Those of you who live in windy areas may have seen some of these meterology towers. They are used by wind energy companies to prospect for areas suitable for wind farms and once a location is planned for a project, it aids in deciding turbine layout. As you can see in this enlargement (click to …
Author: Reid Farmer
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Scientists have sequenced the genome of the Black Death and say they want to recreate the original bacterium. Is this a great idea? Colorado girls get busted for making s’mores. It’s tough out there. Enjoy this interesting interview with Charles Mann about his new book 1493. I’m in the middle of it now. Some gardeners …
Aspens
It is that season here in Colorado, so I’ll put up a couple of pictures we took at Kenosha Pass a couple of weeks ago. We were a little early and all of the trees hadn’t turned yet. I’m sure they are mostly bare now after the last couple of storms. And an echo of …
Books are Fun
Now that Steve and Libby have joined us in the ranks of grandparents, I believe we should declare open season on grandkid pictures – especially ones that reflect themes in this blog. At 20 months of age, Isabella has decided that looking at books is great fun. I wonder how she inherited that? Apparently Bella …
Cyanocitta cristata
Somehow it always seems to surprise me when I see these Blue Jays of my youth out here at the western end of their range. I hadn’t seen this many at once before at our feeders. There was a fourth who wouldn’t cooperate with the photo process. They ended up getting bullied off the food …
Hanging with the Big Bucks
I took this picture from my deck during the snowstorm last Saturday morning.
Denver & Rio Grande
We recently finished fieldwork for a wind farm project in south-central Colorado, Huerfano County to be exact. We found quite a few prehistoric sites, that I’ll talk about in another post, but perhaps the most significant historic thing we found was an abandoned grade of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. The D&RG was founded …
New Kid
I’ve been doing fieldwork for a proposed wind farm in northeastern Colorado (Weld County) since mid-April and now that we are wrapping up, will get back into the swing of blogging. Week before last, my crew and I were driving into the project area when I spotted this mother and child not 50 yards off …
Programming Note
I was late getting pictures loaded for Steve on a post he has dated April 23 on items he has for sale – so it just appeared today. Please look three posts down past Cat’s beautiful pictures to see it.
New Data on Turkey Domestication
Yesterday’s LA Times had a most interesting piece on turkey domestication based on new DNA data. Apparently turkeys were domesticated independently twice, once in Mesoamerica and once in what is now the American Southwest. One of the archaeologists not involved with the study who is quoted in the article points out that the turkeys domesticated …