Yes, really.
Via.
Category: random
Well, I’ve recently returned from a trip to Japan – and a long blog hiatus. I do plan to write a bit about the Japan trip, as well as the current stuff I’m working on.
March through May were pretty busy, with defending my dissertation (I passed, yay), presenting my work at conferences (went to those), and doing more (academic) writing. So this blog has basically been a way to think about something other than professional stuff. While I’ll be continuing that, I’m also hoping to talk a bit more often about my work. So we’ll see how that goes.
Anyway, I’ll leave with a pic of what’s to come:
I’ve been trying pretty hard to think of an appropriate seasonal pun for this, but nothing seems quite right:
- “Deck the hall with a clutch of ducklings”
- “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…for nesting”
- “O ducky night”
- “Rudolph the unseasonably-timed duckling”
- “Silent night, quacky night”
Yeah, not working.
Anyway, it is, obviously, December, and a pair of wild mallard/mottled duck hybrids has decided to raise a batch of babies in our pond. I’ve mentioned the apparent awesomeness of our pond for duck breeding before, but this is pretty ridiculous.
The babies are clearly only a few days old, and I saw them for the first time yesterday. I’m hoping it stays warm enough at night for them to survive. It’s been a mild winter so far, so maybe they can stay warm until they get big enough to survive before we have a freeze. It’s generally January or February before that happens, so hopefully all goes well…
A New Zealand biologist has described a new species of hitherto unknown (to science, at least) flightless bird! What’s most surprising is that this species in from North America, and still exists today!
For more info, go here.
Well, we’re two and a half weeks into the fall semester, and I’ve managed not to be steamrolled yet by the teaching-dissertating combination. I’m working on getting IRB approval to get user feedback on my visualization project, which is just about done. Of course, this means I’m not actually writing, but I’m making progress.
But who wants to hear about that? I will now present to you the highlights of the two days in the last two weeks that I actually got away from the house-school-Panera triangle.
Two weeks ago, we got out to College Park, had a nice lunch, bought some bike supplies, and had green tea frozen yogurt (yum). While we were eating lunch, this bird appeared, strolling down the sidewalk:
Now, there are two peacock colonies around the Orlando area, but they’re ~5 miles away from where we were. This bird looked pretty stressed. The owner of the restaurant brought out a bowl of water and some pine nuts, and he sort of pecked a bit at the nuts. But then he proceeded on his way, unfortunately heading out of the quiet residential neighborhood and onto a busy street.
After the whole business with the macaw, I was afraid we’d witness a tragic accident, but he proceeded to walk down the bike lane and eventually moved back to the residential side of the street. He was probably heading for the nearby park. I hope he’s found a more comfortable situation by now.
So, my other interesting outing was less harrowing. Last Saturday, we went to see the Orlando Lions– our 3rd-tier pro soccer team- playing in the USL Pro League championship. And…they won!
It was an exciting game- no one scored until the 89th minute, then the Lions did. Then, their opponents (the Harrisburg City Islanders) tied it in the last second of injury time. In overtime, the Islanders scored again, but the Lions managed to tie again at the last minute. So, it came down to penalty kicks, which the Lions won. I’m leaving out all the drama of players being ejected, including the Lions’ keeper, dramatic falls, etc. But it was good stuff.
For fans of “A Song of Ice and Fire”- the (unofficial?) team motto is apparently “Hear us roar.” Close enough 🙂
Of course, another highlight was one of the Lions’ booster clubs, a Trinidadian percussion band who played pretty much the whole game through. If all sporting events had their own percussion sections, I’d probably be more enthusiastic about sports overall.
On our recent Great Lakes trip, we didn’t stop to see quirky roadside attractions like the SPAM Museum or the world’s largest ball of twine. But we did get to see a few other random giant objects of cultural significance…
First was the giant frosty mug of root beer at a drive-in diner in Taylors Falls, MN. While not as large as the others, it rotated!
While we were disappointed that it was in front of a “Drive-In”, not a “Drive-Inn” (Hawaii folks will get the reference), they did have good root beer.
Second is from Lindstrom, MN, a town that’s obviously proud of its Swedish roots. Their water tower is decorated like a coffeepot:
Finally, this inexplicable monster pileated woodpecker in downtown Toronto near the CN Tower:
Yay for giant urban (or rural) art!
A few weeks ago, I came across a dead parrot on the side of the road. Not right on the road, but near a hedge bordering the rear end of the local mall. As I was walking, I spotted a brilliant turquoise and gold colored object, crumpled under the hedge. I was sure it must be an article of clothing- maybe someone’s shirt, or a scarf. The colors were so vibrant- at first, I though it must be something made out of silk, or maybe satin. But when I got closer, I saw it was a dead macaw.
It was very hot that day- in the mid 90s- and had been hot for several days. The bird’s body wasn’t stinky- I actually couldn’t smell any rot at all. It was just lying on the ground, wings slightly outspread to reveal its brilliant sea-turquoise and cobalt plumage. Its long tail feathers trailed off behind it. Its feathers seemed strangely smooth and unmarred- there were no ants crawling on them, and none of them were broken. It was lying slightly on one side, so its brilliant gold chest feathers were also visible.
How had it died? And when? It had been a few days since I had walked that way, so its body could have been there a few days. Its eye was sunken, and the white-and-black pattern of feathers on its face was shriveled. I didn’t go up and poke at it, but it didn’t look particularly damaged or like it was in an advanced state of decay. Had it broken its neck by flying into the tree near it? Did it die of thirst, or disease? Was it attacked by our neighborhood red-shouldered hawk? I suppose if I had examined it more closely, there would have been some clues. But at that point, I was really just disturbed at finding it there.
Suburban Orlando is not the place you expect to find the body of a blue-and-gold macaw, just lying on the side of the street. Was it someone’s pet, and escaped in a bid for freedom? Did it escape from a pet store? Was it released because it was too expensive to care for, or because it was aggressive or insane from a life in captivity? Did it enjoy a few days of freedom, or did it starve to death in terror, not knowing how to forage for itself, or did it expire from the heat? Sure, you see plenty of dead birds on the side of the road in Florida- but not giant tropical birds with silken feathers in the colors of the ocean, shining in the sunlight even after death.
The macaw didn’t look like it had been detected by any predators- at least, it wasn’t partly eaten. And, over the next week or so, its corpse just continued to lie there. Was it too dessicated to attract any vultures? Did no feral cats or coyotes happen to pass by it? Maybe the little fence lizards enjoyed feasting on it, but if so, they went at it from underneath. For over a week, the bird just lay there, slowly drying out in the heat.
I kept expecting to find it one day, torn apart by scavengers- maybe missing a wing, or maybe its various limbs scattered under the hedge. But its position never changed.
Another thing I wonder is if anyone else saw it. How could you possibly miss a gloriously-colored bird like this, lying under a bush as it was? Are people so habituated to roadside trash that they avoid actually looking at what lies there? I wonder about this because the bird just lay there. No one came to pick it up and put it into a dumpster, or to gather its feathers for decoration. Granted, I didn’t mention it to anyone, or remove it myself. But clearly I’m the sort of person who has a morbid curiosity in checking up on the slowly decomposing carcass of a large bird from time to time. I’m surprised that no one else did anything about it.
About two weeks after I first saw it, I walked past the bird again, and the groundskeepers were trimming the hedges of the mall. Surely, they would remove the bird’s body? In fact, they did not. They just rolled it further under the hedge.
As of today, the macaw still lies there. The feathers are starting to look disheveled, but they still keep their brilliant colors. It can’t be long until the colors begin to fade, and what is left is a skeleton covered with dried-out skin and dangling feather shafts, leached of their color.
I’d like to think that this bird was at least happy in its few hours or perhaps days unconfined. But I just can’t tell myself that it was. But maybe it had at least some pleasure from flying free, if only for a time.
(OK, I was trying to come up with a good alliterative title for this post, but that’s the best I could come up with.)
Books: My relative blog silence over the last few weeks has been because I’ve been working on my dissertation prospectus- the document that lays out my plans for a dissertation project and which will guide the direction of my life for the forseeable future (or until May 2012, according to the schedule therein). At any rate, said prospectus is in the hands of my committee right now, and we will meet this week to discuss it.
Technically, the prospectus is not a book (it ended up being about 35 pages, double-spaced), so if anyone has a better pithy term for ‘dissertation prospectus’ that starts with ‘b,’ let me know. I’ve certainly been reading quite a few books while working on it, though.
Babies: Combined with this project, we went last weekend to visit my new nephew. Much snuggling of babies was involved. Also, ice cream, sledding, snow, opera, and dinosaurs (not in that order). Baby X is, as yet, too young to appreciate any of these things. Sad, but true.
Not having been around many babies, I did not know that the soft spot on their head can throb. How bizarre is that?
Birds: Last weekend was the Great Backyard Bird Count, a citizen science project that’s a type of ‘bird census’ for the U.S. and Canada. I was able to do some birding near my sister’s house, but baby time interfered with birding time. I can see that I’ll have to introduce Baby X to the wonders of birding as he gets older… At any rate, Spring Break is next week (no, it’s not really spring yet), and we’ll be heading to the San Diego Bird Festival. So there should be plenty of birding then!
Aside from that, Spring Break will include at least one of these things, possibly more: 1) writing the introduction to the dissertation; 2) working on the technical part of the dissertation; 3) responding to review comments to a publication based on my master’s thesis, which has incredibly little to do with my current research but I really want to get it out there; or 4) having fun outdoors in the brief period that Florida actually has nice weather. So we shall see how this goes.
Categories
Time for a plankton party!
Just finished my annotations for my final reading list! I’ll keep posting them here over the next few days, but this calls for a plankton party!
Yes, it makes just as much sense of this clip (watch for the AT-AT teddy bears):
h/t Bioephemera
Categories
Mystery abyss opens at UCF
On Friday August 27, at some time between 1:30 and 3 pm, this mystery hole- complete with brass poles and “caution” tape- appeared in the deck behind the UCF Student Union.
Where did this hole come from? A burst water pipe? Erosion from the summer rains?
Perhaps a new sinkhole in the karst terrain of central Florida?
Or less likely- a very angry gopher tortoise? UCF’s very own Hellmouth?
Why the brass poles? Are they akin to the velvet ropes of the bouncer, designed to keep party-crashing demons from erupting out of the abyss?
And why leave the roll of tape in place? Was the hole expected to grow?
All I can say for certain is that in the 20 minutes I was eating my lunch nearby, a UCF police officer and Student Union administrator both stopped by to photograph the hole. Neither offered comment to the curious onlookers.
And so, I pass this experience on to my readers. One day, perhaps, the answer will be known.