It looks like a skeletal sailing ship and in a way it is. Except that it walks. Like a giant bug.
Strandbeests are created by Dutch physicist turned artist, Theo Jansen, who has worked on them since 1990. He named them strandbeest which literally means “beach animal” in Dutch. They are native to the Netherlands.
Every year Jansen experiments in summer and designs new ones in winter in a constantly evolving process. Though the beests have existed for more than 30 years they became known only after he posted videos on YouTube about a decade ago. Since then the beests have been on tour. They came to the U.S. in 2014-2016.
And yet they remain mostly unknown, especially to people like me who live far from the beach. I learned about them last week in this 11-minute video that tells their story.
Endemic to Guam, where their indigenous name is “Sihek,” the Guam kingfisher (Todiramphus cinnamominus) has been extinct in the wild for almost 40 years. Though they nest in trees they were no match for the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) which was accidentally introduced from its native range into Guam in 1946. Thanks to the Sihek Recovery Program the offspring of this pair at the National Aviary will be among the first to return to the wild.
Since their near extinction in the 1980s the Guam kingfisher has existed only in captivity with fewer than 200 individuals on Earth in 2017. The captive breeding program is increasing their population.
Yesterday two Guam kingfisher chicks hatched at the National Aviary began their journey back to the wild.
When the youngsters are ready for release they won’t be returning to Guam. Unfortunately the brown tree snake is such a successful predator that it overran the island in only 30 years and caused the extinction of 12 native bird species.
On Guam these snakes are so pervasive and so good at hiding that there is a real possibility they could hitchhike on outbound equipment and invade other islands. USDA has trained sniffer dogs to check everything for snakes before it leaves Guam including cargo and the airplane landing gear!
Guam is still infested with snakes so where will the young birds go?
When they’re ready to live in the wild they will be released at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, one thousand miles south of Hawaii and equidistant from New Zealand and the continental US. The refuge is mostly water with only 4.6 square miles of land. Research scientists spend short stints onsite but no one lives there permanently. Guam and Palmyra Atoll are marked on the map below.
The birds will be truly wild.
Follow their journey on the National Aviary’s Facebook page. Read about the National Aviary’s Guam kingfisher recovery program here:
In May I encountered a building that showed me how to think like a bird. Here is the building. What do you see?
Sky. Trees. Four buildings. Railings. Stairs.
At street level we see stairs, railings, trees, white buildings but not the building we are close enough to touch. The Effron Music Building at Princeton University virtually disappears in its reflections.
Facing the glass you can see through it to suspended wooden practice rooms, yet the surface of the Effron Music Building still reflects its surroundings.
Now, imagine you are the size of a songbird.
What do you see instead of the window glass? Leaves. Branches.
What do you see instead of the glass? Sky. Trees.
What do you see here? Lots and lots of trees and an inviting backyard to fly into.
These optical illusions are why glass kills one billion birds every year in the U.S. That’s 2.7 million birds per day.
Towering skyscrapers might seem like the most obvious culprits [of bird deaths], yet Loss’s team found that 56 percent of the mortality occurs at low-rises (4-11 stories tall); 44 percent at residences (1-3 stories tall), and less than 1 percent at high-rises (12 stories and up).
56% of the deaths are at 4-11 story buildings: offices, apartments and academic buildings such as 5-story Craig Hall at Pitt where a juvie peregrine died in 2012.
Low-rise buildings are more likely to cause bird deaths when they reflect trees in the glass. I noticed that the Effron Music Building does not have greenery anywhere near the reflective surface so it probably doesn’t cause many bird deaths.
Our homes, however, reflect our backyards. 44% of bird deaths are at 1-3 story residences.
Do birds hit your windows at home? Take a look at your windows and think like a bird.
PREVENT BIRDS FROM HITTING YOUR WINDOWS AT HOME: Reflective glass must be treated on the outside to alter the entire look of the windows. The treatment must make the birds see a wall or a mesh too small to fly through. Here are tips from Fatal Light Awareness Program in Toronto and the American Bird Conservancy
Early this week a group of us drove north to go birding at Heart’s Content, Beaver Meadows and Piney Tract in Warren, Forest and Clarion counties. For two days the weather was pleasantly cool and the sky was gorgeous. Here are a few things we saw this week.
Beaver Meadows Recreation Area near Marienville, PA
Allegheny River as seen from Rt 62 south of East Hickory
Old growth hemlocks at Heart’s Content
A fallen tree completely covered by moss. It was cut because it blocked the path when it fell long ago.
Looking through the trees at Heart’s Content
A view of Piney Tract, SGL 330
The Wall of Rocks at the Microtel parking lot in Clarion
We stayed at the Microtel in Clarion (nice and new) where I was fascinated by the Wall of Rocks that formed one side of the parking lot. It looked impressive at dusk, lit by streetlamps.
The next morning it was not so fascinating. It looks this way because the excavated hillside is too steep to mow. It is landscaped with large stones.
Fifteen days from now we will celebrate 52 years since the first big step was taken to save peregrine falcons from extinction in the U.S. Scientists had published studies showing that DDT was thinning raptor eggshells and causing all nests to fail. At that point there were no juvenile peregrines east of the Rockies to carry on the species. Thankfully, on 14 June 1972 DDT was banned in the U.S.
Where was the evidence that peregrine eggshells had thinned? In museum collections.
Talk about allergies! Oak tree pollen is finally diminishing in Pittsburgh, but grass pollen allergies are ramping up. I’m allergic to lawn grass. I feel it already.
A study last year explained why we suffer more in the 21st century. Pollen season is getting worse every year because climate change is lengthening the growing season and increasing pollen production.
“Plants that are grown in pollution-stressed situations are known to release more allergens,” says Elaine Fuertes, a research fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.
Depending on the plant species, air pollutants can change the chemical composition of pollen, increasing the potency of pollen allergens and triggering stronger allergic reactions in people. …
…Air pollutants like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides may also make the exine — the outer coating of pollen grains — from some plant species more fragile and, therefore, more likely to rupture into smaller fragments that can penetrate deeper into the lungs.
Learn more about the interplay between pollen, air pollution and our allergies at Yale Climate Connections article below.
BONUS FACTLET: While looking for lawn grass photos I learned that Pennsylvania’s most common lawn grass, Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), is not native to Kentucky nor to North America. Poa pratensis is from Europe, North Asia and the mountains of Algeria and Morocco.
This week I photographed a few puzzling objects for the record.
When I took a photo of Full Leaf trees in Schenley Park on 5 May I noticed something newly visible in the presence of leaves. Can you see it?
Look at the center of the photo where the path disappears in the distance. Above the path is a gap that allows you to see further under the trees. The gap flows to the right and follows the contour of the hillside. That’s the browseline, the cumulative effect of too many deer eating at the same location over and over.
I saw a native(!) honeysuckle this week. Pink with fused leaves, it’s called limber or glaucous honeysuckle (Lonicera dioica).
Was this a cattle egret at Moraine State Park? If so it was a rare bird! Nope. It’s a white bag.
On 3 May a leaf-footed bug appeared to walk across the sky.
During the Pittsburgh Marathon Dippy the dinosaur watched near the halfway mark.
If you live in close contact with animals you get to know them well. Shepherds of small flocks develop an especially close relationship with their sheep because they tend them every day — and for 24 hours a day during lambing in early spring.
Paula Aarons, originally from Valencia PA, runs a small sheep farm in New Hampshire called the Dancing Pony Sheep Farm. Last month she appeared on Junction Fiber Mill‘s Millcast program to tell the story of her flock supporting each other and supporting her, their shepherd.
Our mutual friend Jeff Cieslak introduced her 15-minute video.
People: My friend Paula told this wonderful story about her sheep for a podcast. I watched it, and I wept a little, and now you, too, must weep.
Before Women’s History Month draws to a close here’s some recent women’s history in Zimbabwe.
Poaching is a persistent problem in southern Africa because the body parts of exotic wild animals find a lucrative market in the outside world. Without effective patrols it can even happen in a national park as for example 11 years ago, in 2013, when poachers poisoned 41 elephants at Hwange National Park by putting cyanide in their watering hole.
To stem the tide of animal deaths Australian born Damien Mander founded Akashinga in 2009 to train squads of men to protect wildlife in their home areas. The men were too easily corrupted and poaching continued.
In 2017 he recruited women, many of them single mothers or formerly abused. They named themselves Akashinga — The Brave Ones in the Shona language — and the program has been a great success, not only in terms of wildlife but within their communities.
Today Akashinga has a team of 500+ staff and 9.1 million acres under management in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique. They have reduced poaching by 80% and have seen an increase in wildlife of 399%.
Have you seen coils or fluttering tags on power lines? Not related to power transmission, these accessories are visual cues that alert birds to the presence of wires.
Bird diverters come in many shapes and have changed over the years as new products come to market and are approved by government agencies. California commissioned a 2008 study to evaluate the orange and fluorescent swinging tag below for use in the Sacramento Valley where hundreds of thousands of waterfowl spend the winter.
It is also less expensive to install because it can be done by drones.
Those devices are for the birds.
These are for pilots.
Red ball markers make power lines visible to airplane and helicopter pilots and are usually installed near airports and on long lines over rivers and canyons.
Ironically, they have to be installed from helicopters. This 6-minute video filmed in West Virginia shows a job I could never do.
Wondering about cones? They are also visual cues for pilots.
p.s. Some of you know more about this than I do. If I got it wrong, please leave a comment.