December 08, 2006

Blog stew

•I learn about the Colorado Bat Society, thanks to Colorado Bob.

•The Denver Post quotes a forecast predicting that El Niño means a dry mid-winter followed by "'copious' amounts of snow expected in late February or March."

Since M. and I will be driving to Vancouver, B.C., later this month (long story there), we are OK with the idea of the Northwest being a little dry. On the other hand, western Washington has had copious amounts of rain so far.

•The Forest Service considers more Colorado campground closures. Sheesh, I thought that most of the good ones were operated by private contractors these days.

There is a complicated story here: part of it's budgetary--spending all their money on fire-fighting. Part of it is that Smokey Bear seems to be a poor lobbyist in Congress. And part is a decrease in the "mid-range" camper? The one who is neither a backpacker nor RV-er? (Link will expire.)

•Last year M. and I noted that few Steller's jays came to our feeders. The old Gang of Twelve seemed to have shrunk to a Gang of One. We thought that there might be some connection to the adjacent 11,000 burn and a loss of food, particularly acorns.

But the Cornell ornithology lab's newsletter says, "Corvids, in general, were less common at [Southwestern] feeders during 2005-06. Steller's jays were only reported from one in four FeederWatch sites in the Southwest, the poorest showing for this species since FeederWatch began 19 years ago."

This year, we seem to have four or five hanging around the house, an improvement.

1 comment:

Peculiar said...

I'd heard those closures were in the works. But I haven't seen a clear answer to what seems the most obvious question: Are they talking about just decomissioning facilities, or actually closing off access? I would assume the former, and in that case I'm hardly going to cry in my beer about it, but you never know these days.