I’ve received several questions from India, asking how
peacocks reproduce. Apparently there is some widely believed myth in India that
peahens get “pregnant’ by drinking the tears of the peacock. We need to
dispense with that myth as well as the term pregnant;
when birds have an egg developing in their body, they are …

THE ACORN WOODPECKER

The Acorn Woodpecker is the most common woodpecker in Chico.
It is found in the western parts of California and Oregon and parts of the
southwestern U.S. and Mexico. All year where there are an abundance of oak
trees, you will often see these woodpeckers displaying with their outstretched
wings and calling …

Seems like every time there is an unusual event, conspiracy
theorists and their ilk come up with farfetched explanations. Science generally
operates on the principle that the simplest explanation is generally the right
one. There is no need to invoke ideas like changes in the earth’s magnetic
field, toxic gases, black holes, radio waves, …

This time of year, actually any time of year, is a good time
of year to watch birds, but winter in the valley brings us a lot of waterfowl.
For newcomers to birdwatching, this is an excellent opportunity to learn bird
identification as waterfowl are pretty easy to identify, even at a distance …

Ecological indicators are
useful tools for measuring changes over time, and provide valuable insights
into how and why the environment is changing. We can measure the changing
status of biodiversity – fewer species, more species, and/or different species;
the reasons for these changes (habitat destruction or degradation, pollution,
climate change, introduced species, etc.),
and the response …