Author: Steve

At the grocery, the store always provided paper bags.  Then they started offering paper or plastic.  Save a tree; use plastic.  Then we started thinking about petrochemicals (plastic) and keeping them out of the environment, so we started recycling.  Now we hear that a lot of plastic doesn’t get recycled and ends up in landfills, waterways, and the oceans as a major pollutant.  Paper is a renewable resource.  Cut down a bunch of trees, produce paper, then plant new trees to replace the ones you just cut down.  Then we figured out global warming.  It’s all about the carbon sequestered in oil and trees.  If we use oil, the carbon is released and contributes to greenhouse gasses.  If we cut down trees and use them, the carbon in them is also released back into the atmosphere.  Not only that, but trees take in carbon while they’re alive, so every time we cut one down, we remove another carbon-processing plant from the environment.  In an effort to combat global warming we need to stop cutting down trees and plant about a trillion new ones.

Paper or plastic, we’re screwed either way!  Carry cloth bags.

Wait until evening.  Find the right hole in the power pole to watch.

Wait until it’s almost too dark to see.  When the black hole turns gray, snap a shot.

That means there is a little owl face in that previously empty space.

Elf owls are tiny little things; the smallest owl in North America; about the size of a sparrow; weighing little more than an ounce.  Here is what they look like in good light.

(Not my photo.)

They don’t go very far north in the U.S.

Last year we never saw a blackpoll warbler.

Not so this year.