This week in birds - #382

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

Anhinga photographed at Brazos Bend State Park. These birds look prehistoric to me. It's very easy for me to see birds' relationship to the dinosaurs when I look at them. 

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The Arctic is melting and that is very bad news for all of us. It is the source of several serious problems to the atmosphere including an increase in carbon dioxide.

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Also, the heating is causing the melting of Greenland's ice sheet, which has accelerated so fast since the 1990s that it is now shedding more than seven times as much ice each year sending global sea levels higher and higher.

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Another problem for the atmosphere and worsening global warming is the immense amount of methane that is escaping from oil and gas sites nationwide. Meanwhile, the current administration is weakening restrictions on offenders. 

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It seems that orcas are like humans in that the lives of young orcas are enhanced by relationships with their grandmothers. A study found that grandmother orcas improve their grandcalves' chances for survival. 

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A group of international researchers has sequenced the genome of the Carolina Parakeet and has come to the conclusion that the only parrot native to the continental United States was driven to extinction by human activities.

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The 120th Christmas Bird Count begins today and runs through January 5, a chance for you to join in the world's longest-running wildlife census. Also, two other citizen science projects deserve your attention and participation: Project FeederWatch is a winter-long project that begins in November and runs through early April and the Great Backyard Bird Count takes place over a four day weekend in February, February 14 through 17 in 2020. You can sign up for both now. 

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To help combat climate change, it is important to not just plant trees but to restore habitats of forests. 

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Twenty-four individual states have pledged themselves to keep America's commitments to combating climate change even though the federal government has broken them. They have mixed results but they are having an impact. 

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The Guam Rail's status has been changed from extinct in the wild to critically endangered after nine captive-raised birds were released on an island that had been certified clear of the brown tree snake.

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You know about the very famous cave art found in France but now archaeologists have learned that there is even older cave art by early humans, dating from 44,000 years ago, to be found in the caves of the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

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Should we be feeding the birds? Does it actually benefit them? That is a debate that has gone on for many years. It does have ecological implications but there are some best practices to keep in mind.

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The argali sheep is an endangered animal endemic to Mongolia and is considered a national treasure there. And so Donald Trump Jr went and killed one last summer. Apparently, the Mongolian government issued him a permit for the kill after the fact and after a meeting with the country's president.

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Laughing Gull nesting pairs in Virginia dropped from 55,000 in 1993 to under 20,000 in 2018. These birds are very vulnerable to sea rise since they nest in the seaside salt marshes. 

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Bushfires in Australia have released massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

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The European Commission has set forth plans for a Green New Deal which would change the European economy in ways to combat climate change.

Throwback Thursday: Something to think about

I just realized that I completely forgot to mark the tenth anniversary of this blog which actually occurred exactly one week ago on December 5. But in honor of that, here's one of my past posts from 2015. It still has some relevance I think.

~~~

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Something to think about

With age comes wisdom - or so I've heard. But my own experience in life often makes me question that. Still, we'd like to believe that we do learn from our experiences and maybe even become just a wee bit wiser as we get older.

A friend sent me this email of "Lessons that we learn as we age." See if any of them ring a bell with you.

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Age 5:

I've learned that I like my teacher because she cries when we sing "Silent Night."

Age 7:

I've learned that our dog doesn't want to eat my broccoli either.

Age 9:

I've learned that when I wave to people in the country, they stop what they are doing and wave back.

Age 12:

I've learned that just when I get my room the way I like it, Mom makes me clean it up again.

Age 14:

I've learned that if you want to cheer yourself up, you should try cheering someone else up.

Age 15:

I've learned that although it's hard to admit it, I'm secretly glad my parents are strict with me.

Age 24:

I've learned that silent company is often more healing than words of advice.

Age 26:

I've learned that brushing my child's hair is one of life's great pleasures.

Age 29:

I've learned that wherever I go, the world's worst drivers have followed me there.

Age 30:

I've learned that if someone says something unkind about me, I must live so that no one will believe it.

Age 42:

I've learned that there are people who love you dearly but just don't know how to show it.

Age 44:

I've learned that you can make someone's day by simply sending them a little note.

Age 46:

I've learned that the greater a person's sense of guilt, the greater his or her need to cast blame on others.

Age 47:

I've learned that children and grandparents are natural allies.

Age 48:

I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on and it will be better tomorrow.

Age 49:

I've learned that singing "Amazing Grace" can lift my spirits for hours.

Age 50:

I've learned that motel mattresses are better on the side away from the phone.

Age 51:

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a man by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Age 52:

I've learned that keeping a vegetable garden is worth a medicine cabinet full of pills.

Age 53:

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you miss them terribly after they die.

Age 58:

I've learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life.

Age 61:

I've learned that if you want to do something positive for your children, work to improve your marriage.

Age 62:

I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

Age 64:

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.

Age 65:

I've learned that if you pursue happiness, it will elude you. But if you focus on your family, the needs of others, your work, meeting new people, and doing the very best you can, happiness will find you.

Age 66:

I've learned that whenever I decide something with kindness, I usually make the right decision.

Age 72:

I've learned that everyone can use a prayer.

Age 82:

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.

Age 90:

I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love that human touch - holding hands, a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

Age 92:

I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.
~~~

We all have a lot to learn. Let's keep learning!

The Night Fire by Michael Connelly: A review

Harry Bosch is less of a jerk in this latest book than he has been in the past. Is it possible that he is finally mellowing as he nears 70? After all, he has been retired from the LAPD now for four years, time to chill out a bit. 

Or maybe it is the influence of his latest "partner" Renee Ballard. Ballard isn't really his partner, of course. She is a 30ish detective with LAPD. She works the midnight shift known as the "Late Show" and she has hooked up with Harry before to work cases. He has become something of a mentor for her and she is certainly a worthy successor to his years with the police department. She is every bit as obsessed as he ever was.

One of Harry's early mentors has recently died and the opening scene of the book finds him attending the funeral. At the reception later, the widow gives him something that her husband had taken with him when he retired from the department. It is the murder book for an unsolved murder that took place more than twenty years before. There is no indication of why he took it or whether he was working to solve the cold case.

Renee, meanwhile, wakes in her tent on the beach where she sleeps to find that another beach person nearby had burned alive in his tent when a heater tipped over igniting the structure. Since she is the first detective on the scene, she takes charge of the potential crime scene but soon the guys from Arson show up and take over. They are ready to write it off as an unfortunate accident, but Renee isn't so sure. She finds anomalies that she thinks require investigation.

Connelly even manages to work his other famous character, the Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller, into the mix when Harry helps him out with a pro bono case he had been assigned to defend involving the murder of a judge. Turns out his client didn't do it and Harry helps him prove that prompting the ire of the detectives who had worked the case. Another reason for Harry to be persona non grata with his old department.

As they work these cases together, they come to realize that there is a connection between the death on the beach and the case Haller was defending. Once they put two and two together, the ultimate solution becomes easier.

As for the cold case Harry inherited, he finds to his disappointment that his mentor's feet were definitely made of clay, but Harry finds a way to finally solve the case and bring justice to the victim.

This is a complicated plot involving the three cases, but Connelly as always manages to keep us on track with his step by step procedural. He really has no peer that I know of when it comes to police procedurals. Having read all the Bosch books and all the Ballard books, their "partnership" makes a lot of sense to me and I trust Connelly will continue with it. That being said, this book would also work perfectly well, I think, as a standalone.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars  

Poetry Sunday: The courage that my mother had by Edna St. Vincent Millay

It is a sad fact of life that we often do not fully appreciate our parents until it is too late. It is certainly true of me. I never really appreciated the courage with which my mother faced life and the many challenges of her life until it was too late to tell her how much I admired that. So now all I can do is try to live with at least some of that courage, hoping that she has passed it on to me even in my ignorance.

The courage that my mother had

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!-
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

This week in birds - #381

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

This female Rufous Hummingbird seems to have settled in to spend the winter with us. In recent years, we almost always have had at least one Rufous with us for the winter, often more. So the hummingbird feeders stay filled and ready for visitors.

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The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas has dodged another bullet for now. This week a Texas judge granted a temporary restraining order to the opponents of a crowdfunded project to build part of President Trump’s border wall, siding with the butterfly conservancy that sued over its projected environmental impact. The restraining order involves a three-mile stretch along the Rio Grande in Hidalgo County, where a hard-line immigration group led by Stephen Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, wants to build an 18-foot-tall wall on private property.

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A paper published by the Geophysical Research Letters, a peer-reviewed science journal, documents that the early computer climate models of the '70s, '80s, and '90s were actually impressively accurate.

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At the UN climate conference in Madrid this week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who led a congressional delegation, told the gathering that the commitment of Congress to taking action on climate change is ironclad.

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As sea levels rise, there are some places on the coast that it will be impossible to save. One such place is likely to be the Florida Keys.

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A study found that Australia's threatened bird species have declined by 59% over the past thirty years and migratory shorebirds have declined by 72%.

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As forests around the world become more fragmented, the danger to the continued survival of the species that depend upon them is increased.

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Ross's Gull is rarely found in the lower 48 states and after an incident this week it is even rarer. One of the gulls turned up in Seattle where it was seen and documented by several birders. But then the bird was caught and devoured by a Bald Eagle. Nature at work.

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A study of penguin populations in the Antarctic identifies some winners and some losers as the climate changes. Chinstrap Penguins, for example, are having a harder time adapting than species like the Gentoo, apparently because the Chinstraps have a more specialized diet than the Gentoos. 

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The current administration in Washington has deployed a surge of park rangers to help patrol the southern border of the country, leaving many national parks, which are already understaffed, seriously depleted of personnel to protect them.

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A new study found that the Great Auk was driven to extinction entirely due to human activities, namely overhunting, rather than by any environmental change. 

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More frequent and severe wildfires in the Sierra Nevada region pose a threat to the roosting and foraging habitats of Northern Goshawks in the area.

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A study of 52 bird species that died when they collided with buildings in Chicago over the years has shown that the size of the birds has decreased over the past four decades while their wings have gotten longer. The changes appear to be responses to a warming climate.

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Researchers discovered an unorthodox but effective method of attracting diverse fish species to reinhabit devastated coral reefs. They broadcast the sounds of a healthy reef and it worked! Fish swam to the area once again.

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The Recovering America's Wildlife Act of 2019 advanced from the House Natural Resources Committee this week. It will likely pass when it comes up for a vote in the House, but will it ever be considered in the Republican-controlled Senate?

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Did you hear the one about the electric eel who is powering the lights on a Christmas tree? It's happening at Tennessee aquarium where an electric eel named Miguel is demonstrating the ultimate in renewable energy this season. 

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo: A review

Here we have another modern writer who eschews standard English punctuation. There are no periods in her book. Sentences are delineated by an indentation as at the start of a new paragraph. There are no capitalizations at the beginnings of sentences; only proper names are capitalized. Interestingly, she does use question marks at the end of her questions and she uses commas to define clauses. But the effect is of one long, uninterrupted flow of information. It reminds one of the works of many poets. Indeed, at times it seems almost a hybrid of prose and poetry.

The quirkiness did not bother the Booker Prize committee which awarded Girl, Woman, Other this year's prize (along with co-winner Margaret Atwood's Testaments). Bernardine Evaristo thus became the first black woman to win the Booker. Pity they diluted the honor by making her a "co-winner".

After the first few pages, Evaristo's idiosyncratic punctuation choices didn't bother me either. I was lost in her big, busy narrative featuring a large cast of female characters all related in some way to roots in Africa or the Caribbean. These are mostly mixed race women with ancestors in both the black and white world and we follow them as they come to terms with what that means in our modern world.

These characters wrestle with gender issues as well. There are women who were born female, women who were born male but now identify as female, lesbians, heterosexuals, bisexuals, almost any sexual permutation you could think of is represented here. All are representatives of the human condition and are written about as such.

Moreover, women are represented at all ages, from teenagehood to old age. The oldest character is 93.

This polyphonic novel features the voices of at least a dozen primary characters and it seems utterly impossible to neatly sum up, but if there could be said to be a central character, it is probably Amma, a black lesbian 50ish playwright, who has a new play being produced at the National Theater in London called "The Last Amazon of Dahomey". Several of the other characters have relationships with Amma and others are drawn in some way to her play. On opening night, many are present for what turns out to be a great triumph.

The stories of each of the dozen characters that we come to know are told in time frames that drift back and forth between the past and present and each story is marked by its multicultural sensitivity. While Evaristo tells her characters' stories with sympathy and with grace, she also does not hold back from occasionally tweaking them for examples of hypocrisy and pretentiousness. Their full humanity is on display.

I thought this book was a remarkable accomplishment. The writing is lyrical, poetic, and it shines throughout with a wit and a vitality of spirit. The plot is loose; one might even argue that it doesn't have a plot but that doesn't really detract from the richness of the story. It is evident why the Booker Prize folks liked it so much.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars 

Poetry Sunday: At Day-Close in November by Thomas Hardy

Before there were houses built in my neighborhood some forty years ago, there were tall pine trees, many reaching a hundred feet or more into the sky. Many of the lots still have some of these trees in their backyards. I find it hard to imagine a time when these giants were not present on the land. 

Our lot does not have pine trees. When we moved here thirty years ago, there were a couple of magnolia trees on the lot. One of the first things we did after moving here was to plant trees, live oaks and red oaks. Today those trees spread their limbs over our front yard and reach for the sky. I'm sure the children who live in the neighborhood cannot imagine a time when these giants were not present on the land.

Thomas Hardy addressed that in this poem:

And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees grew here,
A time when none will be seen.

Let us hope that there will not be a time when none will be seen.  

At Day-Close in November

by Thomas Hardy

The ten hours' light is abating,
And a late bird flies across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,
Float past like specks in the eye;
I set every tree in my June time,
And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees grew here,
A time when none will be seen.