The Backyard Science group regularly features the Daily Bucket. Buckets and the accompanying comments describe the corners of nature's mysteries that are unfolding in our own backyards and favorite places. Is a colorful duck swimming away when you approach? Are plants budding two months early? What kind of moth just flitted away?
Please provide a comment about your own area, whether it is your backyard or a favorite spot. Include, as close as you are comfortable, your general location. If you also post pretty pictures, you are eligible for lucrative cash prizes.
I was going to post a diary entitled SNOW IN TALLAHASSEE!!!! with as many exclamation points as I could fit in the title field. However there is no snow. It is currently sleeting and there is a small amount of ice on my deck steps. Nothing that would make for good photographs. I ventured out briefly to refill the feeders. Heard a chickadee. Spring peepers were calling last night when the air temperature was about 36-37 degrees.
Instead I will direct your attention to this article in the NYTimes about mole digging. It has a nice video of moles moving through a tube and 'swimming' through couscous. However in terms of actual scientific findings there is very little. We do learn that moles can exert a powerful force with their forelimbs and that one of the grad students pursuing this research had to camp out on golf courses and carefully watch sticks stuck into mole burrows for hours at a time for signs of movement so she could capture the moles.
As a mole myself I find this kind of interesting although I don't want to be stuck in a plastic tube. I anxiously await more findings as this study progresses.
That's it for the moles. What's up in your neck of the woods?