Readers’ wildlife photographs

February 17, 2016 • 8:00 am

Reader Damon Williford sent us a passel of bird photos, and some spiders, too. Without further ado:

Gadwalls (Anas strepera):

1_Gadwalls

Redhead (Aythya americana):

2_Redhead

Red-breasted merganser (Mergus serrator):

3_Red-breasted Merganser

Sora (Porzana carolina):

4_Sora

Burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia):

5_Burrowing Owl

The last 8 are permanent residents of South Texas, including a White Ibis (Eudocimus albus, immature), Common Pauraque (Nyctidromus albicollis, a nightjar), Golden-fronted Woodpecker (Melanerpes aurifrons), Inca Dove (Columbina inca), White-tipped Dove (Leptotila verreauxi), Black-crested Titmouse (Baeolophus atricristatus), Clay-colored Thrush (Turdus grayi, formerly known as the Clay-colored Robin), Lark Sparrows (Chondestes grammacus), and an Olive Sparrow (Arremonops rufvirgatus). The Common Pauraque, White-tipped Dove, Clay-colored Thrush, and Olive Sparrow reach the northernmost limit of their ranges in deep South Texas.

White Ibis:

6_White Ibis

Common Pauraque:

7_Common Pauraque

Golden-fronted Woodpecker:

8_Golden-fronted Woodpecker

Inca Dove:

8_Inca Dove

White-tipped Dove:

9_White-tipped Dove

Black-crested Titmouse:

10_Black-crested Titmouse

Clay-colored Thrush:

11_Clay-colored Thrush

Lark Sparrows:

12_Lark Sparrows

Olive sparrow:

13_Olive Sparrow

The last 2 photos are of a jumping spider, Platycryptus undatus, that I took last December. I’m hoping to get a lot more photos of arthropods this year.

2015-12-24 jumping spider 2 (CO RD 82B, Sinton)

Wikipedia notes this about the spider:

The bodies of these spiders are rather compressed in the vertical direction, which allows them to hide themselves under the loosened bark of trees and in other tight places. They have a prominent pattern on their abdomens which may make them more difficult to distinguish on mottled surfaces.

2015-12-24 jumping spider 3 (CO RD 82B, Sinton)

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

February 17, 2016 • 6:30 am

Sleeping is still difficult for me, and therefore braining will be as well today. I ask your indulgence. On this day in 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned alive for heresy in Rome. In 1904, “Madame Butterfly” premiered at La Scala in Milan, and, in 1933, the ill-advised experiment of Prohibition finally ended in the U.S. Births on this day included Gene Pitney in 1940, Huey Newton in 1942, Michael Jordan in 1963, and Paris Hilton in 1981; while deaths included Geronimo n 1909, Thelonious Monk in 1982, and Lefty Gomez in 1989. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Sarah, Malgorzata’s friend and co-translator, is visiting for a few weeks, and she is taking excellent pictures of Hili (one is below). And Andrzej just published a new book, which, sadly, is solely in Polish.  But the box in which his books arrived (below) was taken up by Hili, who heretofore hasn’t shown any interest in boxes. But I guess this is the right kind of box. Sadly, Andrzej found it too obstructive, and burned it, much to Hili’s annoyance.

Hili: I have a question for my friends.
A: What question?
Hili: My copy is here, what about yours?

(Photo: Sarah Lawson)

000_0043
In Polish:
Hili: Mam pytanie do moich przyjaciół.
Ja: Jakie?
Hili: Do mnie już przyszły książki, a do was?
(Zdjęcie: Sarah Lawson)
Squee: the Toronto Zoo has released a video of its two four-month-old panda cubs learning to walk. Click on the screenshot below to see the fun (video in a NY Daily News article):
Screen shot 2016-02-17 at 5.35.15 AM
And some woodpecker lagniappe from reader Randy Schenck in Iowa:
Woodpeckers are present in large quantity today: I believe both Downy (Picoides pubescens) and Hairy (Picoides villosus)
Birds 16 Feb. 2016 002
Don’t forget to feed the birds and squirrels, folks!

NY Times editor proclaims that science and religion are compatible

February 16, 2016 • 2:00 pm

 

I’ve long maintained that both the New Yorker and the New York Times are unconscionably soft on religion, even though I suspect that many of their writers and editors are atheists. (A welcome exception is Lawrence Krauss’s recent New Yorker essays on atheism, such as this one).

But the good gray Times remains a resolute “believer in belief”— even being accommodationist in their views about science and religion. In fact, a new Sunday Book Review piece by James Ryerson, a senior staff editor for  the paper’s op-ed page, is explicit about it, as is clear from his title: “The twain shall meet.” The “twain”, of course, are science and religion. The essay simply rehashes the shopworn accommodationist tropes, so there are no new ideas. Ryerson simply trots out dubious claims to show that science and religion are harmonious.

You can intuit Ryerson’s biases from the outset, simply by the way he characterizes nonbelievers (my emphases):

In recent years, the scientists and polemicists known as the New Atheists have been telling a certain type of evolutionary story.

and

The real reason the New Atheists doubt the claims of religion, Jones contends, isn’t that religious beliefs have natural causes (what beliefs don’t?); it’s that these crusaders are convinced that science is the only arbiter of reality and truth.

Would Ryerson use words like that to describe passionately religious people? I don’t think so. At any rate, here are his tired talking points:

a. Just because religion had a tangible origin in human mentality (say, as the “agency detection device” touted by Pascal Boyer) doesn’t mean it’s wrong. 

Research shows that children instinctively believe in God, but this doesn’t mean that Thomas Aquinas was just a big dumb kid. Religious convictions can be, and often are, shaped by sustained sophisticated reflection. The real reason the New Atheists doubt the claims of religion, Jones contends, isn’t that religious beliefs have natural causes (what beliefs don’t?); it’s that these crusaders are convinced that science is the only arbiter of reality and truth. They may be right about that. But that is a philosophical claim, Jones reminds us, not a scientific one.

Well, I agree with the claim in bold, but this doesn’t mean that religious beliefs are true, either! In fact, I’d maintain that the more science tells us about the evolutionary and psychological roots of religion, the less likely we can see religious belief as something given us by God (a common belief), or even as something that’s revealed to us by God. After all, different believers have different religious convictions. Are the beliefs of a moderate Sunni Muslim theologian correct, or are the beliefs of semi-liberal Catholic theologian John Haught? They can’t both be right, even if both are formed by “sustained Sophisticated Reflection™.” (How “sophisticated” can reflection be, anyway, if there’s no evidence for one’s beliefs?)

And really, Aquinas was smart and savvy, and may not have been a “big dumb kid”, but he was a big deluded kid. Aquinas, for instance, believed in many types of angels, and wrote extensively about their actions and nature (read his “Treatise on Angels” in Summa Theologica). I defy Ryerson to tell me why that’s “sophisticated”!

As for science being the “only arbiter of reality and truth”, which I pretty much believe, that may be a philosophical claim, but it smells like an empirical one; and at any rate I’ll deny it when Ryerson shows me how religion can be an arbiter of reality and truth. What has Sophisticated Reflection shown us to be true about God?

b. The conflicts between religion and science are exaggerated.

Also important to the New Atheist movement is the idea that religion and science are opposites, competing forms of inquiry that have been locked in a zero-sum struggle for supremacy. Many of the essays in the anthologyNEWTON’S APPLE AND OTHER MYTHS ABOUT SCIENCE (Harvard University, $27.95), edited by the historian of science Ronald L. Numbers and the researcher Kostas Kampourakis, challenge this dichotomy. To start with, the historical episodes commonly understood to be exemplars of this conflict — from Giordano Bruno’s execution as a scientific martyr to the uniformly hostile religious reception of Darwin’s “Origin of Species” — are frequently misunderstood or misrepresented. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory, for example, did not in fact threaten to demote the exalted place of humans in the universe: The Earth was previously thought to be at the center, i.e., in the gutter, of the world, where filth and disorder gathered. Nor did Copernicus or most other early modern advocates of the new astronomy think it was incompatible with Christianity.

Ronald Numbers has based his career on arguing that things like the Galileo affair and the Scopes trial weren’t “really about religion”, but were about politics and other stuff. And granted, there were other factors, but flatly denying that these episodes instantiated clashes between faith and science is to brand yourself as biased. (Notice that while Copernicus and Galileo may not have thought their views were in conflict with Christianity, the Pope sure did!) In addition, Ryerson conveniently leaves out the many ways that religion has opposed science and still does: the introduction, for instance, of vaccination, lightning rods, and anesthesia were fought by religion, and a fair amount of global-warming denialism still comes from the ambit of faith. And don’t forget the legal pass that Christian Scientists and other faith-healing sects get when they kill their children by neglecting medical care in favor or prayer. Or the fact that in 47 of the 50 states, you can avoid getting your child vaccinated by claiming religious exemption. (In only 20 states will a philosophical objection get you a pass.)

c. Religion gave rise to science and the scientific method.

Religious considerations have also influenced science in constructive ways, as the intellectual historian Peter Harrison notes in an essay about the “conflict myth.” The work of 17th-century figures like Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton was informed by their religious thinking. The very notion of a “law of nature” was at first a theological idea. And even the experimental method itself may be indebted to theological notions of human nature that emphasize our intellectual and perceptual fallibility. Indeed, the “conflict” idea is fairly new: Historians trace it back only to the 19th century, though Harrison observes that many of its characteristic themes (ignorance versus knowledge, superstition versus rationality) appear in 17th-century Protestant polemics against Catholicism for being “anti-science.” Only the villain has changed.

I deal with these claims in Faith versus Fact, and the verdict is: we don’t know. Yes, surely some discoveries were prompted by numinous or goddy ideas, but against that we must see the way the medieval Church held back science. We have no idea whether science would be further along now had religion never existed. But what we can say is that, at present, religion isn’t palpably advancing science, since most good scientists are atheists—including 93% of the National Academy of Sciences in the US and 86% of the Royal Society. As for evolution education, there’s no doubt that religious views are holding as back.  Finally, as for the experimental method resulting from theology, as a check on the fallacies of perception, well, Ryerson is just whistling in the dark. He’s making it up with no evidence to support his claim. That again shows his biases. And if the “conflict” idea is new, well, pretty much everyone in the West was religious a few centuries ago, so there was no soil in which that seed could sprout.

The rest of Ryerson’s essay is curiously disjointed, with some deprecatory remarks about intelligent design (Gad! He’d better!), and then a nod to a new book on science blogging.

The main incompatibility between science and religion is one to which Ryerson alludes but then ignores: which of the two areas (or both) are “arbiters of reality and truth”? To answer that one we can confidently claim that science is but religion isn’t, if for no other reason than that there’s only one brand of science, with most scientists agreeing on what’s true, but there are tens of thousands of brands of religion, many making conflicting and incompatible claims. If religion has arrived at some truth or knowledge of reality, let Mr. Ryerson tell us what it is. If he can’t, then he must explain why there’s such a difference between the two areas. Could it be that religion, although it arrogates unto itself many claims about reality, has no way to see whether they’re true?

h/t: Greg Mayer

The Authoritarian Left reaches rock bottom: The “no-platforming” of Peter Tatchell in the UK

February 16, 2016 • 10:15 am

Like the Russian revolutionaries after 1917, the progressive left—including atheists—are beginning to eat their own. I find it infinitely depressing to see people at each other’s throats about issues of semantics, censorship and virtue signaling, while the malfeasance of our opponents—conservatives and repressive religionists—goes unchallenged. I’m not exactly sure why this is happening, but I do know that it’s not only divisive and unseemly, but unproductive and solipsistic.

The latest ridiculous performance in this charade is the “no-platforming” of Peter Tatchell, an LGBT and liberal activist who has spent his entire adult life campaigning for gay rights, gay marriage, and for humanitarian causes like opposing the Iraq war and apartheid. (Read his Wikipedia bio to get an idea of the breadth of his activism.)

But now he’s a victim of the Authoritarian Left, suffering the death of a thousand smears for not hewing to Acceptable Behavior. He’s been “no-platformed” (i.e., subject to a student fatwa to be denied venues to speak) by Britain’s ban-happy National Union of Students (NUS) and its intolerant minions.

What did Tatchell do? Only this: objecting to the “no platforming” of people whom the Authoritarian Left doesn’t like. On Valentine’s Day of last year, he and several dozen others signed a letter to the Guardian decrying the no-platforming of people like Kate Smuthwaite, Julie Bindel, Germaine Greer, and others. The letter, called “We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals,” was not an endorsement of the views of these people (often dealing with how we should deal with transgender individuals and sex workers), but merely a call to let them speak. Other signers included Mary Beard and Gia Milinovich. Do read the letter; here are its final two paragraphs:

“No platforming” used to be a tactic used against self-proclaimed fascists and Holocaust-deniers. But today it is being used to prevent the expression of feminist arguments critical of the sex industry and of some demands made by trans activists. The feminists who hold these views have never advocated or engaged in violence against any group of people. Yet it is argued that the mere presence of anyone said to hold those views is a threat to a protected minority group’s safety.

You do not have to agree with the views that are being silenced to find these tactics illiberal and undemocratic. Universities have a particular responsibility to resist this kind of bullying. We call on universities and other organisations to stand up to attempts at intimidation and affirm their support for the basic principles of democratic political exchange.

I happen to think that transgender individuals should be treated as full members of the sex they feel they are, and that sex work should, properly regulated, be legal, but I am still on the side of the letter’s signatories: there is a real debate to be had here, and one that should not be suppressed. The fastest social progress comes through open debate, not censorship or repression.

Nevertheless, Tatchell has been attacked as a racist and a transphobe, largely for signing that letter. As yesterday’s Torygraph reports:

The well-known activist was due to take part in a debate on tonight with Fran Cowling, a National Union of Students representative for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, but she pulled out after claiming that he was a bigot.

Miss Cowling, a PhD student at Nottingham University, said she would only take part if Mr Tatchell withdrew from the event, accusing him of having used racist language and signing an open letter supporting the incitement of violence against transgender people.

Cowling claimed she was speaking for the NUS itself, which was apparently untrue, but she clearly reflects the views of that body, which (along with Cowling herself) has refused to be interviewed on the matter. As for those other accusations, Tatchell replied yesterday:

She has every right to do this. But she does not have any right to make false McCarthyite-style smears. When asked to provide evidence of my supposed racism and transphobia, she was not willing to do so. There is none. Privately I tried to get her to withdraw her outrageous, libelous allegations. But she spurned all my attempts to resolve this matter amicably. As a result I have decided to take my case public.

. . . In another email to the LGBT event organiser, Fran made the allegation that she has personally witnessed me using racist language. Untrue. I challenged Fran to produce evidence for this claim. She has failed to produce it – because the accusation is baseless.

. . . Fran also said that I signed a letter to The Observer last year [JAC: same letter to the Guardian] supporting the right of feminists to be “openly transphobic” and to “incite violence” against transgender people. The letter I signed did not say this. Written in support of free speech, it did not express any anti-transgender views or condone anti-transgender violence. For decades, I have opposed feminists such as Germaine Greer who reject and disparage transgender people and their human rights.

Clearly Tatchell is standing up for free expression and debate, not endorsing the views of Germaine Greer. I myself have found no evidence of his “racism” or “transphobia”, and Cowling is clearly lying about that letter, which you can read for yourself (the relevant excerpt is above).

Is this “censorship”? Not in one sense, as Tatchell doesn’t have a right to speak at any private meeting. But in another way it is censorship. If someone is invited to an event and then is disinvited, or someone who’s already agreed to speak at an event withdraws because they don’t like the views of another invited speaker, then that is a kind of censorship, as it constitutes breaking an agreement previously made in an effort to prevent someone’s views from being expressed and heard. “No-platforming” is simply widespread censorship of this form, trying to formalize the banning of speakers in many places. No-platforming as a policy is fascistic, telling everyone that a given speaker is subversive and dangerous. It’s right out of 1984. The NUS has become Big Brother.

This is unconscionable. After all, Tatchell is not Hitler: he’s merely asked for some people—people whose views he opposes!—to be allowed to speak. There are public debates to be had about transgendered people and the legalization of sex work, and why should they not be had? What are people like Cowling afraid of? That their views will lose in an open forum? I don’t think so, for society is increasingly sympathetic, for instance, to the plight of transgendered people. No, the Banning Crowd is trying to stifle its philosophical opponents, and doing it by lying and smearing them. (Cowling’s behavior, by the way, may constitute libel in the UK.)

I asked Grania about “no platforming”, and she sent me an informative reply:

Well, the name certainly appears in an old-ish movement going back to the 80s called No Platform for Racists (it may in fact pre-date this in other forms). It was about not providing a platform for violent fascists and racists of the Neo-Nazi variety at trade union meetings, student meetings and the like. It was the start of the defining of “hate speech”.

Its intentions were noble (although ultimately doomed; see Kenan Malik’s interview, “Why hate speech should not be banned”): to prevent genuine harm or violence to minority or oppressed or vulnerable groups.

In the ensuing 35 years, what constitutes hate speech has, however, become ever more refined to the point of absurdity in some cases.

No-platforming today generally tends to refer to someone being invited and then dis-invited to speak publicly at some event. However, in a broader sense it also involves portraying a person’s character in as negative a light as possible to deter anyone from inviting them to speak (or do business with them, or employ them, or promote them in any way).

It is in effect a 21st-century attempt to excommunicate someone deemed as undesirable. It’s only achievable now (as opposed to 20 years ago) as a result of the Internet turning the world into something of a village again.

The weird thing about the current wave of no-platforming is that the targets tend chiefly to be outspoken advocates of human rights and equality.

Granted, the targets are not exclusively of the Namazie, Tatchell, Dawkins and Hirsi Ali ilk. There are right-wing targets too, like Roosh V (the pickup artist and accused promoter of rape) as well as Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

But the bottom line is that there is a tendency now not to confront ideas that are deemed offensive or troubling. It is more effective to simply shut down those you deem as undesirable. And this is usually achieved by a smear campaign which insinuates that the targets advocate damaging ideas and dangerous actions, regardless of whether those people actually have or not.

I agree with Grania’s thoughtful analysis. What is going on here is not the challenging of ideas, or the promulgation of open debate, but the labeling and smearing of opponents in an attempt to destroy their public reputations. It is ad hominem argumentation. When Cowling says that the letter Tatchell signed is “openly transphobic” and “incites violence against transgenedered people,” she is lying, pure and simple. And it’s easy to find her lies: just read the letter. She’s hoping, I guess, that people either won’t read it or, carried away by their emotions, will say that Tatchell is a transphobe and bigot anyway.

I wonder what these authoritarian Lefists think they are accomplishing. They are not winning the debate in the public eye, for people are not stupid, and—or so I think—view “no-platforming” as unfair and underhanded: a tactic used by privileged crybullies.

And do the no-platform crowd really think that people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Maryam Namazie, Peter Tatchell, Germaine Greer and Kate Smurthwaite are dangers to society—so dangerous that their views simply shouldn’t be aired? What kind of trust of public opinion and democracy does that denote? The authoritarians are arrogating to themselves the right to determine which views can be heard and which should be repressed. This is precisely what Christopher Hitchens saw as the danger to free speech: who do you trust to decide what is offensive?

It is a world turned upside down when organizations like the Goldsmiths College Feminists try to prevent Maryam Namazie from speaking, siding with the Goldsmith Islamic Society against a woman who fights the religious oppression of women. In the end, the Authoritarian Left is working against its own interests.

Screen Shot 2016-02-16 at 8.15.11 AM
Peter Tatchell

 

h/t: Grania, Gregory

How Iranian women would dress if the theocracy disappeared

February 16, 2016 • 9:00 am

A while back I posted results of a Google Image search for “women Kabul 1970” and “women Tehran 1970” and compared the images with those from 2000 (Kabul) and 2010 (Tehran). The results were striking: in the 1970s women in both nations dressed as they wanted, with hair, legs, and arms exposed to the open air. Now, in these theocratic countries, women are put in sacks and veils. Did their desires of what to wear change that much in 30-40 years, or was it religious structures that came with religious governments? (Have a look at the photos.)

In December I also put up some largely unknown photos by Hengameh Golestan, a woman photographer who documented a huge protest by women against the headscarf in Tehran in 1979—right after the revolution started dictating women’s dress.

And remember “Stealthy freedoms of Iranian women,” a Facebook page (no longer extant, I think, but replaced by #MyStealthyFreedom), in which women bravely (and illegally) ditched their mandatory hijabs, positively luxuriating in letting their hair flow free? (There are some wonderful posts at the active link.) How can anyone maintain that the women in Iran and Afghanistan are veiled because they want to be? If those countries weren’t theocracies, those hijabs would vanish in a second.

Now, at the site Atchuup, there are some amazing photos of Iranian magazine ads from the 1970s showing how clothing was advertised to women in the 1970s. Here are a few samples; can you imagine this now? The point is not whether Iranian women actually dressed these ways, though if you look at photos from the 1970s you’ll see that they weren’t veiled or put in sacks. There are two points: first, that it was okay to advertise this kind of clothing in magazines:

iran-women-70s-2

iran-women-70s-20

iran-women-70s-16

iran-women-70s-17

. . . and second, that it was okay to look like this:

Screen Shot 2016-02-16 at 8.54.06 AM

Iran, 1970 (2)

For more photos, go here.

Is there anybody obtuse enough to think that if Iran or Afghanistan had a secular government, and if the hold of conservative Islam was loosened, many women wouldn’t, within a generation, look like those shown in the two photos above? And you know what that means: their present veiling and bagging is not of their own choice, but comes from the strictures of faith.

h/t: Peter

Readers’ wildlife videos: The final guided flight of the whooping cranes (and blackbird lagniappe)

February 16, 2016 • 7:45 am

Tara Tanaka is now our Official Website Wildlife Cinematographer™ for her plethora of wonderful digiscoped photos of the beasts and birds of the field and air. In honor of her title, I’m putting up two of her new videos today. Be sure to watch them on full screen, enlarged and with the resolution set to 1080 p High Definition status (after clicking the arrows to enlarge, click the “HD” symbol at the bottom and set to “1080”).

The first video shows the final guided migration—yes, the last one ever—in which endangered whooping cranes (Grus americana) will be led by an ultralight aircraft to their wintering grounds in Florida from their summering site in Wisconsin. The people involved in this effort, “Operation Migration,” are stalwart and dedicated, and I hope their efforts will not be in vain. I’m not sure why they’re ending this program; perhaps a reader can tell us why. The latest notes on the program by Joe Duff, including photos of the release of the “class of 2015” graduates, can be seen here, and you can donate to the program here ($10 gets you a wristband and entry into a lottery for binoculars).

At any rate, Tara filmed the last flying leg of the trip on January 30. Note below that because of bad weather, 6 cranes were hauled the last 23 miles in a truck. Tara’s notes follow above her great video, the best I’ve seen of this program (note that the ultralight pilot is wearing a crane suit and the plane is painted to resemble a huge crane!). Don’t miss this video!

With emotions swinging from the low of knowing that there would be only one more flight after this one for Operation Migration, to the thrill of seeing the Class of 2015 appear on the tail of the ultralight, back to sadness as they disappeared in the distance — I was fortunate to witness and capture this video of them as they left Climax, GA this morning. Their final stopover is in Leon County before they fly their final leg to their wintering grounds at St. Marks NWR. For those unfamiliar with Operation Migration, you can read more here.

After they were picked up by the ultralight and were disappearing into the distance, they started to spread out, and within a few seconds all six headed off to the left and had to be regrouped. I don’t know what happened between the time that they disappeared at 5:44 in the video and when they reappeared at 5:46 when they can be seen headed back our way, but we were treated to another close fly-by before they made a much more well-behaved exit.

There were a lot of trees, but fortunately I was shooting the video using manual focus, so I was able to keep the birds in focus even when they were behind the trees. A large tree trunk even got between the birds and the camera twice, but I just kept panning and they reappeared again on the other side.

It sometimes appears that the prop is going very slowly, or even stops or goes backwards – all of which is just an illusion resulting from the frame rate of the video relative to the speed of the prop.

UPDATE 2/6/16: In what had to be one of the most difficult and selfless decisions of the OM program, it was decided to crate and drive the 6 cranes the last 23 miles to their winter home at St. Marks NWR. Conditions looked favorable on 2/6, but when the winds proved much too strong that morning, the decision was made to not delay the release of the cranes any longer. I thought I was filming the next to the last flight, but as it turned out, this was the last flight that Whooping Cranes will make following an ultralight, at least for the foreseeable future.

This video was shot in 4K using a Panasonic GH4 mounted on a Swarovski STX85 spotting scope using a Digidapter – a method called digiscoping.

I’m not sure what the blackbirds below are nomming in the water; perhaps a reader can identify the corn-like objects.

In 2009 we reported 130 Rusty Blackbirds [Euphagus carolinus] in our yard, and I believe that we had as many as 180 in 2007. The species has seen sharp declines over recent years. I’ve been seeing 1 or 2 Rustys this year, then as many as 5 in the last few days, but yesterday I was photographing Wood Ducks when I saw at least 20. In the past, there has been a strong predominance of females, but yesterday there were more males than females. Their “rusty gate” sounds can be heard in the background, mixed in with some Red-winged Blackbirds, and two Barred Owls at the end. This location is on the edge of a 45-acre cypress swamp in northern Florida.

This location is on the edge of a 45-acre cypress swamp in northern Florida.

This video was digiscoped in 4K using a GH4 + 20mm/1.7 + Digidapter mounted on a Swarovski STX 85 spotting scope using manual focus.

Tara’s flickr site is here, and her vimeo channel here.

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

February 16, 2016 • 6:30 am

One week from today I’ll be in Halifax for a book talk that takes place on Feb. 23, and then for a similar talk in Ottawa on the 26th; you can see the announcements here. On this day in history, Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba in 1959 after the Revolution, Francis Galton was born in 1822, as was science journalist Natalie Angier in 1958. Leslie Gore died on February 16 a year ago at the age of 68. Nobody ever owned her. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is marooned atop the shed that covers the well. She’s perfectly capable of getting down, but of course wants somebody to come outside, pick her up, and put Her Highness on the ground.  Her hackles appear to be up.

Hili: I’m in two minds…
A: What about?
Hili: Whether I should jump, at the risk of getting hurt, or order you to lift me down.
P1030894a

In Polish:

Hili: Trochę się zastanawiam…
Ja: Nad czym?
Hili: Czy zeskoczyć, a wtedy mogę sobie zrobić krzywdę, czy kazać ci, żebyś mnie zdjął?

Reader Taskin sent a Facebook video of a Nowegian cat, Jesper, who likes to tow his staff when they’re on skis! As Taskin asked rhetorically, “You gotta wonder how stuff like this gets started!” Click on the screenshot to see this video. Jesper beats Leon for sheer persistence in the snow.

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Finally, Marie Cournoyer, who clearly has a serious squirrel fetish, sends another “petit ami”,  encounterd in the Parc du Mont-St-Bruno. The squirrel ran up to her and her husband Claude, did some investigation and body-climbing, and ran off. Canadian squirrels are quite brave (and polite):

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