Great Backyard Bird Count January 2012 newsletter 23 January 2012
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Newsletter here.
The Beauty of Carl Sagan. (Really? Yeah, really!) 20 January 2012
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I was there.
I walked that campus and slept through my classes and met my wife and pulled all-nighters to cram for my exams . . . while Carl Sagan was somewhere on that campus, thinking mind-expanding thoughts, inspiring a new generation of scientists, and ultimately, preparing for his own departure.
While I knew of Sagan back in those days and respected his “take science to the people” attitude, I didn’t truly appreciate his genius or his impact. For one, I knew nothing of astronomy (and still really don’t), so I was much more likely to admire some famous zoologist or paleontologist than an astronomer. I had certainly heard of “Cosmos”, but I had never watched an episode. Sagan’s message, I thought, was not meant for me, it was meant for people who dig stars and galaxies and physics, not people who dig birds and bones and trees.
It has only been recently, now long after Sagan and I have both left Cornell, that I have become more familiar with that message, and I realize how mistaken I was.
Today, what I know and appreciate about Carl Sagan I owe to the modern skeptical movement, and perhaps most directly to the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast. Listening to the “Skeptical Rogues” wax nostalgic for Sagan inspired me to explore a bit more. The beauty of Sagan, however, is something that really did not hit me until I heard on the Skeptics’ Guide a story about John Boswell’s Symphony of Science project. Here, Boswell has taken Sagan’s words, and his voice, to make a musical experience of profound inspiration and beauty, that of course is only possible through a staggering demonstration of human technological advancement.
I play “We Are All Connected” in my classes to instill in them the idea that science is more than the tedium and pedanticism with which it is so often associated in our culture. Science is beautiful. Nature is beautiful and wonderful, even when it is vicious and unfeeling. When Sagan explains “we are a way for the cosmos, to know itself” I find myself stunned that this is perhaps the most interesting idea I have ever heard anyone utter. How can we not be inspired by science when we realize that nature existed for billions of years, changing, growing, and expanding, until some part of itself developed the means to study and understand . . . itself?
Sagan’s genius was not just that he had these thoughts, but that his command of language to communicate them was so clear and elegant and poetic in its simplicity.
“I find it elevating and exhilarating
to discover that we live in a universe,
which permits the evolution of molecular machines
as intricate and subtle as we.”
Carl Sagan
weekly haiku – a mild winter 16 January 2012
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Where is the winter?
Alaska! That’s where it is.
Better them than us.
Oklahoma drought effects on wildlife – local observations 8 January 2012
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Here’s my inaugural post for Focusing on Wildlife. I described a recent visit to Lake Carl Blackwell, and what this little guy might have been doing there:
Wildlife Society NewsBrief 6 January 2012
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Weekly newsletter here.
Birding Community E-Bulletin – January 2012 6 January 2012
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We kick off the new year with a Falcated Duck in California, a Hooded Crane in Tennessee, Snowy Owls all over the place, and lots of other cool stuff:
THE BIRDING COMMUNITY E-BULLETIN
January 2012
This Birding Community E-bulletin is being distributed to active and concerned birders, those dedicated to the joys of birding and the protection of birds and their habitats.
This issue is sponsored by the producers of superb quality birding binoculars and scopes, Carl Zeiss Sport Optics:
www.zeiss.com/SPORTS
You can access an archive of past E-bulletins on the website of the National Wildlife Refuge Association (NWRA):
http://refugeassociation.org/news/birding-bulletin/
Note: this is our new archival location. See more details at the end of this month’s E-bulletin.
RARITY FOCUS
On the morning of 8 December, Dan Tankersley found a male Falcated Duck at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge in California about 60 miles northwest of Sacramento. The duck was first viewed from the auto route observation deck. This 4,500-acre refuge consists mainly of intensively managed wetland impoundments along with substantial riparian and grassland habitat. Located in the Sacramento Valley, the refuge plays host to large populations of wintering waterfowl, sometimes up to a quarter of a million birds.
The Falcated Duck was accompanied by many other species, including Northern Pintail, American Wigeon, and Gadwall. The Falcated Duck, a species pictured in most North American field guides, is actually a vagrant from Asia.
Falcated Ducks breed in northeast Asia from southern Siberia south to Mongolia, northeast China, and southern Japan and they winter from the southern portions of their breeding range to the northern parts of southeast. Asia. The species has a population estimated at about 35,000 birds, most of which winter in Japan, the Koreas, and southeast China.
(more…)
A new idea for what Velociraptors did with those claws 5 January 2012
Posted by Tim O'Connell in animal behavior, bird evolution, birds/nature, Epidexipteryx, evolution, history, life, Links, paleontology, skepticism and science.add a comment
By now, we’re all familiar with this image: Velociraptors running at high speed toward a big lumbering dinosaur that the little demons subdue with an onslaught of murderous slashes from an outsized claw on their second toe. Mark Stevenson’s reproduction below is a vivid attempt to bring one of these battles to life.
Mark Stevenson's concept of a Velociraptor attack.
This model by artist Charlie McGrady illustrates the unique foot structure of this group of dinosaurs. The first toe has moved back, and toes 2, 3, and 4 point forward. It’s that second digit (the “inside toe”) that has been greatly enlarged to support that famous sickle-shaped claw that we’re now so used to seeing elevated when the animal runs and swiped down to cut a huge slash in attack mode.
2nd digits held high in McGrady's reproduction
That basic toe structure is represented in modern birds. In a perching bird’s anisodactyl foot, digit 1 is moved to the rear, while digits 2–4 face forward. Generally, as illustrated with this Clark’s Nutcracker, there is nothing remarkable about the 2nd digit – it’s about as robust as the 4th, and usually shorter than the 3rd (“middle” toe).
inner toes (digit 2) not enlarged like a Velociraptor's
In some birds with anisodactyl feet, however, the 2nd digit is enlarged, and it plays a big role in survival. In many (most?) of our modern birds of prey, digit 2 is enlarged and bears a larger talon than on digits 3 and 4. While this is not all that noticeable on smaller raptors, it’s really obvious on the big, powerful eagles. You can see it on this Red-shouldered Hawk:
enlarged 2nd digits (middle toes) apparent
You can really see it on this Ornate Hawk-Eagle:
2nd digits really big on this bird!
Recently, some out-of-the-box-thinking paleontologists have taken another look at Velociraptor feet and made a connection to the enlarged 2nd digits of modern birds of prey. Rather than just assume that the “switchblade” model was unassailable, they looked at how modern raptors use their enlarged #2s and did some comparative anatomy with Velociraptor (specifically Deinonychus) fossils. Led by Denver Fowler at the Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University, the team just published their new interpretation of these fossils in the journal PLoS One.
Fowler et al. 2011
One of the things that didn’t seem right to the team was that the reconstructions of fleet-footed raptors running down their prey was a bit incongruous with the structure of the foot. Rather than being elongated as in most cursorial species, the metatarsals (long foot bones) of Deinonychus were short, broad, and robust. If anything, these feet were built for strength, not for speed. The authors propose that the famous sickle-claw of raptors was used to grasp and hold prey about as large as the predators themselves, rather than as disemboweling rapiers designed to bring down prey many hundreds of times heavier. Instead of sprinting after prey like a cheetah and slicing it open like a Smilodon, the authors suggest that Deinonychus was more like a modern lion in hunting technique: quick ambush followed by a death-like grip.
maybe this how they hunted?
OK, paradigm shifts are always fun, but this gets even cooler. Note that with the 1st and 2nd digits anchoring together to hold the prey, a modern bird of prey (and perhaps a raptor) can often struggle to stay balanced atop its kill, and it flaps its wings to stay upright and on top. Even modest feathered surfaces far too small to get the bird aloft can provide stability when the arms/wings are flapped. Could this explain what those feathered dinosaurs were doing with their rudimentary wings? Could flapping have evolved before flight? Might enough flapping capable to lift a bird up and away from its own predators and competitors have conferred a great advantage on those individuals able to do it?
The paper is a fascinating read, though I lack the paleontological chops to really make sense of it. I am a bit puzzled about how the “death grip” might have worked given the reduced 1st digit (the “hind toe”) of Deinonychus. Hopefully, some other folks will address that in the coming years and we’ll get to see if this new interpretation of dinosaur feet has any legs.
T-shirts for IMBD 2012 are ready! 5 January 2012
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Check out this cool video explaining the logo and showing how it’s produced.
New post from North American Birding Blog 4 January 2012
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2011 in review 1 January 2012
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 30,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
