Readers’ wildlife photographs

February 22, 2015 • 8:30 am

Let’s start with an update on Lucy and Desi (and you should all know where those names come from), Stephen Barnard’s pair-bonded eagles who will soon produce a family. Stephen took two pictures and also supplied a caption that can apply to both:

“I’m outta here. See ya later.”
“Bring back a fish!”

Eagle off!

Eagle 2

Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus, from Greek hali- = sea, aiētos = eagle , leuco- = white, cephalos = head)

Reader Elise sent photos from her trip to New Zealand:

These are from the gannet colony at Muriwai Beach west of Auckland. The [Australasian] gannets, Morus serrator, nest off Muriwai from August
through March while raising their young.  There is more information here.


 Gannet Colony 2

Gannet Colony 3

In the close-up picture you can see a couple of the youngsters:

Gannet Colony 1
The other bird picture I have attached is a sad one.  Its a black billed seagull (Chroicocephalus bulleri) that has swallowed a piece of discarded fishing line.  I’m not sure if it has swallowed a hook or not, but either way he was obviously not comfortable but there was nothing I could do for him.  It serves as a reminder of how what we discard can affect wildlife.

Seagull

The silver tree fern picture is from the Abel Tasman coastal walkway.  I like this picture of the ferns (Cyathea dealbata) because you can see the developing fronds (or koru), as well as the green top of a developed frond, and the silver underside of another.

silver fern

I have attached three landscape photos. The first is of Mount Ngauruhoe, a volcano in the middle of the north island which you pass while hiking the Tongariro Crossing.  The day I took the photo was beautifully clear so you can see the unique colors on Ngaurahoe’s perfect cone very nicely. For any Lord of the Rings lovers out there, Ngauruhoe was used as Mt Doom in the movie series.

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The other two are both kayaking photos from the south island.  They were taken 10 days apart.  The first is in Abel Tasman park, the second in Milford Sound.  In the Milford Sound photo I love the contrast between the brightly colored kayak and the misty gray of the fjord.  I also enjoy the contrast between the two photos, the first and last overnight stops on my south island road trip.

Abel Tasman Kayak

Milford Sound Kayak

Last are two sunset photos I took in Auckland.  One downtown in the harbor, the other from the top of Mt Eden (the tallest of the several volcanic cones in Auckland).

Harbor sunset

Mt Eden sunset

The Way I Feel

February 22, 2015 • 6:50 am

I haven’t forgotten about Gordon Lightfoot week; but the songs may appear episodically. We’re listening to music from his first and greatest album, Lightfoot!, which came out in 1966, when I was a junior in high school. “The Way I Feel,” a moving lament for broken love, uses the nature similes common in Lightfoot songs.

And notice the cowboy boots on the album cover:

gordon-lightfoot-1966

Sunday: Hili dialogue

February 22, 2015 • 4:58 am

It’s the Lord’s Day, or rather Ceiling Cat’s Day, and Hili, who looks very cute this morning, is conversing with Sarah—and pwning her.

Hili: The presence of a cat in the middle changes everything.
Sarah: What do you mean by that?
Hili: You wouldn’t take a picture of this bed if I were not here, would you?
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In Polish:
Hili: Obecność kota w centrum zmienia wszystko.
Sarah: Co przez to rozumiesz?
Hili: Chyba nie fotografowałabyś tego łóżka, gdyby mnie tu nie było.

 

Leon’s mountain adventure: Part cinq

February 21, 2015 • 3:45 pm

Leon, the intrepid Polish tabby, is still enjoying his winter hiking vacation in the mountains of Poland, but now there’s a new element: he’s smitten by Balbina, the resident female cat!

Leon: Let’s admire this sunset a bit quicker because Balbina and a scrumptious supper are waiting at the hostel.

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The saucy wench Balbina:

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Leon and Balbina are properly introduced:

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I can’t quite tell whether Leon looks lovestruck in this photo, or if he’s affronted after being rejected by Balbina:

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Cultural commentator Philomena Cunk discusses evolution

February 21, 2015 • 2:35 pm

by Matthew Cobb

We can all learn something from this video:

[JAC: After some puzzlement and quizzing of Dr. Cobb, I found out that this is a spoof of Brian Cox’s television series “Wonders of Life,” and the presenter is the comedian Diane Morgan, who uses the name Philomena Cunk. It was created by satirist Charlie Brooker.  You can see another example of the series’s spoof videos here.

I absolutely love her accent, particularly the way she says “monkey.” I guessed it was Mancunian, and Matthew confirmed that I was nearly correct: it’s from Bolton, which is near Manchester. ]

 

Some good news: Muslims protect a synagogue

February 21, 2015 • 1:29 pm

In the world of terrorism and killing, it’s stuff like this that at least buttresses (though doesn’t restore) my crumbling faith in humanity. I reported yesterday that Muslims in Norway vowed to form a ring around an Oslo synagogue on Sabbath (today) as a symbol of unanimity and protectiveness. According to Reuters, that actually took place. I was worried that it wouldn’t come off, or that only a few Muslims would show up, but the showing was, well, awesome:

More than 1000 Muslims formed a human shield around Oslo’s synagogue on Saturday, offering symbolic protection for the city’s Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark last weekend.

Chanting “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia,” Norway’s Muslims formed what they called a ring of peace a week after Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a Danish-born son of Palestinian immigrants, killed two people at a synagogue and an event promoting free speech in Copenhagen last weekend.

And here’s a photo that brings joy to my heart:

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The photo was attached to a justifiably cynical tw**t from Jenan Moussa, a correspondent for Al Aan TV in the United Arab Emirates:

Screen Shot 2015-02-21 at 1.23.45 PM

Can we prove Moussa wrong? Well, we can’t make the photo and story go viral by ourselves, but we could give it a tweak. Maybe you could put them on your Facebook page?

And a bit more about the “demonstration”—a demonstration in the best sense: of solidarity and amity:

“Humanity is one and we are here to demonstrate that,” Zeeshan Abdullah, one of the protest’s organizers told a crowd of Muslim immigrants and ethnic Norwegians who filled the small street around Oslo’s only functioning synagogue.

“There are many more peace mongers than warmongers,” Abdullah said as organizers and Jewish community leaders stood side by side. “There’s still hope for humanity, for peace and love, across religious differences and backgrounds.”

Norway’s Jewish community is one of Europe’s smallest, numbering around 1000, and the Muslim population, which has been growing steadily through immigration, is 150,000 to 200,000. Norway has a population of about 5.2 million.

h/t: Matthew Cobb

Infinite Monkey Cage tour: announcement deux

February 21, 2015 • 11:20 am

Just a reminder that if you want to go to one of the four live U.S. performances of the hugely popular British BBC Radio 4 science-and-humor show, “The Infinite Monkey Cage” (they’ll be in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles between March 5 and March 13), you’d best buy your tickets now, as I’m told they’re moving fast.  The show will, as always, be a live conversation between the two hosts, physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince, and a panel of four: two scientists and two figures from the entertainment world, often comedians.

The scientists have all been lined up, and a few of the entertainers as well. Joe Rogan’s going to be in L.A., and there will be a special guest performance there (presumably musical) by Eric Idle. I’m jealous, for though I’ll be one of the scientists on the Chicago panel (along with my paleontologist colleague Paul Sereno), we get no Python.

However, they just announced the first “entertainer” for our show, and I’m delighted to see that it’s Peter Sagal, author, playwright and host of the popular National Public Radio show “Wait wait. . . don’t tell me!”—one of the few NPR shows (beside the news) that I actually listen to.

You can buy tickets for the Chicago event here, and for the other events at the first link above.

I was alerted to this tw**t about the event that Sagal emitted yesterday.

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Though it thought that this surely must have been a joke, I still had a moment of panic. How could this Harvard-educated polymath possibly be a creationist? So I did some frantic Googling and of course found that Sagal clearly accepts evolution:

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And in fact fact Sagal wrote a play about Holocaust denial. From Wikipedia:

In April 2007, his play Denial received its New York premiere at the Metropolitan Playhouse on the Lower East Side. The play, which portrays a Jewish lawyer who represents a Holocaust denier, has also been recorded by the L.A. Theatre Works company. Sagal is also credited as co-writer of the movie Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.

Sagal is a marathon runner who completed the 2007 Boston Marathon. He ran a portion of the Chicago Marathon in 2011. He was present near the explosions at the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.

Hundreds attend funeral of Copenhagen’s murdering terrorist

February 21, 2015 • 10:10 am

Okay, maybe Omar El-Hussein, the guy who killed a filmmaker at a cafe and a security guard at a synagogue in Copenhagen, might have had a lot of friends and relatives in Denmark, but I doubt that had he died a natural death, more than 500 people would have turned up for his funeral.

But According to Denmark’s The Local website, and the video below, the funeral was really crowded.  I suspect that many of these people were there not there purely out of grief, but to express solidarity with El-Hussein’s heinous and brutal crime. That’s supported by the description of the funeral:

Friday’s funeral was open to the public but according to a report from wire service Ritzau was mostly attended by young men, who were described as “wearing large black coats with many of them having covered their faces”.

 Copenhagen Police sent out a press release prior to the service urging anyone attending to “show appropriate respect” while Kasem Said Ahmad, who conducted the burial ceremony, told Jyllands-Posten that he would require everyone to “remain silent”.

 Ahmad rejected media suggestions that a large turnout at the funeral would be a sign of support for the alleged killer.

“It is support for the family, not for him,” he said. “I do not think that anyone is coming to pay homage to him.”

Seriously? 500 people turn up for a 22-year-old murderer, most of the “mourners” men, and some with faces covered? Who is Ahmad fooling? I feel no guilt about suggesting that what happened here was a covert show of support for El-Hussein’s terrorism. Although most European Muslims don’t commit violence, I suspect—based on Islamic behavior in the rest of the world, including Australia—that many secretly applaud the kind of murders that El-Hussein committed. Since it’s unseemly in Denmark to celebrate by firing guns, shouting in glee, and handing out sweets (as the Palestinians do when their terrorists kill Israeli citizens), El-Hussein’s supporters “celebrate” by attending his funeral.

There seems to be a bit more dissembling in the further description of the funeral:

22-year-old Omar El-Hussein — identified by police as the shooter behind two fatal shootings last weekend —  was buried at a Muslim cemetery in the Copenhagen suburb of Brøndby despite objections from the Islamic group that owns it.

The group said it had considered denying a request by El-Hussein’s parents of to have him buried in the group’s Muslim cemetery, but that its rules did not allow for it.

“My concern is over extremist attitudes and actions on both sides,” Ahmet Deniz, head of the Islamic Burial Fund’s support group told Jyllands-Posten. “Both from his friends and from young Danish people who perhaps could also riot later.”

Well, I have no objections myself to them burying the murderer anywhere they want, but really, to express concern over “extremist attitudes and actions on both sides”? I haven’t seen Danish citizens murdering Muslims, or even rioting. What I have seen are sad and silent vigils by Danes and other Europeans. Deniz is trying to downplay the murders by equating the potential “extremism” of Danes with the actual extremism of celebrating this crime.

h/t: Jelger