No, no, no, this post isn't about Matt Gaetz, it's about my upcoming appointment for my first inoculation with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Local sites were booked solid until 5/21, so I decided to book an appointment at the NY state vaccination site at SUNY Middletown, about seventy-eight miles away. If things go well, I get my poke at 5PM, with a follow-up on 4/28.
I haven't been on a decent road trip in a while... I'm earmarking two and a half hours for travel (an extra hour according to the Google directions) just to take into account traffic problems and possible wrong turns (I've studied the map, and I wrote down the route, so I doubt this will happen).
I have to confess that I didn't sleep well last night. I kinda felt like a kid on Christmas morning, feeling a sense of anticipation. Even now, there's this sort of timeless feeling, a weird combo of 'you don't have to leave yet' and 'you should get on the road'. I really can't wait until this is all over, and I think the first thing I'm going to do on 4/29 is to buy a new Metrocard, then on my first day off, head down to Chinatown... it's been over a year since I've been to Manhattan.
It will be nice to get back to some semblance of normality, even if it takes not one, but two dates with a prick to do so.
As a child growing up in Pennsylvania, he became obsessed with the Appalachian Mountains, raptors, and migration. In the 1990s, hetraveled throughout North America studying migration patterns, and he recently has traveled the world
North America has lost about a third of its birds in recent decades.
Grassland birds, such as bobolinks and meadowlarks, are particularly hard hit. Waterfowl have rebounded due to efforts to protect and restore wetlands. If we put the same time, effort, and money to restoring grasslands, these birds should rebound as well. Progress is being made to restore migratory bird populations, and our ability to crunch massive amounts of data has revolutionized research. Miniaturized tracking devices also help, some are small enough to place on migratory butterflies. We also have better ideas about bird physiology- some of these birds can spend months on the wing while they migrate.
Not all birds migrate, but the dusky grouse migrates uphill in the Rockies by foot. The semipalmated sandpiper migrates thousands of miles to and from its Canadian breeding grounds. To compare birds to even the most elite human athletes is to shame the birds. The sandpipers gorge on crustaceans called Corophium, stocking up on Omega-3 fatty acids before migratiing. Most birds migrate at night, using celestial navigation. Birds also have magnetic sense, with a form of quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance), using a visual pigment called cryptochrome, which becomes magnetized, allowing the birds to sense the Earth's magnetic field. Every goose pooping on the golf course has this magnetic sense.
Just about everything humans can do, birds can do better, certain birds, such as bar-headed geese, can fly higher than the 'death zone' for human climbers. Birds have a respiratory system superior to mammals' lungs- their lungs are attached to air sacs accessed through hollow bones. Bar-headed geese have special hemoglobin which allows them to fly at excessive altitudes.
Alpine swifts migrate to Africa for the winter, flying from Switzerland to western Africa without stopping for two hundred days. Common swifts fly continuously for ten months, feeding on the wing on flying insects. Great frigatebirds, being native to the Galapagos, have little fear of humans, and are easy to have transmitters affixed to. The birds are not waterproof, so they fly nonstop to hunt fish- they undergo unihemispheric sleep on the wing, and after feeding their young, sleep on the nest for long periods. Even the migratory birds in our yards, such as warblers, undergo unihemispheric sleep. The birds need food resources at both ends of their migratory route. Certain birds, such as bar-tailed godwits, engage in hyperphagia, overeating, for days before migrating, and their digestive systems atrophy for the trip, and regrow their guts when they arrive. The most important foraging sites for bar-tailed godwits are mudflats on the Yellow Sea, which teem with invertebrate life. The loss of these habitats to the construction of seawalls and aquatic farms are injurious to birds, a twenty-one mile long seawall in South Korea resulted in habitat loss which decreased the red knot population by one-fifth. The spoon- billed sandpiper, which migrates from Eastern Russia to the Chinese coast, is down to a population of about 400.
Conservation efforts are underway on the Yellow Sea coast, with the authoritarian government of China halting all development on the mudflats. Certain sites are now UNESCO sites.
Bird trapping is also a problem, with birds such as the yellow-breasted bunting, once among the most abundant songbirds, experiencing catastrophic population decline. If they go extinct, this would be the equivalent to the extinction of the passenger pigeon. Bird trapping in the Mediterranean is rampant, with about eleven million migratory songbirds being killed in Egypt, France (where the ortolan bunting is a prized dish), and Italy. The 'black hole' of bird loss is Cyprus, where up to three million birds are trapped, usually using birdlime, a sticky substance smeared on twigs, which can trap birds. In Cyprus, the birds are plucked and fried in an illegal dish called ambelopoulia. Much of the poaching has occurred on British military bases, with local police, at considerable risk, using drones to catch poachers, and British conservationists send anti-poaching specialists. Scott Weidensaul had to wear a bulletproof vest while observing these personnel.
Climate change is the biggest problem facing birds, changing distribution patterns. He doesn't care if you believe in climate change, the birds do. Many species of birds have changed their migration schedules due to warming. Some birds, such as fox sparrows and eastern phoebes, have show flexibility in migration, but most of these are short or mid-distance migrants. Long-distance, such as black-throated green warblers, are adversely effected by climate change. Certain birds, such as pied flycatchers, time their migration to exploit the emergence of caterpillars, but the caterpillars emerge earlier now. North American birds, not having to cross a desert and a sea, are less affected.
Climate change doesn't cause uniform warming- in portions of the Canadian Arctic, falls and winters are colder, but summers are much hotter, so insects emerge earlier so chicks can starve. The Audobon Society modeled bird habitats and determined that scarlet tanagers will lose about ninety percent of their oak-and-beech forests by 2080, and the habitats won't be able to shift to keep up with warming.
Advances in computing power can help in bird conservation. Doppler radar stations can be used to monitor bird migration, even allowing determination of bird size, direction of travel, and the calculation of bird numbers per cubic meter. Shifts in migration can be shown. Radar data allowed researchers to determine that 2.9 billion birds have been lost. Radar cannot determine taxonomy, so birders on the ground, using the E-bird system, can verify what species of birds are migrating. Using this data, optimal habitats, such as pop-up wetlands on farmland, can be created- payment to farmers would be cheaper than buying land outright. City lights can confuse birds that navigate by starlight, drawing them to cities. Automated alerts to building owners can inform them to dim lights as large flocks of migrating birds approach. Urban bird habitats in city parks can also be more effective than buying undeveloped land. GPS units that transmit data cellularly can track birds, with Project SNOWstorm being an effort to track snowy owls.
Small songbirds and migratory insects and bats can be tracked with the Motus system, and numerous local projects are expanding the receiver station network.
This is an amazing time, and a terrifying time, for migration. It's easy to despair, but there is hope that the challenges of migratory birds can be met. Scott Weidensaul cited the Amur falcon migration from Siberia and Eastern China to Southern Africa. Nagaland, in eastern India, is a state characterized by conflict between a local Burmese ethnic population espousing a Baptist Christian religion, it was discovered that falcons that typically gorge on breeding termites before migrating were being trapped by farmers whose fields had been flooded by the construction of a dam. The starving farmers literally believed that the falcons were manna from heaven. There was an outcry among the international press, leading to an effort by conservationists and the hungry Naga to stop the hunt overnight, with former poachers guarding nesting sites, and efforts to jumpstart a tourism industry, which is difficult to put into place due to Nagaland's remoteness and an anti-India insurgency. Mr Weidensaul painted a picture of bad roads, bandits, and Baptist headhunters. Tourists are arriving, but the tourist economy is not as egalitarian as the falcon trapping economy. Trappers-become-tour guides don't have equal access to prime roosting grounds or the ability to install western style facilities for tourists. Roads bring development, logging, and hunting- they are the worst threats to birds... but they would be a boon for Nagaland ecotourism and conservation. Strides have been made, but how sustainable are they?
Every bird that makes that leap into migration is ordinary, and extraordinary. They have evolved amazing systems to navigate the migration process, but it's not enough now, the birds need our help.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session. The first involved the evolution of migration patterns. Scott believes that this is an incremental process, migration is genetically coded, and some birds are born with 'bad software', with some taking riskier routes, such as oceanic routes, but success among a few would be selected for. During the Ice Age, sea levels were lower, so now overseas routes would have been overland on a geological time scale.
Another question involved the use of birds as climate change 'surveyors'. Cornell's eBird program has gathered data, and almost no migration routes have been unchanged by temperature change and shifting wind patterns. The difficulty for birds is that they tend to depend on stable weather patterns, which are being perturbed.
Another question involved the banning of DDT, which decimated raptor and common loon populations. Bald eagle populations have quadrupled over the past couple of decades, which does have a ripple effect on other bird populations, such as tern populations.
How do magnetic pole shifts affect birds? Birds' magnetic senses aren't cued to polarity. There might be some confusion, but birds don't function as compasses, and should be able to handle things well.
How do scientists band birds? Banding is the most effective and least effective method of tracking birds. Marking birds as individuals is crucial for determining migration, longevity, and mating practices. Most birds return to nesting spots and overwintering spots. If you find a dead bird, check for a band- the return on banding is pretty slim, only a fraction of the bands are recovered. GPS locators are more effective. Birds can be netted using audio lures and the geolocators can be evaluated. One great thrush in Denali park has been tracked to the upper Orinoco over seven migration seasons. Other thrushes living in proximity in Denali shared a similar proximity in southern Argentina.
How did the COVID-19 pandemic effect bird migration? Differences in observed migration was probably more due to increased observation rather than decreased activity. People suddenly started noticing nature, started observing birds.
There are migratory birds, semi-migratory birds, irruptive birds that migrate due to changing food availability.
Another question involved Ducks Unlimited- whatever your opinion of duck hunting is, duck hunters have raised a lot of money to preserved wetlands. There is enlightened self interest involved, but the effectiveness cannot be denied. The single largest anthropogenic factor in bird deaths is the domesticated cat- keep the cats inside, they kill billions of birds each year. Trap, neuter, and release programs maintain large predator colonies- keep your cats inside.
Some Bastard in the audience (and another person in the chat), asked how even apartment dwellers can help birds. Plant native plants, especially ones with fruits with a lipid content. Choose your coffee well, pay more for certified shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee sown in forest habitats, subsidize small farmers who grow their coffee bushes under native forest canopy. Look for the Smithsonian label. Certain co-ops are engaged in reforestation efforts, improving bird habitats.
Migratory birds can carry pathogens, such as avian influenzas, which are carried by waterfowl such as gulls. Birds can also be used as sentinels for pathogens, such as West Nile virus, which decimated many wild bird populations.
Another city dweller asked for resources about city-living birds. Migratory songbirds don't typically migrate in large flocks, but they make calls to avoid collisions. Rooftop antennae, available for about twenty dollars, could pick up migration calls to give a more granular picture of birds in transit, giving a detailed picture of the night sky.
The lecture was fantastic, accompanied by wonderful pictures. It was sobering, but Mr Weidensaul challenged us, and gave us hope. Kudos to this Pulitzer prize finalist, and Margaret and Dorian. For a taste of this lecture, here is a lecture by Mr Weidensaul from last Fall:
Today and tomorrow, the streets in my neighborhood are being repaved, so there is no parking to be had. I left my car parked on the job, not wishing to drive around the neighborhood looking for a spot. Not being in a hurry to get home, I decided to take the bus home rather than the train/bus combo... it's cheaper, a mere $2.75 with a free transfer.
I finished my shift at 7AM, and walked to the bus stop, learning that the next 13 bus would arrive at 7:46.. I decided to use this time to gas up the car, which was about 1/4 full, across the street from work, and finally settled on getting to the bus stop ten minutes early. The bus actually arrived a couple of minutes early, and if there's one thing worse than the bus running late, it's the bus arriving early. The 13 bus only runs about once an hour. The ride is not unpleasant, and I was able to transfer to the 20 bus without having to sprint for it.
I decided to exit the bus a few stops early and stop by an Albanian deli and grocery to pick up something for the morning meal, whether breakfast or dinner, who can say? It's been a while since I've had Albanian food, so I decided on a 'greatest hits' approach, choosing a lamb-filled burek, a qebapa, qyfte, and a smoked sausage, probably a sujuk. A crusty pita style bread and a salad with a tasty, mustard-seed vinagrette accompanied the meat fest. It was a fine meal to consume before passing out after a midnight shift, an hour and fifteen minute bus ride, and a two mile walk.
Not even the sounds of the road repaving in front of my house could keep me away.
Easter Sunday- the holiest day of the liturgical calendar, the commemoration of the divine/human entity that is Jesus Christ, conquering death itself and redeeming fallen humanity. This is the centerpiece of the Christian faith, the one mystery which is paramount over all others... what's this, then?!?!?
I really want to know what goes through Medic's mind when he looks at this image and says "Yes. This is what my relationship with God is." pic.twitter.com/6xAniGWSoK
It's amazing how thoroughly shitposting culture has so totally overtaken right-wingers. Everything is now a 'meme' to 'own the libs', even at the expense of any orthodoxy that they may have once espoused. Sexual misconduct is okay, as long as 'their guy' is doing it, blasphemy is no big deal, as long as it elevates Trump over all, and everything is obfuscated by so many layers of ironic detachment that I can't even tell if something like this is leftist satire or not.
I don't even know why these people consider themselves Christian anymore, they don't follow any of the teachings of the Gentle Nazarene. I know, their ancestors professed a Christian faith, and it's hard to shake off tradition, but they haven't been sincere followers of Christ since, oh, about 313. They even erected an idol of Trump at this year's CPAC. These people should just give up any pretense of Christianity and embrace the God-Emperor cult, itself a product of shitposting. Now, THAT guy wouldn't turn the other cheek!
Anyway, happy Easter to my Christian readers, and happy MAGAmas to devotees of the once-and-future God-Emperor to any MAGAs hate-reading this. Maybe you guys can dye your skin instead of eggs, and hide a bunch of indictments of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta for your kids to find.
Since it's the Easter season, I figured I'd continue the theme of my Good Friday post, and continue to cover the right-wing's obsession with all things infernal. Today's demon-obsessed lunatic is claiming that Joe Biden has a 'demonic hedge of protection' around Joe Biden and 'the leftists' that allows them to steal both votes AND children... the demon-protected pinkos will even 'have womanhood' itself erased:
Right-wing pastor Mario Murillo says "there is a demonic hedge of protection around Joe Biden" and Christians must pray to tear it down or else "they're now going to have their children taken from them." pic.twitter.com/tvVD98lDsY
I usually try to avoii being 'looksist', but that guy looks like he'd have been be riddled with arrows during the Scouring of the Shire. Besides having an orcish visage, he has an orcish theology. I was raised in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, and this obsession with demons, and magical powers seems heretical- it seems to contradict the conception of an omnipotent, omniscient God. I read a recent comment on a Twitter thread by some wag (I wish I'd bookmarked it) to the effect that the fundamentalist evangelical view of the Devil owes more to video games like Diablo than it does to the Bible, or Thomas Aquinas. Rather than being a source of temptation, preying on human proclivities, their Devil is a secondary deity with magical powers which could conceivably pose a threat to God's preeminence. Their demons can actually thwart the will of God, say by erecting a hedge of protection that deflects dank right-wing memes from causing people to hate Joe Biden. If I had any religious inclinations at all, I would characterize this as heretical. It sure ain't Aquinas!
Of course, these people believe that they play a central role in this existential battle of Good and Evil... the very notion of a 'humble' Christian is a farce, these people are egotistical LARPers who think they are Big Damn Heroes because they want to persecute LGBTQ people and non-believers (or even believers of 'suspect' denominations). It's no wonder that some of them are actual Flat-Earthers. The whole world would be a happier place if these weirdos just learned how to play D&D.
Today being Good Friday, I figured I'd spend some time on the lastest evangelical Christian persecution 'scandal'. The craw-thumpers have decided to play their greatest hits, and have revived the old Satanic Panic that was all the rage (literally) in the 1980s. Being a Northeasterner, I was insulated from this nonsense, which adversely effected nerds in the Heartland, so my laughter at this bullshit is untinged with bitterness. The Satanic Panic had real victims, though, as smalltown weirdos were singled out, and in one instance, convicted of capital crimes by fundamentalist Christian zealots. It was a bad time, a stupid time, and people who should have known better got involved in spreading the nonsense.
The controversy over Lil Nas X' video is destined to increase sales, as no publicity is bad publicity. Again, it's funny that the song isn't about Satan, but then again, a lot of the bands caught up in the old Satanic Panic weren't singing about Satan, either. It's just another skirmish in the ongoing culture war being waged by right-wingers who can't run on actual policy successes... it's the evergreen bullshit they always use to rile up the rubes. As I've said before, the greatest trick the authoritarians ever played was convincing the world that the devil exists.
I used to like April Fools' Day, it was one day out of the year when media outlets could engage in harmless pranks. One April Fools' Day, the morning drive show of the storied WLIR spun an elaborate yarn about an earthquake which shifted the borderline between Nassau and Suffolk counties a few miles to the west... at first, I wondered what the hell they were getting at, imaginary lines on the map not being subject to flipping because of a minor temblor that no other media outlets had even reported. The joke dawned on me as the news reports involved people in flannel shirts and pickup trucks being seen in areas fornerly in Nassau County. At the end of the day, the hosts wished everybody a happy April Fools' Day, apologized to anyone who didn't get the joke, and a good laugh was had by anybody smart enough not to be bamboozled.
Holidays set aside as a break from the established social order are a grand tradition, dating back to Saturnalia and continuing through Twelfth Night... holidays in which a Lord of Misrule was appointed to preside over the tomfoolery. The problem nowadays is that we've had a Lord of Misrule who presided over every day, and had constituents who thought him serious. Put succinctly, one day of harmless foolish behavior has no appeal when a third of the country engages in harmful foolish behavior.
The Big Bad Bald Bastard is a character played by Monsieur _______ of the City of Y______. The role of the Bastard is a handy one to play on subways, walking the streets, and in dive-bars, when being a nerdy, bookish sort is not to one's advantage.
