Archive for Rants
Two Exhibitions
Posted by: | CommentsI was excited to discover just a few minutes after our arrival in Vienna that there was a special exhibit in the grandest room of the Austrian National Library, the Prunksaal.
Under the promising title “Of Fishes, Birds, and Reptiles,” it promised masterpieces of natural history illustration from the imperial collections–just up my alley, and how nice to get to spend some time in that familiar library someplace other than the dingy old manuscripts room.
And in fact there were some nice paintings hanging and some fancy early prints in the cases. Giorgio Liberale’s works for Ferdinand II were splendid, and the leaves from the Musaeum belonging to Rudolf II let us look into the private library of one of the early Baroque’s most interesting natural history collectors.
So why did we leave feeling like our 12 euros could have been better spent on coffee and cake? (As an apostate academic, I don’t get in free anywhere anymore.)
There are shows whose individual objects are so spectacular that they carry the entire experience. And there are shows whose ingenious narrative structures can get you through even the otherwise dreariest of exhibits. “Von Fischen, Vögeln und Reptilien” was of neither sort. The images on display were all show and no tell, and the simple chronological structure of the whole thing let even the specialized interest flag after a while. It shouldn’t be up to the visitor, for example, to somehow just know that one of the paintings was among the earliest ever to show actual feet on a bird-of-paradise; that’s the job of the curators, who should be responsible for pointing out odd facts like that and telling the stories that will make a trip to the exhibit memorable. The catalogue didn’t do it for me, either, and I buy exhibit catalogues almost like an addict buys, well, coffee and cake.
A couple of days later we found ourselves in Vienna’s grand old Natural History Museum.
I’ve loved this place for years, decades, now, in spite of–no, precisely because of–its resolutely old-fashioned, exhaustively systematic take on the natural world.
There aren’t many museums left that dare present, say, half a dozen rooms of neatly hand-labeled rocks in mineralogical sequence, and the sheer nineteenth-century confidence of it all is overwhelming and ultimately seductive. Here’s nature, have a look!
Since my last visit, though, there have been many innovations, some small and clever, some big and imposing. There are far more “mockups” now than there used to be, from dinosaur models dressed in chicken and turkey feathers
to an animatronic beast roaring and weaving its frightening head above the delighted crowds of mock-terrified toddlers. (Click for video.)
My favorite this time was a temporary exhibition called “Katzengold und Silberfisch,” full of whimsical reminders that some minerals are named for animals and some animals for minerals. Words, things: right up my alley.
And this time it was. There wasn’t much to it: no ooh-aah rarities, no clever texts, just Ruby Topazes and rubies and topazes. And a Lazuli Bunting lying innocently beneath a slab of lapis lazuli.
Three cheers.
Arizona: Start at the Rear
Posted by: | CommentsFor generations, birders believed that the way to identify the feathered objects of their attentions was to begin at the bill and move backwards; I remember, in fact, reading once long ago that no bird could elude determination if you saw its eye well.
The canard is repeated in some recent guides for casual and beginning birders, too. I’m surprised: we all know that many groups traditionally considered “difficult” become less challenging if you start not at the head but at the tail.
Think about it. In the northern hemisphere, at least, the defining behavior of the class Aves is flight, an activity accomplished with two groups of feathers: the remiges and the rectrices. The shapes and relative lengths of the flight feathers of wing and tail are anything from suggestive to species-specific in many birds, and they are most easily and most quickly gauged by checking the rear end of a perched bird. And best of all, those shapes and relative lengths are often consistent across age and sex classes.
Every birder has her own favorite examples, from shorebirds to swallows, but here in southeast Arizona in June, we’re all looking at hummingbirds–and at their tails, not at the glittering, dazzling distractions of the males’ gorgets.
Try this one:
I’d like to claim that the photo looks like this on purpose, but I’ll confess that it reflects my incompetence as a photographer rather than any devilish skill as a setter of quizzes. In any event, I’m fairly confident that anyone trying to identify this bird by starting at the bill will be stymied; there’s just not enough of the bird’s front end visible in this fortuitously (and for our purposes felicitously) poor image.
Stumped? Not at all. Start at the tail, that big, broad, long, dark, forked tail, and I don’t think you can wind up anywhere but at Broad-billed Hummingbird (knowing that we’re in southeast Arizona, of course). Indeed, the tail shape and pattern can be one of the best ways for those not familiar with the two species to distinguish the abundant Broad-billed from the much scarcer White-eared, whose shorter, blunter, narrower tail is green in the center.
What about your local hummingbird or hummingbirds? Next time you get to hang out at a busy feeder, tear your eyes away from the scintillations of the adult males’ heads and focus on the tails. Whether it’s distinguishing Anna’s and Costa’s or Broad-tailed and Calliope or just getting to know your neighborhood Ruby-throateds better, you’ll find a whole new way to identify birds. A better one, too.
Markedness
Posted by: | CommentsAs birders learn to look closer, we more and more detect birds that somehow don’t fit the categories of the birdy books. Individual variation accounts for some of that, but many of the odd birds we encounter are, or at least seem to be, hybrids and intergrades, the products of matings more enthusiastic than accurate.
Some such hybrids are pretty obvious, like this apparent Mallard x Northern Pintail.
In many cases, though, the putative parent species are so similar to begin with, and their offspring so variable, that distinguishing between a “pure” individual and a hybrid can be a real challenge.
This gull at Clover Point this past weekend, for example, showed the mix of Western and Glaucous-winged Gull characters typical of our local “Puget Sound Gull”: a darkish mantle, blackish wingtips above, faintly marked wingtips below, and an orbital ring mixed yellow and red.
And this goose, hanging out in a Tucson park this winter, could easily have been mistaken for a Ross’s Goose without a closer look at the long bill with a slight “grin patch.”
These are old stories and familiar, but lately I’ve been thinking about when birders look for (and find) hybrids. What it comes down to is markedness, or which potential parent taxon is deemed the default. This varies geographically, of course: in the east, a reddish Northern Flicker will be scrutinized, while over much of the west it’s the apparently yellow-shafted birds that draw special attention.
But I don’t think that markedness is always just about rarity and vagrancy. Even in those areas–and there are more and more of them as time goes on–where, say, Snow and Ross’s Geese are equally expected, it’s only the apparent Ross’s that are inspected for signs of hybridization: how often have you heard anyone cautiously report “an apparently pure Snow Goose,” even in places like southeast Arizona where both white geese are uncommonish? Nobody ever objects that a tentative Snow Goose’s bill is a bit short or the head a bit round or the plumage a bit white.
Even more strikingly, here in Vancouver I notice that birders (by which I mean mostly myself) readily pass over the slightly uncommon Myrtle Warblers, while subjecting the more abundant Audubon’s Warblers to a much more thorough examination. Adult male Audubon’s types with white in the throat or lightly marked wing coverts? Probable hybrids! But I simply tick the Myrtles; even when I linger over a particularly snazzy one (they are really very beautiful), I more often than not wind up moving on without checking it over at all as carefully as I do the yellow-throated birds. But surely there are hybrids that more closely resemble Myrtles than Audubon’s, aren’t there?
The lesson that I’ve drawn from these musings? Start to treat all the birds I see as “marked,” as potentially something different and weird–as worth looking at more closely than I already do. Who knows what I’ll find now?
Eagles of the Mind
Posted by: | CommentsAnother beautiful morning at Jericho Park, spring threatening to break out all over in spite of the gray skies.
I’d gone in hopes of passerine migrants, and there were plenty of Audubon’s (and a couple of Myrtle) Warblers and Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets around. But the best bird of the morning was a falcon, a tiny male American Kestrel that floated south through the bunny theater, sending the Golden-crowned and White-crowned Sparrows scampering off into the brush.
Bigger raptors were easy to find, of course: just listen to the Northwestern Crows.
I was standing underneath this adult Bald Eagle, trying unsuccessfully to read the band on its right tarsus, when a tiny woman on a bicycle paused to tell me that if I wanted to see an eagle, I should try Spanish Banks.
I might have stammered a little as I thanked her, but by now, after a year and a bit in Vancouver, I’m pretty much used to it. People here know that there are eagles around, they know it’s a big deal, but not one in a hundred has ever seen one–even when they’re looking straight at them.
I have no idea how many occupied nests are within easy walking distance of our apartment, but just offhand I can think of three; birds from those aeries and unattached non-breeders are in the sky pretty much constantly, visible and often audible from even the busiest Vancouver street.
It’s no great surprise that most Vancouverites don’t notice them, big and noisy as they (the eagles!) are. But the fact that they still talk about them, that they assume that anyone with binoculars must be out looking for eagles, speaks volumes about the cultural weight of these birds. Just knowing they’re out there really matters to the locals, whether they know what they look like or not.
Habitat Enhancement
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Like most of us, I like my sparrows just a little on the trashy side. Here in urban Vancouver, most of the brushy tangles frequented by birds like Oregon Spotted Towhees and Golden-crowned Sparrows are made up of some pretty nasty non-natives, especially Himalayan blackberry.
Until this winter, the tangles came right up to this path in Jericho Park, making the bench from which this photo was taken a magical place to watch secretive thicket birds at close range.
Early this year, the friends of the park got in there and whacked it so that they could have room for a new sign–touting their “enhancement” of the habitat.
I’m torn. On the one hand, the fewer invasive brambles, the better. On the other, the more cover–whatever its origin, whatever its nature–the better. It doesn’t improve things, either, that bare spots prove so attractive to the scofflaw dog crowd, many of whom seem unable to walk the remaining 30 yards to throw their poop sacks in the garbage can.
The birding at my magic bench was all right this morning, but I couldn’t help wondering how much better it would have been with the habitat–trashy, non-native, invasive habitat–intact.
