Saturday, January 18, 2020

Two Sunny HIkes and House Finches

Friday and today were just glorious days.  I love the sky in winter, it has that deep blue color to it.  By April it will be washed out and drab.

Friday we did our new stair master trail and thoroughly exceeded our aerobic thresholds.  It was good.  It's as difficult as the trail up to Golden Gate, but the surface is better and easier on the feet.


This was taken from the John Krein trail.  That peak over on the right is on our list for this year.  Standing up there is very lovely.


Today was a day for contrails.   They're  faint, but you can see four contrails next to each other.  They were too high to identify the planes, but Jim suspects they're large and military.  Fighters don't contrail that much, so multiple engines are likely.  Commercial planes don't fly in a formation like that.


We hiked up the trail that goes towards Ringtail Ridge.  It's another stair master trail.



Here is an interesting article about birds.  It's about urban bird feeders and how they affect birds' development.  I've cut and pasted a paragraph from the article.
So when one of Badyaev’s undergraduate students, Clayton Addison, noticed that the male finches on campus in central Tucson were not singing a rapid trill that’s essential for attracting females in the nearby desert, the lab was able to dig into the data for answers. Comparing the beak sizes, bite forces, and diets of the two populations, the researchers showed that the urban finches rely so heavily on feeders that their beaks have adapted: they’ve become longer and deeper to accommodate the sunflower seeds typically on offer, which are much larger and harder than the small cactus and grass seeds that rural finches eat. This adaptation has altered not only how urban males sing, but also what urban females prefer in a mate. It’s a pattern that Badyaev has since found in other places where finches live in the shadow of humans, the same large beaks arising from a surprisingly diverse array of developmental pathways. Such varied routes to an identical end—a beak strong enough to crack sunflower seeds—may be one way that nature hides variability from the swinging axe of natural selection.
We had house finches at the RV park where we used to stay in Tucson.  I've heard them sing this song, it's kind of sad that the urban birds won't sing it anymore.

10 comments:

  1. I was wishing I could see one of your arrows pointing out the contrails I couldn't see. Scroll to the next picture, and there they were. A great sight; glad you did not miss it.
    Also glad that you are recovered enough to hike again, and Jim is, too.

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  2. That's weird about the birds. Just when people think they are doing a good thing. I never feed them ... draws mice and therefore SNAKES!! No thank you!!

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  3. That blue sky is beautiful and the hiking looks wonderful. I've never seen a cactus like that in real life...yet.

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  4. I listened to the house finch song, it reminded me of the wrens we have around here. It's a lovely song.

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  5. I'm going to keep my eyes and ears open for the house finches around here. That was an interesting observation. Your photos are great. The sky is gorgeous.

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  6. odd that the sunflower seeds that bird feeders have are causing beak changes when the finches here feed on the seed of the field sunflowers. I suppose the field sunflower seeds are smaller than the small (smaller than the big striped ones) black sunflowers seeds that are in bird seed.

    and that sky is glorious. winter does have its perks.

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  7. As a bird watcher, I found the info about House Finches fascinating! My mother has nesting House Finches yearly in her portico, but I'm not sure I've ever heard their song. Gorgeous blue skies there!

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  8. Do you miss your RV life or are you happy to be settled in one place? So much beautiful nature around you.

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  9. Beautiful pictures. I love saguaros, sentinels of the desert. AZ has some beautiful skies this time of the year but it gets hot quickly.

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  10. Wow, it's amazing that birds can adapt that rapidly. (I'm assuming this is a fairly recent development -- within the last 50-75 years or so. I guess that IS a lot of generations of finches, though.) I love your photos of that Arizona landscape with all the saguaros -- so different from anywhere I've ever lived.

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