Sometimes you forget

 Sometimes you forget how awesome this planet is. Nothing reminds you of that quicker than a good shot from a helicopter flyby!

Turn up the volume.

*Face Palm*

Left: Ruby-crowned kinglet; right: Hutton's vireo

So everything I've been calling a Hutton's vireo on campus is probably a ruby-crowned kinglet!

I was talking to my Stats professor, who is an avid birder, and he was telling me how nice it is this time of year with all the kinglets hiding out in the patches of rhododendron. And then I said I've been seeing lots of vireos in the rhododendron...And then we did this:
But do they not look very similar?! Arrrrgh! You know this isn't the first time I called a kinglet something else. For some reason my mind never makes that connection. Next time, will note the thinner bill and single wing bar. I also never saw the ruby crest so that would have been an obvious indicator:

Look who's out of the water!

Trapped! In a glass prison!
I was changing his tank yesterday and recreated his beach but this time added a cushy bed of sphagnum moss on top of the pebbles. It holds a lot of moisture and is definitely more comfortable to move around in than the pebbles.

Phaeton completely out of the water now! He lost a lot of weight during the 'Time of Great Change'. I would like to find more varying food sources for him now, though the worms have been great and very nutritious.

Phaeton Update - Hooray for lungs!

One of my favorite pictures of Phaeton. His eyes were so sparkly!

Balancing on his decorative jars.

Learning to breathe!!

I collected this shedding. It was a nice big continuous piece too.

Mar 12 - What welcomed me as I came in this morning! He was trying so hard to get up there! I have to collect some moss and dirt now and fix him up a new tank soon!

"Of the House"

This House Sparrow is a resident of Montmartre! What a life it must lead! The best pastry leftovers to feast on!
My uncle took me here last March (wow a year already!) and these are the most fearless sparrows I have met. I could not have been standing more than 4 ft when I took this shot!

I was originally going to start this piece off by discussing the House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, perhaps the most pedestrian of winged creatures. But I think the bigger story here is how we choose to look at the world and value critters like the "lowly" P. domesticus. So here we go:

I think many of you who know me know that I can easily find most anything interesting and thus worthy of a few minutes of contemplation. But I realize that trait is not present for everyone out there. There have been some posts where I thought readers would lose interest for sure due to the seemingly dull subject matter discussed. You know I can't hold giant birds every week :) So sometimes I do think to myself: "Is anyone going to care about this slug I found on my walk?" or "Will anyone be interested in corn tiling and field drainage?"

Eh. But I start writing anyways because sometimes it's a slow week. And you know what, no matter what it is, there is always a story to be told. Dig deeper and suddenly everything has a fascinating narrative.

There are many people in science who seek out those narratives, who see something overlooked and throw it under a microscope (I can think of a few right now as I type)! Chief among them, in my mind at least, is Rob Dunn of NC State. He is a lover of all creatures, especially ones that are oft under appreciated and/or looked upon scornfully. Thanks to him, Passer domesticus is enjoying a little bit of the lime light this past week due to a great article written by him on Smithsonian.com! It really is awesome so refill your cup, sit back and enjoy :)

He is a proponent of urban ecology which simply seeks to investigate the ecology of urban spaces. Pretty straight forward right? Why hasn't anyone done this before?? Well, what's the first image you have when you think of an ECOLOGIST? Charles Darwin chasing finches on the Galapagos Islands? Jane Goodall hanging with primates? Perhaps Jacques Cousteau descending into the murky depths?

Surely it is not some dude or chick rummaging around the train tracks for bugs! Well, make room at table because there is some new blood up in here! OK, so it's not so new but the field is still very small. The predominate thought, that nature is what happens when people are not around, is simply not true. But as kids (and adults) we grow up on books and media showcasing the lands and organisms of the far-removed African savannah, boreal forests, and colorful reef systems and yet, know extremely little about the very system we are a part of.

I attended an entomology lecture at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum one afternoon long, long ago and though the memory is very blurry, I do recall that a group of scientists did a bug survey in a local marsh-type area near someone's house in Virginia and ended up finding an array of species and abundances they were not expecting. The speaker happily exclaimed that you need not always travel to exotic locales to make fun discoveries. That's not to say everyone should stop doing that research, but just that we ought to take care to not overlook our own backyards, even though the view may not make much of a postcard.

It's obvious that urban systems are their own unique ecosystem. No one planned on building a home for anything else but humans when they made the first cities/settlements. But adapt nature did! There are pigeons, rats, bedbugs, ants, mice, roaches, sparrows and a plenty more! All pests you say? Well, yes - to us. But they are just creatures making the best of it; and how can they resist when we've made it so easy? We give them food, space, shelter and to some, a warm body to snuggle up to at night! Sure, there are things like exterminators and house cats, but somehow I think the bedbug and pigeon populations are managing all right. One interesting note, many of those creatures probably stood out as disease carriers right? It makes sense that many wildlife-to-human diseases are transmitted to us via these hardy critters because those are the guys we live around and thus most commonly come into contact with. *Note to self: discuss this aspect more in detail in a later post.*

Anyways, it is almost midnight now so I leave you with some urban species, mainly of the avian form:

Another Montmartre House sparrow

Paroaria coronata, introduced to Hawaii

Spotted dove, Spilopelia chinensis, introduced all around the Pacific, it is fast replacing native doves in Australia. This one I found on Oahu.
European starling, Sturnus vulgaris. Christ, it's species name is vulgaris! Hahahaha. Ok really, the Latin word vulgaris means 'of the common people' or something to that effect. There are many near my apartment. I actually like the sound these birds make; they are known to be great mimics and are capable of a range of weird quirky noises. They usually have a very mechanical sound which I find infinitely amusing. Is that a machine or bird outside my window??

Evolution...with Crayons!

This video is amazing! I wish I had these animation skills!

This article over at Scientific American explains how it was made.

New Field Guide...for Microbes??

A crazy microbiologist from UC Davis wants to make a field guide for microbes!

Although it probably won't be as popular as the long standing field guides for birds and flowers it will definitely be just as beautiful:

People love knowing the nature around them. You see it in your wild-haired neighbor who plans his trips around bird migrations. OK so not everyone is like this but many are to varying degrees. It feels good to know what lives around you, that's why field guides are so popular. There are whole subcultures of folks who are devoted to a taxa. I remember as a kid my sister and me would check out books about dog, cat and horse breeds from the library and try to learn as many as we could. My brother had his sharks book. And we weren't the only ones, many children are like this! I can distinctly remember a desire to catalog/collect things in my head and put them into some order so I could wrap my mind around it.

When you get older you start doing it with easily 'collectible' things like birds and flowers or shells. There is a satisfying sense of mastery associated with 'collecting.' I often see it in people I meet birding, everyone feeling like like they understand all the ins and outs of their chosen domain. And this is a great thing! (Though it can sometimes come across as conceit). But this is where a lot of natural science people come from!

Ugh, if I had more time we can discuss citizen science and hobbyist vs. professional routes...but alas, such is the fleeting presence of Time in grad school. So this idea of a field guide for microbes is interesting to me. Even as I am getting more and more entrenched in the microbial world I am finding it hard to locate easily digestible pieces written on them. One thing that popular writing in field guides does is make nature more accessible to for everyone. I wonder if it will be hard for people to care though if they don't own a microscope or something to see the critters with but their presence will be appreciated. Most people are aware microbes are everywhere and have a huge impact on our world (even if most don't understand what that impact is).

Anyways before I rush off to my Friday routine here is a quote I'm sure I've posted before from one of my favorite movies, it certainly doesn't wholly apply to everyone but I think the basic sentiment is true:

"There are too may ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, was that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size." -Adaptation