dendroica

dendroica, 19 days ago to Birding

Short Face Long Beak

I want a bird who's the queen scolopacid,
I want a bird who knows her niche.
I want a bird who's hell-bent onward,
Racing the storm 'cross the Solomon reach.
I want a bird with the right adaptations,
Who is fast, and thorough,
As she probes her mudflats.
She's been wintering in Auckland,
She's visiting Pohnpei,
She's touring coral atolls and their beach habitats.
I want a bird with a short face
And a loong beak...

1/4

@loren @timdesuyo
#Birding

dendroica, 29 days ago to random

#Metasequoia (dawn redwood) is hands down my favorite tree - a massive and stately conifer with deciduous foliage that goes golden-brown in autumn; now in spring it spreads out delicate feathery sprays, pale green and sweet-scented. Originally known to science only from fossils, it was a core constituent of Tertiary forests throughout the Northern Hemisphere. This narrative of its rediscovery in life, quietly persisting in a rural Chinese village, is stunningly vivid.
https://arboretum.harvard.edu/stories/reminiscences-of-collecting-the-type-specimens-of-metasequoia-glyptostroboides/

nyrath, 1 month ago to random

I was trying to remember a satirical book from my childhood. It was written by a biologist, about sub species of animals all who walk using their huge noses.

Turns out it was
The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades (1961)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinogradentia

dendroica, 1 month ago to Birding

The aforementioned Oregon #Junco pair continues to be active in the vicinity of our house, and the female has now started to lay in the nest! This wee cup is quite well concealed to casual observation within a bush in our garden. #Birding #DarkEyedJunco #Oregon #Spring

dendroica, 1 month ago to random

This little fellow strayed into the office and had become befuddled by the windowpane, so I gave em a lift outside. A mason bee, I think? I usually don't see them up so close. Theoretically could probably sting, but in fact was completely mellow - I think was rather exhausted from dealing with the window, and sat on my finger preening for a couple of minutes before flying off.

dendroica, 1 month ago to random

Today in history.

dendroica, 1 month ago to Birding

Finchy ruckus in treetops! A still dull-yellow #AmericanGoldfinch bouncing about with "potato-chip" flight calls. Streaky pointy dark #PineSiskins interjecting a slurred vreeep! and teeny #LesserGoldfinches doing their sad-kitten fweee... A rosy male #HouseFinch singing an earnest chugging warble capped with a querulous "wheer?" like sarcastic meta-commentary. The siskins and goldfinches combine in a chaos of twittering song from which it's hard to pick out the individuals!
#Birding #Oregon

nyrath, 1 month ago to random

NunavutBirder, 1 month ago to worldwithoutus

Oh the grace! Gyrfalcon dive turning to come around to an outcrop. #Nunavut #Arctic #birding #WildlifePhotography

coreyspowell, 2 months ago to science

To your eye, Betelgeuse is the bright "shoulder" star in Orion. A new simulation shows what it would look like if you could get up close: an enormous, boiling cauldron of gas.

If Betelgeuse were placed where the Sun is, Earth's orbit (blue circle) would be deep inside. That's how big it is!

https://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/1094283/hl202403 #science #space #astronomy #nature

Simulation of Betelgeuse’s boiling surface: This animation shows a simulation of how convection dominates the surface of a Betelgeuse-like star. (MPA)

nyrath, 2 months ago to random

I'm trying to remember old pulp scifi stories containing an old scifi troupe.

The idea was in the story, there existed telepathy and other mental powers. Some people's powers were latent, they had them but could not use them. Often were unaware that they had them.

BUT ... if another telepath tried to read their mind, they could see (internally) how it is done. Suddenly the latent telepath was a full telepath.

Can you remember scifi stories like that?

dendroica, 2 months ago to Birding

Oh my goodness, look who just got self slightly confused and stuck on the inside of our screen door! All well, bird was not injured and fluttered promptly to garden fence when released.
#Birding #BlackCappedChickadee

ai6yr, 3 months ago to southbayla

Curious when you just declare a neighborhood a "BAD IDEA" and buy out everyone and make it into a park. This has been a landslide area for A VERY LONG TIME, and homes should never have been built there (IMHO). #PalosVerdes #PortugueseBend #Landslide #disaster https://laist.com/news/rainfall-accelerating-land-movement-in-rancho-palos-verdes

dendroica, 3 months ago to random

Thinking of the time in early spring when I walked past a sugar maple tree on the University of Minnesota campus and had a brainstorm. Hey! Sap is probably rising right now! Curious, I shaved off a wee bit of bark with my pocketknife.. but nothing. Too bad. Couple hours later I passed by again, to find an obliviously blissed out squirrel plastered against the trunk, face pressed into the sweet cut, eyes nearly closed, lapping blep blep blep with his little pink tongue. #spring

dendroica, 3 months ago to Birding

Oscillating between drizzle and downpour, this weather is ideal for using the car as a blind! This #BlackCrownedNightHeron was perched quite close to the pavement, along with a companion who presented only a hunched back screened by willows. Was able to digiscope this picture without getting wet or perturbing them.
#Birding #BirdsOf2024 #Oregon

dendroica, 4 months ago to Birding

Striking today how birds seem larger-than-life in winter. Certainly it's partly that our Song Sparrows, Oregon Juncos, and Black-capped Chickadees have their contour feathers all puffed out against the cold, as insulated and spherical as they can get. Partly that their grays and browns are no longer in camouflage but stand out crisp against the white fresh-fallen snow. But also, not quite by sight, one senses their small warm lives moving through bitter chill like a candle in darkness. #Birding

dendroica, 4 months ago to Birding

Ten thousand years ago, rotund gray birds clung to Aegean sea cliffs, hooted and circled in stiff-winged squadrons at the stony edges of fjords barely cleared of ice. Now they've wandered far, somewhat changed by their time living among the odd primates, their flocks variegated with russet, with white and buff, with feathers sooty and pale. High curving freeway ramps, red brick walls, glass-faceted canyons hunted by peregrines - cliffs are all still cliffs.
#RockPigeon #Birding #BirdsOf2024

dendroica, 5 months ago to Birding

Anybody else doing a #ChristmasBirdCount this holiday season? Where are you going to be?
#Birding #Birds

ct_bergstrom, 5 months ago to random

I've read this supposedly important email from my employer a dozen times and still can't parse the first sentence, let alone understand it.

It's sort of like a neutron star: bullshit corporate neologisms get layered so thick and so self-referentially that grammar itself begins to collapse.

futurebird, 5 months ago to random

As long as I’m meditating on the dark of winter and the soundless void of space I’d like to see if anyone has found any good “scary math movies” (or books) too often attempts at “mathematical horror” are just about how people who like math are kind of strange and maybe that’s “scary” but I don’t feel that. No what I want is for the math itself to be scary.

And not in the “oh no he learned too much and went cuh-ray-zee!” way.

faerye, 5 months ago to Birds

Sitting at red lights today imagining what names the ornithologists will come up with for
#BirdNamesforBirds.

For instance, “Steller’s” Jay! My serious suggestion: Sooty Blue Jay.

My other suggestions:
Stellar Jay (let autocorrect win this one. Downside: these birds already have big egos!)
Crested Jerk Jay (they know what they did! 🪺)

What do you think we should rename “Steller’s Jay”? Serious and silly suggestions both welcome :)

#birds

StillIRise1963, 6 months ago to random

There are so many different cultures here. Not just ethnically, but geographically. I'm not really sure what the word "American" means. I'm hard pressed to describe one. There are not only a lot of different cultures here, but also a lot of different ways of life. From north to south, east to west. The food, the fashion, the style, the era, in some ways. If anything, it means "many things all at once."

Wraithe, 6 months ago to Halloween

So, before sign off for this #Halloween2023 I’ll leave a link to a favorite #Halloween story of mine. A work called “Pillar Of Fire” by Ray #Bradbury:

https://metallicman.com/ray-bradbury-full-text-story-pillar-of-fire/