Because we humans can’t see ultraviolet light we miss the fact that some rocks glow in the dark after exposure to sunlight.
The glowing orange and green rock at top is a composite of willemite (normally brown glowing green) and calcite (normally white glowing orange). On display under normal light it is boring by comparison.
Other rocks can glow, too. Did you know that about 30% of diamonds glow under ultraviolet light? 99% of them glow blue but a few glow white, yellow, green, or red as shown below. See the explanation at Diamond Pro.
And here’s a rock called blueschist (benitoite-neptunite-joaquinite-natrolite) that is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. In black light it would stop me in my tracks.
Chickens were domesticated 5,000 years ago so this finding upends the notion that they came first.
Who was domesticated before chickens?
Before agriculture began 10,000 years ago, humans were nomadic in their search for food. The first two animals to be domesticated — dogs and sheep — were easily nomadic as well.
Agriculture prompted humans to form permanent settlements, which led to a spurt of animal domestication to keep the meat supply nearby. Here’s the list from dogs to chickens.
In more than a decade of choosing an annual ABA Bird of the Year, this year’s choice, the burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia), has the most personality. It’s hard to look at one posing near it’s burrow without seeing its defiant and endearing stance.
The owls, of course, take themselves seriously, choosing a mate, finding an appropriate prairie dog, ground squirrel or man-made burrow to nest in, and raising a family.
The owls have had recent success in Imperial County, California where many of these photos were taken. Unfortunately by 2019 their population in nearby San Diego County was down to 75 pairs due to habitat loss and destruction of the ground squirrels whose holes the birds rely on.
In 2020 researchers began to turn that around by releasing eight young owls at Rancho Jamul Ecological Reserve. In the winter of 2020-2021, 24 pairs were reintroduced to man-made burrows at Ramona Grasslands Preserve. This winter they plan to reintroduce several more. The hope is that the young birds raised at Ramona will return to their birthplace to nest.
Today I will see Mexico at a distance, through a fence.
On today’s “Birding the Border” tour we will be at times less than half a mile from the international border. I expect to see the border wall and northern Mexico through binoculars.
When I visited San Diego in 2013 we could walk within sight of this wall that extends into the ocean through Friendship Park of the Californias. What I didn’t know then was that 2013 was a happier time, the start of a brief period of international exchange on one day per year, Children’s Day in April. On that day, separated families with permission could meet briefly in the middle, touch and hug. The event did not occur every year and was permanently canceled by Border Patrol in 2018.
The U.S. side of Friendship Park is now closed all week except for 10a-2p on Saturdays and Sundays and you must drive in or walk 1.8 miles. Anyone can enjoy the land and beach on the Mexican side (left of fence). Americans are not free to do so on the U.S. side.
Though the fence is meant to impede human activity it also disrupts the movement of water and mammals. Read more about it and see photos in this vintage article from 2013.
p.s. Note that the photos above are from 2007-2012. UPDATE 21 Feb 2022: Here are two photos from my 2022 trip.
Tijuana, Mexico (on top of the hill) and double border fence (dark rust colored) as seen from Tijuana River Valley Regional Park, 19 Feb 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Tijuana Mexico on hill and the tall buildings in distance. Border wall is underlined in red on right. As seen from Tijuana River Valley Regional Park, 19 Feb 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)
What happens when two massive black holes collide and merge? A team of astronomers says we’re about to find out, in as soon as 100 days in early/mid May.
In the center of a galaxy 1.2 billion light-years from Earth, astronomers say they have seen signs that two giant black holes, with a combined mass of hundreds of millions of Suns, are gearing up for a cataclysmic merger as soon as 100 days from now. The event, if it happens, would be momentous for astronomy, offering a glimpse of a long-predicted, but never witnessed mechanism for black hole growth. It might also unleash an explosion of light across the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as a surge of gravitational waves and ghostly particles called neutrinos that could reveal intimate details of the collision.
If recent calculations are correct, an even better opportunity is on its way: Two giant black holes are about to crash. It’s the first time we humans know where to look when it happens so astronomers are getting ready to watch.
Hold onto your hats! When giant black holes collide will we hear the crash?
Dinosaurs are big in Utah with at least 20 sites(*) where visitors can see evidence of their presence more than 100 million years ago. One site in the Top 10 of paleontology is the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite, managed by the US Bureau of Land Management, where more than 200 tracks were preserved in an ancient mud flat 112 million years ago. The tracks were made by 10 distinct species, some of them the theropod ancestors of birds.
This video from BLM shows the site in an upbeat effort to teach people not to damage the dinosaur tracks.
BLM warns visitors not to damage the tracks but they did not think twice about beginning a $250 million dollar project to replace the boardwalk without consulting a paleontologist. At the end of January they made a 112 million year mistake with a backhoe.
A backhoe operator last week reportedly damaged part of one of North America’s largest and most diverse sets of early Cretaceous dinosaur tracks near Moab, Utah. The Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite contains more than 200 tracks left by at least 10 different species about 112 million years ago. Last week, work was underway to replace a boardwalk at the location, which is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Paleontologists say the agency provided no notice of the work and had no fossil expert on site to monitor it; BLM’s Moab office has lacked a paleontologist on staff since 2018. In a statement this week, BLM did not explain the apparent damage or accept responsibility, saying only “heavy equipment is on location, but it is absolutely not used in the protected area,” and it “is committed to balancing resource protection and public access” to the site. The damage there was verified in person this week by Utah’s state paleontologist.
It was easy to find out what was damaged. Every single track is documented in photos and measurements. The news hit the papers and reverberated all the way to the U.S. Senate. Without admitting anything BLM halted the project immediately.
Snow and ice melting at Frick Park, 1 Feb 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
5 February 2022
This week began with temperatures in the single digits so it was amazing that we had a record rainfall on Thursday. Not snow, rain.
By Tuesday afternoon, 1 February, the high temperature was 48 degrees and everything was melting at Frick Park, above.
However, Wednesday’s red sunrise on Groundhog Day presaged the upcoming winter storm. “Red sky at morn, sailors forewarn.”
Sunrise in Pittsburgh on Groundhog Day, 2 Feb 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Birds knew bad weather was coming and frantically fueled up. This hungry red-tailed hawk momentarily perched at Carnegie Museum parking lot for a better look at potential prey while the blue jays shouted “Watch out!”
Red-tailed hawk at Carnegie Museum parking lot, 2 Feb 2002 (photo by Kate St. John)
On Thursday the storm moved in. It rained and rained — 1.02 inches — matching the previous record rainfall set in 1939. We were fortunate not to have freezing rain in the city.
By Friday snow covered everything again except this new creek flowing into Westinghouse fountain at Schenley Park.
… the most amazing event happened on Monday 31 January. Click the link for pictures, videos and the reason why the Flying Squirrel Hill Bus is in the air.
Allegheny Crane lifts PAT bus from wreckage of collapsed bridge, 31 Jan 2022, 5:27pm (photo by Kate St. John)
1 February 2022
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a flying bus!
By now I’m sure you’ve heard of the Forbes Avenue Bridge collapse in Pittsburgh before dawn on Friday 28 Jan 2022. The Fern Hollow Bridge fell down in the valley at about 6:39am, taking with it a Port Authority articulated bus and five vehicles. Fortunately no one died and injuries were not life-threatening.
Click on the image for a larger view of the photo below.
Aerial view of collapsed bridge, seen from drone, 28 Jan 2022 (photo tweeted by Mayor Gainey)
Frick Park was closed all weekend while NTSB gathered data for the investigation. When the park reopened yesterday afternoon I headed there to gawk, not knowing that I’d be just in time to watch them raise the bus using a 50 ton crane. Wow!
Here are just a few photos from the Squirrel Hill side of the collapse. Read the captions for the explanations.
Here we go! (photo by Kate St. John)A half-mile walk on Forbes Ave, a place I’d never seen as a pedestrian (photo by Kate St. John)Almost at the viewing area. Big cranes across the valley, barriers and lots of people (photo by Kate St. John)Bus plus 4 vehicles (circled) on collapsed Fern Hollow Bridge, 31 Jan 2022, 3:30pm. 5th car had already been removed (photo by Kate St. John)
4:56pm: When I arrived the bus already had been pulled slowly from under the slab and was fully exposed. Three men in the sky bucket supervised and pulled debris off the bus roof. Men on the steep slope (ladders) secured the lift chains.
5:15pm: The bus begins to move out. Signs of “Frick Park” and “Weight Limit 26 tons.”
It’s on the move. Slowly. (photo by Kate St. John)Almost airborne, 5:19pm (photo by Kate St. John)
As the bus flew very slowly I took a video. You can hear the comments of a boy standing nearby. Click the Full Screen icon on the video [] if you want a bigger view.
The crane operator parked it on the street. Slowly!
Maneuvering to set it down (photo by Kate St. John)Getting there. He’s gonna park it at the curb. (photo by Kate St. John)
It was a Once in a Lifetime experience — a flying bus in Squirrel Hill!
Mallards have always been abundant in western North America so I was surprised to learn that until the 20th century they were rare east of the Mississippi. Here’s how that changed:
Mallards were once rarely encountered throughout much of the Atlantic Flyway. That began to change during the 20th century, as the expansion of agriculture in eastern Canada opened the Boreal forest, creating ideal habitat for pioneering mallards from the west. To the south, in the eastern United States, government agencies and private citizens worked for decades to establish a huntable mallard population through the large-scale release of game-farm birds. Mallard numbers grew exponentially in the east, and by the 1960s, mallards had become the most abundant duck in the Atlantic Flyway.
As the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) population increased in the East, American black ducks (Anas rubripes) decreased and the two species hybridized. A hybrid is shown below.
Questions about hybridization prompted genetic testing. The results were surprising for mallards.
Wild mallards in the eastern U.S. all have game-bird ancestors introduced from Europe. The further east you go, the more European ancestry they have. Mallards in the western U.S., such as this pair in California, have pure western genes.
“Mallards with game-farm ancestry average 10 – 14 ounces less than the wild birds.
Their bills have structural differences likely derived from a diet of domestic grains.
Males are overly aggressive.
Females have a prolonged breeding period, produce excessive numbers of eggs, and show poor nest vigilance.”
The real danger, if there is one, is that native mallards west of the Appalachians are becoming diluted by interbreeding with game-farm descendants. But maybe this doesn’t matter.
What about black ducks? For them the news is happy. Genetic testing showed that pure American black ducks don’t breed with the hybrids so their genes are clear. Instead the hybrid mallard x black ducks breed with mallards.
p.s. Tip of the Hat to Stephen Tirone for alerting me to this interesting article.
The archipelago of Tonga was devastated on 15 January 2022 when one of its islands exploded violently around 4pm local time. The capital city of Nuku’alofa, only 41 miles away, was hard hit by the shock wave, tsunami and heavy ash fall.
Atmospheric scientists immediately began crunching the numbers. By 19 Jan, Nedjeljka Žagar (@NedjeljkaZ) of the University of Hamburg, tweeted this map with a request for verification.
How good does this simulation of the wave generated by the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha?apai eruption fit with your local surface pressure measurements? We see a good agreement with pic.twitter.com/wZMNf97EUh, etc Performed by Sergiy Vasylkevych at @CENunihh. (1/4) pic.twitter.com/WNS1rkpukt
Image embedded from EOS where the caption reads: Nedjeljka Žagar created a simulation of the atmospheric response triggered by the eruption in the first 24 hours. The colors of the wave represent a perturbation of the height of the stratosphere (positive is red, negative is blue). The signal is proportional to the perturbation in pressure seen at Earth’s surface. The simulation was performed by the TIGAR (Transient Inertia-Gravity and Rossby) model of the atmospheric dynamics and predictability group at the University of Hamburg. Credit: Nedjeljka Žagar
The outbound wave passed over Pittsburgh at approximately 10:30am on Sat 15 Jan, converged to a single point over northern Africa — probably at the explosion’s antipodes, GPS 20.545003 4.609298, Guezzam, Algeria — crossed over itself and headed back again. The return wave passed over us around 9:30p that same day.
You can see it tickle the U.S. in this tweet from Daryl Herzmann @akrherz:
15 minute pressure altimeter change via ASOS NWS/MADIS 5 minute interval data. Shows the shockwave from the #Tongaeruption , feel free to use as you wish. pic.twitter.com/P31Aq1SYku
_(1).jpg)
