I noticed a grove of Milkweed plants in the neighbourhood that have been inundated with aphids—Oleander Aphids, as I found out later. Its amazing to see the diversity of insects attracted to the aphids and their honeydew.
Not surprisingly, are the insects that eat aphids, including this lady beetle. While photographing this afternoon, they didn’t seem to predatory. Just a lot of sitting around. Perhaps its the larvae that are the voracious eaters of aphids.
Birders, according my research, have embraced the Internet for information about birds. This includes general information about birds (websites such as Cornell’s All About Birds were mentioned by birders) but it would seem that the Internet is seen most importantly as a conduit of bird sightings. I conducted my research in Ontario, speaking with Ontario birders. When I would ask how birders decided where to go on a particular day, birders would often cite the Ontario Field Ornithologist’s (or OFO, for short) ONTBIRDS listserv as a source of information (often the primary source) for sightings.
Sharing bird sightings isn’t a new practise in birding. When I was a child visiting my grandparents, I remember the phone ringing, my grandparents answering and getting the latest news that species X had been seen at location Y. As members of the local field naturalist club, they were part of a telephone tree that spread news about rare bird sightings. After they collected the information, they would then call the two people “below” them in the tree. I imagine that in short order, the information about the birds was disseminated.
So the practise hasn’t changed. But the technology has. Before I talk about the implications of this, I want to bring in another thread into this conversation.
This morning I got an email letting me know that I had a comment on the blog ready to be moderated. I went to read it, and some of the most vitriolic words I’ve read on-line jumped from the screen. Since I published, and subsequently apologized for, a post that compared Stanley Tippett to a movie character with facial deformities, these two posts have driven the highest amount of traffic to this website. It’s something that I’m not particularly proud of—that my adolescent comment about someone is the most popular post—and comments on the post indicate to me that it is polarizing issue. But this is not a blog about Stanley Tippett. I don’t need to host adjective-laden conversations concerning Tippett’s character, or my character for being so foolish to post it originally. So, I’m making these posts private—in effect, deleting them.
But this is the Internet. Making them private does not make them disappear. People with interest and a little know-how can find them. Which is why I’m talking about it and justifying my decision. I’m not making these posts private because of what I wrote. The original post was stupid and a mistake, yes, but I chose to leave it up for over a year precisely for the reason that things just don’t disappear on-line. Deleting the posts could be interpreted as trying to hide what I did or said. The post and the subsequent apology were a learning experience for me. I continue to own my actions.
Now, however, I am no longer interested in the posts becoming a sounding board for anonymous commenters spouting hate. Trolls, be gone.
photo credit: Jim Frazier
Research published in Vol. 126, Iss. 3, pg. 579 of The Auk has some interesting implications for habitat conservation for migrating bird species here in eastern North America. In short, during Spring and Fall migration, migrants showed no preference for stopover locations based on distance from a continuous, connected (river corridor) habitat, nor were they more likely to be concentrated in one forest patch over another. Plainly, the migrating birds appear to show no preference for connected habitats versus fragmented ones. Clearly, if this is the case, birds are using other criteria to select where they stop while migrating.
What is interesting, and not surprising, is the finding that during Fall migration, birds do select habitat described as “early succession forest” with high density of native and non-native fruit-bearing trees and shrubs. In the cannon of conservation, habitats that are fragmented or in the early stages of succession are seen as lower quality when compared to continuous and stable habitats. And this may still be the case when it comes to nesting (less nest predation in larger forests, for example)—but it would seem as though we might need to re-evaluate the assumption that these younger, more fragmented landscapes are of little or no use to birds and ultimately, bird conservation.
As migratory stopovers, it would seem that all forested landscapes—no matter how mature—are important.
We’re back from our annual kayak trip to Cedar Island & Northern Georgian Bay. We had a great trip: Ollie enjoyed himself (as usual) and Griff went on his first kayak trip. Rather than being the crazy puppy that we expected him to be, he cooled down after the first night and was a super-dog.
I’ve posted this photo just ’cause its the synthesis of Northern Georgian Bay: waves and rock, each ending where the other begins. In other words: no strict boundaries. And, if you think of the processes involved in the movement of rock and water, waves are a commonality. This exposed rock took its form underground millions of years ago—subjected to incredible heat and pressure, it was more like a liquid than a solid. Bands of molten rock folded on itself, just like wind pushes the surface of the bay into ripples and waves. Now, captured in the photograph, the forms echo each other and act as a reminder. A reminder that often, that when it comes to perceptions about the natural world, all is not what it seems. Rocks can be waves. If we returned here in six months time, I could probably suggest to you that, in the cold of February, that waves have become rock.
