Now! In Your Very Own Home! Avian Skulls in 3-D!

Nature's forms are so awesome when we take the time to really see them (i.e., study, stare, gaze, gawk). I mean awesome in the old-fashion, thunderstorm-and-lightning-awesome sense, not in the "this taco is awesome!" sense.

Take, for example, the bone structure of birds. Works of art, not to mention aerodynamic genius. Give yourself treat and amble on over to this astonishing National Science Foundation-funded website called Aves 3-D.

Here, you can browse the breastbone of an American Robin or marvel at the mandible of a Wood Thrush. By following the site's directions, you can use your mouse to rotate each bone in three-dimensional perspective as examining it with your own hands. Peruse the site by skeletal element, geographical location, scientific name, and, of course, common name.

Explore our wonderful bird friends from the inside out, and be prepared to swoon.

Nest!

My brother's partner Kelly iPhone-d this lovely image yesterday—looks like our extended family is expanding a bit.

One Third of U.S. Bird Species Endangered

Heartbreaking, awful, reprehensible.

Read the New York Times article here.

Check out the video about the report's findings and download the full report, which is the result of an extraordinary collaboration between numerous groups, including Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Also, see this resource on things you can do to do the birds a good turn.

My Birds

MY BIRDS

Bobolinks everywhere—especially in the apple trees—chortling their drunken song.

Brown thrashers collecting nesting material by blueberry bushes.

Oriole chasing crow from oak tree.

Indigo bunting perched on dead plum tree, excruciatingly blue.

Chestnut-sided warbler following me down the road.

Shy male wood ducks at Big Pond—no matter how quietly I approach, they fly.

Flicker calling from—blending in with—gray snag in pond.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker right outside the window!

Cute-faced peewee at margin of field and wood.

Song sparrows hidden in shadow of hay bale.

Blue jay perched forlornly on spiky plum branch.

Yellow warbler with saffron-colored necklace—reminds me of Nepalese markets’ piles of yellow and red curries.

Purple and house finches back in town, paired, and mating in the linden.

Wren family taking up the birdhouse in the bee yard.

Hummingbird back on its favorite perches: aged birch and dead ash by outhouse.

Robins nesting in tall white pine.

White-crowned sparrows in raspberry brambles.

White-throated sparrows rustling behind the shed.

Yellowthroat, high in the black locust, chest lit by morning’s brief sunlight—announcing himself proudly.

Redstart singing by Kroger’s Pond.

Great blue heron in slow-mo flight, carrying huge sticks toward nest site on northern ridge.

Catbirds flirting in the lilac bush.

Red-tailed hawk hovering over dandelion-covered field.

Canada geese calling beyond the tree-line.

Ovenbird heard, never seen.

Thrush crying its sad song at dusk.

Phoebes perched on the lawn chair, hunting by the barbed wire fence.

Mourning doves paired on telephone wire.

Mr. Bluebird waiting on a branch above the beehive.

Nighthawks calling, high in sky, as evening grows warmer.

Screech owl—I think—whimpering in the pine grove as Holsteins pass below.

Turkeys rushing away up the road ahead.

Swallows everywhere, testing their prowess along the surface of the pond.

Goldfinches chasing each other through tightly woven firs.

Rose-breasted grosbeak reminding me to put up the feeder.

Tufted titmouse waiting impatiently for his turn at the suet.

Chickadees playing chaperone as I get slightly lost in the forest.

Warblers and sparrows I can never find in the book.

These are the birds I belong to.

Jonathan Franzen on China, Birds, Biodiversity, & Eco-Catastrophe

Jonathan Franzen speaks about his article in the 4/21 issue of The New Yorker. It's a fascinating interview—worth a listen.

Bird Brains

Some pretty cool crows.

R.I.P. Alex

Here's something you don't see every day— a New York Times obit for a parrot. A taste:

Scientists have long debated whether any other species can develop the ability to learn human language. Alex’s language facility was, in some ways, more surprising than the feats of primates that have been taught American Sign Language, like Koko the gorilla, trained by Penny Patterson at the Gorilla Foundation/Koko.org in Woodside, Calif., or Washoe the chimpanzee, studied by R. Allen and Beatrice Gardner at the University of Nevada in the 1960s and 1970s. When, in 1977, Dr. Pepperberg, then a doctoral student in chemistry at Harvard, bought Alex from a pet store, scientists had little expectation that any bird could learn to communicate with humans. Most of the research had been done in pigeons, and was not promising.

But by using novel methods of teaching, Dr. Pepperberg prompted Alex to learn about 150 words, which he could put into categories, and to recognize small numbers, as well as colors and shapes. “The work revolutionized the way we think of bird brains,” said Diana Reiss, a psychologist at Hunter College who works with dolphins and elephants. “That used to be a pejorative, but now we look at those brains — at least Alex’s — with some awe.”

And the poignant last bit:

Like parrots can, he also picked up one-liners from hanging around the lab, like “calm down,” and “good morning.” He could express frustration, or apparent boredom, and his cognitive and language skills appeared to be about as competent as those in trained primates. His accomplishments have also inspired further work with African Grey parrots; two others, named Griffin and Arthur, are a part of Dr. Pepperberg’s continuing research program.

Even up through last week, Alex was working with Dr. Pepperberg on compound words and hard-to-pronounce words. As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

He was found dead in his cage the next morning, and was determined to have died late Thursday night.

Verlyn Klinkenborg writes eloquently in the NYT on the lessons Alex might teach us. Here's a taste:

"A truly dispassionate observer might argue that most Grey parrots could probably learn what Alex had learned, but only a microscopic minority of humans could have learned what Alex had to teach. Most humans are not truly dispassionate observers. We’re too invested in the idea of our superiority to understand what an inferior quality it really is. I always wonder how the experiments would go if they were reversed — if, instead of us trying to teach Alex how to use the English language, Alex were to try teaching us to understand the world as it appears to parrots."