Ecology- MMG

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mountainFrugal
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Ecology- MMG

Post by mountainFrugal »

One thing that happens in our ecology group is sharing nature observations at the start of each session and sporadically throughout the week via Signal. There is no reason that this has to be on signal. The idea is to become more aware of what is going on with nature around your home (daily, monthly, seasonally) or when you travel. This also plays into observing surroundings for permaculture purposes. No need to be part of the EcoMMG to post nature observations here. Observations can range from simple to complex pattern recognition over time.

I will start:
We are currently hanging with friends in the desert for the week. I did a hill climb workout yesterday in the heat. Various buzzards starting circling above me and hanging out on nearby plants waiting for me to collapse so they could eat my eyeballs. :shock: :twisted: The desert is metal. Anyone else?

AxelHeyst
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by AxelHeyst »

Your thumbnail image perfectly captures the emotion of hill climbing under the gaze of carrion eaters, I feel. :lol:

It's mostly ravens, jays, and woodpeckers around here, although there are several other species of smaller bird that I'm working on identifying. The jays have been gathering into large flocks(?) and flying around making fun jay noises. I've been watching an unkindness of 4 ravens to the north of my studio (they fly around the south of the studio too, but I don't have s-facing windows yet).

On Sunday I saw a red-tailed hawk not a quarter mile from Ft Dirtbag. I hear owls occasionally at night to the west. I've got a hypothesis that some of the bigger birds of prey live on the Northern slope across the wash, which is steep and has more legitimate trees on it.

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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by AxelHeyst »

A couple days ago in the midmorning I looked up out my N window and saw this guy sauntering by:
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theanimal
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by theanimal »

Today we hiked through a biome within a dominant biome. The unique thing being the extreme contrast. We hiked more or less in a canyon through wetlands in the Utah desert. Contrasts in everything. Ravens and ducks. Sand/rock and large ponds/waterfall. Cacti and reeds. Juniper and birch. Very cool!

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shaz
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by shaz »

I saw a pair of sun dogs just after dawn today. It made for a spectacular sunrise. I wish I had thought to take a photo.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by mountainFrugal »

A different species of buzzard hung out around the exercise hill today. They were using the thermals of the hill to scan for dead things. My eyeballs are safe for now.

shaz
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by shaz »

@mountainFrugal how could you tell they were a different species?

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by mountainFrugal »

I was using non-technical terms and playful descriptions in hopes of encouraging more folks to make nature observations. Which you all should do RIGHT now out your nearest window. What is going on out there? What are the temps? What is the cloud cover? Are there any animals? What are the plants like? Go out your door and spend one minute using your senses to take it all in. What do you notice?

Crested Caracara - White feathers on the head. They circled only a little then set up an observation shop on a cactus next to the trail I was running. These are technically falcons, but they mostly eat carrion (like vultures) and can hop along the ground (falcons do not do that). There were 2 of them. I am wondering if they pair bond, but have yet to look up.

Turkey Vultures (buzzards) - have spread feathers when they are circling and red heads with no feathers so they can go deep inside rotting carcasses and not have to worry about cleaning their head feathers.

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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by jacob »

I've been up since 530 walking (8k) and catching pokemons(*). The world is wonderfully devoid of humans today (thanks thanksgiving) and therefore full of squirrels. We have big trees and electric lines overhanging the nearest intersection and squirrels will travel from one side of the street to the other through the tree crowns. There was a squirrel fight going on involving four of them at the same time.

(*) Yes, I finally bought a data plan for my free smartphone and this is how I use my 200MB/month.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by mountainFrugal »

jacob wrote:
Thu Nov 24, 2022 11:02 am
I've been up since 530 walking (8k) and catching pokemons(*).
You (or anyone) could also use your walking time to catch IRL pokemon: https://www.inaturalist.org/
If you are more stoked about birds: https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

No need to use the data plan while out, just snap a photo and try ID'ing/uploading when you get back to wifi. There is a fairly good species search/suggestion function based on the geotag of the image or your live location. If your observations are corraborated by more than one other user, they become "research grade". These are then used by researchers studying species distributions shifts in response to climate change.

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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by jacob »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Thu Nov 24, 2022 11:13 am
You (or anyone) could also use your walking time to catch IRL pokemon: https://www.inaturalist.org/
If you are more stoked about birds: https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
I'm mostly stoked about insects. I can only do so many cardinals, squirrels, racoons, rats, mice, garter snakes, robins, and finches.

shaz
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by shaz »

Fair enough, @mountainFrugal. I was curious about the buzzards because I am only familiar with the turkey vulture variety. The Crested Caracara sound interesting.

My observation for today is that squirrels are cheeky buggers. I thought I might have to fight one to get my disc back at the disc golf course today. Maybe he thinks I am cheeky for landing a disc on top of his log, though. We had quite the staredown until he decided to let me pick up the disc.

avalok
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by avalok »

On my evening walk I wandered around the nearby (very) affluent neighbourhood and encountered a fox I had seen there the week before. I have started noticing foxes more regularly as the nights have drawn in, though this is still surprising to me as I am walking as people drive home from work. I would have thought it too busy for them. The fox this evening was particularly sociable; happy to keep a distance of about 50ft in front of me, laxly criss-crossing the road we walked along. At one point, they even turned around and began to approach me. I made no attempt to hide my presence and they seemed perfectly happy with me there behind them. Quite thrilling to get some time with one!

Curious: is the MMG open to new members currently?

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by mountainFrugal »

avalok wrote:
Fri Nov 25, 2022 2:36 pm
Curious: is the MMG open to new members currently?
Potentially.

Given all the recent activity and ideas about bringing back more "content" to the forum, we will be discussing this at our next meeting in early December. We will know more then. We originally committed to a year (4 seasons) which will be up in the spring. I think what is most likely is we will take the lessons from this group and figure out how to better integrate with the forum. I might then consider leading another one starting next year with the same members (if they were keen) and adding new ones. A majority of the detailed discussion in this MMG outside of sharing nature observations is Plotkin based. This has worked well as a framework for a group. Plotkin is hard, to say the least. We made good progress early on and have posted about it in various threads, but at least I am in the long "boring" part of the internal exploration using this framework. Insight is likely to be less common, but you have to build a base.

In the mean time, I very much look forward to hearing about your interactions with this fox. :)

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by mountainFrugal »

Went around flipping rocks and dead brush today. I saw many lizard tracks and saw a few fast ones. The desert is 12 year old mF's dream. :). I was hoping to find some snakes to admire, but no luck. I did find some small magenta flowers that had a bunch of pollinators on them (butterflies and bees). No species ID for me.

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C40
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by C40 »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:52 am
...Various buzzards starting circling above me and hanging out on nearby plants....
I don't know a lot about the behavior of buzzards, but I got really fascinated by condors one time (which are similar - they are both types of vultures). I was camping in the marble canyon. This is along the colorado river, upstream of the Grand Canyon, in northern Arizona near the Utah border. It's near the city of Page, horseshoe bend, and Lee's Ferry, where many people get onto the Colorado river to float down it in small boats. In that area, the canyon is about 400 feet deep and is quite narrow. In some places the drop is nearly vertical and just solid rock. And there are offshoots of the canyon from contributary steams that are normally always completely dry, and can be walked/scrambled down at least some amount. It's a really interesting area to hang out.

Anyway, there aren't many animals visible in that area. But one that were are California Condors. I'd see one flying around every now and then and watch it. They can fly incredible distances without ever flapping their wings - I mean miles at a time. This spot I camped had very long unobstructed views so I'd sit for quite a long time using binoculars to watch them fly. They seem to me like a very efficient animal - being able to travel so far with little energy - and being able to find food without needing to kill it, and in some cases to eat food that might otherwise largely rot or be eaten by insects (?)

They endangered now or something like that - I think mostly due to hunters using lead bullets and shooting animals but not retrieving them, so the condors eat them and eat the lead. Every few days, a government worker would come out with a strange antenna to do a scan for the tags they place on the feet of those condors to try to monitor and protect them.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by mountainFrugal »

C40 wrote:
Fri Nov 25, 2022 9:14 pm
It's near the city of Page, horseshoe bend, and Lee's Ferry, where many people get onto the Colorado river to float down it in small boats. In that area, the canyon is about 400 feet deep and is quite narrow.
I floated the Grand Canyon in 2012. There was a recent California Condor release there at that point (if I remember correctly). I only saw one briefly circling overhead and it was HUGE. They can have 2.5-3m wingspans!

I would have loved to be able to watch them through binoculars. Really cool. Thank you for sharing!

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C40
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by C40 »

Oh yeah, they really are huge. Compared to other animals, they are far more visible from long distances

shaz
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by shaz »

I would love to see a condor someday.

I saw some elk today when I was out horseback riding. I don't normally see them here at this time of year unless heavy snow pushes them down from the higher elevations. We haven't had much snow yet so I am not sure what is going on with that.

tdurtsch
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Re: Ecology- MMG

Post by tdurtsch »

I recently purchased a worm bin (red wiggler) from a guy on Craigslist who was moving out of the country. I'm having so much fun with it! Honestly, calling it a worm bin doesn't really do it justice. It's more like a whole composting ecosystem in a box. Just about every time I open it up, I find some new and interesting critters hanging around: mites, potworms, pillbugs, a house centipede... But the coolest one I've seen so far is the pseudoscorpion. Never seen these little guys before, but apparently there are thousands of species of them living pretty much everywhere on earth!

https://www.chaosofdelight.org/pseudoscorpions

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