Ruby-throated Hummingbird gallery finally up

Boy, between so many speaking gigs, developing this stupid Bell's Palsy (why couldn't it have been a case of Bell's Vireo?!) and trying to keep up with some other assignments, I've been working way too slow on getting my photo galleries back up. But I've made it (alphabetically by family common names) up to Hummingbird today. I've got a few pretty nice Ruby-throat photos--this spring and summer I'm going to work really hard on getting some better flight shots.
And looking at today's hummingbird map, I guess it's time to get my feeders out! They won't be here right away, probably, but just in case, it's better to have something out there for them!

For the Birds programs for last week -- the Dr. Ruth of Ornithology

Last week's For the Birds programs were my new "Dr. Ruth" series:

• Bird equipment
• Birds getting in the mood
• Birds do it
• The scoop on bird poop
• Do birds fart?

They're all podcast and also available on iTunes--it was a kick to go to the iTunes store, look for Laura Erickson, and find out that my podcast is highly rated! And it's free. If you open these files in iTunes, you can read the scripts on the "lyrics" tab.

Great New York Times article about starlings

I love it when I read a general news article about birds that is both well-written and accurate. And the Sunday New York Times has an extraordinary article about starlings written by Jonathan Rosen that perfectly fits the bill. He weaves natural history, human history, and the arts in a lovely article inspired by an art exhibit of Richard Barnes’s photographs of starlings, which Rosen writes:

capture the double nature of the birds — or at least the double nature of our relationship to them — recording the pointillist delicacy of the flock and something darker, almost sinister in the gathering mass. Many of Barnes’s photographs, which will be shown at Hosfelt Gallery in New York this fall, were taken over two years in EUR, a suburb of Rome that Mussolini planned as a showcase for fascist architecture. The man-made backdrop only enhances the sense of the vast flock as something malign, a sort of avian Nuremberg rally.

The entire article is really and truly worth a read.

Stephen Colbert's Meta-Free-Phor-All!

I almost died laughing when I watched this today--Russ had recorded the program because I was in Rhinelander pitching for WXPR last night.

King Penguins may help monitor climate change

From today's Live Science:

King penguins could help scientists monitor the effects of climate change. Scientists at the University of Birmingham are investigating whether the penguins can be used as bio-indicators.

“If penguins are traveling further or diving deeper for food, that tells us something about the availability of particular fish in regions of the Antarctic,” said one of the researchers Lewis Halsey who presented study results at the annual meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology in Glasgow.

“We may be able to assess the pressure exerted by king penguins on this ecosystem, and look at the effects of both climate change and over-fishing in this region of the world,” Halsey added.

King penguins are good candidates as bio-indicators for several reasons. For instance, while foraging they cover hundreds of kilometers and dive to depths of several hundred meters, so they explore large swaths of the Southern Oceans. Plus, since they come ashore to molt, the penguins are accessible to researchers. Since their diets are well known, scientists can keep track of certain fish populations by monitoring the penguins’ health and food consumption.

It's not like this research is going to really help the penguins--just give us clues about climate by how it affects them. But penguins are a charismatic, popular species, so if they are being hurt, Americans are maybe a little more likely to do something about the problem than if they were, say, Sage Grouse, which we're doing very little about despite their dangerously low numbers. Anyway, read the whole article here.

The greatest living American

Not only is he eneagled, not only is he a flagophile, not only did he create the very word "truthiness," Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American. Now if only he wanted the Dr. Ruth of Ornithology to explain the birds and the bees to Stephen Junior! This week my radio programs are all done in my Dr. Ruth capacity. Monday was about the equipment birds have. Tuesday is how that equipment is readied for breeding. Wednesday is how birds do it. Tomorrow will be the scoop on bird poop. And Friday will provide the answer to the eternal question, do birds fart?

Now come on, Stephen. I need to get people to notice my book, 101 Ways to Help Birds, which I put my heart and soul into researching and writing for three years. You need your son to know the facts of life before he has to learn them on the streets. Wouldn't this be a win-win situation?

Rats--I can't whistle

I was reading Graeme Garden's account of his experience with Bell's palsy and a red flag went up. He discovered he had it when he suddenly found he couldn't whistle. So I puckered my lips and blew, and nothing came out! Oh, dear--whistling has always been my way of signaling my chickadees that I've got mealworms. And my neighborhood cardinal has been singing--I love whistling back to him. Again, this seemed cruel upon the first shocked discovery. But really, I can still see and hear them, and when my whistling comes back, I'll maybe have that same joyful thrill of accomplishment I had the first time I got a whistle to come out sounding like a cardinal some five decades ago.

How I spent Stress Day

I woke up today feeling vaguely weird--my whole face felt sleepy or something, and I felt like I had something in my left eye. But I had to drive to the Twin Cities with Tom and so off we went at 7 am.

Half way there, in Hinckley, I bought a cup of coffee. I took a sip and it dribbled out of the left side of my mouth. It was hot coffee, but it didn't feel hot on my lip or chin. Or rather, it didn't feel hot on the left side of my lip or chin. It was like I'd had a shot of novocaine on that side.

The sky was clear, and we watched a couple of crows chasing a Bald Eagle and lots of Red-wings and stuff, so I wasn't too focused on my mouth. But then as the road curved to the east, the sun poured in, and I tried to close my left eye for a second, but it wouldn't close. I simply could not wink on that side.

I was still focused on the lovely day and getting Tom down to the U of M (where Sandhill Cranes flew over the parking lot!) Then we headed north again, and stopped at a Hinckley Subway for a late lunch. And that's when things got REALLY weird. I couldn't open my mouth right to bite into the sandwich, and when I did get a bite, I found myself chewing on my lip! It was bleeding, but I couldn't even feel it. So then I went to the bathroom and took a look at myself in the mirror. I found myself with a smile as crooked as Dick Cheney's and an eye that wouldn't close.

This was pretty scary, to say the least. I didn't have my palm pilot and didn't know my doctor's phone number, so I called Russ and asked him to call and find out what I should do. Tom drove the rest of the way (we passed a loon in one of those lakes along I-35), and then Tom brought me straight to the emergency room where Russ met us.

They made sure it wasn't a stroke--that was a relief! It turns out I have Bell's palsy. No one knows what causes it for sure, but it's a frequent complication of Lyme disease, so they are doing a blood test for that.

Fortunately, this isn't a bad disease, just a weird one. I'm afraid I'm going to look pretty asymmetric for a while. And until I master drinking without it leaking out the left side, I may retreat to a corner to eat. I have to tape my left eye closed when I go to sleep because it doesn't close properly--the cornea can be easily damaged. But the facial paralysis is usually gone within several weeks, and even if it lasts several months I can hardly complain after the relief I felt that it wasn't a stroke or brain tumor.

So that was how I spent "Stress Day." But imagining what a horrible day some people are having, mine was a piece of cake.

Greater Prairie-Chicken photos finally back up

I've gotten pretty much all my photos uploaded, but am still getting the galleries back up. Now that prairie chickens are booming on their leks, I figure people may want to see their cool displays, which are at Laura's Prairie-Chicken Photo Gallery

Another theory about why bees are declining-- Cell phones

Birdchick, maybe you better not talk on your phone near your hives. This just in from The Independent Online:

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross

Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Read the whole article.