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What a Fish Knows – Jonathan Balcombe
That’s a pufferfish looking at you.
BOOK REVIEW
What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins.
Jonathan Balcombe
Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2016, 304 pgs, $16-27.
We rarely recommend books, but this is a book that should interest everyone, whether you have pet fish, love catching fish, enjoy photographing fish, wonder what life would be like if you were a fish, contemplate your own fishy ancestors 500 million years ago, or simply like to see them on your plate and put them in your mouth.
Natural History Magazine’s Sept’16 issue featured an article by Dr. Jonathan Balcombe, drawn from this book. If this blog doesn’t convince you to buy the book, read the article. It will forever change your view of fish, and give you a new perspective the next time you see the Mullet jumping above the surface of Malibu Lagoon.
A few fishy facts:
- There are more than thirty thousand species of fish―more than all mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined.
- They can plan, hunt cooperatively, use tools, curry favor, deceive one another, and punish wrongdoers. Sound like anyone you know?
- Their courtship rituals are elaborate; they develop lifelong bonds with their neighbors.
- Their sexual arrangements vary widely: promiscuity, polygamy, monogamy, mating-for-life. Males may keep harems, defend a territory, spawn in groups, perform sneak copulations, be a “satellite male” or a “sexual pirate.” Males may become females or females become males as the opportunity arises. There are simultaneous hermaphrodites and sequential hermaphrodites. Some males parasitize the female, embedding themselves permanently into her flesh.
A few of the issues it addresses:
Can fish think? Can they recognize the humans looking back at them in their pools and aquariums? How do they learn to navigate their pools, rivers, reefs and oceans – and find their way home?
Dr. Balcombe relates a wonderful story:
During a dive off the southern tip of Japan, veteran diver and photographer Yoji Ookata was surprised to see, at a depth of about eighty feet, a six-foot-wide symmetrical circular pattern in the sand. The mural featured two concentric rings of ripples radiating outward from a center disk. Ookata returned some days later with a film crew, and the mystery of what might have created this exquisite curiosity was soon solved. The geometric “crop circles” were created by a small, quite ordinary-looking male puffer fish (Tetraodontidae). Swimming on his side, while fluttering a pectoral fin, the five-inch puffer spends hours making his masterpiece. He inspects it as he goes, decorating his mural with bits of small shells that he cracks in his mouth before sprinkling them into the central grooves.
Pufferfish in his sand ‘bower’ (Kimiaki Ito, National Geographic)
Link to Yoji Ookata YouTube series of still photos of the pufferfish ‘mandala.’
Link to Aysel Güler YouTube action video of pufferfish maintaining his mandala.
Mandalas found since show that no two are the same, they attract female puffers who lay their eggs in the inner circle, the furrows help prevent eggs from being carried away by currents, the crushed shells provide camouflage for the eggs, and the more elaborate the circle, the greater the mating success of the male. Birders familiar with Australia’s Bowerbirds will recognize the similarity of intent and result.
I thought I knew a lot about fish. Then I read What a Fish Knows. And now I know a lot about fish! Stunning in the way it reveals so many astonishing things about the fish who populate planet Earth in their trillions, this book is sure to “deepen” your appreciation for our fin-bearing co-voyagers, the bright strangers whose world we share.
— Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel; named one of Audubon’s 100 Most Influential Conservationists of the 20th Century
Balcombe offers a picture of these underwater creatures as complex and sentient beings. Not only do they have acute senses of sight, hearing, and smell, but they also have the capacity to feel pleasure as well as pain….Balcombe never met a fish pun he didn’t like….This is a lively and surprising work that makes a strong argument for sport and food fishing reform.
— Lisa Peet, Library Journal
We rarely consider how individual fishes think, feel, and behave, but their lives are often as rich and complex as our own. Here’s your chance to discover the details.
[Chuck Almdale]
The Friendly Ravens: Sunday Morning Bible Bird Study V
This Week’s Lesson – The Friendly Ravens
Link to entire 10-blog Birds in the Bible series on one page
Ravens weren’t discussed extensively in the bible – no bird was, for that matter – but they do appear in unexpected locations for interesting reasons. We begin with the citation from Genesis, briefly mentioned in Lesson I.
After forty days Noah opened the trap-door that he had made in the ark, and released a raven (הָֽעֹרֵ֑ב – ha-oreb “a raven” ) to see whether the water had subsided, but the bird continued flying to and fro until the water on the earth had dried up.
Genesis 8:6-7 New English Bible (NEB)
As previously mentioned, that’s all that Genesis says about this raven [עֹרֵ֖ב – oreb], not even whether it ever returned. It probably didn’t, preferring to follow its own agenda rather than Noah’s. Bible Factoid #1 noted that the precursor to this story – found in the much older Epic of Gilgamesh, written circa 2100 BCE – Utnapishtim (the “Noah” of the Gilgamesh) released a raven as the third bird, which found food and flew around and did not return.
Common Raven, Santa Rosa (James Kenney, 11-24-12)
The raven was almost certainly the Common Raven (Corvus corax), the species we find today across North America and Eurasia. Their current range includes all of Europe and Asia Minor, northern Syria and Iraq, and nearly all of the southern and eastern edges of the Mediterranean Sea. Back then, forests in the Near East were more extensive and dense, attractive to our raven. Corvid family members are among the most intelligent and resourceful of birds, and the raven may be the brightest of the bunch, a good choice for any task requiring smarts. So smart, in fact, that they may well decide to skip your task and go do what they want to do. The tale of Noah, perhaps inadvertently, reflects this characteristic.
Hooded Crow on sheep’s head
(Jamie MacArthur, DeviantArt.com)
There are other dark corvids living in the vicinity. Hooded Crow (Corvus corone), about 25% smaller than the raven, is resident from Asia Minor down the Mediterranean eastern shore and the Nile River valley. Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) shares this area, but is largely grey and half the size of the raven. Brown-necked Raven (Corvus ruficollis) is a bird of desert and dry steppes. Their range currently stops south of the Mediterranean southern shore, but includes eastern Israel, Jordan, etc. Their range likely stopped even farther south in biblical times, as it was three millennia closer to the ice age.
Jackdaws, India (Wikia)
Hebrew had only one word עֹרֵב – oreb for raven or crow; bible translators used both at different times, but Common Raven is likely our bird. Incidentally, Hebrew uses positional case-marking on nouns. Notice the progressive increase in Hebrew word length: “raven” עֹרֵב – oreb, “a raven” הָֽעֹרֵ֑ב – ha-oreb, “the ravens” הָעֹרְבִ֣ים – ha-oreb-im, and “and the ravens” וְהָעֹרְבִ֗ים – we-ha-oreb-im.
Brown-necked Raven, Hamada du Draa, Morocco
(Momo, February 2007)
Benjamin the Ravin
Our next citation is actually a red herring.
…Benjamin shall raven (יִטְרָ֔ף – ytrp, “yitrap”) as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil… Gen. 49:27 1599 Geneva Bible
Many words in the Jewish Hebrew and Christian Greek bibles occur only once*; יִטְרָ֔ף (“ytrp” or “yitrap”) is one of them. Such words usually create arguments because determining their meaning is little more than guesswork. The first KJV edition had “ravin”, later changed to “raven,” creating additional confusion. This obsolete word meant “to take away (goods) by force; to seize or divide as spoil.” Oxford English Dictionary’s last citation in this sense dates from 1625, fourteen years after the KJV was published. Nowadays we say ravening or ravenous. * See list at bottom
“Benjamin is a ravening wolf: in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he snatches a share of the spoil.” Gen. 49:27 NEB
Inedible Ravens
Ravens next appear as members of two equivalent – but not identical – lists of twenty unclean birds.
“These are the birds you shall regard as vermin, and for this reason they shall not be eaten….every kind of crow [or raven] ( עֹרֵ֖ב – oreb )…” Lev 11:13-14 NEB
“These are the birds you may not eat…every kind of crow [or raven] ( עֹרֵ֖ב – oreb)…” Deut 14:12-14 NEB
This list will be covered in a later lesson. Nearly all twenty birds are birds we wouldn’t want to eat today, consumers of dead animals lying on the ground: cormorants, raptors, vultures, gulls. Most – if not all – corvids fall into that category, and the phrase “any kind of raven (or crow)” makes good sense. Four of the forbidden twenty are cited as “every kind of…;” the other sixteen birds are individually named.
The Friendly Ravens
Then the word of the Lord came to him [Elijah the Tishbite]: ‘Leave this place and turn eastwards; and go into hiding in the ravine of Kerith [Cherith] east of the Jordan [River]. You shall drink from the stream, and I have commanded the ravens (הָעֹרְבִ֣ים – haorebim “the ravens”) to feed you there.’ He did as the Lord had told him: he went and stayed in the ravine of Kerith east of the Jordan, and the ravens (וְהָעֹרְבִ֗ים – wehaorebim “and the ravens”) brought him bread and meat morning and evening and he drank from the stream.
1 Kings 17:2-6 NEB
The Prophet Elijah fed by the ravens, Paulwels Frank, 1590 (Alterpersanium.com)
When Israel’s King Ahab didn’t fully appreciate Elijah’s prophesy, Elijah suddenly felt that the deity was telling him to make himself scarce, hide in the wilderness, and live off the land. The “ravens” would help him survive.
As always, commentaries and disagreements abound.
Matthew Henry: God could have sent angels, yet chose lowly ravens because even they would do what he asked.
Barnes: Most ancient versions translate as “ravens;” others translate as “Arabians” or “merchants” (ma-arab). Jerome [Latin Vulgate translator] took it as “Orbites“as does the Arabic Version.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown: Sending unclean birds to feed Elijah is so bizarre that many choose “Orebim,” meaning merchants, or Arabians (we-ha-ar-bim), or citizens of Arabah, near Beth-shan (ha-a-ra-bah ). But “ravens” is preferable.
Cambridge Bible: The Septuagint says “ravens.” Jerome’s biography of Paul the Hermit says a raven supplied the hermit’s wants. Observers say large birds like ravens commonly carry home large quantities of food.
Pulpit Commentary: Some say הָעֹרְבִ֣ים (ha-o-ra-bim “the ravens”) must be ravens; men – smarter and lazier – would leave enough food for several days. But if Elijah were among kinsmen, friends, or Arab Bedouin following the law of hospitality, they might visit regularly such an honored guest. Visits might be made at twilight to avoid the day’s heat or discovery by authorities. The “orabim” are not ravens but men: kinsmen, friends, Bedouins or inhabitants of Orbo near Beth-shan.
Pulpit Commentary 1 Kings 17:4, comment 4. Both a rock named Oreb and a town named Orbo were in the area. Ha-o-ra-bim “Orbites” refers to inhabitants near the rock or of the town.
Clarke’s Commentary: Bereshith Rabba, an ancient Rabbinical comment on Genesis, says [Hebrew omitted] “Air hia betachom Beithshan, veshemo Orbo.” “There is a town in the vicinity of Bethshan (Scythopolis), and its name is Orbo.”
Old Testament Israel: circled Beth-Shan, Tishbe, & Brook Cherith
(Bible-history.com)
When even professional biblical scholars, believing these passages are Holy Scripture, can’t agree whether “ravens” are really ravens, we neophytes might do best by using probability. What’s the likelihood of being fed morning and evening for a year by wild ravens, versus being fed by friendly humans, perhaps one’s own relatives? Consider what the map shows: Tishbe – the home of Elijah “the Tishbite” – lies just south of Brook Cherith in Giliad, and about twenty-three miles “as the raven flies” across the Jordan River from Beth-Shan (Orbo is in Beth-Shan’s “vicinity.”) It’s pretty clear that Elijah was hiding out in his old stomping grounds, among friends and family, no birds needed. But we report – you decide.
Other Biblical Uses for Ravens
The raven is one in a litany of reasons why Job should stop complaining about the way God treats him.
Who provideth for the raven his prey, when his young ones cry unto God, and wander for lack of food? Job 38:41 Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text (HSMT)
A similar metaphor is included in a litany of God’s good acts.
He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.
Psalms 147:9 HSMT
Ravens will punish a wicked child.
The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young vultures shall eat it. Proverbs 30:17 (HSMT)
The black color of the raven is used as a simile:
His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are curled, and black as a raven. Song of Solomon 5:11 (HSMT)
Our final raven is a parallel to last week’s citation from Matt 6:25-27, about anxiety, but this writer specifies ravens rather than the generic “birds of the air.”
Think of the ravens; they neither sow nor reap; they have no storehouse or barn; yet God feeds them. You are worth more than the birds! Is there a man among you who by anxious thought can add a foot to his height? If, then, you cannot do even a very little thing, why are you anxious about the rest? Luke 12:24-26 NEB
The bible mentions ravens eleven times. Beyond the facts that they are black, have young which cry and are fed, experience no anxiety, enjoy pecking at eyeballs, may be mistaken for one’s friends, and are unreliable errand-runners, the bible has little to say about this very intelligent, successful and admirable bird.
Bible Factoid #5 – The Bar-Abbas Mystery
Even among true believers, this is among the most debated of New Testament stories. Previously we learned: “Bar” means “son of” in Aramaic; the gospels cite Jesus – when speaking of God the Father – as saying “abba,” an Aramaic intimate word for “father;” “papa” or “daddy” is an English equivalent. “Bar-Abbas” means “son of Papa;” the “-s” ending is the Greek masculine addition. Mama, papa, baba, dada, abba – in any language, these nouns derive from baby talk, the first sounds a human infant can utter.
At the festival season it was the Governor’s custom to release one prisoner chosen by the people. There was then in custody a man of some notoriety, called Jesus Bar-Abbas (Βαραββᾶν – Barabban**). When they were assembled Pilate said to them, ‘Which would you like me to release to you – Jesus Bar-Abbas, or Jesus called Messiah?’….they said, ‘Bar-Abbas’. ‘Then what am I to do with Jesus called Messiah? Asked Pilate; and with one voice they answered ‘Crucify him!’….He then released Bar-Abbas to them; but he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. Matt 27:15-26 NEB
**Greek uses the -s ending when the noun is subject (nominative case), -n when noun is object (accusative case).
Barabbas mini-series poster (Crossmap.com , 2016)
There are several problems with this story. First, no written record exists anywhere – not Jewish, not Roman, not Christian – beyond this paragraph in each of the four gospels (the other three gospels borrowed from Mark) of the existence of any custom of releasing one prisoner upon request during Passover season or at any other time. Scholars not wedded to a belief in biblical literal truth and who appreciate supporting evidence doubt this story’s veracity.
Second, Jesus frequently referred to himself and others as sons or children of God the “Father” – fifty times in the four gospels. By the time he was hauled before Caiaphas the High Priest, Herod the King and Pilate the Roman Governor, this usage of “Abba” and “Father” was well known and they asked Jesus about it. Our story is saying that we now have two men called Yeshua (Jesus) Bar-Abba (Barabbas, “son-of-[intimate form of] father”). Two men called Yeshua bar-Abba – one a criminal, one a preacher.
Scholars and mystery-lovers ask: When the crowd called for Bar-Abba to be released – whom did they want, whom did they get? When they called for Yeshua to be crucified – whom did they want, whom did they get? Some scholars, including Hyam Maccoby, maintain that Jesus was commonly known as “bar-Abba” for his custom of addressing God as ‘Abba’ in prayer, and for referring to God as ‘Abba’ in his preaching. When the crowd told Pontius Pilate to “free Bar-Abba!” they meant preacher Jesus. There was no criminal Jesus present.
If we assume the story of setting one bar-Abba free is false, as many scholars maintain, why does the story exist at all? What purpose does it serve? To place blame on the Jews, many say; to make Christianity acceptable to Roman authorities. By the time the Gospels were written, Roman anti-Judaism had begun (c. 40 CE), the Jewish rebellion collapsed (66-73 CE, Jerusalem and the Second Temple were destroyed (70 AD), Masada had fallen (74 CE), the Diaspora quickened, Jews had lost favored status to practice monotheism rather than worship Roman Gods and the Emperor, and pretending to be a Jewish sect no longer protected Christians from oppression. What better way to disconnect from Judaism and curry favor with Roman authorities than to place blame for Jesus’ death onto the Jews. Thus many scholars view the gospels as partially polemic and apology, saying in effect to the Romans, “We don’t blame you, we blame the Jews. We’re no threat to you. We’re good Roman subjects. We ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s…’”
The “disciple whom Jesus loved”- John 19:26 (James, John or Mary Magdalene?) sits at Jesus’ right hand, detail of Da Vinci’s Last Supper (Daily Mail)
Proffered explanations of the Bar-Abba story are legion. Here’s a sampling.
1. Two men: Yeshua crucified, Bar-Abba set free, as the Gospels say.
2. Two men: Bar-Abba crucified, Yeshua set free.
2a. Yeshua survived, met his followers afterwards, inspired them to carry on, the story ends.
2b. Yeshua went to France with or without one of the Mariams (Mary), settled down, had kids.***
3. One man Yeshua “bar-Abba:” religious preacher and insurrectionist, executed.
4. One man Yeshua “bar-Abba:” rebel insurrectionist, executed.
5. One man Yeshua “bar-Abba:” entire“bar-Abba” story invented to shift blame from Romans to Jewish leaders for bribing the crowd to call for the other “bar-Abba.” Pilate could release anyone, anytime without approval or permission, and had done so previously.
6. One man Yeshua “bar-Abba:” Mark invented parable of Yeshua as the innocent “scapegoat” and “bar-Abba” symbolizes all sinners redeemed, set free by Yeshua’s willing sacrifice.
7. One man Yeshua “bar-Abba:” Greek-speaking “Mark,” utilizing story of crowd calling “bar-Abba” when asking for Yeshua’s release, invented Barbbas to explain misunderstood apparent presence of a second man.
8. One man Yeshua “bar-Abba:” Pilate (typically described as hard and iron-fisted) taunts the crowd. When they called for “son of papa” to be released, Pilate crucified him anyway.
9. The gospels are fiction: based on the life of otherwise unknown itinerant preacher.
10. The gospels are fiction: based on the life of otherwise unknown failed revolutionary.
11. The gospels are fiction: inspired by and stolen from the pre-Zorastrian religion of Mithras.
12. The gospels are fiction: “Jesus” is a corruption of name of Greek God “Zeus.”
13. And on and on and on.
***2b. This is the route followed by Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Baigent, M., Leigh, R. & Lincoln, H.), the 1982 “non-fiction” book upon which Dan Brown relied for the “factual” superstructure of his bestseller The Da Vinci Code.
Lacking adequate information, opinions proliferate and grow ever more fanciful.
Part I – What About That Dove? & The Flood of the Gilgamesh
Part II – Sandgrouse or Quail? & YHVH [יְהוָ֖ה] [Yahweh]
Part III – Junglefowl in Judea! & New Testament Koine Greek
Part IV – Birds that Sow, Reap and Store & Whence Jesus (Ἰησοῦς)
Part VI – The Humble Hoopoe & Catching “Forty” Winks
Part VII – The Wise Hoopoe & On “On”
Part VIII –Don’t Eat That Bird! Part 1 & Of “Of”
Part IX – Don’t Eat that Bird! Part 2 & Seeing “Red”
Part X – Don’t Eat that Bird! The Last Bite & The Problems of Translation
[Chuck Almdale]
*A Sampling of Rare Biblical Words
Raven or ravin (יִטְרָ֔ף – ytrp, “yitrap”) 1 occurrence
Crow or raven ( עֹרֵ֖ב – oreb ) 3 occurrences
A raven (הָֽעֹרֵ֑ב – ha-oreb) 1 occurrence
The ravens (הָעֹרְבִ֣ים – haorebim) 1 occurrence
And the ravens (וְהָעֹרְבִ֗ים – wehaorebim) 1 occurrence
Merchandise (מַעֲרָב– ma-arab) 9 occurrences
Citizens of Arabah (or Oreb) (הָעֲרָבָ֑ה – ha-a-ra-bah) 3 occurrences
[Chuck Almdale]
Additional Sources:
Handbook of Birds of the World (HBW), Vol. 14. del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Christie, D.A. eds. (2009) Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. Corvids – Pgs 617, 630-631, 637-639.
Holy Scriptures: According to the Masoretic Text. (1955) The Jewish Publication Society of America. Philadelphia, Pa.
New English Bible with the Apocrypha, The, Oxford Study Edition. Sandmel, Samuel, Suggs, M. Jack, Tkacik, Arnold J.; eds. (1972) Oxford University Press, New York
News keeps pouring in…
| The LA times keeps us up to date on major bird life developments this week. | ||
| In today’s (Sunday 4 Sept.) paper the California section has an article on bird deaths and prevention efforts at the Ivanpah solar power station.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-solar-bird-deaths-20160831-snap-story.html |
||
| In section 1 there are two bird stories: “Cormorants to die for salmon” relating a court decision to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to continue killing Double-crested Cormorant near the mouth of the Columbia River in order to save outgoing salmon. http://www.pressreader.com/usa/los-angeles-times/20160904/281685434285099 | ||
| Also of note on page 8, an AP story by Dan Elliott “New guidelines to protect Sage Grouse”. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/885712770a9c4ef8981006aa11d8ffc0/us-takes-key-step-implement-sage-grouse-conservation-plan | ||
| Enjoy the attention the LA Times is giving birds? Tell the editors: letters@latimes.com |
Birds that Sow, Reap and Store: Sunday Morning Bible Bird Study IV
This Week’s Lesson – Birds that Sow, Reap and Store
Link to entire 10-blog Birds in the Bible series on one page
This week’s topic is not a particular bird, but stems from a general comment about birds. This well-known and oft-quoted verse appears near the end of Jesus’ sermon on the mount, a long oration in which he offers the mass of listeners advice for living a better life.
‘Therefore I bid you put away anxious thoughts about food and drink to keep you alive, and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes. Look at the birds (πετεινὰ – peteina, plural of bird) of the air; they do not sow and reap and store in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. You are worth more than the birds! Is there a man of you who by anxious thought can add a foot to his height?’
Matt. 6:25-27 New English Bible
Stained glass of Jesus, birds and foxes
(Glass Angel)
Put into a modern context, we are being told that if we let go of our never-ending fears, we’ll fuss and fret less and be happier. Endless anxiety does not make us taller or live longer. Birds do fine without such needless fretting. We are greater than they; we can live better that we do.
The bible is full of poetic and literary devices: similes, metaphors, rhyme schemes, and repetition for emphasis are only a few. However, there are many people who interpret literally passages such as the above and who, knowing little about birds or other animals, might think they actually lead lives of perpetual ease and frolic. As with humans, birds have their own agendas; entertaining humans is very low on their list. Their lives are filled with peril; they need all their courage, wits, and a lot of luck to survive long enough to raise young of their own. 80-90% of all birds die in their first year.
To illustrate some of the survival strategies birds use, I’ve selected three species which anyone in Southern California can see without much difficulty.
Clark’s Nutcracker, Aspendell, Inyo Co, CA (Joyce Waterman)
High in the mountains of western America, including our local San Gabriel Mountains, lives the Clark’s Nutcracker. Discovered by William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition near the north fork of the Salmon River (near modern-day Kamiah, Idaho) on August 22, 1805, they were later named for him.
Eurasian Nutcracker, Manzushir Khiid, Mongolia
(Dreaming of Danzan Ravjaa, January 2009)
The family Corvidae (Crows and allies) has 125 species, grouped into 25 genera. The three nutcracker species are in the Nucifraga genus: Eurasian (previously Spotted) N. caryocatactes, Kashmir N. multipunctata, and Clark’s N. columbiana. Kashmir Nutcracker is restricted to Pakistan and northwest India;
Kashmir Nutcracker
(painting by John Gould, 1849)
Eurasian ranges widely from central Europe to the eastern Himalayas and far eastern Siberia, getting no closer to Judea than northern Greece; Clark’s ranges across western U.S. and Canada, from northern Baja to British Columbia and down the Rocky Mountains to New Mexico. All three species live on conifer-covered alpine slopes, ranging between 3500 ft. and tree line, usually between 10,000 and 12,000 ft.
A close relative of crows and jays, Clark’s Nutcracker is twelve inches long, a bit larger and stouter than our local California Scrub-Jay. It does not migrate, but remains resident in its alpine coniferous habitat throughout the windy, bitter cold of the mountain winters, occasionally descending to lower slopes. Trees and shrubs provide no food for it at that season, yet it survives, despite winter’s high energy demands. How it does this is quite amazing.
Clark’s Nutcracker pulls a nut (Greg Bergquist, 10-15-04)
The Clark’s Nutcracker survives the winter primarily by eating pine nuts. The nuts, however, are not on the cones which may have blown away in the high velocity winds, but are safely stored in the ground. Like squirrels, nutcrackers spend the autumn extracting pine nuts from cones. Their long, pointed and stout bill is perfect for hammering on cones and plucking out nuts. But they don’t store the nuts in a few large close-at-hand caches like the squirrel. What they do is far more interesting and ecologically beneficial.
The nutcracker packs a mass of seeds into its sublingual (below the tongue) pouch and carries them, as much as ten miles, to its storage area in deep woods or on a windswept ridge. There, where the coming winter’s snow will lie less deep, it makes a hole in the soil with its sharp bill, pushes in one or more seeds, and covers the hole with soil or ground litter. More holes are made for the other seeds. Then it flies back to the ripe-seed ground to repeat the whole process. Individual nutcrackers may store 100,000 seeds in a single season, creating many tens of thousands of holes. And it remembers where the holes are. In natural and experimental situations, nutcrackers have recovered 50 to 99 percent of stored seeds. Experiments show that they remember each hole’s positions relative to local landmarks such as trees and rocks. If such landmarks are moved, say by a meddling scientist, the bird seeks for holes where they ought to be (relative to the moved landmarks) but are no longer.
Clark’s Nutcracker caching nuts, Mt. Baldy, CA (“Bob” – July 2013)
Choosing areas for storage where snow will lie less deep ensures easier retrieval of the seeds. Pine nuts are nutritious, loaded with energy-packed oil, and can sustain the birds through winter. But no nutcracker retrieves all their nuts. Some remain in the ground, sprout, and grow into new trees. Windswept, barren slopes provide young trees with more sunlight and less competition from mature trees. Thus the forest is replenished.
Juvenile Clark’s Nutcracker, Colorado (Joyce Waterman)
Studies have shown that the vast coniferous forests of (pre-European occupied) western North America were created largely through the activities of squirrels, nutcrackers and several of their Jay relatives. Heavy cones and nuts do not travel far without animal transport, and nuts in unopened cones frequently fail to germinate. The trees feed the squirrels and birds, and they in turn enable the forests to spread. In a sense the nutcrackers are “sowing” the forests; this shelter and food is reaped by itself and later generations of nutcrackers.
So, when considering the Clark’s Nutcracker, we must agree that they sow the coniferous forest, reap the nuts and have their own personal “barns” of which they memorize every nook and cranny! Think about that the next time you can’t find your car keys.
An alert female Acorn Woodpecker. Placerita Canyon State Park
(Chuck Bragg 4-7-12)
The Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) ranges from southern Washington State down to the western slope of the Colombian Andes Mountains. Except for the southern populations in Central and South America, they have the unusual behavior of collecting tens of thousands of acorns and storing them in granary trees. The granary is not a large cavity containing many nuts, instead it is one – sometimes more – entire tree with tens of thousands of small holes drilled by the woodpeckers into the trunk and large limbs. Each hole takes one-third to one
Acorn Caps. Malibu Creek State Park
(Chuck Almdale 4-12-14)
woodpecker-hours to drill, and into each hole one acorn, still in its shell, is pounded. The woodpeckers gather the acorns in the fall, when they’re ripe, and store them in their granary. Throughout the winter the nuts are extracted, as needed, to feed the colony. The acorns fit tightly and are very difficult for other birds and squirrels to steal them; anyone trying will be discovered and driven off by the granary owners. A granary tree can look like Swiss cheese. Telephone poles have collapsed after years of use as a granary.
Male Acorn Woodpecker with acorn, CA
(Joyce Waterman)
A granary of 50,000 holes will take 15,000 – 50,000 hours to create – far too much time for a single bird or mated pair to create. These are multi-generational projects, begun by a single pair of birds, and continued from one generation to the next. Because acorn shells shrink while stored, they become loose in their holes and must be moved to a new hole, so new holes are constantly added. In order to create and maintain such a huge project, Acorn Woodpeckers developed several unusual breeding strategies, one of which is called helpers-at-the-nest.
Acorn Woodpecker at her granary. Malibu Creek State Park
(Jim Kenney 11-10-12)
Unlike most species of birds, young Acorn Woodpeckers often do not leave their parents to find a mate, build their own nest and start their own families. This species does not migrate to find warmer climes and abundant food in winter. They are resident and stay in their territory throughout the winter. A well-stocked granary enables them to survive the winter but, conversely, it is very difficult for a resident pair to survive the winter without a well-stocked granary. The best way for an Acorn Woodpecker to survive and propagate is to inherit the family granary. So the young of previous years may stick around for many years, helping their parents to feed and protect this year’s crop of nestlings. This enables them to “learn the ropes,”, and be ready to take over the nest holes and granary when the parents eventually die.
Male Acorn Woodpecker at the nest-hole. Solstice Canyon State Park
(Chuck Bragg 5-7-11)
Colonies can begin nesting earlier in the season when they have stored acorns. Studies have shown that colonies with a granary have larger clutches and fledge up to five times more young than colonies or pairs without granaries. Acorn Woodpeckers are great flycatchers, and during the breeding months, the chicks are fed insects, supplemented by fruit and granary acorns. As with humans, inheriting the “family farm” is a tremendous advantage. But not all breeding-age birds can wait that long.
Acorn Woodpecker trio. Malibu Creek State Park, Reagan Ranch section
(Chuck Almdale 4-12-14)
Young female helpers often lay eggs in their mother’s nest. While the dominant female is good at preventing non-family birds from “dumping” eggs into her nest, she is unable to stop her own children from doing so, and cannot pick out and eject eggs not her own. So the helpers have a second reason to hang around. Colonies may even have multiple nest holes and multiple pairs of related birds simultaneously nesting.
Acorn woodpeckers don’t “sow” but they reap and they most definitely store their crop. Their complex and variable breeding strategies have evolved around their dependence on their granaries.
Long-tailed Shrike ready to swoop down on prey. Ambua Lodge, Papua New Guinea highlands (Chuck Almdale, August 2008)
Not all food stored by birds consists of nuts and grain. Shrikes store meat. The Shrike family Laniidae, distributed worldwide excepting Australia and South America, has thirty-two species. All feed primarily with a sit-and-wait method: perch upright on a bare twig or post or wire watching for movement, fly out to capture the prey, bring it back to eat it or store it in the “larder.” Prey can be large insects and small birds, reptiles or mammals, but they are known to kill prey 3-5 times as large as their own body mass. Two examples from Southern Grey Shrike larders: In India, one contained a 10-inch saw-scaled viper; in Israel, another held both a fat Sand Rat and a dead Southern Grey Shrike, an unwary intruder.
Great Grey Shrike and his impaled mouse.
(Aves et ales Animales 6-Mar-2015)
Their larder consists of thorns, sharp twigs or barbed wire, upon which they impale their dead prey; busy shrike may have many corpses thus impaled, for which habit they are also colloquially called “butcher birds.”
Loggerhead Shrike sits-and-waits on his bare twig perch. Malibu Creek State Park
(Jim Kenney 11-20-12)
Our local Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius Ludovicianus) is a 12-inch long passerine, looking much like a Mockingbird but with a thicker, hooked black bill. Lacking the talons of a true raptor, it kills its prey by crushing it in its bill or bashing it to death. They have figured out how to eat poisonous Monarch Butterflies: impale them on a thorn for up to three days until the poison breaks down. Shrikes, endemic to North America, have recently suffered an enormous population decline of 76% between 1966 and 2015, primarily due to eating pesticide-laden prey, it is suspected.
Clark’s Nutcracker, Acorn Woodpecker and Loggerhead Shrike – three local examples of the world’s hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of birds that sow or reap or store their food.
Bible Factoid #4 – Whence Jesus? (Ἰησοῦς –Ihsous)
Since we just finished nitpicking one of Jesus’ sayings, let’s take a look at the name itself. In modern America, many people pronounce it “Geezuz,” which would have been unrecognizable to Jesus’ family and friends. We’ll work backwards to see how it got this way.
The hard “J” that sounds like “G” (as in George) became permanently affixed to “Jesus” in 1611 CE by the King James Version of the bible, by which time the letter “J” had finally entered English. Since the Norman Conquest in 1066, the hard “J” had slowly evolved out of the much softer “IA,” primarily because people thought the hardness sounded more masculine: Iames became James, Ian and Iain became John (except in Scotland), Iestin became Justin, Ieremias became Jeremiah, and Iesus (ee-ay-soos) became Jesus (Gee-sus).
The 1384 CE translation by John Wycliffe from the Latin Vulgate bible into English had retained the earlier Latin “Iesus” (“ee-ay-soos”), which dated back to 382 CE, when Jerome completed the translation of the bible from Koine Greek into common (or “vulgar”) Latin. The Vulgate codified “Iesus” in Latin as the transliteration of Ἰησοῦς (Ihsous, pronounced “ee-ay-soos”) from the Koine Greek of the original New Testament books.
Koine Greek was the written language of the New Testament, but was not the only language spoken in first century Judea – Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin were also spoken; Aramaic was the predominant language around Galilee, whence came Jesus, the man. His Aramaic name was masculinized into New Testament Greek by adding “–s” to the end. [Think of Diogenes, Orestes, Herodotus, Ulysses.] Greek had neither the letter nor the sound of “Y;” “IH” was the closest approximation.
Joshua fittin’ the battle of Jericho, which sat on an earthquake fault (Noise Curmudgeon)
So the actual name of Jesus the person would have been “Y’shua” (Yod-Shin-Vav-Ayin) Y’-Sh-U-A. This spelling had evolved over centuries from “Yeshua”, which had, by the fifth century BCE, evolved from Yehoshu’a (“Yahweh is salvation” or “Yahweh will deliver”). Thus Y’shua, Yeshua and Yehoshu’a have all come down to us as “Joshua.” The name “Joshua” appears in seven books of the Jewish testament, most notably as the one who “fit the battle of Jericho,” as the song goes.
Jesus = Joshua = Yeshua = Yehoshu’a. But there’s more. Yeshua’s father was Joseph, which through similar changes was transliterated from Aramaic Yôsēp̄ and Hebrew Yossif (יוֹסֵף֙ – Yoseph “he will add”) . In Hebrew “ben” was added to indicate “son of,” as in Ben-Hur (“son of Hur”) or Ben-Gurion; this became “bar” in Aramaic, as in “Bar-Abba[-s]” or “Barabbas” (“son of Abba[-s]”) Matt 27-16
We can conclude that Jesus would have answered to the name Yeshua (or Y’shua) Bar-Yôsēp̄, a good Jewish Aramaic name. This brings us to a mystery, to be addressed in next week’s bible factoid.
Part I – What About That Dove? & The Flood of the Gilgamesh
Part II – Sandgrouse or Quail? & YHVH [יְהוָ֖ה] [Yahweh]
Part III – Junglefowl in Judea! & New Testament Koine Greek
Part V – The Friendly Raven & The Bar-Abbas Mystery
Part VI – The Humble Hoopoe & Catching “Forty” Winks
Part VII – The Wise Hoopoe & On “On”
Part VIII –Don’t Eat That Bird! Part 1 & Of “Of”
Part IX – Don’t Eat that Bird! Part 2 & Seeing “Red”
Part X – Don’t Eat that Bird! The Last Bite & The Problems of Translation
[Chuck Almdale]
Additional Sources:
Handbook of Birds of the World (HBW), Vol. 7. del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Sargatal, J. eds. (2002) Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. Acorn Woodpecker – Pgs 441-442.
Handbook of Birds of the World (HBW), Vol. 13. del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Christie, D.A. eds. (2008) Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. Shrikes, Loggerhead Shrike – Pgs 744-747, 785-786.
Handbook of Birds of the World (HBW), Vol. 14. del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Christie, D.A. eds. (2009) Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. Nutcrackers, Clark’s Nutcracker – Pgs 611-613.
Birder’s Handbook. Ehrlich, Paul R., Dobkin, David S. & Wheye, Darryl. (1988) Simon & Schuster, New York. Pgs 344, 410, 466.
New English Bible with the Apocrypha, The, Oxford Study Edition. Sandmel, Samuel, Suggs, M. Jack, Tkacik, Arnold J.; eds. (1972) Oxford University Press, New York
World Shorebirds Day Reminder: 2 – 6 September, 2016
Red Knot – World Shorebirds Day Bird of the Year
Photographer: Mario Suárez Porras, Spain
Here’s a message from one of our farther-flung SMBAS Blog readers,
Gyorgy Szimuly, from his home in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom.
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https://worldshorebirdsday.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/raffle-prizes-for-global-shorebird-counting-participants/
Should you have any question, please feel free to contact me.
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