Free email delivery
Please sign up for email delivery in the subscription area to the right.
No salesman will call, at least not from us. Maybe from someone else.
The most expensive bird in the world | YouTube Video
[Posted by Chuck Almdale, submitted by Alert Reader Lina Gallucci]
This bird topped the “11 most expensive birds” list I posted yesterday, so at least this particular expensive bird is for real.
A two-year-old Belgian racing pigeon called New Kim is about to set a world record of over $1.5 million at auction, the price even more exceptional because the bird is female, the online auction house said.
It seems that the Belgians and the Dutch are the most fanatical pigeon racers in the world, and will pay enormous amounts for a good ol’ Rock Pigeon. Why? Who can plumb the mysteries of the human heart. But it’s worth noting that it was the Dutch who—in the early 1630’s—were willing to pay 100,000 florins (or Dutch guilders) for forty tulip bulbs.
What’s a 1630’s florin worth, you ask? Very difficult to calculate the value in today’s dollars or euros. Here’s the cost of a few other items (Wikipedia) of that era:
- A “tun” (930 kg or 2,050 lb) of butter – about 100 florins
- A skilled laborer – 150–350 florins a year
- “Eight fat swine” – 240 florins.
As they say, do the math.
Here’s a quickie history lesson on Rock Pigeons which I wrote a few years back, always worth a re-visit.
What About That Dove? – Sunday Morning Bible Bird Study I
Finally, here’s the next chapter in the Belgian racing pigeon saga, from your number one source of Belgian racing pigeon news, the South China Post.
11 Most Expensive Birds in the World | Luxury Columnist
[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
This come from Ron Orenstein via the BirdChat email service. Ron’s succinct and entirely apropos comment was:
“Can you say irresponsible? Or illegal?”
I was very surprised (aghast, dismayed) to see some of the birds on this short list. It doesn’t seem as if these are the 11 most expensive. Perhaps this is just something intended to annoy – clickbait nonsense. But still it’s probably something we all should be aware of. A trigger warning on this one.
Eleven most expensive birds in the world
LuxuryColumnist.com | 2021 | 2 minute read
Native Plant Landscaping & urban wildlife | Noriko Smallwood study presentation on Zoom
[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
Doing this study during the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic was not easy for Noriko Smallwood, but determination and energy got her through. I know this first hand, as our yard was one of her many study sites. Occasionally we’d peek out our window and spot her skulking around, counting birds and insects, especially our enormous numbers of harmless hover flies and delightful small native bees.
The Influence of native plant landscaping on urban wildlife in Southern California residential yards
Noriko Smallwood and Dr. Eric Wood | LASMMCNPS website | 12 Oct 2021
Noriko begins her program about 7 minutes in, and Q&A follows at the end.
From her introduction to the Zoom presentation on the website of the Los Angeles/Santa Monica Mountains chapter of the California Native Plant Society:
For my master’s research, I quantified the importance of native yards to wildlife throughout L.A. by comparing birds and insects in 22 native and 22 paired non-native yards. Additionally, I investigated the drivers behind these patterns and identified particular plants that were used by birds in greater proportion than their availability, indicating preference. In this presentation, I will share the results of my study and will provide recommendations for wildlife-friendly landscaping.
Website of the Los Angeles/Santa Monica Mountains chapter of the California Native Plant Society
Now clean, oiled birds released | LA Times
[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
Following up on last week’s blog about oiled Western Snowy Plovers, Los Angeles Times reporter Robin Estrin describes more of the process and the final release back into the wild of an Eared Grebe and a Ruddy Duck.
Cleansed of oil, birds harmed by Orange County spill take flight in Huntington Beach
Los Angeles Times | Robin Estrin | 14 Oct 2021 | 5 minute read
Excerpted from the article:
On Oct. 3, the first winged victim of the Orange County oil spill washed ashore in Newport Beach. Its white and light-brown feathers were caked with black crude. Cold, oily water had seeped through its down and onto its skin.
Ten days later, Sam Christie, a wildlife care specialist from the UC Davis Oiled Wildlife Care Network, lifted the bird — a ruddy duck — from a soft, blue box and placed it at the edge of Huntington Harbour. Healthy and cleaned of oil, it did as ducks do; it glided across the surface of the water, paddling its feet and bobbing its head. More…
Both Eared Grebes and Ruddy Ducks are regular wintering birds at Malibu Lagoon and elsewhere along the coast, freely associating with each other as they dive for fish in the deeper sections of the lagoon, especially near the Pacific Coast Highway bridge.
We have recorded Eared Grebes in every month except June, but 82% of the sighting are in Oct – Feb, when they are in their basic (plain) non-breeding plumage. The brightly colored adults in alternate plumage are mostly black and bronze, with bright golden bronze “ear” plumes, absent in winter. Unfortunately, they are mostly gone from the lagoon before this plumage appears, as are the Ruddy Ducks.
Ruddy Ducks are recorded in all months. However 98.2% of sightings are Nov-Apr, and 1.8% are May – Oct. We have no photos of either species in their brighter, breeding alternate plumage. In breeding the colorful males have bright blue bills. Both sexes have short, almost upright tails, and for this have long been known to hunters as “Stifftails.”
(Ray Juncosa 12/28/14)
The Arbornaut | Book Recommendation
[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
The Arbornaut, an adventurous autobiography by biologist Meg Lowman, is exactly what her subtitle suggests: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us. The short version of this recommendation is that everyone will find something to love in the book.
Inquisitive—but a little lonely—child. Plucky young woman. Budding scientist. A woman alone among domineering male scholars and the beer-drinking fellow students. The first person to study forestry who didn’t think in terms of board-feet or harvestable timber per acre, but did think about what might be going on in a tree higher than six feet above the ground. How to get safely into the canopy and move around. What was eating those leaves, and what does it do to the tree? Why are leaves in different parts of the canopy very different from one another. The enormous number of unknown insect species living in the forest canopy. Canopy walks, deforestation, sacred trees, fungal and insect pests, bio-blitzes, fire, tree thirst, global warming. She did it all, and much of it—using rock-climbing (or cave-descending) equipment to get into and around the forest canopy, and the creation of canopy trails—she invented and designed.
An interesting quote about coastal redwoods, one of her favorite trees:
And one last factoid discovered by arbornauts relates to the complex crowns of redwoods: the trees sprout new leaders (shoots at the branch tips) in the upper canopy after wind or storms have damaged the existing trunks. Such response to repeated weather conditions results in complicated masses of separate leaders, both living and dead, and massive amounts of detritus in the tree crotches where entire mini communities establish. One individual tree called Ilúvatar, named after a character from J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, contains 220 different trunks branching in the crown, representing regrowth from fire or wind and comprising over 37,000 cubic yards of wood. Measured by Steve Sillett and colleagues, this tree is considered the most complex living organism on the planet, but only by climbing into its upper reaches were such structural wonders discovered.
The Arbornaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us
Meg, Lowman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2021. 337 pages
The publisher’s blurb:
“An eye-opening and enchanting book by one of our major scientist-explorers.” —Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper’s Wife
Nicknamed the “Real-Life Lorax” by National Geographic, the biologist, botanist, and conservationist Meg Lowman—aka “CanopyMeg”—takes us on an adventure into the “eighth continent” of the world’s treetops, along her journey as a tree scientist, and into climate action
Welcome to the eighth continent!
As a graduate student exploring the rain forests of Australia, Meg Lowman realized that she couldn’t monitor her beloved leaves using any of the usual methods. So she put together a climbing kit: she sewed a harness from an old seat belt, gathered hundreds of feet of rope, and found a tool belt for her pencils and rulers. Up she went, into the trees.
Forty years later, Lowman remains one of the world’s foremost arbornauts, known as the “real-life Lorax.” She planned one of the first treetop walkways and helps create more of these bridges through the eighth continent all over the world.
With a voice as infectious in its enthusiasm as it is practical in its optimism, The Arbornaut chronicles Lowman’s irresistible story. From climbing solo hundreds of feet into the air in Australia’s rainforests to measuring tree growth in the northeastern United States, from searching the redwoods of the Pacific coast for new life to studying leaf eaters in Scotland’s Highlands, from conducting a BioBlitz in Malaysia to conservation planning in India and collaborating with priests to save Ethiopia’s last forests, Lowman launches us into the life and work of a field scientist, ecologist, and conservationist. She offers hope, specific plans, and recommendations for action; despite devastation across the world, through trees, we can still make an immediate and lasting impact against climate change.
A blend of memoir and fieldwork account, The Arbornaut gives us the chance to live among scientists and travel the world—even in a hot-air balloon! It is the engrossing, uplifting story of a nerdy tree climber—the only girl at the science fair—who becomes a giant inspiration, a groundbreaking, ground-defying field biologist, and a hero for trees everywhere.
SANTA MONICA BAY AUDUBON SOCIETY BLOG 