I spotted this pea hen on a neighbor’s roof. Their house is about eight-hundred feet down the road from our house. We have seen peafowl in the downtown area, but never this far out into our semi-rural area.
I looked at peafowl on the internet and think that this is a female Indian peafowl. She was just standing on the roof in the shade of a couple of eucalyptus trees. Click on the image to enlarge.
No, it’s not the first day of Christmas nor spring and neither is this a partridge in a pear tree. However, the red and green complimentary colors make this photo of a cardinal in the mesquite tree look very festive.
We put out the seed bell for the birds a couple of days ago and since they are attracted to it, we get lots of photo ops like this. Click on the image to enlarge.
To all of our Christian friends, Happy Easter and to all of our Jewish friends, Happy Passover.
I read a recent article at the CO2 Science website entitled “One Hundred Years of Global Temperature Change: 1906-2005.” The article discusses the conclusions of a study made to try and determine if 20th century warming is the result of an anthropomorphic-related temperature increase.
Working with 2249 globally-distributed monthly temperature records covering the period 1906-2005, which they obtained from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the authors evaluated “to what extent the temperature rise in the past 100 years was a trend or a natural fluctuation.”
What was learned:
Ludecke et al. report that “the mean of all stations shows 0.58°C global warming from 1906 to 2005,” but they say that “if we consider only those stations with a population of under 1000 and below 800 meters above sea level, this figure drops to 0.41°C.” In addition, they note that “about a quarter of all records show falling temperatures,” which in itself, in their words, “is an indication that the observed temperature series are predominantly natural fluctuations,” where the word natural means that “we do not have within a defined confidence interval a definitely positive anthropogenic contribution.” And continuing to explore this aspect of their analysis, they evaluated – with a confidence interval of 95% – the probability that the observed global warming from 1906 to 2005 was a natural fluctuation, finding that probability to lie “between 40% and 70%, depending on the station’s characteristics,” while “for the period 1906 to 1955 the probabilities are arranged between 80% and 90% and for 1956 to 2005 between 60% and 70%.”
It’s interesting that this study went to the trouble to factor out the Urban Heat Island effect by removing densely populated areas from the results. Of course, the alarmists try and capitalize on the UHI effect to support their erroneous beliefs.
One of the two hedgehog cacti in front of the house has several open flowers with more to come – you can see the cactus with its blooms and a close-up of one flower in the inset. Click on the image to enlarge.
Of all the millions of bird species seen worldwide, we have been able to identify most of those we see in our neck of the woods, except for a small number we can’t find in printed or on-line references. We’re still looking to find the species of this bird.
This week, during our visit to some friends who live on the Colorado River near Parker, AZ, we watched flocks of these black and yellow birds zipping from one treetop to the next. This is yet another mystery bird that does not seem to be listed in our references. Any clues? Click on the image to enlarge.
Today is the first day of spring. Right on cue, we saw this cardinal perched on the power pole across the road on Sunday. He was whistling the cardinal mating call which is considerably more musical than the bird’s normal metallic “chip” sound. We assume this handsome fellow is looking for a mate.
Image: Male cardinal perched calling for a mate. Click on the image to enlarge.
We’re hoping that this cardinal and his mate settle nearby. We had two or more cardinal couples frequenting the area last spring and summer.
We were surprised to see last night’s forecast for possible snow as low as 2500 feet. No snow stuck to the ground here (if any fell at all) but the snow level in the local mountains looks to be as low as 3500 feet. I took this image from the hill behind our house looking north. Click on the image to enlarge.
