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You can almost hear the law of unintended consequences at work among the flora and fauna of northwestern New Mexico.
你几乎不敢相信新墨西哥州西北动植物研究工作带来意想不到的结果。
Thousands of natural gas wells dot the landscape there, along with the compressors that get the gaseous fuel ready to travel through pipelines. The compressor rumble is constant, and seems to be attracting black-chinned hummingbirds, according to a new experiment. The findings appeared this week in the journalProceedings of the Royal Society B.
成千上万的天然气井点缀在那儿的风景中 通过燃料气体压缩机而穿越管道输送。根据一项新的实验压缩机恒定的隆隆声似乎能吸引一种black-chinned蜂鸟。这些发现刊登在本周的皇家社会研究月刊。
Researchers set up test flower beds and tracked bird landings. They found that the hummingbirds were five times more likely to visit noisy areas. Why? Perhaps because the western scrub jay tends to avoid noise. And western scrub jays eat baby hummingbirds. The situation is good for wildflowers that are pollinated by the hummingbirds.
研究人员通过建立花圃并跟踪测试鸟类降落次数。他们发现蜂鸟有超过五倍可能性去喧闹的地区这是为什么?或许是因为西方矮树松鸦不喜欢噪音，而西方矮树松鸦喜欢吃蜂鸟幼鸟。这样由蜂鸟授粉的野花在闹市区开的很好。
But the absence of jays seems to be bad for other plants. For example, the pinon pine relies on scrub jaysto spread its seeds. As a result, pine seedlings were four times less abundant at noisy sites than quiet ones.
但缺乏松鸦似乎对其他植物不利。例如 矮松树依赖松鸦来传播种子。结果 喧闹地点松幼苗清静地儿减少四倍。
Pinon seedlings take decades to become pinon pines, a critical habitat for hundreds of species in the western U.S. So the forest of the future may never take root. Darn noisy neighbors.
矮松树苗要花上几十年的时间成为松树 而因为讨厌嘈杂的邻居，在美国西部的森林中作为数百种关键物种栖息地的矮松树苗可能永远不会生根。
