama, whose signers include Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat, and Representative Allen B. West, a Republican from a neighboring district, a pair who seldom agree on anything. “We are spending billions of dollars to restore the Everglades and if additional invasive snakes are allowed to establish themselves, the native wildlife will be decimated.”

Reticulated Python

Of the nine snakes on the list, Burmese pythons pose the largest threat, although Florida’s cold snap last year appeared to have diminished their numbers. Impressive because of their length — some here grow to 16 feet — Burmese pythons can eat all manner of small animals like birds, other snakes and rodents. In some cases, though, they overindulge.

In October, a work crew tending to plants in the area spotted a 16-foot Burmese python on a little island not too far from Everglades National Park. The python bulged cartoonishly in its middle. Turns out it had eaten a 76-pound female deer, which was discovered by biologists during a necropsy. (The python was killed, as regulations allow.)

In 2005, a python was found dead with a six-foot alligator jutting out of its mouth. More serious, a 2-year-old girl in Oxford was strangled in her bed in 2009 by a pet Burmese python after it got loose from its terrarium.

The snakes, which favor the warmth and humidity of South Florida, typically hide out in the brush. During mating season, which is occurring now, they often sun themselves on levies near canals.

“Until these animals are listed as injurious, they will continue to flow into the country unabated,” Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has led the effort, said in a separate letter to Mr. Obama. “As I have said for years, it is only a matter of time before a python in the Everglades eats an endangered Florida panther.”

The holdup with the rule appears to be mostly bureaucratic. But there is some concern that licensed Florida snake dealers would have to shut down their operations and, in desperation, would free more snakes.

Last year, Florida tightened the rules on six kinds of pythons and the Nile monitor lizard, making it against the law to buy them as pets. People who already owned them were allowed to keep them, with a permit. But only licensed reptile dealers, researchers and exhibitors can sell them out of state. The federal rule would ban the importation and interstate trade of these snakes altogether.

Florida wildlife officials have grown more adept at tracking and killing invaders in the past decade. The state now holds an amnesty day for pet owners who want to give up their snakes and giant lizards for adoption to other people or facilities that can care for them. There is a hot line to report sightings. And the Python Patrol, a team of snake-loving volunteers run by the Nature Conservancy, routinely scours the Everglades looking for pythons.

The weather, though, may turn out to be Florida’s strongest ally. The 2010 cold snap is believed to have killed off a number of the pythons, although no one knows how many. In 2009, 367 pythons were captured in the Everglades. This year, the total is 130.

The cold weather’s impact on their ability to reproduce is still unknown. Pythons can lay about 60 eggs at a time.

“It will take us another year to find that out,” said Scott Hardin, the exotic species coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “But it takes twice as long to find a python now as before 2010, an indication they got scarcer.”

Some other species that may be loose in Florida . . .

Black Mamba

Named for the color of the inside of its mouth, the black mamba strikes repeatedly with venomous fangs. Widely considered the world’s deadliest snake, it continues to take human life in its native habitats in southern and eastern Africa, despite the development of antivenin. A resident of rocky hills and grasslands, the black mamba is also among the fastest snakes in the world, moving at up to 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) per hour.

Spectacled Cobra

The spectacled cobra, named for the eyeglass design on its flared hood (seen here), shares with the Russell's viper the infamy of causing more human deaths than any other snakes. Both are highly venomous and are found in the midst of vast populations of people in Southeast Asia. The spectacled cobra eats rats, poultry, and frogs and is known to enter houses when hunting.

Mozambique Spitting Cobra

The Mozambique spitting cobra can eject venom up to 8 feet (2.4 meters) away. It spits from any position, raised or on the ground, and often goes for the eyes. Untreated, its venom can cause blindness. Considered the most dangerous snake after the mamba, the spitting cobra sometimes feigns death to avoid molestation.

Anaconda

Awkward on land but agile in water, the anaconda lives in the swamps and tropical rain forests of South America. This green anaconda is the largest of several varieties; in fact, it is the largest snake in the world by weight, capable of reaching 550 pounds (250 kilograms) and measuring 12 inches (30 centimeters) in diameter. With flexible jaws and muscular bodies, these nonvenomous constrictors squeeze their prey to death and swallow it whole—whether it’s a bird, a wild pig, or a jaguar.

Desert Death Adder

Often colored in rusts and yellows to match its sand and rock surroundings, the desert death adder of western Australia lures prey by wiggling its thin black tail tip. When a lizard approaches, the snake strikes, delivering powerful venom. Australia is home to 17 of the world's most venomous snakes, including the death adder. Even so, snakes only cause one or two deaths a year there.

Green Tree Python

A green tree python, native to the rain forests of New Guinea and northeastern Australia, emerges from its shell. Most newborn snakes, which must free themselves from tough, leathery eggs, come armed with a single egg tooth, located on their head or snout. The egg tooth is used to tear through the shell and is discarded when the snake first sheds its skin. Thirty percent of snakes, however, give birth to live young. Egg-laying snakes usually live in warmer climates, which helps incubate their eggs.

King Cobra

King cobras avoid humans, but when cornered they can deliver enough venom in their bite to kill 20 people. They can also move forward while looking a 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) person in the eye, a third of their body raised up off the ground. Found in India, southern China, and Southeast Asia, king cobras are the only snakes in the world to build nests for their eggs.

Bathroom Remodel 101

2012-01-11T23:33:00.000-08:00

We're remodeling these circa 1970s bathrooms and running into
a few unexpected problems along the way. Mostly we're finding other things that
need repaired and replaced as we go.

The bathrooms had been updated and remodeled several
times over the years but never completely gutted.

Step 1: Remove everything.

The toilet and sink were the last things to be removed.

In this bathroom we're not putting a tub back into the space. . .
only a shower. The drain and plumbing for a shower is different
than for a tub. . .so the foundation has to be modified to accommodate the
new plumbing for the new shower configuration. This is a several days project.

Once the new drain is plumbed and situated the foundation
is cemented.

Pressure treated 2 x 4 x 8s provide the structure for the new shower pan.

A plastic barrier is placed underneath the new drain-area in case the tiles ever crack . . . so
that water does not leak into the foundation. One obstacle we ran into was getting the
plastic to lay flat. We found that heating it to about 85° F (30° C) does the trick. . .
though it smells pretty awful for a couple days.

Where the new shower area is going to be located, concrete board is installed.
The concrete board will not disintegrate like drywall should it ever get wet.
Lines are pre-drawn on each concrete board to indicate where the studs are behind the board
before it is set in place. Then screws are placed along that line into the studs.

Notice the new cable line (above right). This was an unexpected additional
project that has taken several days to complete. While we had the wall open we added the
cable line to accommodate an office computer on the other side of the wall.

Before the concrete board can be put over the plumbing it has to be re-plumbed to
fit the new shower fixtures. . . which are different from what was there
for a tub and shower. Once the plumbing is complete the pipes are wrapped in toilet
paper overnight to insure that they are not leaking. Its very important to make sure there
are no leaks here, because once the wall is sealed the only way to get to the plumbing
is to remove the new wall. This takes a few days.

We ran into some problems with the pluming turning on and off the water to the
house as crud (corrosion, etc.) was dislodged in the process. This stopped up other
plumbing in other parts of the house. . . that all had to be repaired.

The water barrier is in place, flat with the new plumbing and concrete board.

Concrete board will go up higher than the shower head just in case
there is ever a crack in the tiles.

When we removed the old medicine cabinet we found that in
one of the prior renovations the 2 x 4 x 8s that support the roof had
been hacked away to make room for the recessed cabinet. This will all
have to be repaired. . .which means all the drywall will have to be
removed and be replaced. This is something we had not anticipated.

The wiring will also have to be replaced to accommodate the new
fixtures that will be going in.

Shower area complete and ready for mortar

A line is drawn to achieve the correct slope on the new shower floor. At
the far end (away from drain) the height is almost 2". . . near the drain the
floor slopes to only a fraction of an inch.

Mortar is applied in the seams between the pieces of concrete board

A 2 x 4 is used to smooth the new shower floor.

Next step will be to remove all the drywall. . . and start applying new tile.

We have run into many things that we felt needed repaired or replaced that were
not in our original plan. One such unexpected issue was the skylight
and exhaust fan in one bathroom.

See the Skylight repair photos at PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD 2.0

Whooping Cranes Grounded

2012-01-08T21:19:00.000-08:00

Sport Plane Taking Birds to Florida Is Grounded

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ten young whooping cranes (Grus americana) and the birdlike plane they think is their mother had flown more than halfway to their winter home in Florida when federal regulators intervened and stopped their flight.

Along with the Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis), the Whooping Crane is one of only two crane species found in North America. Declared an endangered species in 1967, there are only approximately 400 individuals surviving in the wild and 165 in captivity. Driven to near-extinction mainly due to habitat loss, cranes are still illegally shot despite substantial financial penalties and possible prison time for harming the animals.

SIGN THE PETITION TO LET

THE BIRDS CONTINUE TO FLORIDA

at this LINK

Now the birds and the plane are grounded in Alabama while the Federal Aviation Administration investigates whether the journey violates regulations because the pilot was being paid by a conservation group to lead the cranes on their first migration instead of working for free.

Agency regulations say only pilots with commercial pilot licenses can fly for hire. The pilots of the plane for the group, Operation Migration, are instead licensed to fly sport aircraft because that is how the group’s small, open plane with a rear propeller and birdlike wings is categorized. Regulations also prohibit sport aircraft from being flown to benefit a business or charity.

The rules are intended, in part, to prevent businesses or charities from taking passengers for joyrides in sometimes risky aircraft.

“That’s a valid rule; they shouldn’t be hired to do that,” said Joe Duff, an Operation Migration co-founder and one of its pilots. “But it wasn’t written, I believe, to stop a wildlife reintroduction.” The conservation group has agreed voluntarily to stop flying and has applied for a waiver.

“We’re considering that waiver,” said Lynn Lunsford, an F.A.A. spokesman. He said he did not know when a decision would be made or whether it would be made before spring, when the birds would return to Wisconsin.

“The same regulations that we’re applying to these pilots we’re applying to everybody who holds that type of certificate,” Mr. Lunsford said. “The regulations are very clear, and anyone who is a pilot holding that certificate is expected to know what the duties, privileges and limitations are.”

Operation Migration is part of a United States-Canadian partnership of government and private organizations trying to re-establish migrating flocks of whooping cranes. The cranes nearly became extinct, dwindling to 15 birds in 1941. One flyway has already been re-established, but that flock of over 100 birds is vulnerable should a disaster strike, Mr. Duff said.

The grounded birds are part of the organization’s 10-year effort to re-establish an Eastern flyway that disappeared in the late 1800s when the last whooping cranes flying that route died off, he said. Since there were no birds still flying the route, conservationists had to teach young cranes how to make the journey.

The birds are bred and hatched at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. A small group of conservationists in baggy bird suits that conceal their human features are the first thing the birds see when they begin pecking their way out of their shells. The conservationists also give the birds their first nourishment, thus imprinting themselves as “parent.” The first thing they hear is a recording of a crane’s brood call combined with the purr of the small plane’s engine.

The birds are later transferred to a wildlife refuge in Wisconsin, where they are conditioned to follow the baggy-suited humans and purring plane. By fall, they are ready to begin a 1,285-mile journey to two wildlife refuges in Florida. The cranes glide behind the plane, surfing on the wake created by its wings. The pilots wear the same baggy white suits and have a fake bird beak attached to one arm, adding to the illusion that the plane is a bird.

Sandhill Cranes in Florida

It is a slow trip, primarily because of the plane’s limitations: no flying on windy or rainy days. On this trip, one young whooping crane took a wrong turn and wound up spending a few days with some sandhill cranes in wetlands before being herded back to the flock. Rain kept the flock on the ground in Illinois for 16 days.

Then, just before Christmas, Federal Aviation Administration officials told Operation Migration that they had opened an investigation into possible violations. The birds are now safely penned in Franklin County, Ala., while conservationists await a decision on their waiver request.

If the waiver does not come through, “the only option we can think of as a contingency would be to transport them by ground to release sites in Alabama or in Florida,” said Peter Fasbender, a field supervisor in Green Bay, Wis., for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which is part of the partnership to re-establish the cranes.

Florida Sandhill Crane in flight

But Mr. Fasbender says he is confident the young cranes will make it back to Wisconsin in the spring. Once they meet up with other cranes making the journey, he said, they usually do not have a problem.

Operation Migration's Report

January 5, 2012. Franklin County, Alabama.
The 2011 ultralight-led Whooping crane migration is currently on hold in Alabama while the Federal Aviation Administration sorts out a regulatory issue involving OM’s pilots and aircraft.

The FAA is working with OM to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. In the meantime, this year’s cohort is safely penned in Franklin County, Alabama, watched over daily by OM personnel.

The issue in question is whether or not OM’s pilots are flying “for hire,” or, for the furtherance of a non-profit. OM aircraft are licensed as Light Sport Aircraft (LSAs) which came into effect in 2008. FAA regulations prohibit flying LSAs for hire or as part of business activities. The FAA has begun the process of evaluating a waiver to OM, exempting its pilots and aircraft from that rule.

OM has always maintained that its pilots are hired for a wide range of non-flying skills and duties, and that they volunteer their time as pilots. In 2010, the FAA Flight Service District Office (FSDO) in Milwaukee investigated the status of OM’s flight operations and accepted OM’s explanation. We were told by the FSDO director that “no further action would be taken.” Based on that ruling, we began the 2011 season.

In August 2011 the FAA inspected our aircraft, which passed with flying colors. In November a Letter of Investigation was sent to each pilot. After discussions with the FAA in December, Operation Migration voluntarily ceased any flying while the matter is resolved. We hoped that would happen during the Christmas break, but it is taking longer than anticipated.

The FAA is in support of this project and is working hard to resolve the matter in our favor. We appreciate their efforts.
We are also working with our WCEP partners to develop a contingency plan for completing the migration without aircraft, if necessary.

An FAA waiver would be based on two main factors: safety and public good. OM has never had an aircraft-related accident and its contribution to wildlife conservation is well-established. If you would like to offer support for OM in this matter, post a comment on our GuestBook. Supportive comments will be collected and forwarded to officials at the FAA.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more stories and photos

Sun Halos and Cold

2012-01-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

A Sun Halo on a cold winter day.

Temperatures are slowly warming across the Florida peninsula today after another freeze event. These periodic, short-lived events are becoming common. This is the 3rd year in-a-row that we've experienced such an event preceded by extremely warm and dry conditions. Thankfully it did not get as cold as forecast. Low temperatures recorded at Florida Automated Network sites are listed below.

Florida Automated Network sites
Low Temperature (F)
Apopka
29
Kenansville
31
Okahumpka
26
Pierson
28
Umatilla
31

Sun Halos also called nimbus, icebows or gloriole are optical phenomenon produced by ice crystals creating colored or white arcs and spots in the sky.

We don't normally see these phenomenon in the sky over Florida but on very cold days they do appear.

Florida Co-Operative Observer weather site data for last night are listed below. Lisbon is the location nearest west Voluisa County. It would appear the reading for Plymouth (near Lisbon) was an error.
.

Co-Operative Observer Sites
Low Temperature (F)
Lisbon
28
Windemere
30
Clermont
32
Ponce Inlet
32
Plymouth
17
Scottsmoor
26
Kenansville
32
Deland
25

There are many types of ice halos. They are produced by the ice crystals in cirrus clouds in the upper troposphere. The particular shape and orientation of the crystals is responsible for the type of halo observed on the ground.

Circular halos like what we're seeing across Florida today are characterized by a disk rather than a ring and generally a red border occurs on the inside of the disk. These are also known as coronas.

22° Halo. . . forms a circle 22° around the sun. It forms as sunlight is refracted in hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. As the light beam passes through two sides of the prism (forming a 60° angle) the angle of minimum deviation is almost 22°. More specifically, 22° halos form when the sky contains millions of variously oriented ice crystals. Some of these happen to be aligned perpendicular to the sun's light as viewed by any given observer.

Local airport weather observations are listed below. The location nearest us -- Sanford -- recorded a low temperature of 29° F (-1.6° C) that lasted for less than 1 hour around 5:00 am. The duration of the cold temperatures is as important as the temperatures when determining the amount of ornamental plant and crop damage that occurs.

These low temperatures were far warmer than the record lows that occurred in the 1970s. Regardless, it was cold enough to damage most of the sub-tropical vegetation in the area. As far as one can see there are burnt, curled and dying plants that smell something akin to collard greens cooking.

Airport Observations
Low Temperature (F)
Leesburg
30
Daytona Beach
31
Sanford
29
Orlando International
32

The coldest location across the south-central peninsula that I could find was at Clewiston (on the south side of Lake Okeechobee -- west of the Palm Beaches) that recorded a temperature of 31° F (-.5 C). This is significant because much of the United State's winter vegetable crop comes from south Florida and much of it was likely damaged by last night's cold temperatures. Other southerly locations and their reported temperatures are listed below:

Location
Low Temperature (F)
Fort Pierce
35
Melbourne
33
Orlando Executive
35
Vero Beach
34

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Fire, Smoke, Fence Building

2012-01-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

The trees in the foreground of this image are about 80-feet tall (24 m). That was a spectacular explosion . . . and quite close. I had the camera set to take a 30-second exposure, continuously, trying to capture some of the fireworks on New Year's Eve. It was a warm night, with temperatures in the 70°s F (22° C). The trees with Christmas lights to the right of image are much closer to my position. . . they are Queen Palms. . . each about 40' tall (12 m). Click on any image to enlarge.

The warmth of New Year's is quickly fading away as two arctic cold fronts overspread Florida today. Low temperatures will fall into the high 20°s (-2° C) tonight over much of the Florida peninsula. This type of extreme pattern is becoming more 'normal' as the overall climate warms and dries.

FENCE BUILDING CONTINUES

The weekend began with more fence construction. This has become a fairly simple task that is only complicated by the weather and logistics. It takes a lot of effort to get the new lumber in place and remove the old fence. . . but not a lot of skill to replace the fence.

Once we've removed a couple of sections of old fence I string a new line along the top of where I want the new pickets to rest.

Here you can see the posts are not quite even but the line above them is.

After stringing the line we nail in 3 1x4x8-foot timbers to hold the new pickets.

Then it is only a matter of lining up each new picket as we nail it in place. The bigger challenge has been the extremely dry conditions and the heat. It was in the mid 80°s F (29° C) and we had to stop frequently for water and to get out of the sun. The ground is so dry that sinking new posts would require a lot of concrete to hold them in place. . . thus we're using the old posts and working around their lack of plumb and level.

After letting the sun fall a bit behind some trees we began installing the new pickets.

This part of the project goes quite quickly. We've now done about 80-feet (25 m) of the 300-foot (91 m) project. The old sections of fence are reused on another part of the property where they are less visibile.

Another section completed. Note that I'm keeping the fence far about the sand. This is to prevent termites from eating the fence. No wood can touch soil of it gives the termites a pathway to build their tubes up into the fence. The area is crawling? Overrun? with subterranean termites.

The Christmas lights are now removed and packed away. I did like the effect of the lights on the trees with the giant fire that raged across the road for a couple days. Other fires burn across Florida. . . there is an acrid smell of burning pine in the air. . . and smoky conditions to go with the cold winds.

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Florida December

2011-12-29T09:56:00.000-08:00

Koi lips

Very unusual December weather continues across Florida. One sign of the persistent warmth is that the koi are still eating. In a normal year they would have gone into a type of hibernation and quit eating when their pond water cooled. Koi are ornamental varieties of domesticated Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio).

Despite the promised frost last night -- and forecast temperatures of 40° F (4½° C) -- the koi were eating again this morning as temperatures had already climbed into the mid-70°s F (24° C). The frost did not materialize and the temperature never dropped below 46° F (7.77° C). New Year's Day -- like Christmas -- is forecast to be in the low 80°s F (28° C).

Part of the reason for the warmth is the Arctic Oscillation. Another factor is the 3rd-in-a-row winter La Niña event ongoing in the equatorial Pacific Ocean which is bringing with it extremely dry conditions to the Florida peninsula . . . worsening the already persistent drought.

Read more about the Arctic Oscillation's affect on Florida's winter weather.

Fog caused by warm water and cool evening air develops over the vast wet prairie that covers parts of Florida's interior. The trees are characteristic of this damp ecosystem. Called Sabal Palms, Sabal Palmettos, or Cabbage Palms (Sabal palmetto (Walter) Lodd. ex Schult. & Schult. f.) they are the Florida State Tree.

Deciduous trees are starting to change colors across Florida, but not from the cold. They are spurned to create spring leaves by the short daylight hours and persistent warmth. Typically at this latitude new leaves on deciduous trees would start emerging around the end of February.

A beetle walks into a pumpkin flower. . . colorized and altered.
Many insects are still active and many flowers continue to bloom. . . where they have received ample moisture to survive.

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Ski Areas Lack Snow

2011-12-26T23:13:00.000-08:00

A lone skier on an artificially snow-covered run at Mount Snow in West Dover, Vermont

Many Ski Areas Lack Snow

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

WEST DOVER, Vt. — There were far too many skis on hand this week at High Altitude, a rental shop on the road to Mount Snow here, and Andrew Glover, the manager, was far too lonely.

The problem was the weather. Week after maddening week of unusually balmy temperatures have made snowfall scant in New England, and, worse, wreaked havoc on snowmaking at ski resorts that like to have a healthy base of, at the least, manmade snow by Christmas.

Many ski areas opened late this year, and the slow start is threatening the fragile economy of towns that rely heavily on the ski traffic that usually starts in earnest over the holidays. Hundreds of seasonal workers have been unable to start their jobs, while some innkeepers report far more empty rooms than is customary during the holidays.

“We opened two weeks before Thanksgiving, and to this point we haven’t even done $2,500 worth of sales,” said Mr. Glover, whose shop also sells ski and snowboarding gear. “It’s been wacky weather, and it’s been really tough.”

Nor is the frustration limited to the Northeast. Out West, some of the country’s more famous ski resorts have been waiting for the steady snowfall that made last year an epic season, dumping seemingly endless amounts of fresh powder.

Ski lift chairs stand empty and unmoving at the Peek'n Peak Resort and Spa in Findley Lake, New York

At Squaw Valley in Olympic Valley, Calif., near Lake Tahoe only 15 percent of the mountain was open this week. Just 12 inches of snow had fallen at the base of the resort and 26 inches on the upper mountain, by far the lowest in a decade for this time of year. (By this point in 2010, the resort had received 135 inches at the base and 246 inches on its upper mountain.) At Alta Ski Area, near Salt Lake City, the base depth was 34 inches, compared with 105 inches last year at this time.

“People are just ready to sacrifice someone to the gods,” said Bill Clifford of Cumberland, Me., who plans to spend the holiday week with his family at Sugarloaf, where 15 out of 153 trails were open on Thursday. “Everyone’s depressed, knowing those limited trails will be crowded and not very much fun.”

On the few days and nights that temperatures have dropped and lingered below the mid-20s, ski areas in the Northeast have gone into manic snowmaking mode. Bill Stenger, president and chief executive of Jay Peak Resort in Jay, Vt., said the resort had been able to make snow on about 15 days this season, about half the usual number.

“We’re going like hell” on days that are cold enough to fire up the snow guns, he said. “Our guys are working 24 hours a day.”

But those efforts have been foiled at times — as on Wednesday, when temperatures rose into the 40s in southern Vermont.

“If Mother Nature’s not going to give us the snow, she’s got to give us the temperatures,” said David Meeker, a spokesman for Mount Snow, where 16 of 80 trails were open on Thursday.

Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, in Hancock, Mass., opened on Dec. 10, a few weeks later than its usual Thanksgiving start, delaying paychecks for hundreds of seasonal workers. Brian Fairbank, president and chief executive, said that about 800 skiers had visited the ski area by mid-December, down from 3,000 by that point last year. “The Valium bottle in my drawer — I haven’t taken it out yet or opened it yet,” Mr. Fairbank said. “But it’s close.”

Mad River Glen, a ski area in Waitsfield, Vt., which prides itself on making minimal snow and relying almost entirely on the natural kind, has yet to open at all. “There’s probably about 45 people waiting just to start work,” said Jamey Wimble, Mad River’s president and chief executive.

At Okemo Mountain Resort in Ludlow, Vt., 33 trails were open on Tuesday, compared with 70 or 80 this time last year, said Bonnie MacPherson, the resort’s spokeswoman. Okemo has focused on where it is easiest to make snow, she said: high on the mountain, which means intermediate and advanced trails.

In Colorado, ski areas like Keystone and Arapahoe Basin had opened less than half of their terrain, although colder temperatures were allowing snow-making machines to keep runs open and both had a few inches of snowfall this week.

In both the East and the West, ski industry workers said it was too soon to predict how the season would shape up, because December snowfall is typically fickle. Parts of Vermont and Massachusetts were eagerly expecting a few inches overnight Thursday and Friday morning.

“We know the snow will come,” said Jennifer Rudolph, spokeswoman for Colorado Ski Country USA, a trade association that represents 22 of the state’s ski resorts.

There is a bright spot: northern New Mexico, where Taos Ski Valley has received more than 50 inches of snow this month, compared with only six last December. “This is the best opening we’ve had since 2002,” said Adriana Blake, a spokeswoman.

At Vermont’s Mount Snow, an arsenal of some 250 fan guns and 800 air water guns have built the base depth to 10 to 18 inches and, thanks to cold temperatures over the weekend, doubled the resort’s skiable terrain between Friday and Tuesday. Mr. Fairbank, of Jiminy Peak, said he had flown a small plane over a number of ski areas in the region on Monday, snapping pictures of slopes covered with (manmade) snow to send the 100,000 people on his resort’s e-mail list.

Still, he and others said it was famously hard to motivate people to venture north on a ski trip if their home turf was still grassy.

“When people are still able to play golf down in Connecticut,” said Mark Wallace, owner of First Trax Sports Shop in West Dover, “they’re not thinking about coming up here.”

Deb Buehler, who owns the Red Oak Inn in West Dover, a few miles from Mount Snow, said she had 22 guests last Christmas but no bookings until Dec. 29 this year. But Mr. Meeker said the resort’s hotel and condominiums were mostly booked for the week after Christmas.

At Stratton Mountain in southern Vermont, where 18 of 94 trails were open on Wednesday and the afternoon temperature was 39 degrees at the summit, Myra Foster, the marketing manager, said there had been a few cancellations for the Christmas week.

“People are really waiting to see,” she said. “Everyone’s keeping their fingers crossed.”

T. J. Raab, a skier from Hoboken, N.J., who coordinates a ski-house share with 17 other people in Killington, Vt., said he had skied there last weekend but that with limited terrain open, the trails felt crowded.

“We skied from 8 to 10, and by then we were like, We need to get off this mountain,” Mr. Raab said. “You feel like you’re going to get crushed.”

But Tristan Grush, 14, of West Dover, said he had skied 10 trails at Mount Snow last weekend and found the terrain “really nice.” The ribbons of white on the otherwise brown mountain lift his spirit, he said.

“When I’m skiing, I feel like it’s winter,” he said. “You go to the mountain and it reboots your faith.”

Dan Frosch contributed reporting from Denver, and Jess Bidgood from Boston.

Glaciers are retreating in many high ranges, including the Himalays and the Alps. Above: The Kyetrak Glacier in 2009.

The Kyetrak Glacier in 1921.

On Mountains, the Peril of Warmth

Retreat of Glaciers Makes Some Climbs Tougher

By KATE GALBRAITH

Three decades ago, when Mick Fowler climbed the north face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, he used crampons and ice axes to haul himself up sheer walls of snow and ice.

Nowadays, during a hot summer, “you’ll find virtually no snow and ice on its face — none,” he said. “It’s a huge change over the last 20 to 30 years.”

Like Mr. Fowler, mountaineers around the world find themselves forced to adjust to a warming world. Routes that were icy or glaciated in the middle part of the past century, when the world’s highest peaks were being conquered for the first time, are turning into unstable and unappetizing rock.

“Almost every area and route in every range have been affected,” said Jeff Jackson, editor of Rock and Ice , a climbing magazine.

The main issue, scientists and climbers say, is that as permafrost, ice and glaciers melt, they leave areas of teetering rock. Some rock formations high in the mountains have essentially been held together by ice, which “acts as a glue,” said Christian Schlüchter, a professor at the University of Bern’s Institute of Geological Sciences . When the glue disappears — something he has seen happening over the past 15 years in the Alps — the formations can collapse, especially if they are initially weak.

Retreating glaciers are a problem because they leave rocks and other sediments that are poorly compacted and of different sizes, which can make footing treacherous and lead to rockfalls, said John H. Shaw, chairman of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at Harvard University.

Mr. Shaw said that as meltwater runs to the foot of a shrinking glacier, it “can make fissures and crevices more common” — and indeed some climbers have noticed more dangerous crevasses.

Glaciers are retreating in many high ranges, including the Himalayas and the Alps (though the Alps are having an unusually snowy year so far), and scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say they expect the trend to accelerate this century. Recent reports from the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, which is based in Katmandu, Nepal, indicate that glaciers in the country have shrunk considerably in recent decades and are also fragmenting.

The speed of the changes has amazed — and dismayed — many climbers. Mostly, routes are becoming harder, according to Michael Kennedy, the editor-in-chief of Alpinistmagazine. Among regions that he said climbers were especially worried about are the Alps, the Canadian Rockies and the Peruvian mountains, as well as many Himalayan areas.

Some professional climbers are also concerned that amateurs may attempt routes that have become unacceptably dangerous because they are not up-to-date on the changes.

David Breashears, who has climbed Mount Everest five times since 1983 and headsGlacierWorks , a nonprofit climate-change awareness group, said significant changes had occurred on the icefall just above the Everest base camp.

Sherpas and other guides have reported that it is “getting much harder to maintain the ladders and the ice screws and the fixed ropes in the icefall,” Mr. Breashears said. The ice screws, which help anchor things in place, now melt out earlier in May, he said.

Some mountaineers say that a changing climate affects not only the climbs themselves, but also climbers’ ability to reach remote sites in the first place. Mr. Fowler, who is president of the Alpine Club in London , said that during a trip to the Himalayas, his party had been delayed for three days because of rock slides that the locals said were unprecedented. Because the horses could not carry their burdens over the slides, the men had to unload them, carry the supplies across themselves and then reload the horses.

The slides were set off by an extreme monsoon season this summer, Mr. Fowler said, and since the group had only 30 days in Nepal, further delays could have prevented them from reaching the mountain they had come to climb.

“If the landslide problems had continued all the way to base camp, we would never have made it,” Mr. Fowler said.

Climate change is sparing the highest altitudes to some extent, some climbers say.

“In my experience, the higher you go, the less evidence you see of climate change simply because it gets much colder,” said Steve House , a top American climber. “The transition zones, where the ice is newly melting, is where the most danger exists.”

Whereas at 5,500 meters, or 18,000 feet, in the Himalayas the retreating glaciers are leaving slopes of unstable rock, “once you get about 23,000 feet you’re in a land of eternal winter,” Mr. House said.

The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development has also found that glacial retreat is less significant at higher elevations, said David J. Molden, the institute’s director general.

Even so, Mr. Breashears of GlacierWorks said he had noticed changes on the traverse leading to the Hillary Step not far below the Everest summit. And in May 2004, when he was about 8,000 meters up Everest, he saw an unexpected sight — running water.

“It was astonishing to see running water that high,” he said.

In the Alps, recent rockfalls have rendered some historic routes inaccessible. On Le Petit Dru, a peak in the French Alps that was first climbed in 1879, the collapse of the west face in recent years has obliterated the challenging American Direct Route, first established in 1962, as well as another route established 10 years earlier, Mr. House said.

This autumn, a group including Mr. House climbed the mountain’s north face for a film project.

While driving down the valley after the climb, “we heard a huge noise, looked up and saw a massive cloud of dust pouring off the face,” Mr. House said. A pile of rocks had plunged off the peak.

Had the rockfall happened a day earlier, “It was clear that we all would have been killed,” said Mr. House, who links the problems at Le Petit Dru to global warming. Scientists like Mr. Schlüchter cautioned that not every rockfall could be attributed to the climate.

But a changing climate may make some of the world’s highest mountains fractionally more accessible. Because of warmer temperatures, barometric pressure at the top has increased slightly over the past 60-plus years, and that leads to more oxygen, said Peter H. Hackett, who directs the Institute for Altitude Medicine in Colorado and climbed Everest in 1981.

“At extreme altitude, the increasing temperature is making Everest a tiny bit easier to climb,” Mr. Hackett said.

Read more about this years warm winter across North America at "Arctic Oscillation Results in Warm Winter."

Christmas in New York

2011-12-22T23:22:00.000-08:00

Shopping for Presents While Most Are Asleep

By NOAH ROSENBERG

The tourists had long vacated Times Square, leaving the streets there and to the south nearly empty; even the halal food vendors on 34th Street had packed up their kebabs for the night. Yet there it was: The sound of Christmas carols emanating from outdoor speakers at Herald Square, an aural enticement for the faithful to come to shop, regardless of the hour.

In the hours before dawn on Thursday, it appeared business was as usual at Macy’s. Window shoppers were transfixed by the store’s scenes of miniature Christmas glee; New Yorkers just off the graveyard shift got in their holiday shopping without the holiday crowds.

Then there were the inebriated post-graduates, drawn by Macy’s new “24-hour” signs on its doors and strolling the store’s empty aisles. A few of New York City’s homeless took advantage, too, washing their faces at a skin-care kiosk. And some sales clerks, indulging in the emptiness, played dress-up in clothing that carried price tags normally out of reach for hourly workers.

And so the old adage of a sleepless New York was true after all, at least here and at a few other Midtown stores, where retailers are keeping their doors open through Christmas Eve — playing into, and perhaps fueling, the never-say-close mentality of big-box-store America, at least for the holiday rush.

At 4 a.m., Elaine Moody, a makeup artist at Macy’s, lifted her chin, beaming, as her colleague Antonio Rodriguez applied a flourish of blush to complement the graphite-colored eye shadow he had just painted on her with masterly care.

“I’ve watched his work for a long time,” Ms. Moody, 42, said, giddily anticipating the lipstick and foundation that would come next, like a child waiting to tear open Christmas gifts. “And now I have a chance to come over and have him make me beautiful.”

They were hardly alone, on a night when, in Midtown, Old Navy and Toys “R” Us were also in the midst of continuing their own annual all-nighters leading up to Christmas.

Elina Kazan, a spokeswoman for Macy’s, said five of its New York City stores, and a total of 14 across the country, would remain open in an 83-hour push, through 6 p.m. on Saturday. The round-the-clock holiday shopping at Macy’s began at a Queens location in 2006, she said, and was brought to Herald Square the next year. The demand for 24-hour stores had increased in recent years, Ms. Kazan said, underscoring the importance of what she called “omnichannel” consumerism.

“Shopping is entertainment,” she said. “When you come into a department store, it is the interaction, seeing the merchandise, seeing the people, seeing the energy. It’s a collective experience.”

But in the wee hours of Thursday morning, as holiday music streamed through Old Navy’s outdoor speakers on West 34th Street, to the bewilderment of a few sanitation workers and weary passers-by, it often seemed as if the 24-hour experience was more collective for employees than for shoppers.

There were customers like Joanna Cruz and Elena Jimenez, who had clocked out of their Midtown security jobs at midnight and, until they finished their Christmas shopping at about 4:30 a.m. at Old Navy, relished having had all three of the area’s 24-hour retailers virtually to themselves. There were those like Alex Ortiz, who worked two jobs to make ends meet and said middle-of-the-night shopping at Macy’s afforded him quality time with his family when it really mattered.

But more common was the sight of employees like Jasmin King and Wilhemina Addo, gathered around a register in a dress department on an upper floor at Macy’s. They gossiped, and they waited. And waited.

“I’m just on lunch right now,” Ms. King, 25, said, glancing at the clock on her cellphone, “eating a turkey sandwich at 2:55 in the morning.”

Ms. King and employees at other retailers admitted the slow traffic afforded them a chance to get to know their co-workers, but also to get ahead on work — fixing racks, folding sweaters, hanging overcoats.

Others said the late-night hours, which they had volunteered for and which had earned them a little extra pay, were draining, especially with the unremitting cheerful music.

“When this is all over, I’m going to take two sleeping pills and try to sleep for a day,” said Alex Garcia, who works at a Macy’s skin-care booth. “And then get up and eat” on Christmas, she added.

Upstairs, Brad Goldfond giggled as he pretended to fall asleep on a rack of men’s suits, which he has sold at Macy’s for two years. He chatted with a customer who could not seem to find the perfect navy blue overcoat.

“What person in their right mind wants to walk in here at 3 o’clock in the morning?” Mr. Goldfond, 58, said. “Let’s be honest.” The customer, who said he had come “because it’s not Black Friday,” laughed in agreement.

Yet there were Frances Arscott and her daughter Brianna at 4 a.m., carrying armloads of clothes, stalking the aisles of Macy’s young women’s department before they headed home to St. Albans, Queens.

“It’s a totally different vibe than when you come during the day,” Brianna, 14, said, “when everyone is pushing and shoving.”

Over at Toys “R” Us, where a police officer said it had been so quiet that “I didn’t even know it was open 24 hours,” Shanee Forbes, 28, said shopping solitude was just the point.

“It’s a blessing,” she said, both arms heavy with gifts as she emerged in the blinking lights of Broadway, practically still at 5 a.m. “You ever been in Times Square during the daytime?”

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Lobster Trap Christmas Trees

2011-12-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

The tiny towns of Beals and Jonesport, Me., have completed their second annual holiday display: a conical tower of 1,364 lobster traps, 60 feet tall, built to withstand the powerful winds that come off the water. It is the towns’ Christmas tree, made of wire traps plucked from the sea by lobstermen who lend them to the cause.

“It’s a beautiful structure,” said Dwight Carver, a 57-year-old lobsterman who has lived all his life on the island of Beals, opposite Jonesport on the mainland.

Shimmering with thousands of lights and topped with an American flag and a cross made of buoys to honor a fallen fisherman, the lobster trap tree is one of many that materialize this time of year in fishing towns along New England’s northern coast, a descendant of smaller trees that have long adorned lobstermen’s yards and ports. Festive monuments of engineering and local pride, they celebrate the season, affirm the local economy and guarantee bragging rights for the towns.

“I think someone did one, and then someone did a bigger one,” said David Cousins, the president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “Which is usually how it goes in the lobster industry. There’s a lot of competition.”

When Jonesport joined Beals to make a lobster trap tree on the island for the first time last year — it was 56 feet tall — Joey Ciaramitaro, a blogger from Gloucester, Mass., called it “ridiculously disfigured” and “horribly disproportionate.”

Mr. Ciaramitaro said he preferred his hometown’s tree, which stands about 35 feet, illuminating a plaza in the fishing city’s downtown. Each year, a local arts group invites children to decorate buoys as ornaments, which are auctioned off to raise money for the group. There are 353 on the tree this year.

“I think ours has a lot more soul in it than the other trees,” Mr. Ciaramitaro said. “It’s not just a bunch of traps all stacked up.”

Gloucester is believed to have started the tradition of the large lobster trap tree when it built its first one in 2001. Janice Lufkin Shea, who was a Gloucester shopkeeper at the time, was frustrated that Main Street had no holiday display. She saw a tiny lobster trap tree in someone’s yard and thought a bigger version would be perfect for downtown.

Legend has it that when people in Rockland, Me., learned of it, they decided they had to have one, too.

“Well, we’re the lobstering capital of Maine — we should have a trap tree,” said Lorain Francis, the executive director of Rockland Main Street Inc., which has organized the tree construction since the town first built one in 2003. Each year, the town holds a ceremony at which Santa Claus lights the tree with help from the winner of the annual Maine Lobster Festival Sea Goddess pageant.

The tree is made from red and green traps custom-built by Stephen Brooks, a third-generation trap maker. They are structurally reinforced, corresponding with a top-secret engineering plan the city uses to build a hollow, free-standing tree, 38 feet tall. “You can put extra bracing in certain areas of the trap to help with the strength,” Mr. Brooks said.

But that is about all the detail on the engineering of the tree that an outsider can glean. “It’s a secret that we don’t like to share with everybody,” Ms. Francis said.

Howard Mills, a Jonesport selectman known as Buddy, joked about the Rockland tree: “We were going to call them and tell them we’d take their tree for a topping on ours.” Still, he found that the competitive spirit had waned a bit this year — perhaps because the trees in each town have carved their own niches: the biggest, the most complex, the artsiest.

And, for communities concerned with fish stocks and lobster prices, each tree is a rallying point.

“We like to see everyone have a good time and be happy,” Mr. Mills said. “Not a lot happens in Down East Maine. This is kind of a special thing for us.”

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Disney Hollywood Lights

2011-12-18T00:23:00.000-08:00

We spent an evening touring Disney World Hollywood Studio's Park to see the Christmas Lights. It would not be a place for anyone who might be at all claustrophobic or uncomfortable in large crowds. I don't remember being in a crowd of people this large since I'd last been in New York City.

I liked some of the billboards like this one of Miss Piggy. . . but I was surprised by all the corporate product placement and sponsorship crap. . . everywhere in the park.

Disney likes to say it is the "happiest place on earth". . . . I'd say not for everyone. Its about as far removed from anything natural in the world as I could imagine. . . so not really my thing.

It appeared that Disney has lost some of its innocence. What I remember from years back were the plants and twinkling lights. . . not this gaudy, overdone, loud, obnoxious mess of pushing and shoving tourists. All the little Disney touches of the past were mostly gone too. . . replaced by big corporate sponsorship crap.

They were shooting artificial snow off the building tops as the sound system blared some sort of rap music which made the lights all dance. The snow had little chance of sticking. . .temperatures were in the 80°s F (27° C) and the crowd of perhaps 10,000 people below was certainly adding a few degrees to the ambient air.

Proof that I was there. . . I don't know who that is adjacent to me. I think I was saying "take the @#%! ing photo and keep moving so we can get out of here.

I think most of this was supposed to look like a street in San Francisco. For the cost of an evening visiting the park one could fly to San Francisco and see the real thing. Parking: $18, cheapest entry fee $79 per person. One is also searched at the gate by security and fingerprinted going in to the park. I barely had time to object as I was being shoved along by hundreds of eager tourists trying to rush in the gates. I should note that our tickets were complimentary or we would not have been there . . . ever. . .under any circumstances. . .

This was called a Spectacle of Dancing Lights. It was that. This street was made to look like New York City.

At this point one could stand in line for an hour and have their photo made by Disney employees. . . for the perfect shot. . . . $25-$75 . . . I decided to make my own.

I believe it was at this point that I was saying. . . "have we had enough?" We stayed a total of about an hour then quickly escaped back to sanity outside the realm of the magical rat that roared its way across Florida. I noticed that it took us about an hour to get all the way out of the Disney-area traffic and back into our northern suburban neighborhood. The traffic thinned just as we were pulling off the freeway. Madness!

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PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

Christmas Palm Trees

2011-12-13T23:48:00.001-08:00

While it doesn't feel much like Christmas, the lighted palm trees to make for a festive show.
Temperatures remain in the low 80°s F. (27° C.) across most of Florida.

This is much more difficult a task than it might appear. First, the trees are tall. Second they are very sharp both on their trunks and their fronds. Its easy to get quite cut up stringing a few lights up a palm tree. I have the healing cuts to prove it.

A few of my Queen Palms with lights and the full moon making for a weird kind of image.

Below: A few more shots and graphics of Florida Christmas Palm Trees. Click on any image to enlarge. Right click or drag the image to copy to your desktop.

Amazing Race

2011-12-12T23:20:00.000-08:00

December 1910. Herbert Ponting, a professional travel photographer hired by Scott, took this portrait of himself photographing the Terra Nova in the pack ice.

Amazing Race to the Bottom of the World

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

One hundred years ago, on Dec. 14, 1911, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and four companions trudged through fog, bitter cold and lacerating wind to stand at the absolute bottom of the world, the South Pole. Nowhere was there a trace of their British rival, Robert Falcon Scott. No Union Jack mocked them, no ice cairn bespoke precedence. The Norwegians had won the race.

Oct. 8, 2011. Scott's photograph of the ice crack is modernist in its aesthetic, showing the buildup of ice pressure from the tides and currents over the preceding winter.

Amundsen and Scott were commanding forces driving early exploration of Antarctica, the ice-covered continent almost half again the size of the United States and unlike any other place onEarth. Both were driven by ambition to win fame by grabbing one of the few remaining unclaimed geographic prizes. Each was different, though, in temperament and approach to exploration, which may have been decisive in the success of one and the undoing of the other.

Earnest and methodical, Amundsen had previously wintered over with an expedition in Antarctica and succeeded in the first navigation of the Northwest Passage, north of Canada, as he learned well how to prepare for work on the planet’s coldest, most unforgiving continent.

Nov. 19, 1911. The peaceful comfort of the ponies' temporary residence in the sun is disturbed as the eye is led along the line of sledges and out into the great beyond.

He knew from experience how indispensable well-trained dogs were for pulling sledges. His next destination was to have been the North Pole. But when he heard that two other groups claimed that triumph, Amundsen wrote that “there was nothing left for me but to try and solve the last great problem — the South Pole.”

Scott was a Navy officer and a gentleman who had led an expedition that fell well short of the South Pole because of poor planning and execution. He had a romantic view of exploration as a self-affirming adventure, a kind of trial by ice. Using dogs to pull all the sledges he thought unsporting: better, he wrote, “to go forth to face the hardships, dangers and difficulties with their unaided efforts.”

Victory: The Norwegian party pitched a tent as near to the actual pole as they could calculate.

This the Scott party had to do. Its motorized sledges and the ponies soon broke down, leaving them to pull the sledges all the way up a glacier to the high polar plateau.

When Amundsen’s men already were only a week away from their base camp at the Bay of Whales, to complete their 2,000-mile round trip, the exhausted British team arrived at the pole on Jan. 17, 1912, five weeks too late. How deflating to see the Norwegian flag, alert to the wind. In his diary, Scott wrote: “Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”

Disappointment then turned to tragedy. Stalled by a nine-day blizzard, weak from hunger and sledge-pulling fatigue on the return trek, Scott and his four team members perished by the end of March. Most of the bodies were not found until November, at their last camp, among diaries and field notes and rock specimens they had gone perhaps too far out of the way to collect.

Scott may have lost the race to the pole, but in death, he prevailed in the narrative for much of the last century as the brave and stoic hero of legend.

Sept. 25, 1911. A view from the sea ice showing, from the left, the Blue Glacier, the Ferrar Glacier and the Kukri Hills; the Kukri Hills to Victoria Lower Glacier; and the Victoria Lower Glacier to Cape Roberts.

Scientific Contest

The time of Amundsen and Scott was the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. The adventurous were in part attracted to the ice because, as the British mountaineer George Mallory was to say of Everest, it was there: a recognized new challenge. Even so, the same competitive spirit drove individuals and nations to seek to be first to make scientific discoveries, as Edward J. Larson, a Pepperdine University historian and author of the recent book “An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science,” describes in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature.

As early as 1900, Dr. Larson notes, the British, notably teams under Ernest Shackleton and to a lesser extent Scott, as well as German scientists, measured the movement of glaciers and mapped the coast and the interior. From seabed sediments and outcrops they determined that Antarctica was a true continent — with a landmass underlying thick ice — in contrast to the Arctic, where the ice more thinly covers a wide sea. From fossils they learned that the continent was once warmer and home to abundant life, all clues to its earlier link to other southern continents.

An American airplane that acts like a flying space lab, collection data all over the continent.

Advances in aviation, icebreakers and other technologies after World War II opened the Antarctic to wider and more sustained scientific research. The United States and about a dozen other countries established permanent living quarters, supply depots and research facilities, the infrastructure for year-round living and increasingly ambitious research projects.

Now, from coastal ice shelves to the 10,000-foot polar plateau, from subglacial mountain ranges to pristine lakes sealed under ice, Antarctica is one vast international laboratory for research in sciences as diverse as astrophysics and climatology, geophysics and oceanography. Looking ahead, the National Academy of Sciences has just published a study, “Future Science Opportunities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean,” identifying key questions that should drive research there in the next 10 to 20 years.

September 1911. With the pyramid tent foreshadowing one of the great peaks of Cathedral Rocks, Scott delivered a splendid photograph in the picturesque landscape tradition.

The report’s principal recommendations focused on researching the continent’s role in globalclimate change. Polar scientists were not surprised.

“We’ve become very aware of the importance of polar regions in recent years as the harbinger of changes to come on a global scale,” said Raymond S. Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who primarily studies the Arctic and was not directly involved in the academy report.

October 1911. Probably Demetri Gerof training a dog team.

“These regions are particularly sensitive to rising temperatures melting sea ice and glaciers,” Dr. Bradley continued. “When sea ice recedes, it makes earth less reflective of sunlight, and this results in more warming and more changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation.”

Robin E. Bell, a senior research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who participated in the academy study, called attention to the report’s conclusion that a greater knowledge of rising temperatures and melting ice in some parts of the continent “will allow scientists to better predict” climate everywhere else.

October 1911. Photographs like this one of the hut at Cape Evans provide a valuable record today, but were taken by Scott principally to practice using lenses, filters and other equipment.

“Antarctica is most critical to understanding the global climate system and creating models for predicting changes in the future,” Dr. Bell said.

The National Science Foundation asked the academy to prepare these recommendations as guides in deciding which projects to support with grants. The government agency is spending $67.4 million this year on Antarctic projects. Since the advent of satellite imagery in the 1970s, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have gathered much of the data calling attention to the continent’s involvement in climate change.

Dec. 11, 1911. Scott took this image from the Lower Glacier Depot in the direction of the group's journey toward the pole.

Scott Borg, director of the N.S.F. division of Antarctic sciences, said the new guidelines highlight research “we think is going to be important in at least the next five years” so that, if governments are to respond to the consequences of global warming, they will have “the best science possible to inform their decisions.”

October 1911. It was almost inevitable that Scott would take photographs of Mount Erebus, as the famous olcano dominated the landscape around his Cape Evans headquarters.

Changes in the ice sheet, which covers roughly 97.6 percent of the continent, is already the subject of new research along the lines of academy recommendations. An international team of researchers, financed by the N.S.F. and NASA, will travel by helicopter this month to the remote Pine Island Glacier’s ice shelf. The glacier, Dr. Borg said, “has begun to flow more rapidly, discharging more ice into the ocean, which could have a significant impact on global sea-level rise over the coming century.”

Dec. 20, 1911. Scott took this impressive image to capture the interesting geological features of the mountains around Mount Wild.

Scientists will use remote-sensing instruments to investigate the cavity beneath the ice shelf where it extends beyond the land and over the ocean. They hope to determine how relatively warm ocean water enters this cavity and undercuts the bottom of the glacier, melting and releasing more than 19 cubic miles of ice into the sea each year.

Such research builds on activities started in the International Polar Year, 2007-9, which brought an infusion of fresh ideas and new projects to Antarctic science. A seven-nation team of scientists, for example, investigated the mystery of the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, two miles beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet. They used aircraft equipped with ice-penetrating radars, gravity meters and magnetometers to learn how a mountain range bigger than the Alps formed where it did. In a report last month, the scientists concluded that the mountains are the remains of a collision of several continents a billion years ago. Its traces extend from Antarctica across the ocean to India.

Dec. 2, 1911. Scott captured the straggle of ponies veiled in the icy wilderness. Many of the men in this image would return, but not all. None of the ponies would: Within a few days they would be shot.

Dr. Bell of Columbia, one of the project’s leaders, said the next step will be to drill through the ice to obtain the first rock samples from Gamburtsev.

In addition to insights into earth history, scientists still find much to be learned from and about Antarctica itself. The academy report noted the seals, whales and penguins native to Antarctica have evolved physiologies adapted to the extreme environment, and this “could hold the key to understanding and preventing a host of illnesses and conditions that plague humans, such as heart attacks, strokes and decompression sickness.”

Dec. 13, 1911. Members of the expedition worked to free a sledge from soft snow.

For years, Russians have been drilling through the ice to Lake Vostok, the largest of more than 140 subglacial lakes on the continent. They may finally break through next year to collect a sample of water presumably supersaturated with oxygen. If there is life in the water, it evolved in cold darkness and under high pressure over millions of years. Any sign of life in Vostok may strengthen the prospect of finding life on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which appear to have under-ice seas of liquid water.

The academy also emphasized the value of Antarctica as “an unparalleled platform for observing the solar system and the universe beyond.” In the thin, dry atmosphere at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the clarity of light is an astronomer’s dream. Several types of telescopes there observe some of the earliest events in the cosmos and are searching for clues to the nature of dark matter and dark energy that presumably constitute 95 percent of everything in the universe. Other telescopes keep track of solar eruptions as an early warning system of stormy space weather endangering communications and navigation satellites.

A new instrument known as IceCube Neutrino Observatory was completed to track the high-energy, nearly mass-less particles that are ubiquitous but so difficult to detect as they pass through Earth. Neutrinos could provide insights into the longstanding mystery of the origin of ultra high-energy cosmic rays. Nearby, seismometers are listening posts for earthquake reverberations bearing clues to the structure of Earth’s inner core and lower mantle.

1910. Some of the crew members from the Terra Nova expedition.

About 700 miles east of the South Pole, China is developing the large Plateau Observatory. The country’s astronomers, who had lacked high-quality observing sites, said they looked forward to research in the clear polar skies where the nights are four months long.

At the Finish

Amundsen spent an extra three days before leaving the South Pole. He and his men — Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting and Olav Bjaaland, the one who took the classic picture of the other four at the pole — wanted to make sure they were really there, at the pole exactly. The Americans Frederick Cook, in 1908, and then Robert E. Peary, a year later, claimed to have reached the North Pole, but the evidence they reported was disputed even then, and especially ever since.

The careful and methodical Amundsen was not about to leave room for a particle of doubt.

Lynne Cox, an author and long-distance swimmer inclined to frigid waters, recently published a kind of biography of Amundsen as well as his mentor Fridtjof Nansen, titled “South with the Sun: Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery.” She thinks it was “a really cool thing” (what other pun would you commit in a polar context?) that Amundsen had his men spend those three days skiing for miles out in all directions, taking sextant readings of the sun at different places and times of day to be sure they were close to or at 90 degrees South. He reasoned that at least one of them would cross and record the exact spot.

Before leaving, the party pitched a black tent as near to the actual pole as they could calculate. In the tent Amundsen left spare equipment Scott might need and a letter addressed to King Haakon of Norway. It was his report of triumph. In a separate note, he asked Scott to deliver the letter to the king, if the Norwegian party failed to survive the return trip.

These two things Amundsen did while at the pole — double checking where they were and recording the story of a deed done — seemed in character. Of course, Amundsen made it back to his base in 99 days, 10 fewer than expected; of his 52 dogs, 11 had survived. The other dogs, weakened over time, were sacrificed for meat to sustain the remaining ones and the men. And Amundsen, as ever preparing for eventualities, made doubly sure the world would know of his success.

And Scott?

If Scott had returned alive, and the Amundsen party had not, it would presumably have been in character for Scott of the century-old legend to have stayed in character, too. He would have done the sporting thing. The news would have been delivered to the King of Norway that his subjects were the first to reach the South Pole.

Christmas Flowers

2011-12-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima).
Poinsettia is native to Mexico and Central America. It is a shrub or small tree, typically reaching a height of 0.6 to 4 m (2 to 16 ft). The plant bears dark green dentate leaves that measure 7 to 16 cm (3 to 6 inches) in length. The colored bracts—which are most often flaming red but can be orange, pale green, cream, pink, white or marbled—are actually leaves; because the flowers are unassuming and do not attract pollinators, brightly coloured leaves developed (aka bracts).

Poinsettia's colors come from photoperiodism, meaning that they require darkness for 12 hours at a time for at least 5 days in a row to change color. At the same time, the plants need a lot of light during the day for the brightest color.

Amaryllis (Amaryllis belladonna)
Amaryllis is a small genus of flowering bulbs native to South Africa. There are only two species in the genus. Among the species there are many cultivars that appear to be different species.

Hibiscus close up

Hibiscus with a Cloudless Sulphur butterly (Phoebis sennae) taking a drink.
Hibiscus is a genus of flowering plants in the mallow family. The genus contains several hundred specis native to warm-temperate, subtropical and tropical regions throughout the world.

A sunflower's (Helianthus annus) florets in extreme close-up. We still have sunflowers blooming throughout the gardens, though they haven't achieved much height due to the short daylight hours.

Water lilys (Nymphaeaceae) on a drying pond at sunset.
Water lilys are a family of flowering plants containing 8 genera and approximately 70 species. The genus Nymphaea contains about 35 species across the Northern Hemisphere. These plants will survive when the lakes where they live dry completely. Eventually it will rain again and the plant's leaves will return. Their bulbs remain dormant far below the lakebed.

Seeds of the Blood Flower (Haemanthus coccineus) make an interesting show.
Also known as Blood Lily or Pinatbrus lily, this plant is a bulbous geophyte in the genus Haemanthus, native to South Africa.

Viburnum trying to change color.
Viburnum is a genus of 150-175 species of shurbs or here in Florida -- small trees. They are in the Moschatel family, Adoxaceae.

COOL FRONT FOR FLORIDA -- FINALLY

A cool front is pushing down the Florida peninsula today -- forecast to bring us some cooler weather. . . finally. Ahead of the cool front it is sunny and warm with temperatures in the mid 80° F. (29° C.). Behind the front we can expect more dry weather but substantially cooler with high temperatures for the next week in the low 70°s F. (22° C.). For some of us native Floridians this is a very welcome change after many months of hot weather. Unfortunately the cool front is not forecast to bring any much-needed rain to the peninsula.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more photos

Nature's Oddities

2011-12-04T23:17:00.000-08:00

A Cuban Tree Frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) chows down on some Christmas lights. . . for some unknown reason. Perhaps he was chilly? It was a hot day in Florida (mid 80°s F.; 29° C.). We spent a lot of time putting up Christmas lights and then even more time taking them all down after dark. I didn't like the way they looked once I saw them all turned on. I'll blog more about this process when I have time to look through all the photos.

I was quite uncomfortable in the heat today -- it didn't feel at all like December. The temperatures are forecast to climb a bit higher until mid-week when the next cool front is forecast to move our way.

The bugs were loving the heat and breezy weather. I was covered with mosquitoes for the better part of the four hours that I was outside working on the light display.

Below: These are damselflies (suborder Zygoptera). Similar to dragonflies the adults are distinguished by the fact that the wings of most damselflies are held along, and parallel to the body when at rest (as below).

I've been cleaning out the gardens as I put up more lights. I've found all manner of insects. This (below) is a Praying Mantis (Mantodea). . . they are considered a good bug as they are predators of all other bugs they encounter.

Below: A bumblebee (bee genus Bombus) on some late season marigolds (Tagetes spp.). There are zinnia, sunflowers, and many other plants blooming in the garden. A really odd sight in December in the Northern Hemisphere.

After dark I went out to remove some of the lights we had so painstakingly put up earlier in the day. I encountered lots more creatures out on the balmy December evening. Below: These are Green Tree Frogs (Hyla cinerea).

I felt bad for all the wildlife outside this afternoon and evening. The mosquitoes and biting flies were relentless. Huge swarms of the bugs descended on everything that moved or dared breath including the many stray cats hanging around, little raccoons, frogs, and me.

For more photos go to

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

and

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD II

Florida Automated Network sites	Low Temperature (F)
Apopka	29
Kenansville	31
Okahumpka	26
Pierson	28
Umatilla	31

Co-Operative Observer Sites	Low Temperature (F)
Lisbon	28
Windemere	30
Clermont	32
Ponce Inlet	32
Plymouth	17
Scottsmoor	26
Kenansville	32
Deland	25

Airport Observations	Low Temperature (F)
Leesburg	30
Daytona Beach	31
Sanford	29
Orlando International	32

Location	Low Temperature (F)
Fort Pierce	35
Melbourne	33
Orlando Executive	35
Vero Beach	34

Phillip's Natural World 3.0

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References

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Florida Automated Network sitesLow Temperature (F)Apopka29Kenansville31Okahumpka26Pierson28Umatilla31

Co-Operative Observer SitesLow Temperature (F)Lisbon28Windemere30Clermont32Ponce Inlet32Plymouth17Scottsmoor26Kenansville32Deland25

Airport ObservationsLow Temperature (F)Leesburg30Daytona Beach31Sanford29Orlando International32

LocationLow Temperature (F)Fort Pierce35Melbourne33Orlando Executive35Vero Beach34

Fire, Smoke, Fence Building

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Ski Areas Lack Snow

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Amazing Race to the Bottom of the World

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Christmas Flowers

Nature's Oddities

Florida Automated Network sites
Low Temperature (F)
Apopka
29
Kenansville
31
Okahumpka
26
Pierson
28
Umatilla
31

Co-Operative Observer Sites
Low Temperature (F)
Lisbon
28
Windemere
30
Clermont
32
Ponce Inlet
32
Plymouth
17
Scottsmoor
26
Kenansville
32
Deland
25

Airport Observations
Low Temperature (F)
Leesburg
30
Daytona Beach
31
Sanford
29
Orlando International
32

Location
Low Temperature (F)
Fort Pierce
35
Melbourne
33
Orlando Executive
35
Vero Beach
34