Odds and ends, 10/18/07

According to an article at sciencedaily.com, barred owls have decided residential neighborhoods in Charlotte, N.C., are as good a place to live as old-growth forests:



Urban wildlife numbers have been increasing in recent decades, notably in populations of squirrels, Canada geese, raccoons and deer, but the appearance of significant urban populations of barred owls, the third largest owl species in the US, is a surprise to many biologists.


"If you read about barred owls in the textbooks, it says they need large stands of old-growth forest to survive," notes University of North Carolina at Charlotte ecologist and ornithologist Rob Bierregaard, who has directed the six-year-old research study. "Either the barred owls in Charlotte haven't read that book or the book is wrong, because they are really here and apparently doing quite well."


"We have concluded is that there may be a third possibility: that old suburban neighborhoods in fact are an old growth forest, at least as far as the barred owls are concerned."



I wouldn't mind a couple of owls establishing a household near my house. There probably are several, but I haven't seen them. Raccoons, deer and Canada geese, on the other hand, can stay away.



Someone will have to tell me this, because I don't know that much about the feeding habits of deer, but I have noticed some low-hanging branches on trees at my house have been stripped of leaves. I asssume it's either a deer in search of food or a son in search of something to do with a low-hanging branch.



My apples and peaches were gone a long time ago. That's what I get for having an apple tree of a variety that doesn't grow well, particularly in poor soil. I grew up along the Ohio River, and you never had a patch of bare ground there.



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I got DirecTV back last night after being without it for a couple of months. We decided we wanted it for the science and history and news channels. I turn on one news show that I used to watch from time to time and I thought, this stuff is garbage. Same old broken record.



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Earlier this week, Ohio State University announced that it retains its spot as the nation's largest university, with 52,568 students on the Columbus campus and more than 60,000 overall when the regional campuses are included.



The one thing that struck me was this: OSU says it retained more than 92 percent of its freshmen from last year. One problem Marshall University and others in West Virginia have is that so many students drop out during or after their freshman year.



Here's another interesting statistic from Ohio State: Women account for 49.3 percent of the student body. That's less than half. I thought that nationwide, more than half of college students are women. There must be a different dynamic at work in Columbus.