From the archives:
No, it isn’t an arthropod this week.
Our family is fond of snails. In fact we have raised the common garden snail. It is exciting when they lay the pearly round eggs.
Then each hatches into a tiny perfect snail.
Edit:Â For a close-up look inside a snail egg, check Beyond the Human Eye.
In spite of their reputation for being a slow, a “motivated” snail can actually move rather quickly.
Have you ever spent time watching a snail?
Are you ready for a new mystery seed of the week?
These lovely smelling round seeds might be found on your spice shelf, although they are more often ground. They are roughly the same size as peppercorns, but they are not peppercorns.
Any guesses what they might be?
Edit:Â The answer is now posted.
Did any of you take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count this year? What did you see?
My son counted:
Mourning Dove – 8
Inca Dove – 1
Anna’s Hummingbird – 2
Black Phoebe – 1
What was a very noticeable change from his count last year was a lack of house sparrows and house finches. It could have been the time of the day he counted, and the fact it was cold and rainy.
We weren’t worried about house sparrows, because we still see them all the time. Here’s one from the park the other day:
But we had already noticed fewer house finches in our yard, even though we were feeding the same kinds of seeds in the same kind of feeder. Checking the previous count totals for our city in previous years we see 138 house finches were counted in 2009, 102 in 2010 and now only 31 so far this year. House finches are native to the Southwest, so we checked to see if the trend carried throughout the state. Sure enough 7,978 house finches were counted in 2009, 7,132 in 2010 and only 3,821 in 2011 (not all reports made yet).
(Photo from 2009).
The Black Phoebe is an interesting new addition, although I noticed this morning that the male Anna’s hummingbirds are giving it trouble so I don’t know whether it will stay.
What birds did you count this year? Do you have house finches?
Did you search through the counts from previous years?
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.
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