Comments

  1. birgerjohansson says

    This morning as I was walking to work it started raining… on the ice. I tripped carefully like a penguin but still ended up on my ass. The municipal bus service had to shut down.
    .
    But on the way home much of the ice was gone and there were bare patches of ground. Great for the birds looking for food.
    Speaking of rodents, some here in boreal Scandinavia carry a virus. The dust on sites where they have spent much time during the winter can spread it. Not deadly but very unpleasant.
    .
    BTW we need a better class of hibernating top predators. The bears around here are wimps who hardly ever attack humans.

  3. dennyk says

    My “lawn” here in the PNW is half an acre of wet meadow grass a foot deep that, when it finally dries enough, is gonna take an arthritic old man with a weed whacker weeks to clear.

  4. jenorafeuer says

    One of my favourite “oh wow, there is actually a word for that” words: subnivium. (The little habitat formed by the trails under the snowpack that rodents will dart around in.) I’ve seen mice dart into holes in the snow before; then again, I live in Toronto, which will have that sort of snowpack for weeks on end during the winter.

  6. birgerjohansson says

    Ah yes, the subnival zone. The snow insulates against the worst cold and the undermost layer of dead grass and snow is much easier to dig through than the frozen ground. After a while there is a whole network of tunnels.
    Foxes are experts of listening to what is going on under the snow, and home in on the exact spot of their prey.

  7. birgerjohansson says

    Ah yes, the subnival zone. The snow insulates against the worst cold and the undermost layer of dead grass and snow is much easier to dig through than the frozen ground. After a while there is a whole network of tunnels.
    Foxes are experts of listening to what is going on under the snow, and home in on the exact spot of their prey.

  9. says

    Pardon the off-topic post, but has anyone heard from Kaveh Mousavi of “On the Margin of Error” fame lately? I hope they’re okay. Patheos still has some posts of his up from 2018, but his blog is nonexistent.

  10. John Morales says

    [OT]

    Raging Bee, Patheos was and is pathetic, and ‘Kaveh Mousavi’ was always a pseudonym.
    Like ‘John Smith’ in English.

    And there is an off-topic open thread for these things.

    (Why don’t you ask Patheos?)

  11. brightmoon says

    Don’t insult arthropods by comparing them to Felon47 . That the politest name I refer to him as . Arthropods are at least useful

  14. StevoR says

    FWIW today in Adelaide , South Oz, we had a maximum of 33 degrees celsius (91 Fahrenheit) late in the arvo..

    Our bushland still dry and yellow and so badly needing some rain. The level of our creeks and lakes and dams horribly low.

  15. birgerjohansson says

    StevoR @ 14
    So, in other words your conservatives (I know they aren’t called that in Australia) will continue to deny climate change is real.

  17. unclefrogy says

    No vole tunnels being exposed around here in so.Cal. I am afraid. We appear to be fluctuating between spring and mid summer almost on a daily basis supposed to hit 90’s again in a day or two.. My wisteria is already trying to bloom weeks a head of average . who knows what the rest of the year will be like could be warm and humid or really hot and very dry. The only thing that is a positive is due to fuel economy and air pollution regulation there has been a significant improvement in the air quality. I’ll take any positive development over the dreary daily news events.

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