It’s Robin Saturday! Reader Jay Haas of Point Reyes, California makes his first appearance by contributing some albino robins:
Here are some photos from a few years ago of a white (partial albino) robin, American robin (Turdus migratorius), which lived in my yard for several days. As I understand it about one robin in 30,000 is an albino or partial albino, and totally albino birds have no pigment in their irises and retinas to protect their eyes from sunlight, and many eventually go blind.
Reader Randy Shenck also sent some robin pics:
Sometimes in the summer we sit outside in the evening to better hear what might be going on and that is what rural life is all about. The American Robin (Turdus migratorius) is the most abundant of all the birds around here. The first one seems to have an attitude and the second has a grub. It is common this time of day to count twenty to thirty robins on the ground at one time.
Stephen Barnard bought another toy: a drone. I doubt that we’ll get many wildlife photos from it, as it’s noisy and intrusive, but one can hope. In the meanwhile, he’s testing it outL
Here’s some drone video in 1080p I uploaded to Flickr. I flew from my house across the creek and field to harass the horses. (I’m not quite intuitive with the camera tilt yet.) Then I went on autopilot to returnhome.
There’s nothing special about this video, but it gives you an idea of what I’m up to. Wait until I shoot the elk. [He means scaring off the elk with the drone, not firing guns at them!]
Click on the screenshot to go to the video:
I have never seen an albino Robin. They are quite lovely!
Apparemtly, drones scare bares:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/cp-wa080615.php
I fully expect drones to be illegal in national parks in the USA and Canada. Imagine the mayhem with hundreds of tourists and their drones harassing the wildlife?
But is there a way to prevent people from flying drones over certain areas?
The FAA has published rules, which I don’t know much about. I think there is an altitude limit of 400′ and an exclusion around airports and in the vicinity of aircraft.
I just heard a bit on NPR saying that this situation is getting complicated, since different regions have different altitude restrictions. But I was thinking along the lines of some kind of jamming signal to prevent drones from being controlled over an area. That too will be complicated, of course.
I had a, “go-round” with a couple of, “freedom-loving” commenters a while back who both thought the government had NO right to put ANY restrictions on drones- they used the old, “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” argument, saying that no matter what laws are enacted, “criminals” will break them, anyway and that it would “just hurt the hobbyist”. I informed them that yes, this is what criminals DO; that’s why they’re called “criminals”. I asked them if they would be OK with one hovering outside their daughter’s window, and the one guy actually said, “Yes”!(I doubt it).
The phenomenon of drones is a almost totally unprecedented one: not unlike a bullet, they are a “projection of the will of an individual operator”- they’re extremely, “hot” and available right now, and, of course we silly monkeys are trying all sorts of stupid things with them. Speaking of bullets, a father and son have already fastened a pistol to one and fired it (the video seems to show this being done in a National Forest, triggering an investigation). How simple would it be for a terrorist to fly one, or several, into the engines of a jetliner upon take-off or landing? There are many difficult questions to be answered in the attempt to “control” these devices while yet not infringing unduly upon personal liberties.
Another, similar phenomenon is that of 3-D printing, which is raise a host of questions concerning patent and copyright law and the basic question of just who “owns” information. We live in interesting times!
I expect drone shooting will become a popular pastime for gun nuts.
I’ll have to be careful during duck hunting season. I’ll also have to careful of this:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/12/eagle-knocks-drone-sky-australia/31527203/
I was just going to post that link too! Also, scientists are now worried that the noise from(maybe coupled with the sight of?)drones might be too stress-inducing for some animals:
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/bears-are-terrified-ufos
Ah, I now see that Cindy already pointed this out.
Recently a drone was shot down by someone who saw it passing over his house. The drone owner sued and won damages.
The bird would be leucistic rather than albino I think.
I was thinking this too, but leucanism is a mutation in the same biochemical pathway that results in albinism. I expect there are many more ways for a mutation to cause leucanism than albinism though.
Next up, submarine drones for the river. Even Deets will be scared, I think.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the thought that a drone would have an autopilot function. But, for some reason, I was…technology sure has come an awful long way….
b&
It records a home location with GPS (including Russian satellites). I probably would have lost the drone by now without this.
The thought that you can buy a self-stabilizing miniature battery-powered helicopter with GPS-guided autopilot…I mean, damn. That would have been something almost too outlandish for James Bond to have had access to not all that long ago.
b&
I can’t wait for the 4 seat model with fully automatic navigation. Not too far off methinks.
Probably much longer than you think. Never mind the product liability / personal injury nightmare or even just the FAA certification…batteries are a long ways from scaling like that — at least, if you want to spend less on the aircraft than you did on your home.
Somebody’s working on a battery-powered fixed-wing aircraft intended for introductory flight training, if I remember right. It won’t have much range…maybe a comfortable half an hour or so in the air before needing to be recharged. (You can get a lot of instruction in with half an hour in the air.) It’ll cost more to buy than a comparable piston-powered plane, and they ain’t even remotely cheap. On the flip side, if you think gasoline is expensive, try pricing AVGAS — but an electric aircraft would obviously pay the same per-kWh rates as your lightbulbs do. It might have a very limited market for some flight schools, depending on how long it takes to recharge the battery…if it’s not much more than the typical turnaround time, then maybe….
I’d say…when you can go to any car dealership and plop $15,000 on the table for a brand-new electric econobox with a 400-mile range, that’s about when you’ll see electric-powered aircraft start to make serious inroads into the general aviation fleet.
b&
Oh, ye of little faith. I think the infrastructure is already in the works for automatic navigation control. Most passenger aircraft is now largely flying by computer/GPS control. Even my single engine putt-putt has an autopilot based on GPS that can follow a precision approach approach plate almost to the ground. Pilots of the heavies perform mostly like lifeguards on a beach. That’s the real reason they put locks on cockpit doors – they don’t want passengers to know the crew are reading newspapers and tw*ting for most of the trip.
Automatic flying cars will be gradually integrated into the system, using hybrid power sources. In the next 20 or 30 years we will see the change take place. Just like whats happening with ground transportation. The difficulties you perceive are legitimate, but none are insurmountable.
Could be. Two to three decades would be the lower bound of what I’d expect.
b&
Don’t know much about these things but would assume some of them are operating on electric power verses engine? That would make them much quieter and not scare the animals so much.
They’re battery powered. It’s the prop noise that’s disruptive.
I worked down in the “backwoods” of Texas and Louisiana during several winters, years ago, and it was common to see huge flocks of overwintering Robins- at first I thought they were Blackbirds, in the way the flock maneuvered. They acted entirely differently than they do when up North in the Spring: they were extremely flighty and would take off en masse if you got anywhere near them.
Could be the environment, Texas, Louisiana, made them very jumpy. Here in the Midwest I would say they are the least flighty birds. Very interesting anyway.