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Come back to this page each day to read another entry from Frederick R. Gehlbach's almanac of suburban natural and unnatural history, "Messages from the Wild," which chronicles the world of a forested ravine in central Texas.
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Because of suburbia's heat and the forest's protective canopy, first freezes average a week later at my house than at the official reporting station in a rural setting. We've already had 260 growing days because of clear La Niņa weather compared to 249 freeze-free days on average each year, so I'd left potted plants on the patio. Big mistake! Last night it froze. I hadn't paid attention to wild forecasters, who knew what the human reporters didn't. Local birds fed like crazy before nightfall yesterday, and flocks of winterers arrived. Their remote sensing equipment is millennia old, while humanity's dates back only a few decades. |
Frederick R. Gehlbach is Professor Emeritus of Biology and Environmental Studies at Baylor University. His ecological studies have taken him from New Zealand to Slovakia and, in the Americas, from Alaska and Newfoundland to Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. His research interests include the life-history strategies of small owls, small burrowing snakes and urban wildlife ecology.
From MESSAGES FROM THE WILD: AN ALMANAC OF SUBURBAN NATURAL AND UNNATURAL HISTORY by Frederick R. Gehlbach, Copyright © 2002. Courtesy of the University of Texas Press.
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