This is Scientific American 62nd Science.

I'm Julia Rosen.

Got a minute?

In 1869, the Smiley family purchased a parcel of land about a hundred miles north of New York City.

Over time, some of their property and much of the surrounding landscape became the Mohawk

Preserve, which has since grown to 8,000 acres and attracts droves of visitors to its

thick forests and rugged crags popular among rock climbers.

But the Mohawk Preserve also has a long scientific legacy.

In the 1930s, Dan Smiley, a descendant of the original owners, began keeping track of the plants and

animals that lived in area.

He wrote meticulous notes on the backs of menus from the Mohawk Mountain House, a resort owned

by his family.

He would take these old menus, because he was green,

he was a environmentalist, so he would cut up these

menus into squares, and actually on the back of all over index cards,

or you can see parts of the menu from back in the 1920s and 1930s, so you can see what was served for dinner that night.

Megan Napoli, a research ecologist with the Mohawk Preserve in New York.

Smiley's efforts produced a rare long-term data set of observations.

It's ideal for studying the impacts of climate

change, which often play out over the course of many decades and cause subtle changes

in the timing of natural processes. For instance, other research has shown that songbirds are migrating north

earlier and earlier in the spring.

...