I keep an eye out for newspaper articles published on birding as I find they provide an interesting insight into the larger cultural perception of the activity. While I’m not doing a discourse analysis of this stuff, a recent article published in the New York Times (Prairie Birds Flirt, and a Town Livens Up) hits […]
Category: Animals
Acadian flycatchers prefer the country to the city to nest
Urban birds that nest in wooded areas don’t do as well (reproductively-speaking) as their non-urban counterparts. Conventional wisdom suggested that this was because of the presence of more egg-eating predators (eating bird eggs, obviously) in urban settings. New research suggests, however, that it might have more to do with fitter (larger, older) birds preferring (and […]
(Amateur) birders & (professional) robots: the “truth” & access to knowledge
I’m supposed to be turning an abstract I wrote into a paper and I’m having some troubles beginning. So rather than staring at the computer screen all day wondering how to begin, I’m going to try banging out my ideas here and see if that gives me a kernel to begin my “real” paper. I’m […]
Boto bling
A recent article (hyperlink below) suggests that the male freshwater dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) that Heather and I got a chance to see in Peru this year (photographic evidence above) hold and thrash objects at the surface to “impress” females. What’s particularly interesting is this quote from the researcher: “It’s particularly interesting that the complexity of […]
Perhaps this will be the next wildlife videographer
Right after I posted on filming tigers with elephant-deployed cameras, this comes along: I, for one, welcome our four-legged wildlife-filming overlords.
Elephants, tusk cams & nature films
Popping up on all sorts of blogs this morning is the news that the BBC natural history unit has been using elephants to film their latest documentary. The tone of most posts is in the “How cool is this?” vein, and while it’s certainly ingenious, I can’t help but be intrigued by it for different […]
Do birds get sunburns?
So, I was uploading this photograph taken in Peru of a Turkey Vulture. Now, with its red head and the fact that it was on the beach in Mancora, I kind of thought that it looked like it had a sunburn. The thing is, TVs have red heads all the time, so I’ve just assumed […]
Salt water blues
Better living through chemistry, originally uploaded by Gavatron. I’ve lived with a saltwater aquarium for the past two-ish years now, ever since Heather moved into the apartment. To this point, I’ve been pretty hands off the whole endeavour, not because I wasn’t interested, but because of the steep learning curve associated with keeping a salt […]
Fruit Flies versus Lobsters
I came across two blog postings today, one that seems to normalize our attitudes toward one animal and another that messes things up. The first is that lobsters, apparently, don’t feel pain. Well, not pain in the way we’re supposed to think of pain, at least. This, unspoken, suggests that boiling lobsters, for example, is […]
Family matters
Ollie & siblings at 8 weeks, originally uploaded by Gavatron. Heather, Ollie and myself had a great little experience this morning–we met (Heather & Ollie for a second time and me for the first) Fozby, one of Ollie’s litter-mates (or, as Max, Fozby’s alpha-male, refers to the two of ’em: “the Beavertown Boys”). The two […]