The Department of Extraordinary Upcycling is celebrating the new year by enjoying these shiny metal birbs created by South-Carolina based artist Matt Wilson using old silverware and pieces of driftwood or old lumber.
To look at spoons and forks in the silverware drawer, you wouldn’t think they were particularly birdlike, but Wilson’s silverware birbs feel so lifelike, it’s as though we’ve been using our silverware wrong all this time until he came along figured out just what to do.
In which I briefly appear! (in the “Dial-a-Fan” segment). Alan and I talked a bunch more about my favorite videos from Leg 3, though that part didn’t make the cut. But they kept the part in which I explain the motivation behind my curation of the Raw Content video spreadsheet, which is the source for the video part of the VOR Raw Content Metadata site.
Bril! I’ll check this out tonight!
So what WERE your favorite videos of Leg 3?
Here’s the list I sent to Alan before the interview:
I felt like the crash-cam footage of the gybe and (especially) the crew trying to get things under control afterward with Nicholson driving and monster waves overtaking them was probably the best reporting of the leg. But those drone shots of them up the rig doing repairs and the pull-back to show them completely alone in the Southern Ocean were artistically the most amazing thing I’ve seen in the race so far.
In which I briefly appear! (in the “Dial-a-Fan” segment). Alan and I talked a bunch more about my favorite videos from Leg 3, though that part didn’t make the cut. But they kept the part in which I explain the motivation behind my curation of the Raw Content video spreadsheet, which is the source for the video part of the VOR Raw Content Metadata site.
Good luck. I hope you’ll see something… Also, that’s a gorgeous photo.
Thank you! And thank you! That’s a tree that I’m pretty sure isn’t there anymore. I took that photo on the scouting trip that produced the eBird list below, two weeks before the fire. Supposedly the riparian corridor in the base of Romero Canyon only has “moderate” damage, with the understory burned but a lot of the trees only slightly scorched and hopefully surviving. But the hillside above, where this fire road runs… Well. I haven’t been back there yet. But like I said; pretty sure this tree is gone.
Romero Canyon, Santa Barbara, California, US Dec 1, 2017 8:01 AM – 10:03 AM Protocol: Traveling 1.709 mile(s) Comments: Looked for, but failed to find, Rufous-crowned Sparrow. Hiked the canyon, then up the Old Romero Canyon dirt road a half mile or so up the hill and back down. 25 species (+2 other taxa)
California Quail 2 Red-tailed Hawk 1 Band-tailed Pigeon 16 hummingbird sp. 1 Northern Flicker 2 Black Phoebe 1 Hutton’s Vireo 2 Steller’s Jay 1 California Scrub-Jay 3 Oak Titmouse 2 Bushtit 9 Canyon Wren 2 Great views foraging in an oak limb. Bewick’s Wren 1 Ruby-crowned Kinglet 3 Wrentit 5 Hermit Thrush 4 California Thrasher 1 Orange-crowned Warbler 1 Yellow-rumped Warbler 8 Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) 2 Fox Sparrow 2 Believe they were Thick-billed, but I didn’t see them long enough to confirm that. Dark-eyed Junco 1 California Towhee 4 Spotted Towhee 2 House Finch 6 Purple Finch 1 Female Lesser Goldfinch 2
A few weeks ago the hills above Carpinteria, the coastal town I live in, burned. I was talking to a neighbor today, someone who spent his career working in forest management. He’s retired now, but he’s an expert on wildfire behavior. He’s been volunteering since the fire on restoring the Franklin Trail, which leads from Carpinteria up into the hills. He showed me a map and pointed out the few strips of riparian habitat where the fire damage was relatively light. Except for those isolated pockets, the damage behind Carp is severe. He said he’s never seen a burn pattern like this. In the time leading up to the fire, drought and the persistent high pressure had driven humidity levels so low that when the fire came through the vegetation was like one big expanse of tinder.
The fire crews saved most of the structures. They successfully protected the homes in Ojai, La Conchita, Carpinteria, Montecito, and Santa Barbara. As a result, in tomorrow’s (rescheduled) Carpinteria Christmas Bird Count, most of the accessible areas in the coastal strip where we were planning to bird are actually looking pretty good. Indeed, in the scouting I’ve done since the fire the birding seems better than usual. The unburned areas are filled with displaced chaparral birds; wrentits and California towhees and ruby-crowned kinglets everywhere you look. I think they’re refugees. The carrying capacity of the habitat they’re in won’t have increased. The extra birds will disperse more widely, or will suffer from predation, disease, or starvation. But for now it makes for exciting birding.
That’s the story in the “front country”, the area south of the Santa Ynez crest. The backcountry north of the crest is another matter. There the fires burned largely unchecked. Jameson Lake is seven miles north of Carpinteria. It’s hard to reach even under normal circumstances, requiring a day-long backpacking trip or mountain biking down miles of dirt roads that are closed to private vehicles. We don’t always manage to include it in our Christmas count; it’s great habitat for us, giving us a chance at an inland freshwater lake that we otherwise don’t have, but it’s hard to get there.
This year it’s especially hard. The whole area is closed to the public. The only people with access are fire and forest service crews, and the people who maintain the water facilities at Jameson for the Montecito Water District.
So… tomorrow, thanks to some really nice people pulling some strings on our behalf, we get to go count birds there. I’m going in along with two other birdwatchers, led by the water district employee who lives part-time at the lake (or used to, before his cabin burned down).
I don’t know what we’ll find. I was there on a scouting trip in November. Alan, the caretaker, has been in several times since the fire, and he’s told me not to expect much. Everything has burned. For all I know we’re going to spend all day in a sterile moonscape. But I think it’s important to document what happened. The Christmas counts are mostly for fun, but they also produce useful citizen science. Thousands of volunteers go out each year and catalog the birds they’re able to find. In some count circles above the Arctic Circle they go out in the midwinter twilight to record a single species (thank you, common raven). Next to that I’m getting off easy.
Anyway, that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.
Republic of the Maldives is a sovereign archipelagic nation positioned in the Indian Ocean. Notably the South Asian Island nation has no counterpart in the entire world in terms of its unique geography and topography.
The Maldives encompass more than 99 % of the sea and less than 1 % of the land. The 99 % of the sea is home to one of the most diverse marine treasures of the world. Less than 1 % of the land is a masterpiece in natural landscaping.
The Maldives comprises of 26 natural atolls consisting of dual island chains. Incidentally the Maldivian language has the distinct pleasure of contributing to the English word “atoll”, which was derived from the Maldivian word “atholhu”.
