anhinga are “devil birds”?
down here we call them snake birds, because their head and neck are usually what you see when they are in the water.
TIL, the name is from Indigenous Brazilian meaning “devil bird” or “snake bird”.
ETA: i suppose having them in New York is startling…
A report on producing crops in southern Spain despite desert conditions:
There is controversy about materials and workers, but some of the solutions in use here might help combat climate change problems in other places.
Have I ever mentioned the time there was a friggin’ BLACK SWAN on my pond in rural Indiana??!!
Florida is the only place I know of other than Australia where you can find them naturally. I spent some time that day alternating between taking photos, texting everyone I knew, and following the most logical steps to try to figure it out. Calling the closest zoo (several towns away) worked: the farm that keeps exotics like Roberta for summer rental (I kid you not) had called them as the most likely contact point for anyone trying to figure out why there was a black swan in the area!
I was actually quite pleased to hear that she got out because they clip certain flight feathers every spring so that the birds don’t fly away, and were due to do it again only a few days later but she obviously had grown them back enough to escape early.
Most places would actually clip the wings themselves, permanently harming the birds. This seems much more humane. In rural areas, you take what good you can get!
Josh Hawley would rather run.
Net inflow only makes sense if you distinguish between those leaving one of the top cities to move to a suburb of same (for free public schools and a yard), versus those who are truly moving to a different state, not because of work or family but rather because they just want to.
Even that is malleable. A lot of people move to Indiana because the commute to downtown is shorter than moving to a lot of the Chicago suburbs. In fact, that corner of Indiana stays on Central Time and has a commuter train to downtown just like any other suburban spot in the Chicagoland area. These are not people leaving Chicago because they’d rather live in Las Vegas.
Besides, just because someone looks doesn’t mean they’re really going to move there.
this is wild to me. turns out, in order to feed their dairy cows, saudi arabia and the uae grow alfalfa for hay… in arizona
if i understand correctly, just one company consumes as much water as a million residents of phoenix. only an estimate though because no government agency monitors it.
also, no one knows how much water is left in the aquifers… neither the state nor the feds have been willing to find out. meanwhile the water table has been dropping by about 5 feet per year. ( determined in part by residents watching their wells run dry )
This storm over the weekend was one of the most violent outbreak of thunderstorms we’ve seen in NoVa in a long time and more damage left behind than any recent hurricane. This AM we had a storm pass thru that was akin to Niagara Falls passing overhead lasting for about 20 minutes.
Just more examples of weather events becoming more violent as a result of climate change (or all the hot air in DC).
That’s exactly what I’ve thought during every thunderstorm in the past 5 years: I was never afraid of storms as a child, but now they’re so violent and extreme that I truly do worry about windows getting blown out or the roof being ripped off. Every time, now. This is not how storms used to be.
Right? We’ve been getting estimates to trim back a giant willow oak partially hanging over the house recently. Up until the past few years it hasn’t bothered us. It’s different now, it’s life and death.
Yet another example of how climate change has a negative financial aspect.
And is more likely to kill people (and other living creatures).
I can’t even be mad about that. It is way too stupid to even be offensive.
