Caracaras

Pal Mikael, of Birding on Broadmeade, recently went to Port Aransas where he took some striking photos, including this one of a pair of Crested Caracaras. Would you believe you can take a photo like this in Texas? Photo links you to the Flickr set.

Transformer Owl

This video shows an owl whose natural defensive behaviors lead it to take three different 'forms' by changing its posture and how it holds its wings. I found it both hilarious and mesmerizing.

Kids and turtle

On a birdwalk last month.

Newflash: Hedgehogs

Can swim!

Hahaha! It's all mine!

Actually these are the work of beavers not too far from our house. Took this on a bird walk a while back.

Caracara sighting this weekend

I went birding this weekend, taking Chloe on Mikael's neighborhood bird walk. We saw a big raptor give us a nice show: a crested caracara took a long slow flight across our field of view, favoring us with several different angles.

I got a little frustrated during this walk, trying to keep flying birds in my binoculars, but this bird cooperated beautifully. I say this sort of thing a lot, but I didn't know we had any birds like this here...and right in my neighborhood. They're actually year-round residents. A big falcon relative with some gorgeous colors.

Other notable birds that I got to see were a Savannah Sparrow, whose stripes I enjoyed, and a Pied-Billed Grebe. Chloe and I had enjoyed the grebe's diving behavior on a previous trip to this same spot, the Parmer Village model homes area, but we didn't see any of that this time.

I'm enjoying the binoculars I received for Christmas; they've become essential on these walks. It's amazing the views you can get with a little patience.

_How to Build a Dinosaur_ by Jack Horner and James Gorman

Subtitled "Extinction Doesn't Have to be Forever," this book talks about ways and means of reverse-engineering a dinosaur from a chicken. The author is dead serious, and transmits a lot of interesting science, but the path is meandering.

I love pop sci books, and this one, like a lot of them, turns science into a narrative. I went along with most of that, but I wasn't always sure where we were going. The main thing this book did for me was to introduce me to evolutionary development ideas. It also brought home the close relationships between dinosaurs and birds.

It puts the ideas from Jurassic Park into some perspective. Jurassic Park's method of getting DNA from insects that sucked blood from dinosaurs was far-fetched. But some of the real science outlined in this book is mind-blowing.

The basic idea is to analyze evolutionary developments and reverse some of them. There's no magical rollback, no turning people into rats the way the High Evolutionary sometimes did. But there have been discoveries of identifiable biological molecules in fossils. There's an exciting bit about cutting open a bone to split it in half for transport and finding organic material inside. It's a fun read.

Sci-fi deer hunt for predatory aliens

I see a lot of deer when I bike to work, but I can't usually get close enough to take a decent photo. This one, from Friday 9/4/09, wasn't horrid.

Thinking about deer and hunting in a sci-fi context brought me this idea:

Picture an alien race of intelligent predators. They live in an urban environment but they all want the thrill of the hunt. They don't want their prey to be too tame, because that makes it too easy.

They handle this by sensefiltering all the prey animals. It's the idea of a totally computer-moderated sensorium, where you and I could be in the same room and have completely different experiences...but applied to animal life.

So, your deer, for example, can live right in the middle of a city, in greenbelts or whatever, and never interact with buildings, cars, people.

But, when one of the aliens wants to hunt, he tells the computer (or it just senses his hormonal change) and suddenly he's visible to the prey. They want it to be sporting, so if you're too close to a deer, it gets a warning. Otherwise, you both now inhabit the same reality.

This would be fun if shown as an image of idyllic nature: that is, we first see the happy deer wandering peacefully through a city, never straying onto the roads it can't perceive, never seeing people. Then, clawed death.

NASWC neighborhood bird walk

I took Chloe to pal Mikael's bird walk this morning; we spent two hours on a nice paved trail whose existence I had not previously suspected.

These are the birds I got good looks at. It was a great outing. It's fantastic to see so many different species on a leisurely walk:

• Summer tanager
• House wren
• Unidentified hummingbird
• White winged dove
• American Redstart (I never heard of this one, it was pretty interesting-looking.)
• Wilson's Warbler
• M, F Cardinal
• Blue Jay
• M, F Lesser Goldfinch
• F Hummingbird...black chinned or ruby-throated
• Least Flycatcher
• Eastern Phoebe
• Great Blue Heron
• Killdeer
• Barn Swallow
• Bell's Vireo
• Ladderback Woodpecker

We also got to watch a kit of about 20 Birmingham Roller (I'm assuming) pigeons, who flew in circles around their presumed home, with birds frequently rolling out of the kit and returning. I identified them as rollers by their behavior. I think Mikael said he'd talked to the fellow who owns them in the neighborhood. I held forth a bit for the group on the strength of my dad having kept rollers all during my childhood, and the fact that nothing I said could be contradicted by a far-off view of the birds through binoculars. :)

Chloe managed to find two tiny frogs or toads, smaller than my thumbnail, and a skink no longer than my index finger. I got a picture of the skink on my cell phone. I never got close enough to any birds to photograph them with the phone.

Here's a link to Mikael's blog post on the morning's walk.

Giant schnauzer invades Austin

I'd never seen a giant schnauzer in the flesh before last week...when I saw one at work. A coworker brought one in for the day.

Interview with a capybara owner in Texas

I dunno where I found this one, but it's pretty charming. I like the Texas connection and the fact that it's author Jeff Vandermeer doing the interviewing.

The Fantastical Capybara: An Interview with Melanie Typaldos About Her Caplin Rous

Saw the tiniest fawn yesterday when biking to work

I couldn't believe how small this fawn was. No more than 18 inches tall. I saw it stepping carefully along on stilt-legs, and was able to creep within 3 feet to photograph it. No angry mother appeared.

How chameleons change their colors

I was reading about chameleons (for research for the reptilian fauna of my fantasy world, indulging the inner child who read every book about animals in the school library, use whatever rationalization you like) and I ran into this page by the San Diego Zoo, which includes a great short description of how they change their colors. Really, it's more wonderful and complex than I imagined:

Chameleons have four layers of skin: the outer, protective layer called the epidermis; the chromatophore layer that contains yellow and red pigments; the melanophore layer that contains the dark pigment melanin and can create brown and black colors or reflect blue; and the nether layer, which only reflects white. Nerve impulses and hormone changes cause the color cells in these layers to expand and shrink, and the blending of the different layers creates the colors and patterns that we see.

I guess this page is aimed at kids, but I wouldn't be the first to notice how useful material designed for kids is when you want to get an initial handle on a topic. My goal here was to find some info on the unusual aspects of chameleons -- the fun facts -- so a kids' page was perfect. I can always get more detail, now that I know some of the variety that's available for chameleons.

I think I mentioned chameleons earlier. Oh yes, here. The chameleon idea came from my nine-year-old daughter Chloe. They're to be domesticated riding animals. I'll have to change their feet. Maybe they'll have three horns and you can tie reins to the horns.

Just for Karen, a shot of Olie

Olie takes a ride in the two-wheeled bike cart. I took him to the groomer's this way, biking about 4 miles.

Can this be for real? The stovepipe bird trap

I was reading the wild intertubes and I came across a tubular bird trap idea: the stovepipe. The idea is that birds can't back up, so you put some birdseed inside a pipe that's big enough for the birds to walk into (and too small to turn around),  you block one end of the pipe, and make sure the birdseed is deep enough in the pipe that the bird has to go all the way in.

That's it. Because birds can't back up.

They can't? Well, I found more than one reference to this idea. I have half a mind to try one and make a pigeon pie. 

Wood cutouts

Some wood cutouts I made with a scroll saw and decorated with permanent marker. The bird was inspired by something I saw on mocoloco.com.

Circle of life

Here's a couple of photos I finally got round to uploading; Chloe and I on our latest bike ride, and a dead deer we saw. The questions this sort of thing inspires are always fun with Chloe. Luckily she wasn't interested in dissecting it or anything.

Dad's pigeons and my kids

My dad has raised pigeons since before I was born. I grew up in the only suburban back yard I knew of that was full of pigeon coops. Every trip to my parent's house in Arlington includes trips to the back yard to see the pigeons.

These photos are from June 2008. I can't say that I got much, but the shots of Chloe (8 years old at the time) holding the birds are fun.

The ominous drums

1. We watched The Fellowship of the Ring last weekend with 11-year-old Ethan.

2. Ethan bought a Fellowship game for his Gamecube on Saturday and played it as much as we'd let him.

3. I went to bed that Saturday night with visions of orcs and goblins dancing in my head.

4. About midnight, I heard a faint drumming. Da-dumm, da-dumm, da-dum da-dum, repeated, then a random pause, then it would start up again. I thought maybe Ethan had snuck downstairs to play his new game, but I was too tired to go look.

5. I heard it again when I woke up in the morning, so I went downstairs to look....and it was our hamster, Marigold, pushing her new exercise wheel. 

Iterative development and hamsters

Hamsters have not, so far, proven to be the most robust pets possible for our household. Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of importing a rodent into a household that contains both a cat and a terrier. Especially when the cat sits on the hamster's aquarium.

So we came back from the holidays to find that Boss, our remaining hamster of the two initial hamster colonists, had passed on. Our 9-year-old daughter, owner of said hamster, was heartbroken for about as long as it took to figure out that she had enough money to buy a new hamster.

We went to Petco and discussed the situation with Hamster Pros and handled several hamsters before choosing a new one, larger than the last, and a female -- both factors we hope will improve the hamster experience.

That's how Marigold the Hamster has entered our life, and so far she's a big improvement -- lively and friendly, and hasn't bitten anybody.

You can't do this kind of thing with dogs and cats. I mean, you can, but it takes a lot more patience. I guess you could start with sickly animals or something, but that's no fun.