I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll…John Lennon
Snowy Owl, Fremont, NE, 13 Jan 2012 by Ted Lee Eubanks
I understand why people credit this force to a god. From a distance life appears ordered, even planned. From a distance life is perfect. From a distance the earth is a big blue marble.
Alexander Skutch completed his remarkable career with a cryptic work, The Minds of Birds. In this last effort Skutch forcefully argues for celebrating the intelligence of birds. This contentious book incorporates both his decades of observations and experiences as well as evidence from the research literature.
Now scientists have discovered that ravens, in some ways as intelligent as great apes, socialize with gestures. According to this recent study, “chimps gesture to each other, as well, pointing out particular spots where they’d like to be scratched or groomed. These symbolic gestures are believed to be an important precursor to language. Now, researchers have observed ravens using gestures in the wild—the only non-primates seen doing so…. The researchers saw ravens pick up stones, moss, and other non-edible items with their beaks, and display or offer those objects to another bird, usually of the opposite sex.”
Bewick's Wren, Waller County
The challenge faced in the southern Great Plains is trying to determine which Bewick’s population a given bird belongs to. The racial differences between the various Bewick’s populations are disputed. There is no doubt that bewickii is the bird of the east, but exactly where does bewickii stop and cryptus begin? For example, the birds in Waller County are not as rufescent as some birds seen in traditional bewickii territory. On the other hand, they are clearly more brown than cryptus from the west. Could these two overlap?
I’m blitzed…burned…blottoed. My day began at 4 am; I am rushing to hop a flight home from the Bahamas. For six days I have ignored the Washington farce, the bizarre burlesque being passed off as governance. Now I am being bombarded with this blather in the form of a television set blasting forth in the airport terminal. I am having a Rodney King moment.
Please, we can get along here? We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while.
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe…Theodore Roosevelt
President Obama proposes to double fuel economy standards by 2025. If he succeeds, American autos will average almost 60 miles to the gallon. The president’s proposal is the largest increase in mileage requirements since the government began regulating consumption of gasoline by cars in the 1970s. The auto industry backs him.
See how easy that is? Park the partisanship, and propose what is best for the country. I cannot conceive of a single argument against higher fuel efficiency in American cars. But let’s see what happens in Congress. I have no doubt that House Republicans will still bare the knives and eviscerate the new standard. For Tea Party Republicans, the Teapers, no good deed goes unpunished.
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt challenges Romeo. Best friend Mercutio expects Romeo to defend himself. Romeo refuses (Juliet is Tybalt’s cousin), and Mercutio decides to vindicate Romeo for his “vile submission.” Tybalt slays Mercutio, and as he dies he damns both Moneagues and Calulets with the immortal curse “a plague on both your houses!” In time Shakespeare’s plague morphed to pox, and the latter phrase remains with us still.
Romeo refused to defend himself, and Mercutio died for Romeo’s failure. Mercutio covered Romeo’s back, yet Romeo still abandoned his best friend in the thick of it. There are lessons here. Be cautious of the politics of intrigue (be not Montague nor Capulet). Choose your friends wisely. Watch you own back. Don’t play with knives.
The flurry of questions that I received this morning has inspired me to add an addendum to my initial article. This is precisely the level of interest that I hoped my questions would inspire. Perhaps with your help I can tweak the survey to where it is more meaningful for those who participate.
Let’s begin with a quote fro Yi-fu Tuan in his seminal book Space and Place:
An unknown physical setting is a “blank space” that only becomes a “place” as it is endowed with meanings through lived experiences.
I have a hunch, one that has tugged at me for a few days. I wonder how people watch birds. I’m not curious about birdwatching gluttony (the Big Year) or whether or not yours’ (list) is bigger than mine. I want to know how people watch birds, not how many, how much they spend, or why.
How many hours in a week do you watch birds? Of those hours, what percentage is with optics pasted to your face? How many birds can you identify without optics, and how many with the aid of binoculars or a scope but without a field guide?
Image 1 – Chittering (Eskimo) Curlew, Photographed by Don Bleitz, Galveston, Texas, 1962
Ben Feltner had never seen a whimbrel. Houston birders had hinted that the bird might be found in grazed coastal prairie on west Galveston Island. Beach houses and strip malls had yet to scar that landscape. Ranchers worked the coastal prairie, and fields there were clipped as close as a putting green.
Ben, along with Dudley Deaver, worked his way west from the city. Wandering through the ranch lands bordering the beach, Ben noticed a small curlew pacing along a barbed wire fence. There were golden-plovers nearby, as well as long-billed curlews. Something about this one bird, this slight curlew barely larger than a plover, struck him.
The title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork… William S. Burroughs on Naked Lunch
I am more curious about what is at the end of every birder’s arm. What do we hoist, perch, lift, finagle, finger, and thumb to identify birds? We invest mightily in accoutrements such as binoculars, scopes, recorders, cameras, and field guides. How often do we use them? For every hour of birding how many minutes are we actually spying through those $2000 glasses? Leica promises that their binoculars offer “breathtaking images all day, any day.” Do we really screw these tubes to our eyes “all day, any day?”