Yaoundé, Cameroon
Bird of the Day: African Pygmy Kingfisher
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Birds, Citizen Science & You
Seth has been working in various African countries recently, and is somewhere in Kenya at this moment, for work. There is a school in the vicinity, with these signs. We have not yet had the chance to hear any details about the school, but these signs anyway say most of what we might want to know.
His work, related to forest management, clearly intersects with his longstanding interest in birds, strengthened by his three years working at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. That period coincides with our learning about citizen science and in the years since we have shared many stories from the field.
The pictures arrived from Kenya just as this initiative between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the New York Times comes to my attention, which you might find interesting:
Mike McQuade
Our understanding of birds has been profoundly shaped by the work of everyday people. After all, anyone can step outside and pay attention to an untamed world swooping above. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Cedar Waxwing
Santa Rosalia, Guatemala
Greenland’s Rock Flour
Guardian graphic. Source: Guardian research
Damian Carrington, Environment editor at the Guardian, shares these findings:
Eight-thousand-year-old marine deposits, exposed by the slow rise of Greenland after the last ice age. The cliffs are about 15 metres high. Photograph: Minik Rosing
Rock ‘flour’ from Greenland can capture significant CO2, study shows
Powder produced by ice sheets could be used to help tackle climate crisis when spread on farm fields
Rock “flour” produced by the grinding under Greenland’s glaciers can trap climate-heating carbon dioxide when spread on farm fields, research has shown for the first time.
Natural chemical reactions break down the rock powder and lead to CO2 from the air being fixed in new carbonate minerals. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Great Kiskadee
The Lost Tinamou Nature Preserve, Guatemala
Give It Up For Oysters
Among the ocean’s best filter feeders, one oyster cleans 50 gallons of water per day. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
We have linked to stories about the environmental services that oysters provide, as well as the environmental activists who leverage those services; today a riff on those topics:
They Knew Little About Oysters. Now They Have a Farm With 2 Million.
Stefanie Bassett and Elizabeth Peeples left their city lives behind to raise mollusks.
The Little Ram Oyster Co., a farm of 2 million oysters on the North Fork of Long Island, started with a Groupon.
To celebrate a friend’s birthday in the summer of 2017, Stefanie Bassett and Elizabeth Peeples joined eight other enthusiasts in Long Island City to learn how to shuck oysters at a discount. The Brooklyn couple, who knew each other from middle school in Columbia, Md., always had a love for the delicacy. But as they laughed with their friends and fumbled with their oyster knives, they also listened intently as an instructor explained the history and magic of the mollusks.
Ms. Bassett and Ms. Peeples prepare oyster cages to be put into the water. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
“The thing that drew our attention was the positive environmental impact oysters have,” said Ms. Bassett, 42.
Among the ocean’s best filter feeders, one oyster cleans 50 gallons of water per day. New York was once known as “the Big Oyster,” but over-harvesting and poor water quality wiped out the population by the 21st century. The couple learned about efforts to bring them back to the harbor. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-and-white Warbler
Lake Georgetown Cedar Hollow, TX
Weed Is A Weed Is A Weed
Weeds are classified subject to norms, we have read; thanks to Rivka Galchen for reminding us, and reference to this book:
The names we call plants say more about us than they do about the greenery that surrounds us.
Steve Brill’s first stop was the greenery behind the bike racks. Brill, who is known as Wildman Steve, picked up a weed with heart-shaped seed pods and a small, four-petalled white flower. About thirty of us were gathered for a three-hour foraging tour through Prospect Park, in Brooklyn.
Illustration by Karlotta Freier
The plant was shepherd’s purse, a name that references the seed pods’ resemblance to the containers shepherds used to make from the bladders of sheep. “It’s in the mustard family,” Brill said. “Most all of the flowers in the mustard family are four petals in the shape of a cross.” He encouraged everyone to take a bite, and to tell him what vegetable it tasted like. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Yellow-throated Euphonia
The Lost Tinamou Nature Preserve, Guatemala
Better Living Through Birding, Christian Cooper’s Forthcoming Book
Wesley Allsbrook
Christian Cooper, an American science writer, is author of the forthcoming book (below left) from which the following essay in the New York Times is adapted:
Three Years After a Fateful Day in Central Park, Birding Continues to Change My Life
Early in the morning of May 25, 2020, I biked from my apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to Central Park to go birding in the Ramble. Despite the uncertainties of the time — New Yorkers were living in a hot spot of the raging Covid pandemic, with no vaccine in sight — I strove to start this warm, sunlit Memorial Day on a happy note by wandering my favorite urban woodlands in search of migrating songbirds.
I was focused on the end-of-season hunt for a mourning warbler, a small yellow and gray skulking bird that’s difficult to spot and relatively rare. I hadn’t yet seen one that year.
Visiting the park in the morning to look for birds has long been a springtime routine for me. I wake before sunrise and grab my Swarovski binoculars — a 50th-birthday present from my father — and head out the door. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: African Thrush
Yaoundé, Cameroon
11 Years, 11 Months & 11 Days Later
Mermaid (now in Escazu, Costa Rica), handcrafted by Rock Bottom from driftwood in Port Antonio, Jamaica
June 15, 2011 was the day we first posted on this platform, and while we have evolved since then we have remained constant and consistent in a few ways. In the daily search for something worth sharing, photos of birds from around the world have been the most constant–as in, every day since the first photo was shared by this old friend who got us started on that daily routine. Thank you, Vijaykumar, for a healthy habit-formation.
Consistent have been the shared convictions that environmental conservation, no matter how bleak the news, is worth our effort.
Maroon shaman mask with third eye for healing power (now in Ithaca, NY USA), handcrafted by Rock Bottom from driftwood in Port Antonio, Jamaica
Plenty more constantly interesting sub-topics like books and libraries, seemingly unrelated to the environment, have been the focus of daily posts; but they are related. As is artisan production, riffed upon many times in these pages, especially now that it is the focus of our day jobs.
So today, heading toward the twelve year mark posting here, a nod to an artisan named Rock Bottom. He carves driftwood in Port Antonio, Jamaica.
There is an effort in that part of Jamaica to revive and strengthen traditional crafts, and the work of Rock Bottom is a model for what we can hope to see more of. My hope is that the amazing engine of economic activity that Jamaica’s tourism sector represents will valorize his work and the work of others akin to his.
Bird of the Day: Sharpbill
Hotel Quelitales, Cartago, Costa Rica
Sea Cucumbers Working Overtime
Diagram of a test project in Italy in which sea cucumbers cleaned up excrement from farmed mussels. GROSSO ET AL.
A topic that rarely, if ever, has made our pages, the sea cucumber’s moment in the spotlight has arrived:
A sea cucumber near Mindoro Island in the Philippines. IMAGEBROKER / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Are Sea Cucumbers a Cleanup Solution to Fish Farm Pollution?
Seafood farm operators are breeding and deploying sea cucumbers to vacuum up the massive amounts of fish waste that pose a major problem for their industry. It is part of an effort to redesign fish farms with multiple species so that they work more like natural ecosystems.
Sea bass at a fish farm in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Slovenia. WATERFRAME / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Off the coast of the Hawaiian Island of Kauai, an underwater metropolis bustles. Sea turtles glide lazily through the surf while schools of fluorescent yellow butterflyfish weave between basketball-size sea urchins and sharp corals.
But Dave Anderson isn’t distracted by the otherworldly charm of the coral reef — he’s here on a mission. Around 70 feet below the surface, he finds his prize: a red sea cucumber. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Social Flycatcher
Antigua, Guatemala
Out With PFAS, Considering Alternatives
PFAS are used as a coating on food packaging and are prevalent in other everyday items like personal care products and textiles.
Triple Pundit, and writer Riya Anne Polcastro, are new to us, and we appreciate their coverage of this complex topic, important both for health and environmental reasons:
Nixing PFAS is a Real Possibility: Here’s One Company That’s Doing It
Per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) have been getting a lot of negative publicity. And with good reason. Classified as “forever chemicals,” they’ve been found in food, water, soil, animals and even our blood. Although the extent of their effects is not fully understood, they are known to negatively impact human health in a variety of ways. But while many are calling for an overall ban on the chemicals, pushback from the industry seeks to simply switch out the PFAS we already know are harmful with lesser-known ones that likely have the same — or possibly even worse — effects. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-necked Stilt
Estero Llano Grande State Park, Hidalgo County, TX
The World Of Sugar, Reviewed
Our thanks to the LA Review of Books for this review by Dinyar Patel:
Sugar, Slavery, and Capitalism: On Ulbe Bosma’s “The World of Sugar”
WHAT MIGHT DONALD RUMSFELD have in common with Frederick Barbarossa, Mormons, and Queen Elizabeth I’s rotting teeth? The answer is simpler than you might expect: the power and influence of sugar, a crystalline specimen of world-historical significance dissolved in your morning coffee or tea. A warmongering neocon, a Holy Roman emperor, pious Utahns, and a heavily cavitied pair of Tudor gnashers are part of an expansive cast of characters in Ulbe Bosma’s new work on the sweet stuff, The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment over 2,000 Years. This book is a tour de force of global history, one that helps us better understand the genesis of both modern capitalism and globalization. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: African Blue Flycatcher
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Trees Are Always Welcome In Our Pages
The notion that clear-cutting can be counteracted by the planting of trees is a political product of the timber industry.Photograph © Robert Adams / Fraenkel Gallery
Jill Lepore gives us a 30-minute read on a topic we have linked to more times than any topic other than birds:
Forests fed us, housed us, and made our way of life possible. But they can’t save us if we can’t save them.
The woods I know best, love best, are made of Northern hardwoods, sugar maple and white ash, timber-tall; black and yellow birch, tiger-skinned; seedlings and saplings of blighted beech and striped maple creeping up, knock-kneed, from a forest floor of princess pine and Christmas fern, shag-rugged. White-tailed deer dart through softwood stands of pine and hemlock, bucks and does, the last leaping fawn, leaving tracks that look like tiny human lungs, trails that people can only ever see in the snow, even though, long after snowmelt, dogs can smell them, tracking, snuffling, shuddering with the thrill of the hunt and noshing on deer scat for dog treats. Continue reading
Organikos 