How many species of hummingbird do we really need?

A hummingbird we saw in Costa Rica in 2005.

Today I was reading a review of the book "Hummingbirds," which has photos of most of the 338 known species, and it got me thinking: 338 species of hummingbirds? Nature's abundance and variety amazes me.

And then I thought about how a friend of mine who is against all tree huggers and in favor of all real estate development might respond to this information. He might say, "Well, how many species of hummingbird do we really need? Do they all need to be protected? Don't construction people need jobs? Don't people need places to live? Should we stop building highways so we can all spend the rest of our lives stuck in traffic?"

Our neighborhood in the exurbs of Mexico City

The air is thin where we live. We notice it most when we hike uphill two-thirds of a mile to the campus.

According to Google Earth, our apartment is 7,600 feet above sea level, and the track where we run is almost 7,700 feet above sea level. We are not high enough to feel altitude sickness, but we definitely feel the stress of breathing thin air.

Technically we are in the Colonia (neighborhood) of Villas de la Hacienda, in the city of Lopez Mateos in the Municipio of Atizapan de Zaragoza in the State of Mexico. 

On Mexico's Mayan Riviera: Tulum and Cancun

Cindy and Patrick at Tulum in 2000

When Cindy, Patrick and I visited the Mayan ruins of Tulum 14 years ago, we had the place pretty much to ourselves.

Industrialized tourism was just beginning on the so-called Mayan Riviera on the east coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

We could climb the pyramids and walk anywhere around the site.

Today it's a different story. Busloads of tourists pour in from Cancun, about 90 minutes north. You have to park about a half-mile away from the entrance now. The ruins are roped off. More of the buildings of this ancient ceremonial city have been restored and excavated.

Getting acclimated to one of the world's biggest cities

Letter from Cindy:

At the National Palace in the heart of Mexico City, where we saw Diego Rivera's murals.

Our neighborhood is densely packed, part of a suburb of 500,000.

 

Dear Friends and Family,
 
Jim and I are still wandering the globe. We are in Mexico again, as some of you already know. Jim has accepted a one-year appointment as visiting professor of Communications and Digital Arts at Tecnologico de Monterrey's campus near Mexico City. Tec is an innovative private university with 13 branches around Mexico.

 

We are living in Ciudad Lopez Mateos, 30 to 40 minutes northwest of the capital. This is quite different from life in Guadalajara, where we lived in an upscale neighborhood with plenty of shops, restaurants, parks and a car. 

Balloon launch over the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan

Morning balloon launch over Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan. We got to the site at just the right moment.

Cindy and I have been to Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wah-KAHN) a couple of times before, but the scale of the place never ceases to impress us. So when the staff at the university invited us to join a Sunday tour with other international students and professors, we said sure.

We had a pleasant surprise when we got to the site, which is about 30 miles northeast of Mexico City. A balloon launch was under way. It looked at first like an invasion of the aliens.

Coal mining and ballet in the industrial heart of Germany

From the top of the Ruhr Museum, you can still see some smokestack industry nearby.

Cindy and I went to the Ruhr Museum in Essen yesterday, which is housed in a huge former coal-processing and mining complex.

The Ruhr region (Ruhrgebiet) includes a vast area in the Rhine and Ruhr river valleys that has been the industrial heart of Germany.

The Allies bombed the heck out of the Ruhr in World War II, and three-fourths of Gelsenkirchen, where Bridget's dance company has its home, was destroyed. The town of Essen next door housed the huge Krupp armaments and steel factories and was also heavily bombed.

Still, after the war, this area was rebuilt and continued to be a major industrial center focused on production of coal, coke and steel. The MusikTheater (photos here) where our daughter Bridget's ballet company performs, was completed in 1959 and was viewed as a symbol of the area's reconstruction.

Christmas market in Essen, Germany, 2013

Bridget and Cindy, Essen

Since our daughter Bridget moved to Germany more than 20 years ago, we have tried to have someone from the family visit each year.

A highlight is visiting the Christmas markets.

The Germans transform their town centers into winter wonderlands of lights with open-air feasting, shopping and live music.

German Christmas markets are commercial, no doubt. But they are commercial in a more picturesque way than we do it in the U.S. The Brits have tried to imitate them. I sampled Manchester's version a few years ago. But they don't get it right.

This year we took a 10-minute train ride into Essen, not a big place by any means, and we saw hundreds of little gabled shops set up in the pedestrian malls that make up the heart of the town center.