This week in birds - #599

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

A Cooper's Hawk surveys my backyard looking for a possible meal.

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Heat continues to be a big story. It is now winter in Australia and yet they just endured a day with a high temperature of 107 degrees F. Moreover, a recent study found that deaths from heat-related causes have doubled in this country in recent decades.

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Atlantic hurricane activity has been on the quiet side this summer.

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The world's second-largest diamond ever found has been discovered in Botswana.

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Even in the Sahara Desert it sometimes rains.

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In Iceland, the news continues to be of volcanic eruptions.

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The Northern Bald Ibis was extinct in central Europe for three hundred years but with a helping hand from science, it is making a comeback.

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The Pantanal region of Brazil is being consumed by wildfires that are made worse by ongoing drought.

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Meanwhile, Colombia is being overrun by marauding hippos, a legacy of cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar who brought the original ones there. To say they have flourished would be an understatement.

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Here is the week in wildlife pictures as presented by The Guardian.

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Southern white rhinos are a near-threatened species, but there is cause for rejoicing over the recent birth of a male calf at the Melbourne Zoo.

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An endangered Canada lynx has been observed in Vermont for the first time since 2018.

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The scribes of ancient Egypt were high-status individuals but that did not protect them from ergonomic injuries related to their profession.

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Horticulturist Carlos Magdalena wants to save every species of plant on Earth.

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Sparrow weaver birds in Africa appear to learn distinct building styles that require careful thought. Perhaps they aren't such birdbrains after all!

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What is it about the Maldives that attracts tiger sharks?

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The dam removal project on the Klamath River will allow salmon to once again have free run in the river.

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Sacred objects, including skulls, that were looted from the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu years ago are being returned at the behest of the FBI.

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It seems that marmoset monkeys have individual names and they call each other by those names. 

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Bristle worms, venomous sea worms, have been washing up on the Texas coast recently. If you encounter one, don't touch!

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Behold the miracles contained in seeds.

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Prozac is getting into waterways and it is changing the way that fish behave.

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I've long been fascinated by the ancient cuneiform relics from Babylon. A new translation of those relics emphasizes the warnings that astrologers attached to solar eclipses.

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Peregrine Falcons are making a comeback in Yosemite National Park thanks at least in part to rock climbers.

The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin: A review

 

In this second entry in his Malcolm Fox series, Ian Rankin sends Fox and his Complaints team out of Edinburgh. They must go to the town of Kirkcaldy to investigate the possibility that a group of police officers has conspired to cover up the bad behavior of one of their fellow officers, Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of sexual misconduct with women whom he had arrested. His own uncle, who is a former police officer, is the one who brought the charges against him to light. The Complaints team arrives in Kirkcaldy to find no cooperation from their fellow police officers and, in fact, obstruction of their investigation on every hand.

Malcolm Fox intuits very early on in the investigation that all is not quite as it seems. There may be more here than meets the eye, and, since this is an Ian Rankin plot, of course there is.

Fox goes to talk with the uncle. Soon after their conversation the uncle is found dead, at first thought to be a suicide, but things don't add up. What was first put down as a suicide soon is found to be murder. Not only that but the prime suspect in the murder is the nephew, the disgraced Paul Carter.

Then, Paul Carter turns up dead. Curiouser and curiouser.

Meantime, Fox is digging into the background of the uncle's death and finds a link to the days of chaos and violent demonstrations in favor of Scottish independence which took place in the 1980s. This leads him to the death - again, a supposed suicide - of one of the firebrand leaders in the independence movement.

Throughout his investigation, Fox is also dealing with personal trauma as his elderly father's health fails and his only sister's resentment of him (Malcolm) grows.

Rankin has created believable and empathetic characters in this series, and it will be interesting to see how they grow as the series progresses. In this particular book, I especially enjoyed all the "inside baseball" references. Things such as allusions to Midsomer Murders (which I love!), John Le Carre, and a crime scene technician's reference to "woolly suits." When Fox looks askance, she smiles and says there used to be a DI who used that term to refer to the uniformed cops. Yes, we remember that DI well and lament his retirement, but Malcolm Fox is a worthy successor.

Poetry Sunday: Late Summer by Jennifer Grotz

Summer is beginning to wind down in most places in the northern hemisphere although it lingers longer here in Southeast Texas. Still, late August and September fit the description of late summer.

Late Summer

by Jennifer Grotz

Before the moths have even appeared
to orbit around them, the streetlamps come on,
a long row of them glowing uselessly

 

along the ring of garden that circles the city center,

where your steps count down the dulling of daylight.

At your feet, a bee crawls in small circles like a toy unwinding.

 

Summer specializes in time, slows it down almost to dream.

And the noisy day goes so quiet you can hear

the bedraggled man who visits each trash receptacle

 

mutter in disbelief: Everything in the world is being thrown away!

Summer lingers, but it’s about ending. It’s about how things

redden and ripen and burst and come down. It’s when

 

city workers cut down trees, demolishing

one limb at a time, spilling the crumbs

of twigs and leaves all over the tablecloth of street.

 

Sunglasses! the man softly exclaims

while beside him blooms a large gray rose of pigeons

huddled around a dropped piece of bread.

This week in birds - #598

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment: 

A Common Gallinule enjoying a swim.

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To prevent a climate breakdown we not only need to reduce carbon emissions; we need to restore Nature.

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As glacial melt continues and increases, there is a danger of a megatsunami being triggered.

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There are at least 144 species of birds that have not been seen in at least a decade but scientists suspect (hope) they may still be out there somewhere and they have issued a BOLO for the public.

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An Icelandic volcano has erupted for the sixth time since December. 

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Out there in space somewhere is a "speedy little star" that may be on its way out of our galaxy.

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And back here on Earth, there is good news from the world of endangered California Condors: The captive breeding program at the Los Angeles Zoo has produced a record-breaking seventeen chicks this year.

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There is renewed hope that the worst-case scenario for the melting of Antarctica may not occur.

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Tree frogs are usually green but a rare blue species has been discovered in Australia.

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The Dovekie is one of the smallest and most abundant members of the Alcid family and it is also the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week.

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Giant, ancient tropical trees are the anchors of their ecosystems and many of them are dying. Scientists are trying to discover why. 

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Brown Pelicans off the coast of California are also dying in alarming numbers and scientists are working to determine the cause.

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There is much better news from the world of the Peregrine Falcon. In Yosemite National Park the birds are making a comeback.

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And in Botswana, the second largest diamond ever found has been discovered. It is an amazing 2492 carats!

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore: A review

The Van Laar family owns a summer camp for kids in the Adirondacks. Their thirteen-year-old daughter, Barbara, is attending that summer camp in August 1975. When the camp counselor goes to wake her early one morning, she finds Barbara's bunk empty and a cursory search does not find her. Barbara is missing. 

Moreover, fourteen years earlier, Barbara's older brother, Bear, had also vanished when he was eight years old, never to be found. Now it seems to have happened again. But why? Are the two disappearances related and will Barbara be found?

The Van Laars are a seriously damaged family and not just because of these two tragedies. The father, Peter, is a workaholic and an authoritarian ruler of the family. The psychologically damaged mother, Alice, is an alcoholic and pill addict. The grandparents are equally messed up, a harsh grandfather and a silent, obedient grandmother. What a family life for the two kids to have endured!

The story features several strong female characters. There is Judyta Luptack, a former national trooper and now the first female state investigator at the age of twenty-six. She is idealistic and able to view things in ways that others cannot see. Assigned to the Van Laar disappearance case, she hopes to use those skills to find out exactly what has happened.

The camp director is T.J., a no-nonsense, resilient woman. She runs the camp without allowing interference from anyone, including the Van Laars.

There is Louise, who had been an abuse victim and is now raising her younger brother.

Then there is Alice who is struggling to find her place in the world while dealing with losses that threaten to numb her into oblivion.

We get the stories of all these women with their different timelines. It's a tale with several twists and surprises. It is a very well-written story and I would not be surprised to see it nominated for various prizes.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
 

Camino Ghosts by John Grisham: A review

In the 1700s, there was a thriving slave trade of people stolen from their homes in Africa and brought to the Americas. On one of those ships bound for America was an ancestor of Lovely Jackson. Her ancestor survived the wreck of that ship off the coast of Florida and managed to swim, with other survivors, to a small island where they were able to live, free and undisturbed.

Descendants of those first residents continuously inhabited the island until 1955 when Lovely Jackson, the last resident, left what was then known as Dark Isle. She was fifteen years old. 

Now Dark Isle has attracted the attention of a predatory land developer. He wants to build a bridge to the island from the mainland and furnish it with high-priced condos and casinos.

This story, however, begins with a current-day wedding. Writer Mercer Mann marries her long-time beau, Thomas. Mercer mentions to some attendees at the wedding that she is searching for a subject for her next book and her friend, Bruce Cable, owner of Bay Books, suggests the story of Dark Isle.

Lovely Jackson is now in her eighties and lives on Camino Island. Lovely had once written and self-published a book about Dark Isle and some were sold at Bay Books. Bruce arranges a meeting between Lovely and Mercer and both of them eventually accept Bruce's proposal of a nonfiction book about Dark Isle.

Mercer begins her research, hoping to find information that might bolster Lovely's claim to the island. Meantime, Lovely and her legal team of retired lawyer Steven Mahon and his paralegal, Diane Krug, prepare for the legal battle.

This book is actually the third in a series, but it is not necessary to have read the first two to "get" this story. I had not read them, although I might now do so because I found this tale quite intriguing. It is no accident that John Grisham's books sell millions of copies. He is a master storyteller.  

Poetry Sunday: Seasons of Life by Joseph Anderson

We are in mid-summer now but we know autumn and winter are coming...

Seasons of Life 

by Joseph Anderson

How like the seasons is our life,
We face the sunshine, storms and strife;
As seasons come, so they must go,
We are enjoined within that flow.

In spring we start our journey new,
When flowers bloom and skies are blue;
The trees are budding, birds will sing,
With youth in bloom, it's always spring.

'Tis summer soon, we are mature,
Face love and kids, home and career;
It's harvest time, success we seek,
These sounds of summer leave us weak.

Then autumn calls to have it's say,
The foliage falls, the hair turns gray;
The chill descends and soon the frost,
We think, perhaps on things we lost.

Old winter grips with snow and cold,
We watch our destined fate unfold;
As now we near our time to go
And seek life's final afterglow.

This week in birds - #597

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment: 

My little backyard goldfish pond is home - in addition to the goldfish - to little green frogs, a garter snake, and, occasionally a bullfrog like this one. It is an endless source of entertainment for me.

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The main environmental story at the moment is the incredible heat that is blanketing the northern hemisphere. The planet is heating even faster than climate scientists had predicted, leaving them somewhat baffled by its pace. Even the Arctic region is baking in unprecedented high temperatures. The question is, how close is the planet to a tipping point from which it will be impossible to recover? 

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The heat is warming Earth's rivers which is creating yet another set of problems for those who depend on the fish from those rivers.

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It is believed that changing water levels and erosion are what have led to the collapse of the famed double arch over the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

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Here's a hopeful note: Wind power has beaten coal for electricity generation in this country for two months in a row. We can hope that trend will continue and eventually entirely supplant coal.

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There is also hope for the future of red wolves - in fact, that they may have one.

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A humpback whale first photographed in 1972 is still swimming in the waters off Alaska.

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Invasive blue crabs are overtaking Italy's marine ecosystem.

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The iceberg designated as A23a split away from Antarctica in 1986 and it is still out there spinning around in the Southern Ocean.

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There are few records of polar bears attacking humans but last week two bears killed a worker at a remote radar site in the Canadian Arctic.

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Tigers in the wild are in trouble and extinction has seemed possible, but there is hope.

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Climate change affects everything on Earth, including the evolution of butterflies.

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Fire is a part of the life of a boreal forest but it becomes a problem when wildfires burn the forest faster than it has time to regrow.

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It turns out that the altar stone at Stonehenge may actually have come from Scotland rather than from Wales as had long been believed.

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I was entranced by the Epic of Gilgamesh when I first became acquainted with it in my freshman literature class. It still fascinates me and now Artificial Intelligence is being called into use in service of piecing fragments of the story together.

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The Brown Noddy, a resident of rocks, islets, and islands in tropical oceans around the world is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week.

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A twelve-foot-long dead oarfish was found floating in the waters off San Diego. Only twenty of the creatures had washed up on California beaches in the last century.

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A new study postulates that the asteroid that slammed into Earth off Chicxulub in present-day Mexico some 66 million years ago originated in a family of asteroids that formed beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

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An Indigenous Brazilian author has written a book that offers ancestral answers to today's environmental crises.

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Fan mussels have suffered a series of mass mortality events but hope is kindled for their survival as there is a thriving population of them in Greece.

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New discoveries continue to be made at the ancient site of the city of Pompeii.

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There is hope for the survival and thriving of clones from the iconic Washington, D.C. cherry tree known as Stumpy.

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Scientists have found an indication of water on Mars which renews the hope of finding life there.

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Wasps may be on the wane in some places but they are certainly thriving in my backyard.

Poetry Sunday: Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer

Baseball was my favorite game when I was growing up. (It still is.) And when I discovered this poem about a dramatic moment in a game, it became my favorite poem. I still find it fun to read. 

Casey at the Bat

by Ernest Lawrence Thayer

A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;

The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.

And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,

A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest

Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;

They thought if only Casey could but get a whack at that—

We’d put up even money now with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,

And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake;

So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,

For there seemed but little chance of Casey’s getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,

And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;

And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,

There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;

It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;

It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,

For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place;

There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile on Casey’s face.

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,

No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;

Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.

Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,

Defiance gleamed in Casey’s eye, a sneer curled Casey’s lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,

And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.

Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped—

“That ain’t my style,” said Casey. “Strike one,” the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,

Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.

“Kill him! Kill the umpire!” shouted some one on the stand;

And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey’s visage shone;

He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;

He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;

But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, “Strike two.”

“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;

But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.

They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,

And they knew that Casey wouldn’t let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip, his teeth are clinched in hate;

He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.

And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,

And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.