Towheeblog

NATURE—JANUARY 25, 2019

Our hellebore is in bloom.  Down the street a parade march of daffodils is blooming next to a neighbor’s home.  Nearby a single, pioneering Dutch iris waves its purple petals at the winter sun. English daisies rear their white and yellow fried egg imitations across infected lawns here in suburbia.  I liberated my daisy infusion from some nearby parks where these daisies are profligate and prolific. A chorus frog calls from his unseen hideaway.  Buds have appeared on cherry, blueberry, apple and quince—promise of another fruitful summer.  Hazels and alder now dangle three inch long tassels from their outer twigs, sure sign that leaves and flowers are pending.  Somewhere in the golf course woods a pair of Great Horned Owls are already nesting.  Wintering ducks are going to be pairing off soon, before they must migrate to colder lands and waters where the nesting season is brief and such work must begin upon arrival.  Grass, moss, conifers soak up the rainfall, the winter sun, and then make haste with photosynthesis.

We see nature through our eyes which register three primary colors: red, green, blue.  All our video screens and cameras are designed to credit what the human eye sees by sensing the natural mixtures of those three basic colors.  Birds go us one better, they see a fourth primary color, outside the visual range of our more limited eyes.  Birds see ultraviolet, their fourth primary color.  That means they see a different world.  So Swedish researchers built a camera that picks up all four avian primary colors…presto, a new world. 

 Not only do birds have a visual advantage over mammals.  They and other warm-blooded critters (like whales and seals) have a great advantage when they are hunting food in cold water.

Donald Trump’s nihilism knows few bounds beyond his highly-developed bullying/bragging system for self-preservation and brand-building.  Everything else on the planet he considers secondary to himself and himbrand, to be used and abused for profit and attention.  That’s certainly true of any animals outside his family…like wolves.  The much-touted wall would do immense damage to wildlife if it ever came to be.