Posts Tagged ‘Ornithology’
“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”*…
As Josh Begley elegantly demonstrates, silence may be nigh…
The New York Times published its first issue on September 18, 1851, but the first photos wouldn’t appear on the cover until the early 1900s over 60 years later. This visual timeline by self-described data artist Josh Begley captures the storied newspaper’s approach to layout and photography by incorporating every NY Times front page ever published into a single one-minute video. The timelapse captures decades text-only front pages before the newspaper began to incorporate illustrated maps and wood engravings. The liberal usage of black and white photography begins a century later and finally the first color photo appears in 1997. What a fascinating way to view history through image, over 60,000 front pages in all…
Showing instead of (simply) telling: “The Rise of the Image: Every NY Times Front Page Since 1852 in Under a Minute,” from @thisiscolossal.com (who found it via @kottke.org).
See the animated visualization here or here.
(TotH to EWW)
* Ansel Adams
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As we ponder the prevalence of pictures, we might spare a thought for a man who made powerful– and beautiful– use of images, John James Audubon; he died on this date in 1851. An ornithologist, naturalist, and artist, Audubon documented all types of American birds with detailed illustrations depicting the birds in their natural habitats. His The Birds of America (1827–1839), in which he identified 25 new species, is considered one of the most important– and finest– ornithological works ever completed.
Happy Mozart’s Birthday!
“The daily hummingbird assaults existence with improbability”*…
Zito Madu‘s lovely meditation on– and appreciation of– the hummingbird…
… Hummingbirds are wondrous creatures. As Katherine Rundell wrote in her 2022 essay “Consider the Hummingbird”:
There is nothing I admire more than evolution. But it’s difficult, more than with any other living thing, to imagine hummingbirds beginning as archaebacteria among primordial murk, painstakingly working over millions of years to grow bright wings. They seem as if they were made in an instant, a spark of genius from an extravagant god.
They are the smallest living birds in the world. There are 366 known species of hummingbirds, with the smallest being the bee hummingbird that measures at two inches, and the largest being the giant hummingbird, which is 9.1 inches long. Most live in the tropics, largely in Central and South America, but there are around seventeen species in the United States. They have long needle-like beaks, can fly forward, backward, up, down, and in zigzags. They flap their wings faster than any other bird, up to fifty times per second, they have the largest heart-to-body-size rate in an animal, and that heart has typically 500 to 1200 beats per minute, according to The Hummingbird Handbook (2021) by John Shewey. When in a state of deep rest, and to conserve energy, the hummingbird can slow down its heart rate to only fifty beats per minute, and drop its metabolism by 95 percent.
In 2022, a study was published by Yale scientists on the range of colors in the plumage of hummingbirds, which “exceeds the known diversity of colors found in the plumages of all other bird species combined, increasing the total of known bird-visible plumage colors by 56 percent.”…
“Hummingbirds are Wondrous,” from @_Zeets in @Plough.
* Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters
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As we appreciate abundance, we might send bucolic birthday greetings to Ralph Waldo Emerson; he was born on this date in 1803. An essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet, he articulated the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay “Nature.”
A mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow Transcendentalist, and remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement.
“The daily hummingbird assaults existence with improbability”*…
High in the Andes, thousands of meters above sea level, speedy hummingbirds defy near-freezing temperatures. These tiny flyers endure the cold with a counterintuitive trick: They lower their body temperature—sometimes as much as 33°C [over 90°F] —for hours at a time, new research suggests…
Among vertebrates, hummingbirds have the highest metabolism for their size. With a metabolic rate roughly 77 times that of an average human, they need to feed nearly continuously. But when it gets too cold or dark to forage, maintaining a normal body temperature is energetically draining. Instead, the small animals can cool their internal temperature by 10°C to 30°C. This slows their metabolism by as much as 95% and protects them from starvation, says Blair Wolf, a physiological ecologist at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
In this state, called torpor, a bird is motionless and unresponsive. “You wouldn’t even know it was alive if you picked it up,” Wolf says. But when the morning comes and it’s time to feed, he says, the birds quickly warm themselves back up again. “It’s like hibernation but regulated on an even tighter schedule.”…
One of Nature’s (many) marvelous tricks: “To survive frigid nights, hummingbirds cool themselves to record-low temperatures.”
* Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters
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As we admire adaptation, we might send closely-observed birthday greetings to Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek; he was born on this date in 1632. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as “the Father of Microbiology“, and one of the first microscopists and microbiologists (he discovered bacteria, protists, sperm cells, blood cells, and numerous structures in animal and plant tissues). A central figure in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology, his letters to the Royal Society were widely read and richly influential… which is fair dues, as it’s widely believed that van Leeuwenhoek was inspired by illustrations in Robert Hooke’s earlier book, Micrographia [and here].
“Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”*…
The census is an essential part of American democracy. The United States counts its population every ten years to determine how many seats each state should have in Congress. Census data have also been used to levy taxes and distribute funds, estimate the country’s military strength, assess needs for social programs, measure population density, conduct statistical analysis of longitudinal trends, and make business planning decisions.
We looked at every question on every census from 1790 to 2020. The questions—over 600 in total—tell us a lot about the country’s priorities, norms, and biases in each decade. They depict an evolving country: a modernizing economy, a diversifying population, an imperfect but expanding set of civil and human rights, and a growing list of armed conflicts in its memory…
From our friends at The Pudding (@puddingviz), a graphic history of the questions asked in the U.S. Census. What changes each decade, what stays the same, and what do the questions say about American culture and society? “The Evolution of the American Census.”
For a look at how the pandemic is impacting this year’s census, see “It’s the Official Start to the 2020 Census. But No One Counted On a Pandemic.” and “Coronavirus could exacerbate the US census’ undercount of people of color.”
* Article 1, Section 2, of the the Constitution of the United States of America, directing the creation and conducting of a regular census; Congress first met in 1789, and the first national census was held in 1790.
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As we answer faithfully, we might send illustratively enumerating birthday greetings to John James Audubon; he was born on this date in 1785. An ornithologist, naturalist, and artist, Audubon documented all types of American birds with detailed illustrations depicting the birds in their natural habitats. His The Birds of America (1827–1839), in which he identified 25 new species, is considered one of the most important– and finest– ornithological works ever completed.
Book plate featuring Audubon’s print of the Greater Prairie Chicken
“It is a good day to study lichens”*…
Wolf lichen
Science is sometimes caricatured as a wholly objective pursuit that allows us to understand the world through the lens of neutral empiricism. But the conclusions that scientists draw from their data, and the very questions they choose to ask, depend on their assumptions about the world, the culture in which they work, and the vocabulary they use. The scientist Toby Spribille once said to me, “We can only ask questions that we have imagination for.” And he should know, because no group of organisms better exemplifies this principle than the one Spribille is obsessed with: lichens.
Lichens can be found growing on bark, rocks, or walls; in woodlands, deserts, or tundra; as coralline branches, tiny cups, or leaflike fronds. They look like plants or fungi, and for the longest time, biologists thought that they were. But 150 years ago, a Swiss botanist named Simon Schwendener suggested the radical hypothesis that lichens are composite organisms—fungi, living together with microscopic algae.
It was the right hypothesis at the wrong time. The very notion of different organisms living so closely with—or within—each other was unheard of. That they should coexist to their mutual benefit was more ludicrous still. This was a mere decade after Charles Darwin had published his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, and many biologists were gripped by the idea of nature as a gladiatorial arena, shaped by conflict. Against this zeitgeist, the concept of cohabiting, cooperative organisms found little purchase. Lichenologists spent decades rejecting and ridiculing Schwendener’s “dual hypothesis.” And he himself wrongly argued that the fungus enslaved or imprisoned the alga, robbing it of nutrients. As others later showed, that’s not the case: Both partners provide nutrients to each other…
Gorgeous and weird, lichens have pushed the boundaries of our understanding of nature– and our way of studying it. Learn more at: “The Overlooked Organisms That Keep Challenging Our Assumptions About Life.”
A Year in Thoreau’s Journal: 1851
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As we contemplate cooperation, we might spare a thought for John James Audubon; he died on this date in 1851. An ornithologist, naturalist, and artist, Audubon documented all types of American birds with detailed illustrations depicting the birds in their natural habitats. His The Birds of America (1827–1839), in which he identified 25 new species, is considered one of the most important– and finest– ornithological works ever completed.
Book plate featuring Audubon’s print of the Greater Prairie Chicken
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