food

the American robin is a migratory thrush, unlike the European robin, which is a flycatcher. Unlike the Flicker, this common bird seems to like to pose for pictures. Right now these birds are gorging on russian olive fruits in preparation for their migration north. Take your pictures, they will be gone in a month or so.

Nature and Biology work in a duality. Everything in the natural world seems to have more than one function. Take an ninvasive species, like this russian olive. Where it grows unchecked, cottonwoods disappear. But if you remove established groves, birds and beavers disappear. Humans are good at removing vegetation, we are less good at agreeing on other ways to manage areas.

Not all trees have seeds at the same time. With the four wing saltbrush, only the female bushes have the four winged seed pod clusters. Some trees keep their dead leaves, other trees in the same species are bare. Plants rely on hormones to respond to their environment. These galls are a growth formed when a virus manipulates the plant hormones to produce tissue. Some wasps in the spring will do the same thing.

This plant, the rabbitbrush (A safe name, everything in the western US that blooms yellow is called the same thing) has legacy blooms from the last summer still clinging on

this dock (unknown species) is on of the earliest sprouting plants I know of. Plants that never actually die off in the winter can get an early start in the spring and be done with their reproductive cycle by the time the summer heat makes life tough again.

the cottonwoods are budding. They reproduce also from cuttings that land in wet clay. Buds growing rapidly now are likely to be killed off by the storm coming through this Tuesday, but the branches that break off from the accompanying high winds should grow in the wet soils that follow. Nature always has more than one plan in action at a time...