Phillip's Natural World

May Sunflowers

2013-05-21T22:38:00.002-07:00

These are some shots of the sunflowers (Helianthus annus) today.
Below is probably my favorite. A stink bug (Pentatomidae) staking his claim.

I think they look most edible when they're not yet open. . . or partially open. They look like a special petit four.

ABOVE: A bee incoming. . . and BELOW: Perfect light.

Up on the Roof

2013-05-15T22:46:00.000-07:00

I can just hear this little guy humming The Drifter's

Up On the Roof
by songwriters Gerry Goffin & Carole King

you know how it goes. . .

When I come home feelin' tired and beat

I go up where the air is fresh and sweet

Up on the roof

I get away from the hustling crowd

And all that rat race noise down in the street

Up on the roof

On the roof, the only place I know

Where you just have to wish to make it so. . .

Let's go up on the roof

Honestly I don't think the roof is the best place for the raccoons (Procyon lotor elucus) but they've taken to running across the roof mid-afternoon to get to the porches looking for food. I feel sorry for them. . . it is hot. . . the dry is relentless. . .and they're likely quite hungry and thirsty.

Feeding them is a problem, however. If you feed one little raccoon you end up with 50 or more big raccoons and a few small bears. . .and how many raccoons do you really want up on the roof?

How about. . .

Right smack dab in the middle of town

I've found a paradise that's trouble proof

Up on the roof

And if this world starts getting you down

There's room enough for two, up on the roof

The dry has become so pervasive I've begun to wonder if it will ever end.

Once 700-acre Lake Theresa is now a massive field (below)

At least there is some relief in all of our ponds. We have 5 ponds now that we maintain and they are providing ample space for turtles, snakes and other wildlife that likely would have disappeared otherwise due to the endless dry.

Emory University Art

2013-05-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

Is it art?

This art installation on the campus of Emory University caught my eye.

Titled "Pop Canopy," the installation is a work commissioned by Rollins Environmental Health and Action Committee. It was designed and facilitated by Jessica Marquardt and Keyan Rhimzadeh of Georgia Institute of Technology. The work was then customized by the students and faculty of the Rollins School of Public Health.

The art asks the question, what are the opportunities of applying a system to reuse recycled materials. It is a systematic framework for the reuse of discarded materials: an overhead network of empty soda bottles that scatters ambient light to create a unique, contemplative space.

The installation embodies a couple of concepts: 1. Every consumer object is designed; we can take advantage of the embedded intelligence in these artifacts, thereby extending them beyond their intended performance cycle. . .

and 2. . . Every person has a stake in the environment, but in order to create change, one must take ownership of the actions of others.

. . . or so say the artists. I will say that it was eye-catching. I'm no fan of plastics so I would have preferred had it been made of glass and metal. . .but that wasn't the point.

I did love these metal lamps that hung in a stairwell. I wouldn't want to be the person who had to dust them, however.

Emory University is recognized internationally for its outstanding liberal arts colleges, graduate and professional schools, and one of the Southeast's leading health care systems. It is located on a spectacular campus in Atlanta's posh Druid Hills neighborhood. Below: The skyline of Atlanta a parking area at the University.

Emory University was founded in 1836, when the Cherokee nation still clung to its ancestral lands in the State of Georgia, and Atlanta had yet to be born. A small band of Methodists in Newton County dedicated themselves to founding a new town and college. They would call the town Oxford. It was a name of high aspiration, linking their frontier enterprise with the university attended by the founders of Methodism, John and Charles Wesley. The college they would call Emory, after an American Methodist bishop who had inspired them by his broad vision for an American education that would mold character as well as minds.

Asa Candler, the founder of The Coca-Cola Company and brother to former Emory President Warren Candler was instrumental in bringing Emory to its present-day campus. In 1914 he gave $1 million and 72 acres of land on which to build the university.

Robert Woodruff (pictured above in bronze) poured some of his largess into making Atlanta and Emory great. In 1966, thanks largely to Woodruff, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control opened on Clifton Road, next to Emory. The presence of the CDC was one reason why the American Cancer Society moved its headquarters to aAtlanta and sert up shop across the street. The CDC made it possible for Emory, in 1990, to launch its first new school in 50 years, the Rollins School of Public Health (see art above).

At that time those 72 acres, about 6 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta, lay in pasture and woods amid Druid Hills, a park-like residential area laid out by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of New York's Central Park.

Emory University's Vision Statement calls for the University to be a destination university internationally recognized as an inquiry-driven, ethically engaged, and diverse community, whose members work collaboratively for positive transformation in the world through courageous leadership in teaching, research, scholarship, health care, and social action.

The lofty Vision Statement is great, the spectacular campus is world class.

The buildings are a mix of old and new, often closely integrated. The lecture halls are awe-inspiring.

Above: the 19th century Mary Gray Munroe Theater is a 100-200 seat black-box studio that is merged seamlessly with an ultra-modern eating and study area.

Below: The Clock Tower of Cox Hall is a distinctive symbol of one of Emory's most popular community gathering spots. The 3-story building includes a large food court and dining area that invites interaction between Emory community members, faculty, staff, and Emory Hospital employees. The building also houses a state-of-the-art computing facility and a banquet conference hall.

Hello Redneck My Old Friend

2013-05-10T00:20:00.000-07:00

"Redneck," my Red-eared Slider turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans) who went missing around the October full moon of 2012 has returned. I very much enjoy the company of this gentle creature in afternoons by the ponds. This is Redneck's 5th year summering in our ponds.

Just as mysteriously as he disappeared, Redneck reappeared on the full moon in late April, a couple of weeks ago.

He has very poor eyesight so he is only slowly becoming very tame again, where he will eat food from my hand. When I wear a hat or bright clothes he is initially scared and dives to the bottom of the pond and burrows in leaves.

I notice too that when I throw food into the pond he has to dive to see where the food is floating before raising up to eat.

Redneck's favorite pastime is basking in the sun. Late afternoons he loves to gorge on cat food. The floating blobs around him are cat food I've thrown into the pond for him. He is currently eating 2 cups of food per day.

Redneck seems to be staying mostly in the Big Pond which is about 6,000 gallons of still water, plenty of room for him to grow.

He appears a bit larger than when I last saw him. Perhaps the size of a large dinner plate now. I would guess he measures 12" across (30 cm).

Redneck got his name because he has a prominent red stripe along both sides of his head and smaller red stripes along the back of his head.

None of the dozens of Yellow-bellied Sliders that I put into the 3 ponds last summer have yet reappeared. See TURTLE RESCUE for those images.

The Yellow-bellied Sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) are native while Redneck is not. Redneck is of the variety of turtles that once were sold in pet shops across America. Often cited as the most widely illustrated turtle in the world the Red-eared Slider's indigenous range broadly covers the midwestern United States and extends as far east as West Virginia and Southern Ohio, as far west as eastern New Mexico, and as far south as the Rio Grand River.

These turtles, because they were sold as pets, have been introduced into most of the continental United States. In Florida, non-indigenous Red-eared Sliders have been found in scattered colonies throughout the peninsula. The peak of the Red-eared Slider's popularity was during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle television cartoon craze of the late 1980s.

In nearly all non-indigenous locations across America the Red-eared Sliders are reproducing and thriving.

Redneck is mostly aquatic, omnivorous, and rarely leaves the water except to bask. He seems to prefer quiet waters so I have turned off the water pumps in the Big Pond to accommodate him.

These turtles are known to thrive in the wild as far north as Portland, Cumberland County, Maine so I assume that they hibernate in cooler weather, and that is likely why I did not see Redneck for 5 months.

For more information about Red-eared Sliders check out the USGS's Nonindigeneous Aquatic Species page.

As our lake has gone almost completely dry I find it hard to imagine that Redneck traveled all the way from the current shoreline, nearly a mile to our north. However a couple of days ago a family of River Otters were in the Big Pond so I assume it is possible that turtles too could travel that distance.

Below: Our 700 acre virtually dry lake. A testament to the mismanagement of government officials starting with former Republican Governor Jeb Bush who ordered the lake drained in 2003 during the last high water event. To be fair climate change has also played a role in Florida's disappearing lakes and springs. Persistent drought has become common across the central peninsula of Florida.

Florida Squanders Medicaid Opportunity

2013-05-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

Medicaid Expansion Is Rejected in Florida

Rebuffing Gov. Rick Scott and a majority of Floridians the Republican-dominated Florida legislature rejected expansion of Medicaid giving away billions of dollars in the process. The legislature callously ignored the needs of millions of Floridians. The expansion would have been paid 100% by Federal funds for the first three years. Nevertheless, Florida House Republicans blocked any expansion of Medicaid before closing the legislative session in early May.

Florida Republicans' politically-motivated decision not to expand the federally-subsidized program leaves roughly 1 million state residents without health insurance, deals a blow to health care providers hoping to boost revenues and reduce charity care, and leaves billions of dollars that would have poured into Florida to be spent by other states.

The Senate panel debating the expansion proposed a compromise: to accept the federal money but use it to put low-income people into private insurance plans. Accepting the money would have pleased the governor and countless Floridians, while steering people away from Medicaid.

A regressive Florida House committee ignored the Senate's proposal and voted to reject Medicaid expansion altogether, saying that the system was broken and that adding people to the rolls would cost taxpayers too much money in the long run. The House speaker, Will Weatherford, a Republican, said it was the wrong approach. Republicans offered no solution to the problem. The committee vote to reject Medicaid expansion under President Obama’s health care overhaul was 7 to 4, with Democrats voting for the expansion.

From the start, Governor Scott knew it would be difficult for the Florida Legislature to embrace Medicaid expansion, even for only three years, which is what he proposed. The governor had staked his political career on derailing what he calls “Obamacare,” and his abrupt reversal did not endear him to conservatives in Florida or in the Legislature.

It is unclear whether the Obama administration would have accepted the proposal to use Federal funds to purchase private insurance. Regardless, Florida Republican's couldn't even be bothered to vote for such a plan, preferring for the tax dollars to go to other more progressive states. Several states, including Arkansas, Indiana and Ohio, are exploring using private insurers to enroll uninsured patients. The administration recently agreed to a proposal by the Democratic governor of Arkansas, Mike Beebe, who sought to reject Medicaid expansion and use federal money to buy private health insurance for its uninsured residents who qualify.

The healthcare of uninsured Floridians is likely to figure prominently in Florida's 2014 elections if lawmakers do nothing again next year.

Florida has historically rejected providing healthcare for its disadvantaged citizens. It took five years for Florida to join the Medicaid program after it was first created in 1965. States can expand Medicaid anytime in the future, but only the first three years are 100 percent federally funded. After that the rate drops to 90% over time and states much pick up 10% of the cost of providing healthcare to their citizens.

A Quinnipiac University poll in March found that a majority of Floridians supported expanding Medicaid.

Pressure to expand Medicaid could grow as supporters are able to highlight the human toll of rejecting the money, the financial impact on health care providers and the potential to create jobs.

Land of the Walking Dead

2013-05-04T21:20:00.003-07:00

The area around Senoia, Georgia is extremely picturesque. It was hard to choose a favorite image of the area, but I think this spot was might be my top pick.

This is Starr's Mill. The property was owned by Hananiah Gilcoat who built the first mill here before his death in 1825. This site, on Whitewater Creek, was then less than a mile from the boundary between Creek Indian lands and the State of Georgia.

Today you can find the mill just northeast of Senoia on Georgia 74/85. There is a park off of Georgia 74 at Waterfall Way but the better photo ops are above the mill (as pictured here) on Georgia 85. . . kind of a precarious dirt trail off the main road.

Hilliard Starr, who owned the mill from 1866 until 1879, gave the site its current name. After the first two log structures burned, William T. Glower built the current building in 1907. This mill operated until 1959, using a water-powered turbine, instead of a wheel, to grind corn and operate a sawmill. The Starr's Mill site also included a cotton gin and a dynamo (an electrical generator) that produced electricity for nearby Senoia, the present day home of fictional "Woodbury" from The Walking Dead.

While I do not consider myself a full-fledged Walker Stalker, I was hoping to see some kitschy stuff in the land where The Walking Dead is filmed. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find a quaint and largely unspoiled corner of the South.

Blogger playing with iPad, above. I managed to get my sunglasses and forehead in this shot.

Getting lost around Senoia is a treat for The Walking Dead fans as one stumbles across shooting locales that are very familiar. Above and Below: The area where the Governor stored walkers. . . and where Daryl had to kill his brother (Merle Dixon) in the episode titled "This Sorrowful Life" Season 3 number 15. These old silos and barns are located in beautiful downtown Haralson, Georgia, a few miles south of Senoia.

We ended up here by accident but were pleasantly surprised to find this site just off the main road (Georgia Route 85/74). I thought it looked very familiar though the camera distorts the surroundings. . .then I saw other tourists taking photos and knew that it was the site from "This Sorrowful Life" episode.

Downtown Senoia (aka Woodbury) was so busy on a recent Saturday afternoon that we could not find a place to park except at the bottom of the steep hill that constitutes Main Street. This street is often featured in the TV show from a crane held-high position (see article below).

It was nice to see that others were drawn to this quaint corner of Georgia for the same reason we made the hour and a half drive down from Midtown Atlanta. The building at left sports a sign "Bank of Woodbury.". . . I have to wonder if this is going to somehow play into the new season of The Walking Dead.

Click on this or any photo to enlarge.

All around town signs were going up (pictured above) that areas of the town would be closed starting May 6, 2013 when The Walking Dead starts filming season 4.

Below: The fire pit burn scars are still in the middle of Senoia's Main Street. This is where the nighttime shots of downtown Woodbury are filmed.

Around town there are plenty of photo opportunities. . . one sees many structures that have appeared in films other than The Walking Dead.

Below: I particularly liked this converted church/home that had the grave of a Confederate States of America soldier in the front yard. I did not add the Confederate Flag, it was already there.

Read more about the Land of The Walking Dead at this LINK or below. . .

A house from the film "Fried Green Tomatoes." Photo by Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

By ROBBIE BROWN
The New York Times

SENOIA, Ga. — Unlike so many recession-weary towns, Senoia, Georgia has a bustling Main Street. Dozens of new stores have opened, including a sushi bar, an antiques vendor and an Irish pub. City Hall has been repainted with money from the soaring tax revenues.

The reason? Filmmaking.

This is the quaint, small town that plays a quaint, small town on television and in the movies. Hollywood filmmakers come here when they need a Mayberry backdrop or a row of mom-and-pop storefronts. The community of 3,300 people, 25 miles south of Atlanta, has been the site of 24 shows and movies, from current hits like “The Walking Dead” and “Drop Dead Diva” to Southern classics like “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “Driving Miss Daisy.”

With film crews bringing in money and publicity, Senoia (pronounced sen-OY) has avoided the empty downtowns and shrinking tax bases that plague many rural towns. The population has nearly doubled since 2000. Property tax revenues have risen even though the city has lowered its tax rate and the fact that Georgia, over all, has among the nation’s highest foreclosure rate.

“It has been like turning on a fire hose of cash,” said Scott Tigchelaar, the president of Raleigh Studios Atlanta, a division of an international production company.

Senoia did not lure Hollywood on its own. Georgia lawmakers helped, passing lucrative tax credits for filmmakers and promoting the state’s cheap labor costs, few unions and access to the world’s busiest airport, in Atlanta. The money brought into the state through filming — including music videos and television commercials and other projects — has soared to $879 million from $260 million in 2008.

Haralson, Georgia is also the site of "The Walking Dead" filming. Haralson is located about 6 miles south of Senoia on Georgia Highway 85/74

No city took advantage of the Georgia filmmaking bonanza as much as Senoia. The first movie made here was “Driving Miss Daisy,” which was released in 1989, and a movie or television show has been filmed nearly each year since, including “Sweet Home Alabama” in 2002, “Meet the Browns” in 2008 and “Footloose” in 2011.

By far the biggest project has been “The Walking Dead,” the hit zombie show on AMC that is the highest-rated drama of all time on basic cable channels. In the current season, Senoia plays the fictional town of Woodbury, Ga., a heavily armed haven for zombie survivors. Last season, most of the filming was done at a farm outside town.

Autographed memorabilia from The Walking Dead in a Senoia, Georgia coffee shop.
Photo by Dustin Chambers for The New York Times.

Much of life in the real town revolves around the zombie show. Main Street was closed to traffic for 30 days this summer and fall for filming. The city stopped mowing its grass to appear post-apocalyptic. Fake buildings for a bank, travel agency, law firm and bookstore were so realistic that some customers tried to walk in.

Senoia does not charge filmmakers who come to town, but it makes money in other ways. Cast and crew members dine, shop and sometimes live here. Raleigh Studios employs as many as 250 people. And store owners say profits rise by up to 30 percent during filming.

Main Street Woodbury, Georgia in "The Walking Dead" (Senoia, Georgia in pre-apocaplytic times).
Photograph by Dustin Chambers for The New York Times.

Tourists have come from around the world. Self-proclaimed Walker Stalkers hover off the set for cast members. Keith Boldt, a truck driver from nearby Newnan, Ga., has stayed up until 4 a.m. to watch key scenes being filmed. “You get the spoilers before they air,” he said. “I’ve met almost every cast member who hasn’t been killed off yet.”

To foster tourism, the city built a replica of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, with gold plaques honoring locally made films. Soon there will be a trolley-car tour of the filming sites.

Senoia’s slogan (“The perfect setting. For life.”) clarifies that it is a small town doubling as a movie and television set, and not vice versa. But the attention can be overwhelming.

“It feels like living on a film set,” said Todd Baggarly, owner of Founders Restaurant, whose great-great-grandfather founded the town in 1860. “One of the biggest cable shows in history films on one block of a small town in Georgia, and it happens to be our town.”

Not long ago, Senoia looked like most hard-hit rural towns. There were only seven stores on Main Street in 2006, compared with 49 today.

The largest landowner is Senoia Enterprises, a development company run by Mr. Tigchelaar of Raleigh Studios. Since 2006, his company has bought and restored more than half of the stores downtown. Using an architecture firm that specializes in historical renovations, the company has rebuilt bars, restaurants and shops as they might have looked in the late 19th century.

The result is a Norman Rockwell setting for the newly rich. Zac Brown, the country music star, owns a restaurant and concert space. There are 4,000-square-foot brownstones with elevators and five bedrooms that sell for $500,000. Developers are also planning a hotel. The goal is to attract empty-nesters from Atlanta and its wealthy suburbs who are drawn by the simplicity of small-town living, with a Hollywood twist.

“We like to say we’re 25 miles and 100 years from Atlanta,” Mr. Tigchelaar said.

Not everyone in town shares that vision. “It’s a double-edged sword,” said Wayne Peavy, the owner of an antiques store. “It’s good for business. But it’s not the small town I moved to.”

Others are embracing the changes. Mr. Baggarly has installed Hollywood props at his restaurant: a white reindeer from “The Chronicles of Narnia” film series overlooks the bar, and a bazooka fired by Patrick Swayze is mounted on the wall. “We’re buying velvet ropes,” he said. “And of course, there will be a red carpet.”

COMPLETE LIST OF WALKING DEAD FILMING LOCATIONS

At AMC, Zombies Topple Network TV

By DAVID CARR

When a show about the walking dead on basic cable beats every network show in the ratings demographic that advertisers care most about, you have to wonder who the real zombies are.

A zombie, after all, is something that continues to roam, and tries to devour all in its path even though its natural life is over — a description that does not sound that far-fetched when it comes to broadcast networks.

During its run last fall, “The Walking Dead” was the highest-rated show among viewers 18 to 49, the most-sought age group, with a bigger audience than network winners like “The Big Bang Theory,” “American Idol,” “The Voice” and “Modern Family.”

Now the zombies are back for the second half of the show’s third season, and they continue to gnaw on everything in their path, including the broadcast networks’ historical claim to being the only place to find a mass audience. Three weeks ago, the zombies owned Sunday night, attracting 7.7 million viewers in the 18 to 49 range, more than any broadcast show in the land.

It gets better (or worse, if you are a network). AMC has a spinoff chat show about zombies called “The Talking Dead,” and even that is making waves. That same Sunday three weeks ago, “The Talking Dead” drew almost 2.8 million viewers ages 18 to 49, trumping NBC not just for the night, but for all of February.

Being a cable network, it’s clear, is less of a disadvantage than it used to be, as broadcast networks become just one more click on a seemingly infinite dial.

A couple of things are at work here. For years, inertia kept viewers locked on the big broadcast channels, but these days, consumers are roaming omnivores, hunting down whatever has heat and water-cooler value. And network appointment viewing has given way to foraging and bingeing.

AMC, along with its studio partners, has always made sure that if someone wants to catch up with America’s favorite zombies, or “Breaking Bad” or “Mad Men,” two of its other hits, then past seasons are readily available — on demand, on Netflix or on iTunes. As a result, the audience for “The Walking Dead” is up 51 percent overall last year, and it is one of the most consistently talked about shows on social media.

It’s worth noting that the gap between basic cable and broadcast television has gradually shrunk as satellite and telecommunications companies have joined the fray. There are about 115 million television households in America, and some 99 million of them have access to AMC. On the networks, old franchises are tiring, new efforts are flopping in record time and a show like “The Walking Dead,” whose audience grew slowly and steadily over three seasons, is just not in the playbook.

“AMC sold the show to Netflix early, so when people started talking about it, it was there for the watching,” said Alexia Quadrani, a media analyst at JPMorgan.

Last Thursday, I visited Josh Sapan, the chief executive of AMC Networks, at his office across the street from Madison Square Garden. You might expect him to be celebrating his zombies’ success, but you’d be wrong. Mr. Sapan has been at AMC for 25 years and he is too superstitious to tempt the gods like that. As a collector of lightning rods — he has acquired more than a hundred, two of them on display in his office — he knows that sticking out has a cost.

“I would have put big odds against a cable show winning over network five years ago,” he said. Still, he warns, “People’s taste in what is popular can be very fleeting and short-lived. There is some alchemy at work here that is hard to diagnose and replicate.”

“It’s a big moment to those of us who are in the business,” he added, “but I don’t think the general public, especially young people, even think about where programming comes from.”

The zombies have not devoured all Mr. Sapan’s challenges. Even though advertising in the fourth quarter is up 16 percent over the previous year, earnings at AMC fell short of Wall Street estimates because of a costly fight with Dish Network and expensive outlays to service debt.

And he’s right to give the American audience, a notoriously fickle bunch, a wide berth. Ask NBC, which went from first to worst this season in nothing flat. As my colleague Bill Carter pointed out, the peacock was on top of the pile in 13 of 15 weeks from September to December, according to Nielsen. Since then, it has dropped below not only its broadcast brethren but also Univision, the Spanish-language network.

“The Walking Dead” was actually NBC’s for the asking in 2011. At a news tour for television reporters in January, Kevin Reilly, who is now at Fox but was a top programmer at NBC when the show was still up for grabs, talked about the one that got away.

“ ‘The Walking Dead’ is an extraordinary thing,” Mr. Reilly told reporters. “I bought the script at NBC from Frank Darabont. I developed it. I loved it.”

But NBC was back on its heels at the time, and Mr. Reilly ended up letting it go. “I thought it was good, but it was an early draft,” he said. “And then, when I left and I heard it went over to AMC, there was just a lot of serendipity involved.”

In fairness, “The Walking Dead” would have never made it to network prime time in all of its gory glory because of broadcast standards. Not long ago, I was wedged in the back of an airplane and took solace by catching up on Season 3 on my iPad. The guy next to me was sawing into some meat of unknown agency and looked over at my screen, where a pack of zombies were lustily feasting on human innards. “Really, dude?” he asked. “Zombies?”

AMC is also home to “Breaking Bad,” where a former science teacher turned meth chef has been known to use chemistry to dissolve the bodies of people who got in his way. Think about the box that the broadcast networks are in. Audiences expect spicy and sometimes dark narratives, but because the networks are still in the business of not offending mass audiences, they cannot even grab a hit when it comes lurching through the door. And A-list actors who used to demand that their work show up on the big networks are now after their agents to get them onto a prestige cable show.

“The talent which used to complain about being on something like AMC now want to be where good stories are being told,” said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research. “All around, it’s a very seismic change in the television industry.”

It’s programming that rules now, not platform or position on the dial. I watch all kinds of AMC shows and I couldn’t tell you what channel on the cable box they live on — even if a zombie were after me.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;
twitter.com/carr2n

A Tale of Two Springs

2013-04-30T10:37:00.003-07:00

Separated by less than 20 miles along Highway 19 in Florida's Ocala National Forest are two of Florida's first magnitude (more than 100 cubic feet per second flow) springs. They offer a tale of two Floridas; one natural, protected, and respected, while the other is trashed by increasingly numerous and disorderly humans.

Pictured here, Silver Glen Spring is largely ignored, and littered with unruly boaters who access the spring boil unimpeded from nearby Lake George, the largest lake on the St. Johns River.

The important Silver Glen archeological site is nestled in a big scrub forest 6 miles north of SR 40 along SR 19, along the eastern edge of the Ocala National Forest. It rates neither a mention nor a notation on most maps and on a recent Sunday afternoon I only saw one ranger watching the free-for-all occurring within the sensitive spring boil and adjacent run area.

These raccoon cubs look like they're thinking
What the @#$! is going on

The air was filled with the smell of marijuana, campfire smoke, diesel fuel, and bar-b-ques in and around the spring. The cacophony of sounds was deafening; a raucous mixture of rap and country music blaring from boats in the spring run. Drunkards stumbled around the spring into nearby forests looking for a place to relieve themselves, people yelled and threw aquatic vegetation at one another, boat horns blasted. If there was any wildlife in the spring area it had long since fled the flood of unruly humanity that filled the area.

The National Forest's website notes that there are no flush toilets at Silver Glen due to the sensitive nature of the cultural heritage and geology of the area. Apparently that sensitive nature doesn't rate a few more rangers and some enforcement of environmental regulations within the spring run.

The spring is slightly larger than nearby Alexander Spring with a flow of 135 cubic feet per second. There were virtually no educational materials to be found around Silver Glen. It is an afterthought on the environmental manager's list of irreplaceable sites in Florida.

Silver Glen is much larger than the other nearby spring, Juniper Spring, which has a flow rate of only 8 million gallons per day making it a magnitude 5 spring (see Florida's First Magnitude Springs for more description of magnitudes). See my photos of a similarly crowded Juniper Springs at Florida's Threatened Springs.

Whatever aquatic life there was in the spring run was being trampled by the countless boaters moored at the edge of the park and trudging into the spring along the narrow, shallow, and fragile limestone ledges that lead up to the spring boil.

I suspect that this spring has not been protected because historically it was a stopping off point for boaters from Lake George and it would cause too much controversy with that group of people should the National Forest shut off their access to the spring, as they should.

The boating and ATV lobby is powerful in Florida. That is why there continue to be so many endangered manatees senselessly killed in collisions with boat traffic. Imagine if any manatees had wandered into Silver Glen on this day. . . not only would they have had to dodge dozes of boats but they would have had to avoid hundreds of humans trampling their habitat.

ALEXANDER SPRING

Alexander Springs Wilderness is a total contrast to Silver Glen Spring. The Alexander Springs Wilderness was designated by the U.S. Congress in 1984 and protects 7,941 acres around Alexander Spring. It is a tranquil and well-managed resource without the noise, crowds, and disruptive behavior found at Silver Glen.

There were a few swimmers and a dozen scuba divers in Alexander Spring when I visited. The spring has a flow rate of 102 cubic feet per second or about 70 million gallons per day, making it slightly smaller than Silver Glen and the 33rd of Florida's First Magnitude Springs.

The site is well-managed with multiple rangers and park employees and the spring area is tidy and free from the detritus of humans. It includes a complete bath and changing area and flush toilets.

Alexander Springs' waters are 72º year round and crystal clear. The surrounding subtropical vegetation provides a variety of lush botanical areas making this a recreational and environmental masterpiece.

The water from Alexander Springs makes a 180º loop first north then back southward and eventually adds to the flow of the nearby St. Johns River.

There are no boaters or boats at all in the spring area, only a floodplain forest of maples, sweet gum, cabbage palms and bald cypress like the large specimen below. There are a lot of opportunities for quiet reflection under the canopy of old growth trees on benches provided by the park service.

Florida Phlox and Checkered White Butterflies

2013-04-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

Along the spine of the Florida peninsula, in sandy fields and roadside swales,

Florida phlox (Phlox floridana) is in full bloom.

This native plant is lovely from a distance but it is really spectacular close-up.

Getting close to the phlox requires stopping one's car and getting out.

I received a lot of strange looks as I investigated these fields of phlox.

I like how there are a few pure white phlox mixed in with the dominant

purples and lavendars.

Mixed in with the phlox is a lot of India Mustard (yellow-flowering) also known as Leaf Mustard (Brassica juncea). The mustard is attracting the Checkered White Butterfly (Pontia protodice) commonly known as the Southern Cabbageworm Butterfly. In the image above I caught the flutter of one of these currently abundant butterflies.

The hosts of Checkered White larvae are herbs in the Mustard family (Brassicaceae).

The preferred host in the South is the Virginia pepperweed (Lepidium virginicum).

Below: A close up of a Checkered White drinking from some mustard blooms.

Below: There were a lot of wild beans in this swale but the Checkered White

was much more interested in the Mustard. Click on the image below for a large view.

You'll see many ripe string beans on the left side of the image.

Below: An extreme close up of a Checkered White on a mustard bloom.

These white butterflies with black spots were very abundant in all the fields of

phlox and mustard that I visited on a recent afternoon.

Below: Our newest raccoon cubs.

For more images of the new raccoon cubs visit

Phillip's Natural World 2.0

Below: The sun is again relentless. We desperately need a few months of rain.

Regardless, in the right location the never-ending sun can provide for some

interesting photography.

Springtime in Florida

2013-04-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

Adorable juvenile raccoon (Procyon lotor) smiling for the camera.

The raccoon cubs are too young to have developed a healthy fear of humans.

Late in the evening I put out larger bowls for the bigger raccoons.

These little guys made quite the mess but none of the food is ever wasted.

A raccoon cub waits on the rooftop at dusk for the evening meal.

For the most part these raccoons are very docile.

The baby opossums (Didelphis virginiana) think they are invisible. They've evolved a great strategy of freezing when threatened by predators. Unfortunately they haven't evolved fast enough to learn to get out of the way of vehicles. Their survival strategy that worked so well for eons is no longer beneficial.

One of several new black cats. They all look like Dell-roy. Perhaps they are cousins.

The water lettuce (Pistia stratiotes) grows so fast that it covers the ponds every day.

Above: This is what the ponds look like when I go out in the morning to feed the fish. This pond is 16 feet by 8 feet (2.4 x 4.8 m). That's an enormous amount of biomass produced daily as temperatures warm and growing conditions are ideal (the water is full of fish who are constantly defecating; e.g. fertilizing the water).

I very unceremoniously scoop out 10 - 20 nets full of plants every morning so I can feed the fish.

The water lettuce creates colonies overnight that spread and grow extremely rapidly.

Each plant becomes 5 - 10 plants in a 24 hour period.

Above and Below: Little colonies of fresh water lettuce.

After I scoop out the lettuce the fish emerge.

The lettuce provides a great platform for spiders, snakes, crawfish, etcetera.

I've encountered just about every kind of creeping and crawling critter one

could imagine scooping out these plants in the mornings.

HAY GARDEN CONSTRUCTION

I began constructing the hay gardens this week.

It helps to have a giant truck to haul the bales of hay.

The hay is inexpensive, about $7 per bale.

As soon as I pile up the fresh hay one of the black cats comes along and sprays on the bales. Nice.

I've started constructing the gardens. I'm using a modified version of the hay/straw garden that is so trendy. I had to modify the plan for the Florida environment which is extremely dry and where the soil is not at all suitable for growing vegetables. Our soil consists of 98% quartz sands and 2% dead plant matter. It is virtually impossible to grow vegetables in such pure quartz sands.

I break up the bales of hay and lay them about 2 inches thick, then make a hole where I want my tomatoes to go. I started the tomatoes from seed around the first of March. I've transplanted the tomatoes into 5 gallon pots full of extra rich gardening soil that I purchased at a home improvement store.

Because the soil is so poor I'm sinking the entire 5 gallon pot into the ground and leaving the tomatoes in the pots. Their roots can grow out from holes in the bottoms of the pots, but the pots will help to preserve some moisture.

In theory the hay and straw pulled close around the plants will both help to retain moisture around the plants and inhibit weed growth. We'll see as the garden progresses how this strategy works in this very difficult environment.

On the coasts and swamplands of Florida there is generally a thick layer of muck or peat. But on the sandy hills (ancient sand dunes) there is little other than dirty sandy soils consisting primarily of quartz. . . . not suitable for vegetable gardening.

Homosassa Springs

2013-04-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

The name Homosassa Springs comes from the Muskogee "homo" (pepper) and "sass" (is there) for "the place where the wild pepper grows." Today Homosassa Springs State Park is kind of a Disney-fied amusement park for wildlife viewing. Everything from the wildlife to the spring itself have been greatly modified by humans unlike some other first magnitude springs in Florida like Blue Spring in Volusia County or Ichetucknee Spring in Columbia County which have been conversely restored to virtually their natural state.

The site has been continuously occupied by humans since at least 2,500 B.P. when the Deptford culture called west Florida home. At the time of the first European contact in the sixteenth century, Timucuan-speaking peoples lived in the area. They were quickly exterminated and replaced by European explorers and settlers. After the Civil War "settlers" were encouraged to clear the land and humanize the area. . . so it is no great surprise that the spring and environs are so developed.

The manatees (Trichechus manatus) that are visible at Homosassa (like the ones above) are being rehabilitated in the spring to be released back into the wild by state employees. The main spring boil and pool appear to be gated off from the Homosassa River to prevent their early departure.

Despite being developed there are still some lovely scenes within the park. Here I intentionally obscured the "fish bowl" (left of image) a 1940s attraction that was built directly in the spring boil. The fish bowl allows tourists to walk below the water and see manatees and fish underwater.

Above: I prefer my images to be natural with the reflection of trees on the spring's water. Until recently Florida's springs were incredibly clear allowing excellent viewing of wildlife within their waters. This school of Spanish hogfish (Bodianus rufus) indicate that the spring flow is currently quite low as they generally prefer brackish water. Also known as "lady fish" these guys would likely not be seen in Homosassa if the spring were putting out its average flow of 104 cubic feet per second or 229 million gallons per day of water. This discharge includes the 3 springs that make the Homosassa Spring Bowl plus 3 other springs downstream (Southeast Fork of the Homosassa River, Hidden River Head, and Hall's River). We noted that it did not appear that there was much flow at all from Homosassa when these images were made.

Above: This view from the fish bowl is of a large school of Grey Snapper (Lutjanus griseus) that appeared to be congregating in the shadows away from any direct sunlight. Also known as the "Mangrove snapper" this fish is highly sought after by anglers for its light and flaky meat.

There were a lot of alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) sunning around Homosassa. At a glance they look like some Florida 'attraction,' but they are real. They move little, but when they do move they do so quickly and with often furious intent.

Above: There is no swimming anywhere in Homosassa Springs State Park. For good reason. There are at least 6 large alligators sunning next to this pool.

Click on this or any image to enlarge.

I enjoyed these two. . . a large alligator and a very brave yellow-bellied slider turtle (Trachemys scripta scripta) sharing some floating cabbage palm logs. The slider is very fast when he needs to be and though it looks like he was very close to the alligator's mouth, he was not. The long lens on the camera created a distorted view. The turtle was never closer than about 6 feet from the alligator's jaws.

Below: On the way back to east Florida where we live blogger stopped for some photos and repast on Lake Harris in the central highlands of Florida. Lake Harris is a large (about 14,000 acres; 56 square km) lake that is part of the Upper Ocklawaha River Basin.

Red Tide Kills Florida Manatees in Record Numbers

2013-04-11T10:23:00.001-07:00

Florida’s endangered manatees (Trichechus manatus), already reeling from an unexplained string of deaths in the state’s east coast rivers, have died in record numbers from a toxic red algae bloom that appears each year off the state’s west coast, state officials and wildlife experts say. Often called red tide, the deadly phenomenon is an algal bloom (large concentrations of aquatic microorganisms) that take on a red or brown color.

The tide has killed 241 of Florida’s roughly 5,000 manatees, according to the state Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, and the toll appears certain to rise.

On April 10, 2013 The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission Current Status report on the Red Tide organism (Karenia brevis) showed that it was being detected in smaller numbers.

The number of deaths from the tide far exceeds the previous annual record of 151. Most occurred along the lower west coast of Florida near Fort Myers, where an algae bloom that began last fall was especially severe and long-lasting.

Although the algae had begun to dissipate by mid-March manatee deaths are likely to continue for a few months because remnants the toxin cling to sea grasses. Manatees can eat 100 pounds of sea grass daily, said Pat Rose, an aquatic biologist and the executive director of the Save the Manatee Club in Maitland, Fla.

The state’s annual red tide affects a wide range of aquatic animals and can cause problems in people. The algae contain a nerve poison known as brevetoxin that is not only found underwater but that is also blown through the air when waves break open the algae’s outer casing. Outbreaks of Karenia brevis have been reported in Florida waters since at least the mid 1800s but their frequency and scope rise exponentially with population growth.

Manatees, birds, dolphins and other animals can be killed by consuming the poison, either by accidentally eating the algae or by ingesting small organisms clinging to sea grass that have soaked up the poison while filtering seawater.

Residents and tourists regularly have respiratory problems after inhaling brevetoxins while strolling on beaches near red tides. People can also become ill after eating oysters and clams that have absorbed the toxin.

Experts point to a number of causes for the severity of this year's outbreak: Phosphorus runoff from fertilized farms and lawns is a main culprit, because algae thrive on a phosphorus diet. The Caloosahatchee River, which runs through rural Florida farmland, empties into the ocean at Fort Myers. Effluent dumped from sewage treatment plants may be a cause along with dumping from cruise ships and other human activities in the nearshore and coastal zones of Florida. The population of Florida is currently estimated to exceed 20,000,000 permanent residents along with an untold number of visitors on any given day, far more humans than the environment can support.

Other contributing factors include a mild, fairly windless winter helped the algae persist far longer than ordinary blooms, which generally die off late in the year. That meant large blooms remained offshore when the manatees, driven by a search for warmer waters, began moving to the Fort Myers area.

Manatees are attracted there every year by a warm-water discharge from a power plant.

The red-tide deaths come amid what is shaping up as a disastrous year for the manatee, whose numbers have slowly been growing in recent years. So far this year, at least 463 have died from a range of causes, more deaths than had been recorded in any previous comparable period.

At least 80 more manatees have been killed this year in the Indian River in east-central Florida, where a huge phytoplankton bloom in 2011 killed most of the sea grasses. The manatees there appeared outwardly healthy, but autopsies indicated that they had severe intestinal distress and that their stomachs were generally filled with a different strand of algae that they were apparently eating in the absence of the grass they normally eat.

What is killing those animals is not yet known. It appears to be related to the algae and could — like the west coast’s red tide — be tied to a poison. More likely the lack of rainfall has caused the salinity of the giant Mosquito Lagoon to rise to levels that have killed off native seagrasses leaving nothing for the manatees to eat but invasive plants that are more salt tolerant (and thus saltier). The extreme drought affecting east central Florida continues into its fourth year.

Gold Loses its Luster

2013-04-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

Below the streets of Lower Manhattan, in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the world’s largest trove of gold — half a million bars — has lost about $75 billion of its value. In Fort Knox, Ky., at the United States Bullion Depository, the damage totals $50 billion.

Gold, pride of Croesus and store of wealth since time immemorial, has turned out to be a very bad investment of late. A mere two years after its price raced to a nominal high, gold is sinking — fast. Its price has fallen 17% since late 2011.

It is a remarkable turnabout for an investment that many have long regarded as one of the safest of all. The decline has been so swift that some Wall Street analysts are declaring the end of a golden age of gold. The stakes are high: the last time the metal went through a patch like this, in the 1980s, its price took 30 years to recover.

What went wrong? The answer, in part, lies in what went right. Analysts say gold is losing its allure after an astonishing 650 percent rally from August 1999 to August 2011. Fast-money hedge fund managers and ordinary savers alike flocked to gold, that haven of havens, when the world economy teetered on the brink in 2009. Now, the worst of the Great Recession has passed. Things are looking up for the economy and, as a result, down for gold. On top of that, concern that the loose monetary policy at Federal Reserve might set off inflation — a prospect that drove investors to gold — have so far proved to be unfounded.

And so Wall Street is growing increasingly bearish on gold, an investment that banks and others had deftly marketed to the masses only a few years ago. On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs became the latest big bank to predict further declines, forecasting that the price of gold would sink to $1,390 within a year, down 11 percent from where it traded in late March. Société Générale of France last week issued a report titled, “The End of the Gold Era,” which said the price should fall to $1,375 by the end of the year and could keep falling for years.

Granted, gold has gone through booms and busts before, including at least two from its peak in 1980, when it traded at $835, to its high in 2011. And anyone who bought gold in 1999 and held on has done far better than the average stock market investor. Even after the recent decline, gold is still up 515%.

But for a generation of investors, the golden decade created the illusion that the metal would keep rising forever. The financial industry seized on such hopes to market a growing range of gold investments, making the current downturn in gold felt more widely than previous ones. That triumph of marketing gold was apparent in an April 2011 poll by Gallup, which found that 34 percent of Americans thought that gold was the best long-term investment, more than another other investment category, including real estate and mutual funds.

It is hard to know just how much money ordinary Americans plowed into gold, given the array of investment vehicles, including government-minted coins, publicly traded commodity funds, mining company stocks and physical bullion. But $5 billion that flowed into gold-focused mutual funds in 2009 and 2010, according to Morningstar, helped the funds reach a peak value of $26.3 billion. Since hitting a peak in April 2011, those funds have lost half of their value.

“Gold is very much a psychological market,” said William O’Neill, a co-founder of the research firm Logic Advisors, which told its investors to get out of all gold positions in December after recommending the investment for years. “Unless there is some unforeseen development, I think the market is going lower.”

Gold’s abrupt reversal has also been painful for companies that were cashing in on the gold craze. In the last year, two gold-focused mutual funds were liquidated after years of new fund openings, Morningstar data shows. Perhaps the most famous company to come out of the 2011 gold rush, the retail trading company Goldline, has drastically cut back its advertising on cable television, lowering spending to $3.7 million from $17.8 million in 2010, according to Kantar Media.

Goldline agreed to pay $4.5 million last year to settle charges brought by the city attorney of Santa Monica, Calif., accusing the company of running a bait-and-switch operation. Goldline did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

But the worst news for gold is probably good news for the broader economy, which, though still struggling to grow, has recovered from its lows.

“As the economy improves, the demand for gold as a financial hedge declines more than the fundamental demand for gold jewelry increases,” said Daniel J. Arbess, a partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, who sold off his fund’s large stake in gold in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Investment professionals, who have focused many of their bets on gold exchange-traded funds, or E.T.F.’s, have been faster than retail investors to catch wind of gold’s changing fortune. The outflow at the most popular E.T.F., the SPDR Gold Shares, was the biggest of any E.T.F. in the first quarter of this year as hedge funds and traders pulled out $6.6 billion, according to the data firm IndexUniverse. Two prominent hedge fund managers who had taken big positions in gold E.T.F.’s, George Soros and Louis M. Bacon, sold in the last quarter of 2012, according to recent regulatory filings.

“Gold was destroyed as a safe haven, proved to be unsafe,” Mr. Soros said in an interview last week with The South China Morning Post of Hong Kong. “Because of the disappointment, most people are reducing their holdings of gold.”

Those who bet the bank on gold mining companies have lost more. Mining company stocks have fallen more sharply than gold itself.

paraphrased from Nathaniel Popper, April 10, 2013, The New York Times

Florida's Snake Season

2013-04-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

I had an encounter with this Coral Snake (Micrurus fulvius) this afternoon as temperatures approached 90º F (32º C). This is Florida's snake season when temperatures are ideal for snakes to be on the move searching for mates. Every snake out there has a mom and dad. . . and likely brothers and sisters. So when you see one, there are others around.

This individual was particularly large and aggressive for a Coral snake. In general they are passive and would rather flee than take on a large predator like a human, though in such a contest were the snake to penetrate a human's skin the snake would win. This snake was in the carport and took refuge in a grotto in the coquina stonework. Above I put my fingers near the snake for scale.

We do our best not to harm, harass or kill any of the wildlife we encounter. After taking these photos I left the snake to do whatever he was doing before I saw him.

Coral snakes are biological relatives of cobras and mambas, one of the 70+ species of venomous snakes found on earth. Coral snakes earn their appellation from the coral-red bands encircling the bodies of most species. These small serpents have potent venom, but they generally aren't aggressive and deaths from their bites are rare. Above I put my shoe near the snake for scale. This was an unusually large specimen. He was also aggressive. Below, the snake lunged for my shoe (the photo is a little blurry as I was backing up quickly).

How to Identify a Coral Snake

If you can remember the childhood rhyme, it is an easy way to distinguish a deadly coral snake from a harmless king snake. I can rarely remember the rhyme but below are some other ways to distinguish the coral snake.

"Red touches yellow, kills a fellow. . . "

"Red on Black, a friend of Jack."

1. Check the pattern of the bands on the snake to identify it as a Coral snake. The Coral snake is ringed with narrow yellow and wider black and red stripes. On a Coral snake, the red rings touch the yellow. On non-poisnous mimics (King snake) they do not.

Above: In close up the snake is spectacularly beautiful. It looks like a bejeweled necklace.

2. Note the length of the snake. Adult Coral snakes are usually between 20 and 30 inches long (50 to 76 cm), though they may be longer.

3. The Coral snake's head is black from the front to behind the eyes. The rest of the Coral snake's head is bright yellow.

4. Look at the eyes of the snake. The coral snake has round pupils, as opposed to the vertical, cat-like pupils of most other venomous snakes.

5. Avoid the snake's teeth. The Coral snake has small, grooved fangs that do not fold back into its mouth, but stand in place. The bite of a Coral snake is always dangerous and can be deadly.

6. Look at the snake's tail for final identification. The Coral snake's tail is black and yellow only, with no red bands.

Above: Note that the tail has no red bands.

In general Coral snakes are nocturnal predators, though they're sometimes active during overcast days. They feed on lizards, other snakes and frogs as their jaws are too small to engulf large prey. Coral snakes mate during the late spring and early summer. Females lay clutches of three to fourteen eggs, which hatch after 10 to 12 weeks.

As fearsome as these little snakes are due to their deadly venom, they aren't typically aggressive. They coil and raise their tails when threatened, seeking to protect their heads through this diversion tactic.

Coral snake's venom is a neurotoxin that disrupts the brain's ability to communicate with the body's muscles. It can eventually lead to respiratory and cardiac paralysis, and death. The coral snake has tiny, hollow fangs that aren't retractable like those of pit vipers. Its small teeth and weak jaws compel it to chew its victim's flesh rather than delivering a single bite, and while these bites aren't very painful, they inject a considerable amount of venom into the prey's bloodstream. A victim of the bite may slur his speech, experience double vision, and eventually succumb to paralysis.

Impostors

Coral snakes in the Americas have thick red bands, alternating with black bands bordered by white or yellow rings, and all of these bands completely encircle the snake. Other snake species, such as the false coral snake (Simpohis rhinostoma) mimic coral snake coloring. The imposters usually lack the white or yellow bands, and the bands don't extend to their bottom half. This coloration is called Batesian mimicry, an evolutionary adaptation in harmless snakes that makes predators think they've encountered a potentially lethal snake.

More photos of another of my Coral Snake encounters are available at this link:

CORAL SNAKE PHOTOS

MOTORWORK OF ART

The new car. The incomparable BMW 328i Luxury Sport.

Below, the driver's side interior. I like the splash of red.

The car has a hologram that appears over the hood displaying vital information like

speed, navigation, etc., that in addition to the pop up media screen in the middle of the dash.

Below, the engine. It is like nothing I've ever seen. Likely nothing one would never tinker with either. It comes with a full maintenance package so no worries.

Exquisite Eyes. . .Red-tailed Hawk

2013-04-01T23:43:00.002-07:00

My red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) sits by the pond, daily. The Florida drought has reduced her hunting area to small puddles and dry grasslands, so my ponds with their plentiful water are enticing all sorts of prey (snakes). I always recognize this hawk because she rests on one leg.

Another daily visitor is this very large Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus). He comes out for the greenery growing near the ponds. Everything else in the natural environment has been reduced to straw by the never-ending dry.

Hawk stayed around for a long while this afternoon, waiting for a wayward snake, her favorite afternoon snack. The weather was perfect for snakes with high temperatures in the upper 80ºs F (31º C).

This evening, after dark, I was startled by a family of tiny raccoons and a small bear sitting by one of the ponds. Needless to say I was too startled to snap a photo.

The ponds have become a wayside watering area for passing wildlife as the arid conditions worsen.

Click on any image for a larger view

These recent contrails were unusual and quite beguiling. The dark streak adjacent to the contrails was caused by the heat from the passing jet's engines. If one looks to the skies over the Florida peninsula there are always dozens of jets traveling mostly north-south, at any given time of day.

Above and Below: Some fun with the recent Worm Moon (March's full moon).

Below: The most recent Drought Monitor shows the severe drought in Central Florida worsening.

Sunflowers, Honeybees, and Cranes

2013-03-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

Above and Below: The sunflowers (Helianthus annus) are early this year. They don't mind the endless dry as long as they get some occasional irrigation.

Below: This family of Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) has one surviving chick (colt). Click on the image for a larger view. The chick stays between the parents, most of the time.

Below: I have hundreds of these shots of honey bees (Apis mellifera) on White Sweet Clover (Melilotus alba). I see them every evening. The mass die off of bees happening elsewhere doesn't seem to have affected our wild bees (see story below).

Below: I've been walking later and later to avoid the heat. At dusk I see many of these Eastern Cottontail Rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus). These little rabbits are primarily nocturnal, resting in shallow depressions of dense grass during the day. They eat legumes, broad-leafed weeds, and grasses.

We have a few of these guys inside the gates of the house. I throw out the ends of my carrots, beans and squash every night for them to munch on. They are also very fond of granola, raisins and cranberries. . . things they wouldn't normally find in the wilds of Florida. . . but things that are on my vegetarian diet. . .and so found in plentiful supply around here.

Mysterious Illness Decimates Bee Populations

Neonicotinoids likely to blame

A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables.

A conclusive explanation so far has escaped scientists studying the ailment, colony collapse disorder, since it first surfaced around 2005. But beekeepers and some researchers say there is growing evidence that a powerful new class of neuro-active insecticides chemically related to nicotine, known as neonicotinoids, incorporated into the plants themselves, could be to blame.

The pesticide industry disputes that. But its representatives also say they are open to further studies to clarify what, if anything, is happening.

In a show of concern, the Environmental Protection Agency recently sent its acting assistant administrator for chemical safety and two top chemical experts, to the San Joaquin Valley of California, for discussions.

In the valley, where 1.6 million hives of bees just finished pollinating an endless expanse of almond groves, commercial beekeepers who only recently were losing a third of their bees to the disorder say the past year has brought far greater losses.

The federal Agriculture Department is to issue its own assessment in May. But in an interview, the research leader at its Beltsville, Md., bee research laboratory, Jeff Pettis, said he was confident that the death rate would be “much higher than it’s ever been.”

Following a now-familiar pattern, bee deaths rose swiftly last autumn and dwindled as operators moved colonies to faraway farms for the pollination season. Beekeepers say the latest string of deaths has dealt them a heavy blow.

Annual bee losses of 5 percent to 10 percent once were the norm for beekeepers. But after colony collapse disorder surfaced around 2005, the losses approached one-third of all bees, despite beekeepers’ best efforts to ensure their health.

Nor is the impact limited to beekeepers. The Agriculture Department says a quarter of the American diet, from apples to cherries to watermelons to onions, depends on pollination by honeybees. Fewer bees means smaller harvests and higher food prices.

Almonds are a bellwether. 80% of the nation’s almonds grow here, and 80% of those are exported, a multibillion-dollar crop crucial to California agriculture. Pollinating up to 800,000 acres, with at least two hives per acre, takes as many as two-thirds of all commercial hives.

This past winter’s die-off sent growers scrambling for enough hives to guarantee a harvest.

Bee shortages pushed the cost to farmers of renting bees to $200 per hive at times, 20% above normal. That, too, may translate into higher prices for food.

Precisely why last year’s deaths were so great is unclear. Some blame drought in the Midwest, though Others cite bee mites that have become increasingly resistant to pesticides. Still others blame viruses. But the most likely culprit are increasingly toxic insecticides used with abandon creating a toxic soup of chemicals spread across the farmlands of America.

Many beekeepers suspect the biggest culprit

is the growing soup of pesticides, fungicides

and herbicides that are used to control pests.

While each substance has been certified safe, there has been less study of their combined effects. Nor, many critics say, have scientists sufficiently studied the impact of neonicotinoids, the nicotine-derived pesticide that European regulators implicate in bee deaths.

The explosive growth of neonicotinoids since 2005 has roughly tracked rising bee deaths.

Neonics, as farmers call them, are applied in smaller doses than older pesticides. They are systemic pesticides, often embedded in seeds so that the plant itself carries the chemical that kills insects that feed on it.

Older pesticides could kill bees and other beneficial insects. But while they quickly degraded — often in a matter of days — neonicotinoids persist for weeks and even months. Beekeepers worry that bees carry a summer’s worth of contaminated pollen to hives, where ensuing generations dine on a steady dose of pesticide that, eaten once or twice, might not be dangerous.

A coalition of beekeepers and environmental and consumer groups sued the E.P.A. last week, saying it exceeded its authority by conditionally approving some neonicotinoids. The agency has begun an accelerated review of their impact on bees and other wildlife.

The European Union has proposed to ban their use on crops frequented by bees. Some researchers have concluded that neonicotinoids caused extensive die-offs in Germany and France.

Neonicotinoids are hardly the beekeepers’ only concern. Herbicide use has grown as farmers have adopted crop varieties, from corn to sunflowers, that are genetically modified to survive spraying with weedkillers. Experts say some fungicides have been laced with regulators that keep insects from maturing, a problem some beekeepers have reported.

Sandhill Crane Colts

2013-03-26T23:29:00.001-07:00

A Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) colt born this week, covered in mud. The little guy runs to keep up with his mother. The lakes are virtually dry leaving mud puddles where there was once 20 feet of water (once 6 m deep).

Above: The pair tend one colt. I believe the other colt died or the egg has not yet hatched as they left the nest for some time this afternoon. These images were made with a 1,000 mm lens (40 inch) from a distance of a little over ½ mile (1 kilometer).

The unusual weather (very cold and extremely dry) are making this once prime Sandhill Crane habitat quite dangerous, as there is no where the birds can escape humans and other predators. Normally they would nest in tall swampgrass in the lake that is impenetrable to most predators and all but the hardiest of humans.

The birds are walking through a field of hat pins that was once lake bottom. Below, a White Ibis (Eudocimus alba) flies through my shot. Because of long lens distortion the ibis appears closer to the cranes than she was.

Long-lens or telephoto distortion causes distant objects to look approximately the same size, while closer objects are abnormally small, and more distant objects are abnormally large. Thus the viewer cannot discern relative distances between distant objects—distances are compressed.

These camera tricks are common with cinematography to make short actors appear tall, mountains to appear close, etcetera.

Below, the male Sandhill scares off a Great Egret (Ardea alba) and a White Ibis that were too close to his nest. This makes me think that perhaps there is another colt in the nest or another egg that has yet to hatch. Sandhill Cranes lay two eggs and normally one of the young survives.

Click on any image for a larger view

The abnormally cool weather is being caused by the Greenland Block, a high pressure phenomenon that is causing anomalous warmth over Greenland and Baffin Bay, Canada while cold Arctic air is flowing all the way south into Florida. This phenomenon is believed to be related to global warming.

Whatever its cause it continues to pump cooler than normal air into Florida and the central peninsula remains extremely dry.

Below are a couple of before and after shots of our lake. There remains less than ⅓ the normal coverage of water in the lake basin while billions of gallons of water are missing and hundreds of acres of lake bottom are now grassland. The shoreline is currently about 1 mile distant (1.6 km) from its normal level. My boat, in the foreground below, sits nearly a mile from the nearest water.

Above: Before.

Below: After.

Above: Before.

Below: After.

Read more about Florida's Dry Lakes at this link:
FLORIDA DRY LAKES

Read about Florida's dying (drying) springs at this link:
DEVELOPMENT THREATENS FLORIDA SPRINGS.

Glacier National Park. . . Without the Glaciers

2013-03-24T11:22:00.001-07:00

Agassiz Glacier (1913)
Credit: W. C. Alden (Glacier National Park Archives)
BEFORE: Agassiz Glacier, 1913, near Boulder Pass, Glacier National Park
Next Image: Agassiz Glacier (2005)

AFTER: Agassiz Glacier (2005)
Credit: Greg Pederson (USGS)

Blackfoot-Jackson Glacier Complex (1914)
Credit: E.C. Stebinger, Glacier National Park Archives
BEFORE: In 1914 Blackfoot Glacier encompassed the current Jackson Glacier
Next Image: Blackfoot-Jackson Glacier Complex (2011)

AFTER: Blackfoot-Jackson Glacier Complex (2001)
Credit: Blase Reardon, USGS

Boulder Glacier (1932)
Credit: George Grant (Glacier National Park Archives)
BEFORE: Image taken near Boulder Pass, Glacier National Park. The foreground rocks provide excellent reference to re-photograph the historic photo.
Next Image: Boulder Glacier (2005)

AFTER: Boulder Glacier (2005)
Credit: Greg Pederson USGS
73 years later there is virtually no glacier remaining.

Chaney Glacier Terminus (1911)
Credit: M.R. Campbell (USGS)
Next Image: Chaney Glacier Terminus (2005)

AFTER: Chaney Glacier Terminus (2005)
Credit: Blase Reardon (USGS)

Grant Glacier (1902)
Credit: Morton Elrod (Glacier National Park Archives)
BEFORE: Photographed from Grant Ridge, Flathead National Forest, Montana
Next Image: Grant Glacier (1998)

AFTER: Grant Glacier (1998)
Credit: Karen Holzer (USGS)

Grinnell Glacier from Mt. Gould (1938)
Credit: T. J. Hileman (Glacier National Park Archives)
BEFORE: An oblique view of Grinnell Glacier taken from the summit of Mt. Gould, Glacier National Park. The relative sensitivity of glaciers to climate change is illustrated by the disappearance of Grinnell Glacier while surrounding vegetation patterns remain stable.
Next Image: Grinnell Glacier from Mt. Gould (2005).

AFTER: Grinnell Glacier from Mt. Gould (2005)
Credit: Blase Reardon (USGS)
The lake continues to enlarge as the glacier melts. Icebergs can be seen floating in Upper Grinnell Lake.

Grinnell Glacier from Overlook (1940)
Credit: Unknown photographer (Glacier National Park Archives)
BEFORE: Grinnell Glaccier taken from the Grinnell Glacier Overlook off the Highline Trail, Glacier National Park. The 1940 view of Grinnell Glacier shows the early formation of Upper Grinnell Lake, a pro-glacier lake visible at the terminus of the glacier.
Next Image: Grinnell Glacier from Overlook (2004).

AFTER: Grinnell Glacier from Overlook (2004)
Credit: Karen Holzer (USGS)
The 2004 photo shows a dramatic increase in the size of the lake as a result of melting ice.

Sexton Glacier (1901)
Credit: F. E. Matthes (Glacier National Park Archives)
BEFORE: Photographed from bench below Siyeh Pass, Glacier National Park.
Next Image: Sexton Glacier (1998)

AFTER: Sexton Glacier (1998)
Credit: Lisa McKeon (USGS)

Shepard Glacier (1913)
Credit: W. C. Alden (Glacier National Park Archives)
BEFORE: Photographed from Pyramid Peak, Glacier National Park
Next Image: Shepard Glacier (2005)

AFTER: Shepard Glacier (2005)
Credit: Blase Reardon (USGS)

Swiftcurrent Glacier (1900)
Credit: F. E. Matthes (Glacier National Park Archives)
BEFORE: Taken from the Swiftcurrent Trail, Glacier National Park
Next Image: Swiftcurrent Glacier (1998)

AFTER: Swiftcurrent Glacier (1998)

Credit: Karen Holzer (USGS)

Greenland's Glaciers Melting Quickly

Melting from stand-alone glaciers in Greenland accounts for 10 percent of the total sea level rise worldwide from melting ice, which is more than expected, a new study finds.

These "peripheral" glaciers are isolated from the main ice sheet, flowing independently to the sea, and make up just 5 to 7 percent of Greenland's total ice coverage, researchers found. But they are rapidly losing ice, making up 20 percent of the island's total contribution to sea level rise. Because the glaciers cover a smaller area than the ice sheets, they are losing ice about 2.5 times faster than the giant ice sheet, the researchers calculated. Read the research here:

Mass loss of Greenland's glaciers and ice caps 2003-2008 revealed from ICESat lair altimetry data. Geophysical Research Letters, 13 Mar 2013.

"The ice loss with respect to area is significantly higher than of the ice sheet," lead study author Tobias Bolch of the University of Zurich in Switzerland said in a statement. "This means that the local glaciers react faster with respect to climate change. This information will help to improve the predictions of the future contribution of Greenland's ice to sea-level rise."

Bolch and his colleagues estimated the changing mass of the glaciers using lasers that measure the height of the ice from space and a recently completed inventory of Greenland's glaciers and ice caps. The study appeared in the March 13 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

About 12 cubic miles (50 Gigatons) of water poured into the ocean from the isolated glaciers each year between 2003 and 2008, the study found.

"Beside the large ice sheet, there are thousands of peripheral glaciers which are not connected to the ice sheet or can be separated from it due to the existence of ice divides," Bolch said. "The area of those glaciers is about 50 times higher than the ice cover of the European Alps. Consequently, it is important to investigate not only the ice sheet, but also these local glaciers."

Spring Blooms

2013-03-21T22:43:00.001-07:00

I walk though fields of this White Sweet Clover (Melilotus alba) every evening. As it brushes against my ankles I smell its sweet fragrance. This pea family (Fabaceae) plant was one of the first really green sprouts to appear on the landscape around the first of February.

Early Florida settlers used various Melilotus species as bed bug repellant in their mattresses while Native Americans used the plant to scent the home (for the aroma) and in incense.

The Sweet Clover springs from fields of Black Medic (pictured below). Scientifically known as Medicago lupulina the Black Medic isn't as tall as the Clover but is more widespread. Medicago species are better known by their common name; Alfalfa. They make excellent feed for livestock.

Its hard to distinguish one from another of these plants until they bloom. The alfalfa (black medic) is yellow-blooming while the clover is white.

On the drier patches of ground around the Medic and Clover one finds Innocence, pictured below (Hedyotis procumbens). Hedyotis is the starviolet genus more commonly associated with the western USA.

The USDA classifies this Madder in the Genus Houstonia L. (Bluets). So, depending on who you ask, this plant is instead referred to as Houstonia procumbens (Walter ex J.F. Gmel.) Standl.—or the Roundleaf Bluet. While I know of no ethnobotanical use for this plant, the University of Michigan School of Native American Ethnobotany notes that other Houstonia species were used to treat various ailments including sore eyes, stomach pain, menstrual troubles.

Ethanol Responsible for High Gas Prices

2013-03-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

Ethanol Surplus May Lift Gas Prices

Excess ethanol in the gasoline supply is threatening to push up prices at the pump and may have exacerbated the growing cost gap between regular gasoline and premium, some oil experts say.

Refiners have been trading ethanol credits in an effort to meet federal environmental mandates, helping to significantly push up the cost of those credits — a jump to more than $1 from a few cents in recent weeks.

Prices for premium gas are now about 30.2 cents over the price of regular, according to Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey. That is up from 24.1 cents in 2010 and 18.2 cents in 2000. Any increases could affect about a third of this year’s car models, because premium fuel is required or recommended for them, according to Edmunds.com, a popular automobile quote website.

Experts disagree on the reasons for a widening gap between the costs of regular and premium gas. Reasons for the ethanol surplus are even more broadly in dispute, between producers and the oil companies. Gas companies are required under federal law to blend a certain number of gallons of ethanol into the fuel. Refiners argue that some cannot reach that requirement because they are nearing or at the so-called blend wall, the maximum percentage of ethanol in gasoline that most gas stations can handle, 10%. They also note that is the maximum level recommended by auto manufacturers for most cars.

Refiners blame Congress, arguing that the ethanol quota was set at a time when gasoline demand was expected to rise steadily. Instead, demand has declined, and refiners, obligated to blend more ethanol than they can actually use, have resorted to buying a lot of ethanol credits, known as renewable identification numbers (or RINs), to meet the mandated levels.

On the other side of the debate are the ethanol producers, who say prices are pushed lower because their product is cheaper than gasoline. This is true on a gallon-per-gallon basis, although ethanol provides less energy per gallon.

The argument over ethanol and gas prices highlights the politics of the Renewable Fuel Standard, set by a 2007 law. The ethanol lobby accuses the oil companies of ratcheting up the demand for fuel credits as a way of applying pressure on lawmakers to reduce the alternative fuel mandates. Congress could change the rules, or the Environmental Protection Agency, which set up the electronic marketplace where ethanol credits are traded, could adjust them.

The ethanol credits, like some other kinds of environmental credits, can be banked as well as bought and sold. Some companies have a surplus. But those without them have rushed into a market that is thinly traded, driving the spike in prices, according to the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade association.

Oil refiners also warn that higher prices for the credits will encourage fraud, something the ethanol trading system has encountered in the past.

There are two ways the ethanol credit issue could drive gas prices higher. Mr. Drevna said that refiners would probably seek to recover the cost of the credits, which were a mere seven cents or so at the beginning of this year, in the prices they charge. And Eric G. Lee, an analyst at Citi Research, said that some refiners might seek to avoid the ethanol requirement by exporting their gas, which could tighten supplies in the United States.

paraphrased from MATTHEW L. WALD

HOW IS GASOLINE MADE?

The Perfect Storm

2013-03-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

The 1993 Storm of the Century

Its been twenty (20) years since the March 1993 “Storm of the Century” struck the gulf coast of Florida late on Friday March 12, 1993 and continued slamming Florida and states to the north on Saturday. Why was it called the Storm of the Century? To Florida residents, it was an unnamed March hurricane creating wind gusts over 90 mph, tornadoes, and a devastatingly deadly storm surge. But it was much larger than a hurricane. To residents farther north it was called “The Blizzard of the Century” A blizzard like few had seen that dropped temperatures, dumped snow, broke trees, and knocked out power over a wide swath from Georgia to Maine. The storm was the basis for the Sebastian Junger book The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea and the 2000 George Clooney movie of the same name.

In addition to its affects on the Florida peninsula the storm left the Florida panhandle covered in a rare blowing snow that remained on north facing surfaces for several days. Its radar and satellite presentation is reminiscent of those life-altering storms in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow.

Melbourne Weather Radar Loop
from 11 pm Friday until 1:15 am Saturday

The Superstorm produced over $2 billion in property damage across portions of 22 eastern U.S. states. Most of the property damage occurred in Florida. Advanced warnings saved lives with less than 100 direct casualties – half of whom were on vessels in seas estimated as high as 65 feet. Another 118 people perished from indirect causes with many dying during the post storm cleanup.

Map of Tornado and Wind Damage

METEOROLOGICAL BOMB

Five days in advance, computer models were forecasting a rapid development of intense low pressure over the Gulf of Mexico. It was initially difficult to believe that a weak low pressure area could deepen to much lower pressures in such short a period of time. Some forecasters used the term “meteorological bomb!" As the week went on, the numerical forecast models continued showing the same unbelievable development. It was happening though. Upstream, the arctic, polar and subtropical jet streams were merging and a deep flow of tropical moisture over the Gulf was coming north from the Caribbean Sea. These merging factors set the timer for the impending explosion.

Twenty years later as global warming accelerates meteorological bombs are becoming more common.

Storm Surge Associated with Storm of the Century

The winds howled as the storm moved north with the strongest recorded wind gusts at these locations:

• 110 mph Franklin County, FL

• 109 mph Dry Tortugas, FL

• 101 mph Flattop Mountain, NC

• 144 mph Mount Washington, NH

Forecast Radar Two Days Before the Storm
Computer power was very limited in 1993,
regardless the model did a great job forecasting
the storm and was only about 4 hours off on the timing
of its arrival in Florida.

The fast moving squall line produced 59,000 cloud to ground lightning strikes as it moved onshore. At least 11 tornadoes were reported with the storm as it crossed the state. The F2 tornado near Chiefland in Levy County led to 3 fatalities. Other tornado fatalities were reported in Alachua and Lake Counties.

The Superstorm created an unprecedented storm surge up to 12 feet in Taylor County well north of Tampa Bay in the Florida panhandle. The surge drowned 13 people.

Who Took That Photo?

2013-03-18T10:05:00.003-07:00

Original photo of mostly imagined exploding sewers in Omaha Nebraska by Stephanie Sands.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times Business Day section on February 18, 2013. It speaks to the never-ending complaints about blog photos and their authorship or ownership which is often murky, hard to prove, faked, or of unknown origin. On this blog the authors have begun putting copyright notation on a layer that is added to all photos produced by the authors . . . which has done nothing to slow the complaints.

Logging Off to Trace a Web Photo to Its Source

By DAVID CARR

When photographs of spontaneous events miraculously appear on the Web, it generally prompts two responses: wonder and skepticism.

So it was with an image of exploding manhole covers in Omaha that took over the Web last month. On Sunday, Jan. 27, an underground fire cut power in half of downtown. A vivid photograph of unknown provenance, showing fire shooting out of manholes on a city street, began popping up on Reddit, where it had 1.5 million views, and Gawker.

The photo — an indifferently composed shot of an event that looks very far away — would not win any Pulitzers, but something incredible seems to be under way at the precise moment it was taken. You can almost hear the sequential explosions emanating below the street: boom, boom, boom as flames appear to shoot up from hell itself.

In this age of Photoshop, it wasn’t long before the debates cropped up, on the Web and in Omaha, about the picture’s authenticity.

Matthew Hansen, a columnist at The Omaha World-Herald, wondered the same thing, and one night found himself in a bar engaged in the real-versus-fake debate. Like many photos on the Web, this one came from everywhere — forwarded, tweeted and blogged — and nowhere — there was no name on the image nor any text to indicate its origin.

Mr. Hansen, intrepid journalist that he is, solved the mystery and wrote a column about it. The photo was real, it turned out, but not in the way people thought. (More on that later.) So, did Mr. Hansen use deep photo analytics or examine metadata to peel back the truth?

Nope. There was a notebook involved, a lawyer, some phone calls, a cursory digital investigation and some street reporting, which included an interview with a man with no pants.

Shoe leather never looked or smelled so good.

Mr. Hansen’s first step in solving what he called the “Great Omaha Manhole Fire Photo of 2013” was to determine from the angle of the photo that it could have been taken from only one apartment building — called the Kensington Tower. He then used an architectural detail to conclude that it was shot from the top floor, on the west side.

He managed to gain entry to the building — that is, he sneaked in — and made his way to the top floor, where he began knocking on doors.

Mr. Hansen found a man named Kenneth who would not let Mr. Hansen in because he was indisposed — he became “Pantsless Kenneth” in the column — but said that he knew the photo in question and thought his neighbor had taken it.

But the neighbor wasn’t home, so Mr. Hansen stuck his business card in the door jamb and left.

When he returned to the office, Mr. Hansen jumped onto Reddit, found the person who had originally posted the photo there and through him found the person, Gwendolyn Olney, who had posted the photo on her Facebook page, the source for the Reddit posting.

Ms. Olney happened to be the associate counsel for The World-Herald. “Omaha is indeed a small town,” Mr. Hansen wrote in his column. He began to follow the pixilated bread crumbs.

“Gwen didn’t take the photo,” he added. “She got it from Rebecca, who didn’t take the photo. She got it from Brandon, who didn’t take the photo. They led me to Gwen’s friend Andrea, who didn’t take the photo, who led me to ... well, she couldn’t remember who she had gotten the photo from.”

Reading the column, you could almost hear his sigh when he wrote, “Dead end.”

Then his phone rang. “I took that photo,” the voice said.

The caller was Stephanie Sands, a graduate student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She said that the day after she took the photo, which she had no idea had become a sensation, she learned from her friends that a reporter was asking about it.

“I was impressed that he had sneaked upstairs and put a card in my door, so I called him,” she said in an interview by phone.

Ms. Sands agreed to meet Mr. Hansen and told him that she had heard the explosion and took two photos with her phone. She sent one to friends and thought nothing more of it.

“I was actually disappointed in how it turned out,” she told me. “Because I was shooting at a distance with an iPhone, it didn’t really capture the severity of what I saw and heard.”

She told Mr. Hansen that while the bright spout of light in the foreground was indeed flames shooting from under the street, the rest of the lights, neatly aligned in a row, were actually reflections of streetlamps on the rain-dappled pavement — not fiery, exploding manholes.

So the photo was real. The context assigned to it was not.

“When people suggested that I Photoshopped the photo, my first thought was, ‘Why would I do that? What for?’ ” she said. “And of course, people want photos to go viral, so they will do things to make that happen.”

Let’s stipulate that Mr. Hansen’s investigative reporting into the “Great Omaha Manhole Fire Photo of 2013” is not a scoop for the ages.

But at a time when almost everyone is beyond caring what is real or fake onscreen, knowing that, in this case, someone who is paid to get to the bottom of things did just that is somewhat comforting.

And it’s a useful reminder that even though daily newspapers are a threatened species, they continue to have value in the informational narrative. In The World-Herald, you have a newspaper backed by some fairly solid finances — someone named Warren Buffett — that is actually hiring reporters while other newspapers are laying them off. A good yarn about a photo and a guy with no pants may not change the economics of the industry, but it proves that having reporting boots on the ground still has value.

“It was an old-fashioned journey to answer a newfangled question,” Mr. Hansen said in a phone call.

“I can remember reading a profile that Calvin Trillin wrote about Edna Buchanan, the great crime writer, a long time ago, and when someone would tell her something, she would say, ‘That is interesting as heck.’ That photo fired my curiosity. It was interesting.”

Besides, he said, he got another column out of it. While talking to the man with no pants, Mr. Hansen found out that he was an accomplished restorer of rare art, which is good fodder for another piece. “I figure I owe him that because I christened him ‘Pantsless Kenneth’ in the column I already wrote,” Mr. Hansen said.

All of which serves as a reminder to reporters — and those who read their work — that if journalists take their eyes off the screen, leave their cubicle and actually go out and talk with people, they might discover something that is interesting as heck.

The End of Monarchs

2013-03-14T22:53:00.001-07:00

Monarch Migration Plunges to Lowest Level

The number of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) that completed an annual migration to their winter home in Mexico sank this year to its lowest level in at least two decades, due mostly to extreme weather and changed farming practices in North America, according to the Mexican government and a conservation alliance.

The area of forest occupied by the butterflies, once as high at 50 acres, dwindled to 2.94 acres in the annual census conducted in December, Mexico’s La Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP) disclosed at a news conference in Zitácuaro, Mexico.

That was a 59 percent decline from the 7.14 acres of butterflies measured in December 2011.

Because the insects cannot be counted, the combined size of the butterfly colonies is used as a proxy in the census, which is conducted by the commission and a partnership between the World Wildlife Fund and the Mexican cellphone company Telcel.

“We are seeing now a trend which more or less started in the last seven to eight years,” Omar Vidal, the head of the wildlife group’s Mexico operations, said in an interview.

The latest decline was hastened by drought and record-breaking heat in North America when the monarchs arrived last spring to reproduce. Warmer than usual conditions led the insects to arrive early and to nest farther north than is typical, Chip Taylor, director of the conservation group Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas, said in an interview. The early arrival disrupted the monarchs’ breeding cycle, he said, and the hot weather dried insect eggs and lowered the nectar content of the milkweed on which they feed.

That in turn weakened the butterflies and lowered the number of eggs laid.

But an equally alarming source of the decline, both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Vidal said, is the explosive increase in American farmland planted in soybean and corn genetically modified to tolerate herbicides.

The American Midwest’s corn belt is a critical feeding ground for monarchs, which once found a ready source of milkweed growing between the rows of millions of acres of soybean and corn. But the ubiquitous use of herbicide-tolerant crops has enabled farmers to wipe out the milkweed, and with it much of the butterflies’ food supply.

“That habitat is virtually gone. We’ve lost well over 120 million acres, and probably closer to 150 million acres,” Mr. Taylor said.

A rapid expansion of farmland — more than 25 million new acres in the United States since 2007 — has eaten away grasslands and conservation reserves that supplied the monarchs with milkweed, he said.

The monarchs’ migration is a natural wonder and, for Mexico, a huge tourist attraction. But naturalists regard the butterflies as a forward indicator of the health of the food chain. Fewer butterflies probably means there are fewer other insects that are food for birds, and fewer birds for larger predators.

Mr. Vidal said that American and Canadian officials should move quickly. “Mexico is doing its part,” he said. “Mexico has invested resources, and it’s eliminated this massive illegal logging in the reserve. But on the other hand, I think the United States has to do much more.”

Mr. Taylor said a further decline could cross a tipping point at which the insects will be unusually vulnerable to outside events like a Mexican cold snap or more extreme heat that could put them in peril.

“Normally, there’s a surplus of butterflies and even if they take a big hit, they recover,” he said. But if their current 2.94-acre wintering ground drops below 2.5 acres, bouncing back could be difficult.

“This is one of the world’s great migrations,” he said. “It would be a shame to lose it.”

Wisteria, Blackberry, and Blueberry Blooms

2013-03-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

The Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) is in full bloom this week. This plant specimen I brought from the old Leggett farm in Mississippi a decade ago. It has gotten quite thick.

To see photos of the Leggett Farm and Eminence Cemetery scroll to the bottom of this page.

Chinese wisteria is a member of the pea family (Fabaceae) and listed as an invasive species by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council.

There is a native American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens) but its flowers are less showy and vine less aggressive. I have trained the bulk of this vine up a Queen Palm that I grew from seed. The tree is now 40-feet tall and the vine is quite impressive this week.

Below: Beneath the tree canopy the native blueberries are in full bloom. There are two species of blueberry in Florida. I think we have mostly the Shiny Blueberry (Vaccinium mysinites). The other variety that is native to Florida, Darrow's Blueberry (Vaccinium darrowii Camp) is a little taller and found in more moist locations. Our properties are high and dry and our blueberries reflect that difficult environment with much smaller fruit than those found on the Darrow's. Blueberries are in the Heath family (Ericaceae).

Below: The blackberry vines are also in full bloom this week.

Scientifically this is Rubus betulifolius. Practically speaking, they're a pain, quite literally. They grab hold of my jeans and travel with me as if they have a mind of their own. An un-gloved hand is easily sliced by their very sharp thorns. Even the new growth is blessed with plentiful thorns.

Southerners refer to these native fruits as "briars" and often remove them. I've let them do their thing just to see what kind of fruit they will produce.

The USDA appropriately refers to this native-to-Florida species as the "Sawtooth Blackberry" or Rubus argutus. Blackberries are in the Rose family (Rosaceae).

EMINENCE CEMETERY

I visited Eminence Cemetery on a very hot and dry day over the weekend. The truck was reading 102° F. (38.8° C.) when I got there late one afternoon. It immediately crossed my mind that some trees would be nice in the cemetery . . . but I imagined that they had removed them to make mowing easier. Later I was told that was indeed why there was no shade. I don't suppose those interred there care that much. Above left: Our beloved Marion Leggett and to the right William and matriarch Myrrh Leggett.

Above: Looking away from the setting sun at the church where my parents were married in the 1950s. Both family farms are within a mile of the cemetery. The 2010 census recorded 335 people in the Eminence to Seminary area of Mississippi. . . or in other words a couple of people per square mile.

Above: My great grandfather Felix Leggett and my great grandmother Zipporah Redmond Leggett. Felix died in 1948 at the age of 82. Zipporah died in 1929 at age 61. Most of the Redmonds are buried across the road in their own small family plot. Most of the Leggetts reside at Eminence.

The best way to locate this place on a map would be to use its latitude and longitude (approximately 31.613 latitude and longitude 89.434). The nearest town is Collins, Mississippi located on Mississippi Highway 49. The elevation is more-or-less 450 feet above sea level though there are some taller hills and lower valleys.

View Larger Map

Above: Find the 588 circled to the left of the notation for Eminence. The road just to the right of that 588 notation that runs north-south (top to bottom of image) is Stuart Leggett road. Where the diagonal line of clearing traverses Stuart Leggett road (gas transmission lines) is the old Leggett farm. At the end of Stuart Leggett road (bottom of map) where it meets County Road 535 is the Lott property. Most of the farm is on the left side of 535. Some acreage remains on the right (east) side of the road as well. . . though the land hasn't been surveyed in many, many years. The farm appears as a circular expanse of trees toward the bottom left of this aerial photo. . . adjacent to a clearing that is a small dirt farm to the east.

I can always find the family farmland by a palm tree planted in the 1930s by my grandmother Gladys Gilmore Lott. She used to say it was the only palm tree in this part of Mississippi. It is certainly one of few palm trees growing on these dusty hills today.

Above: This is more-or-less what Mississippi 588 looks like . . .kind of desolate. Lots of tall pine trees. The camera doesn't do justice to the steep hills, however. I was driving rather fast while snapping photos.

Above: My great great grandfather John Leggett who was a soldier for the Confederate States of America. There are no dates on the headstone but note the "C S A" designation. John was one of Felix's brothers. I was named after Felix.

Above: Looking at the Leggett Homeplace. Its in there somewhere. I was surprised at how dark and spooky the woods could be. I traipsed around in there a bit looking for any trace of the old house but found nothing but lots of poison ivy and bugs. It was painfully hot despite the near dark of the woods. The big green leaves to the right top of image are poison ivy.

Above: Looking south down the road from the Leggett farm toward the Lott property. The hill is rather steep. Again the camera distorts the topography.

Above: Looking north through the Leggett farm—up hill. One can easily see why these are referred to as the "piney woods." In geography the Piney Woods generally refers to the temperate coniferous forest ecoregion of the Deep South dominated by several species of pine trees as well as hardwoods including hickory and oak. The World Wide Fund for Nature considers the Piney Woods to be one of the critically endangered ecoregions of the United States.

For more of my Mississippi images and musings go to PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD III.

Regressive Florida Rejects Medicaid, Again

2013-03-12T22:11:00.006-07:00

Rebuffing Florida Governor Rick Scott’s support of Medicaid expansion, a Florida Senate committee on Monday rejected the idea, all but ending the possibility that the state would add more poor people to Medicaid rolls.

Alternative Plan has been Used for Years

with Lackluster Results

But the Senate panel debating the expansion proposed a compromise: to accept the federal money but use it to put low-income people into private insurance plans. Accepting the money would please the governor and a number of Floridians, while steering people away from Medicaid.

The Republican's alternative plan mimics a program in place since the early 1990s to keep HIV+ people off the Medicaid rolls of Florida by helping them to purchase private insurance. The problem with the existing plan is that the Florida legislature failed to regulate private insurance companies or the premiums they charge.

While Florida still provides its HIV+ citizens (who qualify and while funds are available) with $750.00/month in private insurance payment support through a program called the AIDS Insurance Continuation Program (AICP), many enrollees' private insurance rates have skyrocketed in recent years to $1,500/month or more, effectively pricing them out of the private insurance market even with the $750.00/month voucher provided by Florida. The AICP program receives its funding through a combination of federal and state monies with the state dollars mostly coming from Federal grants under the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act of 1990.

Despite this ongoing experience with the private insurance market in Florida, the regressive Republican-controlled Senate committee vote to reject a Medicaid expansion under President Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act was 7 to 4, with Democrats voting for the expansion.

Florida House Vote is Even More Punitive

To Low Income Floridians

Last week, a Florida House committee voted to reject Medicaid expansion altogether, saying that the system was broken and that adding people to the rolls would cost taxpayers too much money in the long run, even though the Federal Government was going to pay most of the bill for the foreseeable future. The heartless House speaker, Will Weatherford, a Republican, said it was the wrong approach, calling it a “dangerous path.”

From the start, Florida Governor Scott knew it would be difficult for the Florida Legislature to embrace Medicaid expansion, even for only three years, which is what he proposed. The governor had staked his political career on derailing what he calls “Obamacare,” and his abrupt reversal did not endear him to conservatives in Florida or in the Legislature.

“I think it’s important for us to say no to having Washington tell us to expand our Medicaid program,” said Senator Joe Negron, the Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

But, he said, the committee still hopes to address the larger problem without explaining how the problem might be addressed other than to offer platitudes like, “We want to try to find a creative way to help people, empower people to have their own private health insurance but not put them into the Medicaid program,” he said.

Representative Paul Ryan Again Pushes to Cut Medicare

This week U.S. House Budget Committee chairman, Representative Paul Ryan, unveiled his 2014 spending plan: a retread of ideas that voters soundly rejected, made even worse, if possible, by sharper cuts to vital services and more dishonest tax provisions.

The budget, which will surely fly through the House, was quickly praised as “serious” and job-creating by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, though it is neither. By cutting $4.6 trillion from spending over the next decade, it would reverse the country’s nascent economic growth, kill millions of real and potential jobs, and deprive those suffering the most of social assistance.

All the tired ideas from 2011 and 2012 are back: eliminating Medicare’s guarantee to retirees by turning it into a voucher plan; dispensing with Medicaid and food stamps by turning them into block grants for states to cut freely; repealing most of the reforms to health care and Wall Street; shrinking beyond recognition the federal role in education, job training, transportation and scientific and medical research. The public opinion of these callous proposals was made clear in the fall election, but Mr. Ryan is too ideologically fervid to have learned that lesson.

The 2014 budget is even worse than that of the previous two years because it attempts to balance the budget in 10 years instead of the previous 20 or more. That would take nondefense discretionary spending down to nearly 2 percent of the economy, the lowest in modern history. And in its laziest section, it sets a goal of slashing the top tax rate for the rich to 25 percent from 39.6 percent, though naturally Mr. Ryan doesn’t explain how this could happen without raising taxes on middle- and lower-income people. (Sound familiar?)

There’s no need, of course, to balance the budget in 10 years or even 20; these dates are arbitrary, designed solely to impress the extreme fiscal conservatives who now compose the core of the Republican Party. That same core in the House will almost certainly reject the 2014 Democratic budget. It will take a far more evenhanded approach, cutting spending by $1 trillion while eliminating tax breaks for the wealthy and spending $100 billion on job training and infrastructure.

Plants Lure Bees with Caffeine

2013-03-08T23:15:00.002-08:00

All images on this page are of an American Wisteria Vine (Wisteria frutescens) that I trained up a large palm tree in the back yard. The wisteria has been blooming for a couple weeks.

A new study shows that the naturally caffeine-laced nectar of some plants enhances the learning process for bees, so that they are more likely to return to those flowers.

“The plant is using this as a drug to change a pollinator’s behavior for its own benefit,” said Geraldine Wright, a honeybee brain specialist at Newcastle University in England, who, with her colleagues, reported those findings in the 8 March 2013 issue of SCIENCE (Caffeine in Floral Nectar Enhances a Pollinator's Memory of Reward, Vol. 339 no. 6124 pp. 1202-1204).

The research, other scientists said, not only casts a new light on the ancient evolutionary interaction between plants and pollinators, but is an intriguing confirmation of deep similarities in brain chemistry across the animal kingdom.

Plants are known to go to great lengths to attract pollinators. They produce many kinds of chemicals that affect animal behavior: sugar in nectar, memorable fragrances, even substances in fruit that can act like laxatives in the service of quick seed dispersal.

Lars Chittka, who studies bee behavior at Queen Mary, University of London, and wrote a commentary on the research in the same issue of SCIENCE, said that in the marketplace of plants seeking pollinators, the plants “want their customers to remain faithful,” thus the sugary nectar and distinctive scents.

“The trick here,” said Dr. Chittka, who was not involved in the research, “is actually to influence the memorability of the signal using a psychoactive drug. And that’s a new trick in the book for plants.”

Robert A. Raguso, who studies the interactions of plants and pollinators at Cornell and was not part of the study, said, “It makes the reader think twice about where natural products that have economic importance to humans actually came from before we ‘discovered’ and co-opted their biology."

Dr. Wright did not set out to investigate the evolutionary stratagems of plants. Rather, her goal was to use the honeybee as a model to study drugs that are commonly abused.

About eight or nine years ago, she said, “I ran across this paper on caffeine in floral nectar.” And then, she said, she thought, “ ‘This could be quite interesting because there might be some ecological interaction between the plants and the pollinator.’ That’s how it started.”

Several varieties of coffee and citrus plants have toxic concentrations of caffeine in leaves and other tissues, but low concentrations, similar to that in weak coffee, in the nectar itself. The toxic concentrations help plants fend off predators.

But Dr. Raguso pointed out a well-known axiom that “The dose makes the poison,” a principle that Dr. Wright and her colleagues followed in lab experiments. She conducted learning experiments with bees to see if they associated a reward with an odor, the reward being either sugar water or a combination of sugar water and caffeine in the same concentrations found in the nectar of coffee and citrus plants.

The effect of caffeine was not obvious at first, but as Dr. Wright refined her experiments, it became clearer that the chemical had a profound effect on memory. “If you put a low dose of caffeine in the reward when you teach them this task, and the amount is similar to what we drink when we have weak coffee, they just don’t forget that the odor is associated with the reward,” she said.

A Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly (Phoebis sennae) is also attracted to the wisteria, likely in part due to the fact that Cloudless Sulphurs respond to the color purple and also in part because there are very few purple wildflowers currently blooming due to the severe drought in East Central Florida.

After 24 hours, three times as many bees remembered the connection between odor and reward if the reward contained caffeine. After 72 hours, twice as many remembered. They then tested the effect of caffeine on neurons in the bee brain and found that its action could lead to more sensitivity in neurons called Kenyon cells, which are involved in learning and memory. Dr. Wright said that this was one plausible route for enhancing memory, but was not definitive.

Insect and human brains are vastly different, and although caffeine has many effects in people, like increasing alertness, whether it improves memory is unclear. But the excitation of the Kenyon cells was similar to the action of caffeine on cells in the hippocampus in a recent experiment on rats, Dr. Wright said.

Such similarities in neurochemistry that allow caffeine to affect mammalian and insect brains in similar ways may seem surprising, but insects like fruit flies and the nervous systems of even more primitive organisms like nematodes have been used to study learning at the level of individual cells and the chemistry that changes their activities.

Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University, who studies the brain and behavior of a microscopic roundworm (Caenorhabditis elegans), said that the bee findings added more support to the idea that some very ancient behaviors like learning must have very deep evolutionary roots. Finding the common neurochemistry in such diverse creatures, she said, is like “learning the vocabulary of the brain.”

A version of this article appeared in the New York Times, March 7 2013, by James Gorman titled "Nectar That Gives Bees a Buzz Lures Them Back for More."

Hoping to Save Bees, Europe Fails to Agree on Pesticide Ban

European officials efforts to sharply restrict the use of pesticides that have been implicated in the decline of global bee populations failed. The European Commission could force a ban through on three widely used pesticides linked to the decline of honeybees by summer unless member states agree on a compromise.

In a duh moment that has eluded American officials, the vote in Brussels, by officials from all 27 European Union member states, followed a January report from the European Food Safety Authority recommending that none of the chemicals of a class known as neonicotinoids should be used on crops that are attractive to honeybees, because of the risk the insects could be poisoned.

The ruling called for a two-year prohibition of neonicotinoid use on the flowering crops that lure bees, as well as the seeds of such crops.

Companies that produce neonicotinoid-based pesticides, including the German giant Bayer CropScience and Syngenta, the big Swiss biochemical company, lobbied strenuously against the moratorium. Monsanto incorporates the chemical into some of the seeds it produces; in the United States, neonicotinoids are heavily used on the country’s huge corn crop.

E.U. nations already have the authority to restrict neonicotinoids. Initial approval for chemicals is granted by Brussels, but responsibility for approving the commercial products that contain them rests with member states. As a result various nations, including France and Italy, already restrict their use. Germany moved to restrict the use of some products after one such pesticide was blamed for millions of bee deaths in the Rhine Valley.

According to U.N. studies, bee populations — including honeybees, bumblebees and solitary wild bees — are dying in Europe, North America and around the world, with a significant upturn in mortality over the last decade. The exact reasons for the decline are unknown, but the implications are disturbing because the insects are essential for feeding the planet. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says that bees pollinate 71 of the 100 crops that provide 90 percent of the world’s food.

In the United States, studies by the Agriculture Department’s Bee Research Laboratory show colonies declining by as much as 30 percent annually over the last five or six years. As a result, about two-thirds of all the remaining honeybees in the country are needed in California each spring just to pollinate the state’s almond crop.

Bayer CropScience and Syngenta emphasize the lack of scientific certainty that the use of their chemicals is responsible for bee deaths.

Whatever might be killing off the bees, there is no doubt about the lethality for insects of neonicotinoids, which are also used in forestry and tree nurseries — even in flea collars for pets. Once plants or seeds are treated with the chemical, it permeates their tissues; it then attacks the nervous system of any bug feeding on a leaf or root, or a bee that collects nectar or pollen.

Even if a bee does not receive enough of the poison to kill it, there is a fear that “sublethal” doses it carries back to the hive may be weakening already-stressed colonies. Two studies reported last year in the journal Science suggested that low levels of neonicotinoids from a common pesticide can have significant effects on bee colonies.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency backed the chemical industry last year in rejecting a petition from honeybee keepers who argued that one neonicotinoid should be withdrawn from the market on the grounds that the studies on which approval was based were inadequate. But it said additional research was needed.