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Category Archives: history
September 2020 COVID-19 comparisons: confirmed deaths for the USA, China, and South Korea
Here in the USA, every week presents us with a new normal in our ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Many in this country seem to think that this is just how it has to be or, at the very least, they are … Continue reading
Posted in #COVID-19, editorial, history, life, skepticism and science
Tagged #coronavirus, #COVID-19, China, deaths per million, Hubei, lockdown, OurWorldInData, public health, quarantine, South Korea, Wuhan
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Bird Names For Birds
It’s long past time to consider, learn, care about, and correct a problem in our nomenclature for birds. via Historical Bios
Posted in academics, animal behavior, bird banding, bird evolution, birding, birds/nature, career, environment, evolution, history, IUCN, mentoring, National Audubon Society, nature deficit disorder, No Child Left Inside, ornithological newsletter, professional development, skepticism and science, wildlife
Tagged #AOS, #BirdNamesForBirds, #nomenclature, EDI, environment, history, ornithology, science, URM
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Re-imaging the meaning of national defense
Writing for Resilience, Rob Brooks re-imagines a national defense grounded in Wendell Berry’s observation that “Earth is what we all have in common.” “We need to pay as much attention to conserving and restoring the connectivity of the natural infrastructure … Continue reading
Posted in academics, editorial, environment, history, life, skepticism and science, weather, wildlife, wind power
Tagged #Army Corps of Engineers, #CASSE, #Coast Guard, #disaster response, #DoD, #FEMA, #flyways, #National Guard, #natural infrastructure, #steady state economy, climate change, conservation, environment, joint ventures, nature, resilience, science, sea level rise
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Coronavirus in Oklahoma: some data from the first week of April
As we have now left March 2020 in the rear-view mirror, I thought it might be a good idea to adjust my semi-weekly interpretation of national comparisons on #COVID-19 deaths and drill drown into some data from US states. Apropos … Continue reading
Posted in academics, editorial, environment, evolution, history, life, population estimates, skepticism and science
Tagged #coronavirus, #COVID-19, CDC, death, double-digit date, doubling rate, environment, epidemic, OK State Department of Health, Oklahoma, pandemic, pandemic response, Safer At Home, science, Shelter in Place, WHO, Wuhan
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Yes, we know that “the climate has always changed”…
… but that’s not the point. Here’s what that point really is. The concentration of global, atmospheric CO2 today exceeds 400 ppm. The last time that happened on Earth was something like 2–5 million years ago, in the Pliocene Epoch … Continue reading
Posted in academics, deforestation, editorial, Endangered Species Act, environment, evolution, history, IUCN, overpopulation, skepticism and science, weather
Tagged #climate justice, #climate proxy, #ClimateAlwaysChanges, #coastal, #famine, #greenhouse gases, #Homo habilis, #human migration, #IPCC, #land cover, #land use, #Pliocene, #ppm, #refugee, #sea level, climate, CO2, environment, nature, NOAA, population, science, sustainability
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The state of global biodiversity — it’s worse than you probably think — ConservationBytes.com
Sobering synopsis here by CJA Bradshaw. For those of us who study natural history, such information confronts us every day. It can be easy to forget that we are a tiny minority of the billions of humans on this planet … Continue reading
Posted in bat conservation, birds/nature, deforestation, editorial, Endangered Species Act, environment, evolution, history, IUCN, nature deficit disorder, No Child Left Inside, overpopulation, paleontology, population estimates, population monitoring, skepticism and science, wildlife
Tagged Anthropocene, biodiversity, Conservation Bytes, Diaz et al. 2019, environment, extinction, nature, population, science, Sixth Mass Extinction
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Your life is profoundly meaningful
It’s quite simple, really. The matter in our universe is comprised of the same elements throughout. Proportions differ and it might be mixed together differently here and there, but it’s the same stuff. Some of those mixes develop self-replication under … Continue reading
Posted in academics, animal behavior, birds/nature, editorial, environment, evolution, history, life, Links, mentoring, skepticism and science, wildlife
Tagged #cosmos, astrobiology, bison, buffalo, Carl Sagan, education, environment, George Catlin, history, intelligence, life, Marie Curie, meaning, nature, nebulae, pale blue dot, research, Revelation, science, sentience, universe
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My lifer Whooping Crane – something I thought I might never see
It’s been a long time coming, but I was recently guided to my lifer WHOOPING CRANE by my nephews Benjamin and Matt Hack (+ special guest star Matt’s friend Kaitie) at a lake near Dexter, Michigan. This is an ENDANGERED … Continue reading
Posted in animal behavior, bird banding, birding, birds/nature, editorial, Endangered Species Act, environment, history, IUCN, migrants, population estimates, wildlife
Tagged ABA, Aransas NWR, birding, consevation, endangered species, ESA, extinction, Michigan, success story, USFWS, Whooping Crane, wildlife, Wood Buffalo NP
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Kerri J. Smith – beaked whales
via Research I found another bright young scientist to amplify today. This is Kerri J. Smith, who is studying Sowerby’s beaked whale. No, I’d never heard of this species either. #TIL
Posted in academics, animal behavior, birds/nature, editorial, Endangered Species Act, environment, evolution, history, IUCN, population estimates, population monitoring, professional development, skepticism and science, wildlife
Tagged environment, Kerri J. Smith, Mesoplodon bidens, nature, Sowerby's beaked whale
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007 — History of Ornithology
BY: Bob Montgomerie, Queen’s University | 7 January 2019 A couple of years ago, my family and I had an early morning stopover in Frankfurt, Germany, en route to our spring bolthole in the French Pyrenees. As we stumbled bleary-eyed … Continue reading
Posted in academics, bird evolution, birding, birds/nature, environment, evolution, history, wildlife
Tagged Bob Montgomerie, David Lack, Ian Fleming, James Bond, ornithology, Queen's University, West Indies
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Do my social media milestones matter?
Well, no. Of course not. Still . . . My wife and I started this blog (formerly Eat More Cookies) way back in July 2006. We were about to complete our third year in Oklahoma, with family back home in … Continue reading
Posted in academics, editorial, environment, haiku, history, life, Links, overpopulation, professional development, skepticism and science, The Waterthrush Podcast
Tagged #social media, academia, duckface, environment, Facebook, followers, Google Scholar, impostor syndrome, LinkedIn, milestone, network, networking, ORCID, professional development, ResearchGate, science, selfie, social justice, Twitter
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Audubon’s The Birds of America at the University of Michigan
Since touring the natural history collections at the University of Michigan a few years ago, I have included an abridged version of this tale in my classes when trying to impress upon them the significance of John James Audubon and … Continue reading
Posted in academics, animal behavior, birding, birds/nature, editorial, environment, history, National Audubon Society, wildlife
Tagged Black and Yellow Warbler, James Tobin, John James Audubon, John Syme, Magnolia Warbler, The Birds of America, The Heritage Project, University of Michigan, Zina Pitcher
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Some perspective on peak abundance of Passenger Pigeon
You’ve heard the story before, and it’s sobering: Once perhaps the most abundant vertebrate on the planet, a combination of unremitting exploitation and habitat loss reduced the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) from billions to none in a few short decades … Continue reading
Posted in bird evolution, birds/nature, deforestation, editorial, Endangered Species Act, environment, history, IUCN, life, Links, National Audubon Society, Partners in Flight, population estimates, population monitoring, skepticism and science, wildlife
Tagged abundance, billions to none, conservation, environment, exploitation, extinction, habitat loss, nature, Partners in Flight, Passenger Pigeon, population, population estimates, science
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Anchiornis in living color
Laser flourescence of the feathered dinosaur Anchiornis provides a picture of its life appearance in stunning detail http://ift.tt/2lTPfzX via Laser flourescence of the feathered dinosaur Anchiornis provides a picture of its life appearance in stunning detail — Like For Real Dough
Posted in bird evolution, birds/nature, evolution, history, Links, paleontology, skepticism and science
Tagged Anchiornis, avian pigmentation
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Do you have a voice in government?
I bet rarely would people respond that they feel well-represented in government. I know I’m not well-represented when I long for a revolution in renewable energy but one of my senators is the guy who thinks snowballs in winter refute … Continue reading
HBW Alive Newsletter #21 – March 2016
The latest newsletter of the Handbook of the Birds of the World has been released and it, as usual, is chock full of fascinating discoveries*, insightful synthesis, and stunning multi-media features. *For example, I just learned that a flightless owl … Continue reading
Posted in animal behavior, bird evolution, birding, birds/nature, editorial, Endangered Species Act, environment, Epidexipteryx, evolution, Great Auk, HBW Alive, history, hummingbirds, IUCN, life, migrants, paleontology, skepticism and science, vultures, wildlife
Tagged biodiversity, birding, conservation, ornithology
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Birding, and the biggest year ever
Of the estimated 20 million (at least!) bird-watchers in the US, a relatively small percentage consider themselves to be serious birders, i.e., the kind of people who actually travel around to try to see as many birds as they can, … Continue reading
Posted in animal behavior, bird evolution, BIRDATHON, birding, birding community e-bulletin, birds/nature, editorial, environment, evolution, history, IUCN, life, migrants, National Audubon Society, nature deficit disorder, No Child Left Inside, ornithological newsletter, wildlife
Tagged 6000 species!, American Bird Conservancy, big year, birding, conservation, Noah Strycker, ornithology, The Big Year
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What words mean . . .
actually matters. Here in the US, there’s an unfortunate stereotype that someone who encourages the proper use of words and grammatical structures is a pedantic jerk. If you do this, you might even be an intellectual snob in anti-intellectual America. … Continue reading
Posted in academics, editorial, history, life, Links, skepticism and science
Tagged English language, grammar, grammar Nazi, word usage
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Where to publish ornithology and wildlife ecology? The impact of impact factor.
Update June 2019: New rankings for Journal Impact Factors have just been released, and that makes for a good opportunity to update this post from 2015. There have been some big changes, notably the merger of the Cooper Ornithological Society … Continue reading
Posted in academics, birding, birds/nature, career, editorial, environment, history, life, Links, mentoring, ornithological newsletter, professional development, skepticism and science, wildlife
Tagged #JIF, Biological Conservation, career, citizen science, environment, Impact Factor, Journal Impact Factor, Landscape Ecology, mentoring, ornithology, OSNA, productivity, professional development, publishing, research, science, tenure track, The Auk, The Condor, Thompson Reuters, Web of Science, wildlife, wildlife ecology, wildlife management, Wilson Journal of Ornithology, writing
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