Thursday, January 14, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM
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Vermilion Flycatcher, Percha Dam State Park, Arrey NM, January 12, 2010
These colorful little Vermilion Flycatchers are quick to launch out from a perch to snatch an insect out of the air 40 or 50 feet away. This little guy let me snap away at him at work for the better part of an hour but my little Panasonic DMC-FZ28 at 18x wasn't really up to the task. One could easily lust after better equipment at times like these. I caught a few in flight shots that could have been spectacular with a better camera.
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.