Monday, January 9, 2012

Frosty Mornings

First light on a frosty morning.
Diane and the dogs crossing the big field.

My oldest dog Korry stops back to check on why I'm kneeling.
Most people in the mid-Atlantic region will tell you that witnessing the change of season is important to them.  Of course, that's an underlying theme of this blog.  Based on my current understanding of others' interpretations of climate change data, we may have an increasingly warmer climate, but that will likely be experienced through irregular weather patterns, more snow rather than less, and increases in both flooding and drought.

As an educator, I also align more with those who are putting their energy into climate adaptation, rather than what may or may not be possible in reversing climate trends, which may be entirely due to anthropogenic causes.      I don't look forward to droughts or floods, but I certainly look forward to more snow.  I'm surprised we're still seeing temperature swings in January of 30 oF or more.

But for now it seems will have to settle for frosty and foggy mornings rather than snow.  

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Eagles in the City

I was commenting that it has been more than three weeks since we've seen a Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) along the South Branch.  Then today I received an email from my neighbor Greg in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, VA (most densely populated county in the U.S.) that there was an eagle in his tree, and our neighbor Joan got these two great photos.







Best of all, there is good reason to believe the eagle may have been surveying Greg's flock of plastic flamingos, although I wish it would pick off some of the neighbor's free-roaming cats.   What might this mean for the Arlington Egg / Backyard Hen Initiative?  I learned there was another eagle spotted above the Arlington Career Center last month.