Over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about chickens, and their quirky antics.

Here's an excerpt:

"Four chickens huddled together, braced themselves, then marched out as a pack, tails up, heads poking forward with each step of their orange legs. A stray hen scurried out from another corner of the yard, peeking warily over her shoulder, and the four biddies reacted as one: squawking, clucking, shushing and finally herding and prodding the stray hen back into the group.

It could have been our own backyard.

Instead it was on stage, at a rehearsal of my daughter’s ballet company’s production of 'Carnival of the Animals.'

'That chicken dance is spot on,' I told my daughter who, for the record, is a swan.

Observers — and impersonators — of animals look for the telltale movements or postures that differentiate a chicken from, say, a duck. Or a swan."

Click here to read the whole thing.

In her column Greenpoint over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about the use of corn for ethanol, rising food prices and the benefits of growing your own food.

Here's an excerpt:

"It’s almost time to plant the corn — and I’m talking about corn in our own gardens, grown for food, not fuel.

But the use of corn for ethanol has changed our food supply, and is changing how people eat and how much. And it’s affecting food prices.

It stands to reason. If fertile agricultural land is being used to grow corn for ethanol, it’s taking land out of food production. Subsidies for ethanol keep corn prices high, which also makes animal feed expensive, which makes meat expensive.

Of course, there are a lot of things affecting food prices. The World Bank reported late last month that rising fuel costs, bad weather in Europe and the United States, and increasing demand in Asia combined to push food prices up 8 percent worldwide between December and March. Because our food supply is no longer local, problems far from home — tsunamis in Japan, droughts in Australia — affect both prices and supply in our local stores.

The globalization of our food supply is not all bad, of course. It keeps us in oranges and coffee, and gives us cheap rice and cinnamon."

Click here to read the whole thing.

In her column Greenpoint over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about the fondness birds have for trees, and how planting trees is a good way to attract birds.

Here's an excerpt:

"In the Faroe islands, there are no native trees. A series of volcano tops sticking out of the North Atlantic about halfway between Scotland and Iceland, the Faroes are naturally home to grasses and some shrubby plants — good sheep country.

But over the past century, people have been planting trees there, in areas sheltered enough from the winds that they can take root and grow, albeit slowly. These trees offer shelter to the sheep, but also something else: a comfortable hangout for migrating birds.

Like other islands in the North Atlantic — the Shetlands, the Hebrides, Iceland — the Faroes are a natural landing zone for all kinds of migrating birds. Faroese birder and blogger Silas Olofson says those migrations can make the islands loaded with birds sometimes, and almost empty at others. The tree plantations (the U.N. estimates them at about a total of 200 acres) offer an added incentive for touring birds to land on the Faroes, and to hang out for a while."

Click here to read the whole thing.

My favorite story of the day brings together bears and the media.

Over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about Earth Day, spending time outside and how daunting changing the world can be.

Click here to read it.

I like bats. I don't want them flying around my home or anything, but I appreciate the fact that they exist, because they're interesting - how could a flying mammal that uses echolocation to interpret its surroundings not be interesting? - and because they eat mosquitoes.

My fondness for bats explains why I was so saddened when bats began dying due to a mysterious illness known as white nose syndrome. White nose syndrome was discovered in caves outside Albany, and eventually spread to 19 states and Canada. Nobody knew what caused it, but it was decimating the bat population.

A few years ago, I traveled to the Adirondacks with scientists who were capturing and releasing bats, recording information about them and looking for signs of white nose syndrome. I was there as a reporter, but I did end up helping out a bit, which might explain why I feel so concerned about bats, and don't want them to keep dying - once you've assisted scientists in taking a bat census, you feel invested in the future of the species.

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Over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about her love of gardening.

Here's an excerpt:

"From spring through fall, my family is thinking garden. I’ve been planting a few more seeds every morning in whatever used containers I’ve saved — plastic clamshells from strawberries, foam containers from mushrooms. All the paper coffee cups mined from my husband’s car floor are cleaned and ready for when it’s time to transplant tomatoes and peppers into individual pots.

In the morning I look at a window full of 1-inch sprouts, but what I see is full grown plants out in the garden, heavy with ripening vegetables.

I see gardens wherever I go, and where there aren’t gardens, I imagine them.

When we pick up the neighbor kid for school in the morning, I look at his sloping, south-facing lawn and see terraced gardens. The grass is spotty there anyway, and interspersed with moss, so I imagine sweetening the soil with wood ash and dumping piles of well-composted manure, maybe building up terraces with stone edges. I see it overflowing with vines of eggplants and squashes, poles of beans and tomatoes, edged in the back by towering sunflowers.

Then my daughter brings me back to earth.

'I don’t think they want a garden,' she says."

Click here to read the whole thing.

In her column at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about how the birds in the city are singing louder, to be heard above the noise of traffic.

Here's an excerpt:

"When visitors from more populated areas sleep over at our house they are always surprised at how loud the birds can be. The mornings start with a call or two, then erupt into whistles and shouts as the avian opera fills the air. Nights are loud too, with woodcocks and owls trying to drown out the frogs and coyotes.

It reminds me of the city mouse-country mouse story, where the city mouse came to the country for peace and quiet but couldn’t tolerate the noise of birds and animals.

That city mouse would be surprised to know that birds in the city are louder than birds in the country.

A study published in this month’s Animal Behaviour journal found that city birds have altered their songs to be heard above the noise of traffic. Two biology professors — David Luther of George Mason University in Virginia and Elizabeth Derryberry of Tulane University in New Orleans — studied sparrows in San Francisco, comparing their calls from the late 1960s with today’s sounds, and tracking increases in traffic."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley ponders how to reduce her use of plastic bags in her weekly column Greenpoint.

Here's an excerpt:

"Trying to reduce the amount of plastic we use is a constant theme at my house, but every time I think I’m making progress, I’m reminded of how far I have to go.

Last week I filled my shopping cart with fresh fruits and produce at a discount grocery store, filling two big reusable shopping bags. That probably saved six or seven plastic shopping bags.

But so what? Just about everything in my bag was wrapped in its own little plastic bag — red peppers and lettuce, avocados and onions, oranges and apples. The seltzer comes in plastic bottles, strawberries come in plastic boxes, each block of cheese is separately wrapped in its own plastic covering.

It’s bad enough that this is the time of year that makes me feel most dependent on petroleum — from the fertilizers that grow all this discount produce to the fuel that ships it to me from Florida and California, or Chile. Add to that the plastic bags made of petroleum, the gas I used to drive to the store, the fact that we’ve had another cold snap and the oil heat’s running again at my house . . ."

Click here to read more.

Over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about the ugliness of early spring, and how it gives way to growth.

Here's an excerpt:

"'Are you going a different way?' my daughter asked as I drove the usual back roads to her friend’s house about two weeks ago.

'No,' I said. 'It’s just a very ugly time of year. Everything looks like mud.'

She looked more closely, and began to recognize landmarks. 'You’re right,' she said. 'It’s hideous.'

People wax poetic about the beauty of spring but the start of the season, pre-spring you might call it, is nothing but ugly. The snow and ice — yes, we still have some up north where I live — have turned brown. The exposed earth is the same color. Driveways are deep trenches of mud and the yards smell like dog turds.

Even the houses look like they’ve been coated in grime, dingy and dull, surrounded by mud in a barren landscape of sticks.

But it doesn’t last long. Soon the dun-colored world starts greening up and the fresh smells of spring cover up the musty old smells that emerged from under the ice."

Click here to read the whole thing.

In her weekly environmental column over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about how almost everything we use is bad for us.

Here's an excerpt:

"As I suspected, everything is bad for you. Washing, eating, cleaning, the sun, sunscreen — everything.

Makes you want to just curl up and go back to bed. Except that your bed is probably bad for you too.

The more we read labels to avoid ingredients that are known to be bad for us, the longer that list grows. Now a new study says we have to watch out for all those things that aren’t even listed on labels.

The Silent Spring Institute, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that researches links between chemical exposure and health problems, just released a report about hormone-disrupting chemicals in consumer products.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives, looked at more than 200 common consumer products, from cat litter and diapers to a wide variety of cleaning products. Researchers found 55 chemicals that are known hormone disrupters (linked to breast cancer among other diseases and conditions) or asthma triggers in the products they tested."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Want to learn how to compost?

My colleague Margaret Hartley explains how in her weekly column Greenpoint over at the DG.

Here's an excerpt:

"Before you plant anything, it’s a good idea to think about your soil. The best thing you can do for your soil is to add organic matter, and the best way to do that is to compost.

If you’re a composter, you know what I mean. Kitchen scraps and yard waste, animal manure if you have animals — all get mixed together with a little rain, sun, heat and time. When it’s all finished, you end up with rich, black earth, full of earthworms and ready to produce beautiful plants, flowers and vegetables."

Click here to read more.

Tonight feels really cold to me, and we had our first big snowfall of the year last week but, according to my colleague Margaret Hartley, it is time to think about planting the garden.

Click here to read what she has to say in her weekly column Greenpoint.

Over at the DG, I offer some thoughts on our long-awaited snowstorm.

Click here to read them.

Over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about whether we really need driverless cars, a topic I've written about myself.

Here's an excerpt:

"There’s been a lot of talk lately about the development of autonomous cars, cars that could be programmed to essentially drive themselves to wherever it is that we’re going.

These cars use multiple sensors, radars and video cameras to note the distance from other vehicles, local traffic and road patterns, stop signs and traffic lights. They are programmed with maps and speed limits, and use artificial intelligence to detect and react to unusual situations.

Robotic cars could drive closer together, getting more vehicles onto existing roads. By all accounts, such cars would be safer because robots don’t react emotionally, or get drunk or distracted, or fall asleep at the wheel.

Remote cars could free drivers to read, nap or, more likely, to engage in the electronic stuff that people endlessly engage in. Former drivers could eat breakfast, or use their laptops, or talk and text on their phones — without being distracted by the task of driving.

I would love not to be distracted by the task of driving. I spend way too much time in my car — my commute is almost 40 miles and it gets even longer when I have to drive a passel of high school kids to the community college, something I do almost every weekday morning."

Click here to read the whole thing.