The Backyard Science group regularly publishes The Daily Bucket, which features observations of the world around us. Insects, weather, meteorites, climate, birds, flowers and anything natural or unusual are worthy additions to the Bucket and its comments. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note you write helps us understand the patterns that are unwinding around us.
The odd weather has fascinated many Bucketeers this year. Some of us have bucketed about plants and critters and birds whose natural cycles seemed a little skewed compared to other years.
In the West and Pacific Northwest, many of us have experienced drier and hotter weather. Whether or not these perceived changes denote capricious weather or climate change, all creatures great and small are reacting.
Continue reading below the orange racetrack of fate, for observations of the reactions from the strangest creature of them all.
I refer, of course to a variant of Homo Sapiens, the onmivorous Fanatic Gardener, an invasive species who has widely settled North America over the last 522 years.
In the following scarcely-believable footage, we see a pair of Fanatic Gardeners, blinded by ambition, who are actually attempting to plant dozen of herbs in the middle of October, fully six weeks after the usual passage of decent weather.
Clearly the unusual weather has confused these usually-intelligent creatures, whom often construct sophisticated habitats.
Those dozens of plants are low-growing Thyme, and various mosses. We got them all planted just hours before the Fall rains cascaded down. We've hidden bulbs, including tulips, in between, for colored Spring surprises.
Here's a look at the same area four months ago:
Two tiny bullfrogs now inhabit the pond. I haven't seen any grown-up native tadpoles from the six I planted there in the late Summer.
The Chickadees, wrens and little brown birds' party pad is in the upper left, around the yellow bird feeder and the bushes to the left of the artificial waterfall. They feast at and under the feeder, and bathe in the stream bed.
Watching the water run educates me in fluid dynamics, written very small. I see the tiny current bump on a softball sized rock, and eddy and swirl into a whirlpool the size of your palm. Debris accumulates there, and now those specks of rejected birdseed have rooted and sprouted in that backwater.
The little birds became so rowdy and numerous that a sparrow hawk flew a swift, wide arc over the area yesterday afternoon, darting like a feathered dragonfly, scattering its prey. I hope to see that common kestrel again, with its mate. I think it is lurking in the redwood a dozen yards to the east.
I leveled a large flat spot, thinly coated with brushed sand, hoping to capture the left-behind pawprints of whatever was knocking the pond rocks askew, but the intrusions ceased after I blogged about it.
Apparently the critters read The Daily Bucket and knew what I planned. Or someone talked to them in a wee voice and warned them. Nevermind, I'm going to install a cam soon.
I didn't put any fish in this pond. Absent the nitrogen-heavy fish poop, the pond remains clear, but some kind of brown algae accumulates in the pond bottom, an apparent result of whatever organic matter (twigs, needles, dirt, frog poop, dead leaves) makes it into the pond. The algae look like small brown worms. Here is a picture of how it had covered the underwater stone slabs but retreated when the weather cooled.
"Spotlight on Green News & Views" will be posted every Saturday at 1pm and Wednesday at 3:30 pm Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page. Be sure to recommend and comment in the diary.
Now It's Your Turn What's interesting to you? Please post your own observations and your general location in the comments.
Thank you for reading. I'll work this morning so I'll respond to comments before lunchtime, PDT.