Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM
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Leak, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 27, 2010
The birds here at the Bosque National Wildlife Refuge live in a closely monitored and managed environment. The staff is constantly moving water around and a day or so ago they started a big pump to send water down through this meadow and into the shallow ponds where so many water birds roost and get their pictures taken. A bit is leaking out of the meadow through this old valve into the acequia (canal) in the foreground. I'm not sure where the acequia goes but I'm guessing it ends up in those same ponds. Now I'm curious - I'll have to check it out next time I walk down to the ponds.
Night camp
Site 16 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM
- This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park on my Night Camps map
- Click for Google street view
- Check the weather in San Antonio NM
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.