What’s the world’s prettiest bird?

December 23, 2018 • 9:00 am

After looking at some bird photos sent by a reader, and admiring the lovely lilac-breasted roller, I got to thinking about the world’s prettiest birds.

I’ve never wavered in my conviction that the world’s prettiest bird is the male of the Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno), which I’ve had the privilege of seeing several times in the wild. (They live in montane cloud forests of Central America.) This breathtaking bird has iridescent green feathers and a bright crimson breast, combined with a super long, sexually selected tail and a lovely yellow beak. Males even have a fuzzy crest atop their heads.

It’s the national bird of Guatemala and a drawing of the male appears on all their currency (the unit of currency is in fact called the Guatemalan quetzal, worth about eight American cents). The Mayans used the long tail feathers as currency.

Yes, the quetzal has fewer colors than one can see in, say, the roller or the rainbow lorikeet, but sometimes less is more. And that tail—sometimes nearly twice as long as the male body!

Here are some photos of the species, but I’m urging readers to email me a few words about what they consider the prettiest bird and a link to a good picture. (You can name only one species, and please specify the sex if you choose a sexually dimorphic species.) I’ll collect these for a few days and post them on the 27th (Thursday), and maybe I’ll recruit an independent judge to name The World’s Prettiest Bird. Please do not put your entries in the comments below; email them to me. Thanks!

Male quetzals:

And the female—no slouch in the looks department either:

A one-quetzal banknote:

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 23, 2018 • 7:45 am

Well, it’s time to importune you to send me some good wildlife photos. The drill is that I’d like no more than ten photos, please identify all organisms with the Latin binomial scientific name if you can, and send good photos!  Thanks.

Reader Rachel Wilmoth sent some photos from Africa; her captions are indented. Readers are invited to fill in the eagle and the giraffe subspecies (I do not recognize the existence of more than one species of giraffe!).

Here are some wildlife photos from a trip my boyfriend and I took to Kruger National Park in October. First up are some elephant (Loxodanta africana) photos, including an extreme closeup and a calf with its mother.

Next are some shots of a lioness (Panthera leo) eating a freshly-killed pregnant Greater Kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros). This was a once-in-a-lifetime sight and we were very lucky to capture it.
A cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus).
And a white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum) (up close you can see that they’re built like a tank).
A female leopard (Panthera pardus).
Giraffes (Giraffa). (Sorry, I don’t know the species. Maybe another reader does?)
A species of eagle, although again, I’m unsure of the species.
And finally, a group of spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) cubs.
Also, if you and/or your readers are interested, more photos of the trip can be found here. The URL also includes snorkeling and diving photos of the coast of Mozambique.

Sunday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

December 23, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s Ceiling Cat’s Day: Sunday, December 23, 2018, and National Pfeffernüße Day, a cultural appropriation if there ever was one. Look at the name: it’s a German gingerbread cookie covered with powdered sugar. If you want to eat one, you can do so only while being deeply appreciative of German culture and mindful of how Germans were oppressed. As for us heathens, it’s Humanlight, a secular humanist holiday. But we don’t need no stinking holidays around Christmas, do we? Not even the Seinfeld-ian holiday of Festivus, which is today as well.

Reminder: it’s only two days until Coynezaa begins! Sadly, my holiday has been deeply marred by pervasive reports that Hershey’s chocolate kisses are being produced with broken tips. Nobody seems to know why, but, as HuffPo might say, “Twitter isn’t having it.”

The holiday Google Doodles have begun; today’s gif links to a Christmas song (click on screenshot):

But Grania reports that in the UK the Doodle is this one. I guess Brits don’t believe in Santa but in tea!

History is a bit thin on December 23. On that day in 1783, George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. In 1815, Jane Austen’s novel Emma was first published. Much later, on this day in 1947, the first transistor was demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

On December 23, 1954, the first successful kidney transplant was performed in Boston by J. H. Harrison, J. P. Merrill and J. Murray. It succeeded because, well, read what Wikipedia says:

The Boston transplantation, performed on December 23, 1954, at Brigham Hospital was performed by Joseph Murray, J. Hartwell Harrison, John P. Merrill and others. The procedure was done between identical twins Ronald and Richard Herrick to eliminate any problems of an immune reaction. For this and later work, Dr. Murray received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1990. The recipient, Richard Herrick, died eight years after the transplantation.

On this day in 1972, the 16 survivors of the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 were rescued after 73 days (29 passengers were killed). It’s well known that the survivors made it by subsisting on the flesh of those who died, which is fine with me but horrified many people. Finally, according to Wikipedia, it was on December 23, 1986, that the plane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, [landed] at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling. It was in the air a bit more than nine days! As NASA reported:

Essentially a flying fuel tank, the Voyager lifted off Edwards’ main runway early in the morning of Dec. 14, 1986, rolling down almost the entire length of the 15,000-foot-long runway and scraping off one of its wingtip winglets before it became airborne. When it touched down on the same runway shortly after 8 a.m. on Dec. 23 after nine days, three minutes and 44 seconds in the air, it had less than two hours worth of fuel remaining.

The non-stop unrefueled flight, which more than doubled the previous distance record set in 1962 by a U.S. Air Force B-52H, remains a world record and an unduplicated aeronautical feat.

Here’s the plane:

The plane! The plane!

Notables born on this day include John Jay (1745), Joseph Smith (1805), Edward Blyth (1810), Norman Maclean (1902), Yousuf Karsh (1908), Chet Baker (1929), William Kristol (1952), and Donna Tartt (1963).  Here’s one of Karsh’s famous photographs. The photo’s story is here, and Churchill looks pissed off because, right before Karsh snapped the shutter, he snatched Churchill’s cigar out of his mouth:

Those who joined the Choir Invisible on this day include Lavrentiy Beria (1953; after being found guilty of treason and other crimes, this horrible man was shot while pleading for his life), Peggy Guggenheim (1979), and Oscar Peterson (2007).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is both bored and demanding:

Malgorzata: You do like being petted.
Hili: Yes, but read to me because it’s a little boring.
In Polish:
Małgorzata: Lubisz jak cię głaszczą.
Hili: Tak, ale czytaj głośno, bo nudno.

And a holiday bonus: Leon!

Leon: To get up or not t0 get up, that is the question.

In Polish: Wstać czy nie wstać,oto jest pytanie.

A cartoon courtesy of Moto:

And reader Bruce sent a timely cartoon:

Gethyn shows a cat employing The Force:

https://twitter.com/Animal_R_Us/status/1075763851394572289

From Heather Hastie. I’m not that surprised at the numerous muscles in the cat’s ears, but look at that adorable kitten!

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1076165372301082624

Tweets from Matthew. We’ve seen the first one, but check out the second one. Does the kitten recognize its own image in the mirror?

You have to admit that this is funny. One thing about the internet is that it gives all amateur comedians a stage:

I had no idea that early moviemakers did this!

Another dichotomy:

Matthew says, “From the tracks they obviously had several goes at this, but still . . . ”  Indeed!

Really? A bunny saving a cat? Can’t cats dig?

Tweets from Grania. The first is the way cats are uniquely obstructive at Christmas:

Collection of semen in kakapos. Look at that guy go!

It may take you a second to get this, as it did for me, but get it you will.

 

The blind leading the bland: Nicholas Kristof interviews William Lane Craig

December 22, 2018 • 1:30 pm

When I saw the headline below in the New York Times, I wondered why the deuce Nicholas Kristof wanted to talk to William Lane Craig. But who could NOT read that article after the headline, wanting to see how Craig answered? (Click on screenshot and be prepared to facepalm.)

It turns out that this is part of a series Kristof is doing on Christianity—but again, WHY? At any rate, here are the predecessors:

This is the latest installment in my occasional series of conversations about Christianity. Previously, I’ve spoken with the Rev. Timothy Keller, Jimmy Carter and Cardinal Joseph Tobin. Here’s my interview of William Lane Craig, professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Houston Baptist University.

The interview is a gold mine of apologetics and laughs as Craig weasels and wobbles and waffles about Jesus, Scripture, and miracles. Have a look; I’ll put some of the Q&A below.

It’s hard not to reproduce the entire text! But here we go:

Kristof: Merry Christmas, Dr. Craig! I must confess that for all my admiration for Jesus, I’m skeptical about some of the narrative we’ve inherited. Are you actually confident that Jesus was born to a virgin?

Craig: Merry Christmas to you, too, Nick! I’m reasonably confident. When I was a non-Christian, I used to struggle with this, too. But then it occurred to me that for a God who could create the entire universe, making a woman pregnant wasn’t that big a deal! Given the existence of a Creator and Designer of the universe (for which we have good evidence), an occasional miracle is child’s play. Historically speaking, the story of Jesus’ virginal conception is independently attested by Matthew and Luke and is utterly unlike anything in pagan mythology or Judaism. So what’s the problem?

Note the “(for which we have good evidence)” after he mentions God. That, presumably is Craig’s dumb Kalam Cosmological Argument (read the link), which somehow gets from the assumption that “all things have causes” to “God is the Christian god and Jesus is His son”. He adduces additional “evidence”, like “fine-tuning” later on.

The “problem”, of course, is that even if you accept the existence of a creator, that doesn’t get you to miracles and Jesus.  And “independently” attested by Matthew and Luke? Really? Were they both there when God manufactured a haploid genome and inserted it into one of Mary’s eggs? And how independent were these Gospels? Although “Biblical scholars” (i.e., believers) consider them evidence of the writers being independently motivated by God to write the Truth, I think it more likely that they’re recounting a common myth, or even copying each other.

But wait! There’s more! Craig does some bobbing and weaving after Kristof asks him why he takes the New Testament as gospel truth but not the Old Testament. You’ll enjoy Craig’s response. Then Kristof asks him about why he thinks the New Testament is inerrant. (To be fair, he’s pressing Craig pretty hard, but pressing Craig is like trying to wrestle a greased eel.)

[Kristof] How do you account for the many contradictions within the New Testament? For example, Matthew says Judas hanged himself, while Acts says that he “burst open.” They can’t both be right, so why insist on inerrancy of Scripture?

[Craig] I don’t insist on the inerrancy of Scripture. Rather, what I insist on is what C.S. Lewis called “mere Christianity,” that is to say, the core doctrines of Christianity. Harmonizing perceived contradictions in the Bible is a matter of in-house discussion amongst Christians. What really matters are questions like: Does God exist? Are there objective moral values? Was Jesus truly God and truly man? How did his death on a Roman cross serve to overcome our moral wrongdoing and estrangement from God? These are, as one philosopher puts it, the “questions that matter,” not how Judas died.

But don’t the core doctrines of Christianity include all of us being imbued with Original Sin, that Jesus was crucified and then resurrected, and that there’s an afterlife in which you either go up or you fry. It’s interesting that he says “leave the contradictions to us Christians” and then says the important questions are those that aren’t contradicted but also have no answers. But Craig does think there are “objective moral values”—since he believes in Divine Command Theory, he thinks that whatever God says is correct and moral by virtue of God having said it. Ergo, we can kill anybody who picks up sticks on the Sabbath and curses their parents. I wish Kristof had pressed him on that!

I like this exchange best.

[Kristof] Why can’t we accept that Jesus was an extraordinary moral teacher, without buying into miracles?

[Craig] You can, but you do so at the expense of going against the evidence. That Jesus carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcisms is so widely attested in every stratum of the sources that the consensus among historical Jesus scholars is that Jesus was, indeed, a faith-healer and exorcist. That doesn’t prove these events were genuine miracles, but it does show that Jesus thought of himself as more than a mere moral teacher.

That reminds me of the famous passage from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, where Lewis pretends to exhaust all the possibilities:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

I prefer the Poached Egg Hypothesis, but that’s not acceptable to most people.

Several times in the interview Craig appeals to “the consensus of historical Jesus scholars”, a consensus that of course is based on construing truth from what’s in the Bible. And I’m deeply suspicious of that consensus, especially in the absence of extra-Biblical evidence for even a historical person on which Jesus was grounded.

I remain agnostic about whether there was a real person on which Jesus was based, and even about whether that person could have claimed magical powers (a bit more of a stretch), but, as Craig says, “that doesn’t prove these events were genuine miracles.” Indeed—and there lies the rub that Craig avoids. Even if you accept the premise that some first-century charismatic preacher said he could do magic, that doesn’t mean that he could, or that such a person, now dead, continues to perform miracles.

And there’s this.

[Kristof] Over time, people have had faith in Zeus, in Shiva and Krishna, in the Chinese kitchen god, in countless other deities. We’re skeptical of all those faith traditions, so should we suspend our emphasis on science and rationality when we encounter miracles in our own tradition?

[Craig] I don’t follow. Why should we suspend our emphasis on science and rationality just because of weakly evidenced, false claims in other religions? I champion a “reasonable faith” that seeks to provide a comprehensive worldview that takes into account the best evidence of the sciences, history, philosophy, logic and mathematics. Some of the arguments for God’s existence that I’ve defended, such as the arguments from the origin of the universe and the fine-tuning of the universe, appeal to the best evidence of contemporary science. I get the impression, Nick, that you think science is somehow incompatible with belief in miracles. If so, you need to give an argument for that conclusion. David Hume’s famous argument against miracles is today recognized, in the words of philosopher of science John Earman, as “an abject failure.” No one has been able to do any better.

Although Kristof doesn’t ask him the logical question—”How do you know you’ve found the right god and the right faith?”—it’s implicit in the query. And Craig gives an implicit answer: that Christianity is not as “weakly evidenced” or as “false” as are other faiths. How does Craig know this? Not because the Bible is more credible than the Qur’an, but that Craig has personally experienced “the self-authenticating witness of God’s Holy Spirit.” Yep—”self authenticating” (see the link for a takedown).  And really—”the best evidence for God from contemporary science” is the Cosmological Argument and the fine-tuning argument? I don’t think many physicists would say, “Yes, that evidence pretty much convinces me of a God.”

As far as Hume’s argument against miracles, which is basically that you should accept a miracle only if a genuine God-produced miracle seems more likely than false testimony or dubious claims, that doesn’t seem to me an “abject failure,” but rather an exercise in judicious skepticism. But perhaps you feel otherwise.

I have to say that publishing this interview seems rather dumb, unless it exposes Craig’s philosophical weaknesses to a public that, by and large, considers him serious and learned. But I think people would nod their heads in assent at Craig’s answers.

And perhaps that would be true of all of Craig’s interviews with Christians. But somehow I don’t think, despite Kristof’s hardball questions, that he’s trying to do a number on Christianity.

h/t: Barry

I get emails from theists

December 22, 2018 • 10:00 am

Since my piece on the incompatibility of science and religion was published yesterday at The Conversation, I’ve been bombarded with emails and “requests for interaction” (The Conversation allows readers to contact you this way), with the latter being largely “requests for you to listen to my point of view.”

Here’s an email from someone who found my address and sent me a confusing message masquerading as a request to “engage me in meaningful conversation.” But it doesn’t look like the person (name redacted) wants a meaningful conversation. Rather, the person wants me to absorb his/her/zir views.

I’ve learned two things through bitter experience. The first is that if you try to have a discussion with someone like this, no minds get changed, nor does it wind up as anything besides mutual acrimony.  The second is that I need to learn the lesson given by Christopher Hitchens, who said something like: “Unsolicited emails deserve to go unanswered.” (I’d appreciate it if anyone could give me his actual quote.)

Engagement on social media is pretty much useless with an issue like accommodationism, and my tactic has been to just publish what I think, read some of the comments, and examine my views to see if they need modification. I try not to engage in online catfights or exchanges. The comments posted at The Conversation and, especially, on Pinker’s retweet of my article (see below) are largely ignorant (also ignorant of what I actually wrote), angry, or irrelevant.

Anyway, here’s the email that greeted me this morning.

I appreciate your point of view in the recent article; “Yes, There is a War between Science and Religion” published December 21, 2018. I would like to engage you in meaningful conversation in regards to your view that science and religion are incompatible. I would argue that you are morphing science into a religion in regards to what answers you expect science to be able to produce. I would agree with you that science is the set of tools we as humans use to discover “truth” (a more appropriate term to use in the definition you provide would be facts) about the universe, with the understanding that the truths/facts are provisional rather than absolute. In other words, inductive reasoning allows for the generalization of a set of data or observations to describe the probable way in which the world or some phenomena functions. Repetitive experiments increase the probability of the generalization being true, but there is no possible way in which the generalization could ever be 100% certain, yet alone able to be extended to other areas to make 100% certain predictions in that area. In fact you argue that faith without evidence is a vice. Do you not take many things on faith in performing your experiments? Have you replicated every possible experiment personally and validated its veracity? Of course not, and it is not necessary. However there is some degree of certainty in the uniformity of the universe that allows you to function and to make predications in vastly differing fields. While science has made great and amazing gains in understanding the universe, it still relies on the underlying assumption of uniformity. It would seem to me then that you are suggesting that science would thus be able to function in such a manner distinct from faith? If so, then science has moved beyond science and has become philosophy. What is religion but other than a philosophy? In arguing that science can serve as more than what its capacity as science permits (and subsequently using it to derive meaning) you have made science a religion. You have simply created yet another god to which you adhere to unknowingly.

The reader, as happens so often, mistakes “faith” (the belief in “verities” that lack evidence) with “confidence” (the prior probability you develop from experience). So yes, I don’t assume, when doing an experiment, that a tornado nearby will change the barometric pressure and affect fly behavior. That’s not faith but confidence born of experience.

Likewise, “uniformity” is not a “faith” but an observation that hasn’t been contradicted: the laws of physics operate the same everywhere we know. That’s why we’re able to get probes sent to distant planets, and to confidently make predictions and conclusions based on observing distant bodies. That’s a long way from religious faith, two notions that—at the risk of repeating myself too often—I distinguished in my Slate article “No faith in science.” Thus, the reader’s conclusion that confidence based on experience turns science into a “religion” or “another god” is arrant nonsense.

But the reader went on, immersing him/her/zirself into the quicksand of Sophisticated Theology™. Clearly my definition of religion wasn’t nuanced enough! I’ve put the mindmush in bold:

Moreover your definition of religion is much too simplistic and arguably a straw man. While religion is a social system, it is also much more than what your definition would permit, especially in regards to how it applies to Christianity. You argue for the incompatibility of religion as a belief system in relation to science, I would presume because you view that science is a better belief system. Why else would you be making such an argument as outlined in your article? Religion is at its essence a system of beliefs by which the adherent seeks to come to transcendental truth and meaning. As religion is a philosophy it rests on deductive reasoning. I’m not here to outline the numerous arguments for God. If you are interested, maybe we could have that argument in a future correspondence. I do however want to clarify the view of God that you hold.  From the Aristotelian perspective, God is that which its essence is existence. In other words, God is that which is. Stated another way, God is subsistent being itself. Everything else in the world is contingent upon what we refer to as God (to you it very well may be your assumption of universal uniformity or some other principle). Given that everything in the universe is contingent (nothing sustains itself in being/existence, but can easily perish or go out of existence), we would argue that we are all dependent upon God for existence. Subsequently any action of matter would then be, ultimately, an action of God (through secondary causes). Therefore in relation to your field, evolutionary biology does not explain away God. Once matter is in existence, it has its own set of actions and causes. Therefore life arising from nonliving matter and subsequently changing does not preclude the existence of God. It simply cannot answer, nor can any science fully explain, why there is existence in the first place (even if it is just matter/gravity/universal laws/etc). Science however can detail how the universe works, deepening our understanding and bringing to light the true beauty of God in the universe. Science and religion are absolutely compatible.

This, of course, is the cosmological argument for God, also called the “argument from contingency” or the “first cause” argument. The rebuttals to this claim are numerous and you should already know some of them; I’ll refer you to this section of Wikipedia for the most common ones. Suffice it to say that contingency and first-cause arguments are unconvincing.  The reader’s last sentence, “science and religion are absolutely compatible”, is simply an assertion, apparently resting on his/her/zir bogus argument that science is a religion based on faith.

Here’s a private message I got from The Conversation (name redacted), asking for discourse. How on earth would that be possible here? But I love the last sentence.

Finally, check out some of the 193 comments appended to Pinker’s tweet. I’m pretty sure Steve doesn’t read comments, as he’s busy and most of the comments are pretty nasty.

Here are a few:

https://twitter.com/jacobatkinson99/status/1076252748562206720

Caturday felid trifecta: An iPhone for cats; cat mistakenly shipped to Montreal, cats on glass tables

December 22, 2018 • 9:00 am

This is the last Caturday felid before Coynezaa, but they will continue, as usual, unabated through the holidays.

The first contribution comes from Slate (click on screenshot) and TechCrunch. The upshot is that the fingerprint sensor you can use on an iPhone 5s (I use one on the iPhone 5), also happens to work with cat paws:


Watch a cat’s paw unlock the phone!

From TechCrunch:

As you can see in the video above, Apple’s new fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5s isn’t restricted to human users. After commandeering a cat, I tested a colleague’s hypothesis that you could register the identifying skin segments of your favorite furry friends for Touch ID, too.

The cat’s paw worked, and while it encountered more frequent failures than did a fingerprint, it was able to unlock the phone again repeatedly when positioned correctly on the sensor. Note that no other paw pads would unlock the device, and that cats essentially have unique “fingerprints” just like people, so this doesn’t make the Touch ID sensor any less secure.

For the curious, I also tested the 5s fingerprint sensor on the heel of my palm, as well as on the inside of my forearm up around the wrist, and found that I could register and successfully unlock with both skin regions. Again, it was trickier to get the unlock to work consistently, and trying to fool the sensor by using the same part of the body on the opposing limb never worked.

To clarify, this isn’t a ‘hack’ of Apple Touch ID tech, like the kind a group of individuals is trying to crowdfund via the istouchidhackedyet.com covered earlier this morning by ZDNet. But it is a broadening of the definition of what counts as a “fingerprint” by the iPhone 5s scanner’s standards, so if you think your pet needs access to your accounts, feel free to register them as one of your five stored Touch ID profiles.

This bodes ill for cat owners with iPhones, as your cat can now do butt-dialing and maybe even ordering from Amazon:

***********

From the CBC News (click on screenshot):

From the site:

Baloo, a one-year-old tabby, survived the 17-hour trip to Montreal after crawling into a parcel shipped by his family.

He was spotted by a Purolator worker in Montreal last week.

“[It] could have had a much worse ending so we’re very relieved that he’s doing fine,” said SPCA Montreal communications director Anita Kapuscinska.

The shipping company called the local SPCA when they found Baloo, and the organization was able to track down its owners.

“They couldn’t be more relieved, surprised, thrilled, there were a lot of emotions going on during this phone call with them,” said Kapuscinska.

His trip back to Nova Scotia begins Saturday morning.

Baloo got into a box of tire rims the family was preparing to ship.

“Somehow he managed to sneak into the box when no one was looking and must have taken a little cat nap,” she said.

Baloo is on his way back under much cozier conditions, courtesy of the Freedom Drivers, a network of volunteers that transports animals between shelters.

Only in Kindly Canada would there be an organization that would drive a wayward moggie 1200 km so it could be home for Christmas. The moral: check those boxes before you send them out! Here’s Baloo at the SPCA. He’ll be starting for home today!

 

**********’

Finally, you might know the image of Hovercat on a glass table; it’s an iconic Internet meme (see here). Here are a few more photos of cats on glass contributed by reader Gravelinspector, with his captions:

Tail up, back arched, not happycat.
Catling, glass table, water glass.
Undercarriage:
More undercarriage:

 

h/t: Diana MacPherson, gravelinspector

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 22, 2018 • 8:00 am

Reader Tom Carrolan, who works on raptors, sent us a post about eagles. His notes are indented:

The Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) was an early bird on our Endangered Species List due to DDT use. At the first Earth Day, Syracuse NY’s Onondaga Lake was dead. In addition to a chemical plant, the city dumped raw sewage into the lake. In the early 20th century, bath houses and a full-blown amusement park atmosphere was present. Earlier, as Onondaga Lake is a salt lake, this industry was also present. Nowadays the Bald Eagle wintering population on the lake is fairly large . . .not Alaska or Mississippi River large, but forty wintering eagles is quite a sight! These are Canadian Bald Eagles moving in mid-winter as rivers and lakes freeze over farther north. Obviously, fish have repopulated the lake since the 70s.

This image of eagles landing on a slushy ice mix triggered Sean Kirst’s original Syracuse Post Standard article referenced above. Also we see a partial view of Bald Eagles of various ages in a tree right on the lake shore (it takes this species three years to develop the full white head and tail).

Adult Bald Eagles of the northern subspecies migrate in late winter through early spring. By the end of April into June, the southern population eagles (Florida and Gulf Coast) disperse north, all the way to the Canadian Maritimes. In August, mid-Atlantic and Ohio River Valley. Balds disperse through upstate New York state. September sightings of this species consist almost entirely of southern Balds heading back south for their December nesting. Satellite tracking of the northern birds shows even the youngest ones don’t move south until November. Northern adult migration continues well into December.
This pair was photographed near Onondaga Lake in late February. The female on the left is larger than her mate. Reverse sexual dimorphism is common in our hawks and owls,  and has been studied throughout the later 20th Century. . . looking for rhyme or reason.

This is also a bonded pair sitting not far from Onondaga Lake in winter. Like an old married couple on a long sofa, they are sitting like the image above—but not shoulder to shoulder.

In flight, the adult bird is iconic with a white head and tail. Before Brian Wheeler’s latest volumes, it was “common knowledge” that it took five years to reach this plumage, now we know it develops faster.

One last adult bird, photographed in winter at Onondaga Lake, Syracuse NY. Adults are difficult to photograph as the white head contrasts strongly with the body, making exposure allowances for a bright background difficult. All my in-flight raptor images have a plus overexposure setting to compensate for the bright sky (otherwise you get a nice silhouette… a cardboard cutout of a bird)! For adult Balds and also Osprey, I quickly change that setting as the bird approaches.

Immature bald eagles are all dark brown in their first year’s plumage and various changes occur over the next three years. This is a juvenile eagle showing a feature thought to be diagnostic for this species: note that the underwing coverts are white (leading half of the underwing). The all-brown fuselage varies a bit, and some young birds have white on the lower body toward the tail.

Some first year birds are much darker. The underwing coverts on this juvenile bird are quite dark brown. In September at a hawk watch that doesn’t see many Golden Eagles, this individual might get misidentified. But remember, September Florida Balds are abundant as they migrate south.

Here we see a white tail and a bit of an adult white head on the older immature bird, which also has a black facial mask (like an Osprey). Note the one long, pointed, pale feather at the mid-wing: a retained unmolted feather.

It is easier to see the longer retained feathers here, as there are several. The shorter, blunt feathers are the adult feathers. The pale translucent feathers in the outer wings are also unmolted younger feathers wearing out with age. The tail is still dark, but the head is getting white.

And last, in late April, we have a Florida Bald Eagle dispersing north along Lake Ontario on a warm hazy day. This one probably hatched in late December or early January.