Tired of mowing already? Why not make your property more wildlife friendly and save yourself some work at the same time. Check out this post from April of 2010.
While most naturalists and veteran birders head for conservation areas, nature preserves and wildlife refuges to observe and photograph wildlife, urban parks have a great deal to offer. Providing a natural escape from human "development," these urban oases are generally planted with a wide variety of native wildflowers, shrubs and plants, attracting a diverse assembly of wildlife. Indeed, in my experience, the more extensive the nature sanctuary the more dispersed the wild creatures and the more difficult they are to find. Urban parks, on the other hand, tend to concentrate wildlife, offering food and shelter that is not readily available in the surrounding concrete jungle. This morning, my grandson and I walked through Stephens Lake Park on the east side of Columbia. Though its hike-bike path is less than two miles long, we observed twenty bird species, including a yellow-bellied sapsucker (a lifer for my grandson). Urban parks may not offer the solitude and tra...
The ongoing chaplain controversy in the U.S. House of Representatives seems to be the product of both political and religious objections to the Catholic priest who has recently held that position. Some say his firing was in response to his criticism of the Republican Tax Cut while others report that evangelical Congress Members want a chaplain who is more accepting of their beliefs. In my opinion, the real scandal lies with the appointment of a House Chaplain to begin with, funded by American taxpayers and plying his trade on Government property. The same goes for those Prayer Breakfasts that our Presidents and Congress Members attend; I assume we also fund those mystical events. Legislators certainly have the right to attend the church, synagogue or mosque of their choice and can seek the advice of shamans if they like; they can even arrange for their piety to be photographed in order to impress or appease their constituents. But this mysticism should not occur on Gov...
Watching a film set in Cape Town, South Africa, today, I wondered about the geology of Table Mountain, which looms above the city. As is often the case, the natural history of that famous massif is complex. About 500 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period, a rift valley developed in the southern portion of a continental plate that included today's Continents of South America, Antarctica and Africa. Initially flooded by a shallow sea, the rift accumulated sediments over the next 100 million years. Throughout the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic Eras, this region was folded, lifted and eroded by tectonic forces as Earth's Continents merged into Pangea and then rifted apart. Among the sedimentary rocks that formed within the ancient rift valley was a thick layer of hard quartzite sandstone; resistant to erosion, this Table Mountain Sandstone now outcrops as the steep cliffs of Table Mountain and the Cape Fold Ranges of western South Africa. Of note, the west...
Comments
Post a Comment