15 February 2010, Monday
Predicting the very best conditions for a hawk flight is exactly the same as for optimal big wave surfing. When the lifeguards raise the black flags, it is a warning... and a welcome. For the elite surfers coming to Hawaii from all corners (shores) of the world for the Eddie Aikai big wave contest the combo of speed, fetch, and duration is as tantalizing as a Huntington Beach fish taco... been there, done that. A strong front, with no other weather in its way, traveling across the Northeast landmass picks up a lot of hawks along the way. The key to great macroweather conditions is understanding wave theory. Watching the weather, like you watch hawks — pick up the object of your interest as far away as humanly possible and follow it in. Identifying the rarest thing at the greatest distance gives you the longest time to study, learn, and enjoy. According to my wave theory, you are looking for the same kind of big wave conditions the surfers look for, but for hawkwatchers we want (Spring example): a strong cold front with good winds and long North-South length; we want this front moving unobstructed and with a clear path, hundreds of miles in advance of it; and this in turn sets up a full day and often two of pre-frontal conditions with a ton of birds that read just what we did. In the Fall, hawkwatchers in the Northeast want the front to clear quickly and cleanly: analogous to Spring where you want a clear path ahead, in the Fall you don't want trailing/secondary fronts sending mixed signals to the raptors as they choose a wave to ride South. Mitigating factors — other weather — are the kiss of death to a great hawkfight. In the Spring, multiple dry lines, or warm fronts, preceding your big weather maker is not good as it weakens the pressure gradient which sustains the wind fetch. Without this the waves are for the tourists... for hawkwatchers, these are the folks who want to know where the hawks are today. Over the last twenty years, at Derby Hill, we're seeing more warm fronts, split lows, and the low center themselves taking a more southerly track. This effects the wind strength out ahead of a Spring front, setting up weaker conditions that can quickly and more consistently allow a lake breeze (Great Lakes) or a sea breeze (Atlantic Ocean) to kick in and ruin a good flight at the hawkwatch. As always though, hawks don't need the wind... hawkwatchers do. In the Fall, weather, winds, and the pressure gradient are mitigated (weakened) by a more frequent and early tropical storm season. Again, lots of little weather systems in between the fronts waters down the weather. And all this is not the result of better weather mapping, although you see more now on a forecast map. Those of us who have watched weather, both on maps and out in it, have observed this. Bob Dylan said it, "Things have changed." PBS Nature had an episode in 2006, Condition Black, about the 1998 "storm of the century" style weather pattern for big wave riders — that's where the excerpt above comes from. I also put a longer version on YouTube that repeats this clip and continues the discussion by adding in bottom conditions that make certain beaches the very best for big wave surfing, when the best weather comes. Hawkwatchers will see another common thread.
12 February 2010, Friday
In Californication, Hank Moody advises, "Check yourself, before you wreck yourself." (Showtime, David Duchovny). There's some irony there. I can't remember the last time — but it's been a very long time — since I entered the Owl Woods on Amherst Island, off Kingston Ontario. I just don't go in there, even if I'm the only one around that end of the island. Can't do it. An email to Ontario birders and others who check for info, might also be titled, "Horse gone somewhere, please close barn door now." This message is so old that it used to be the announcement on the KFN rare bird line, when birders got their information that way. Nobody got the message, apparently. Subject: Amherst Island's-Owl Woods new rules And rules to live by, anywhere.
11 February 2010, Thursday
Nice looking adult Redtails, but not many of them (7). Not especially close either. I was hoping for more sun than I got and was not expecting lake effect. For some unknown reason there was the occasional southerly flow kicking a light snowfall where I was... still Winter. And while it's "still Winter" there are a few things yet to be seen.
When you search for the name of the February full moon, Hunger Moon is no longer a name you can find easily; certainly not the name with the best marketing department.
10 February 2010, Wednesday Of course it is, and well it should be. Whether it's a concert pianist, professional athlete or professional hawk, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A hawk is not the summation of talons, powerful eyes, wings on soar... it is more, whole, and because it is not less than us, equal partner. In wars ancient, and modern religions, it is important to make others less than us so we can either conquer or utilize them. More and more studies are showing us that this just doesn't have any basis in fact/science. Got to love a bat study with "zen" in the title. That's what I'm talkin' about. And the photo with the article's release statement is worth the click. The art and science of bats, and probably all other hunters is examined through a simple study with high tech tools. These bats emit paired clicking sounds and the researchers found that the sonar beam created by each click alternated to the left and right of a target. This alternating pattern effectively directed the inside edge, or maximum slope, of each sonar beam onto the target. As a result, any change in the relative position of the target to the bat reflected that large sonar edge back at the bat, delivering the largest possible change in echo intensity. Seen any great tits lately? GoogleSafeSearch had reset itself this morning (to ExtraCensorshipMode... my term) and it took a couple of minutes of banging around to get search results for this species because of the its name. An impressive genetics study of Parus major looks into personalities and therefore behavior and adaptation, within but beyond this little chickadee. This stuff of behavior is more than just learned and lost (with an individual or within a family etc. that would be the case, where it not encoded... in advance). Gene variation is the reason that some great tit populations are more curious than others. In humans and animals alike, individuals differ in sets of traits that we usually refer to as personality. An important part of the individual difference in personality is due to variation in the underlying genes. One gene, the dopamine receptor D4 gene, however, is known to influence novelty seeking and exploration behavior in a range of species, including humans and birds. In both of these studies, and many more lately, we see our affinities to all life expressed through our DNA across space and time.
9 February 2010, Tuesday
Our play (and practice) for macroweather involves getting to know the pattern of the weather's flight across the continent. Any weather map of North America will do, but I recommend you start by follow weather on as many maps as you can find... and you'll notice similarities but differences too: for any given day, over a few days as a system migrates our way, and you'll also see one low pressure system become two... or more and then maybe none. Front lines — cold, warm, stationary — appear, disappear and morph. They are as different as they are the same. Play at seeing that. If weather can't be predicted a couple of days out, while look it from every angle for a week or more? Because we are not interested in doorstep weather. We are looking at the big picture and looking to see what kinds of systems and patterns of systems are on the move, and maybe the hawks along with. At this point, the disclaimer: this blog entry should be confused or equated with a book or course in meteorology... which may or may not be of any help figuring out the movements of hawks, migration or dispersal. There are however several companion pieces on my view of weather watching, a gathering storm or not. Weather mapping has added a ton of technology over the forty years of modern hawkwatching, but the weather model in the hawkwatchers' mind hasn't changed much. These days, I use my iPhone for long-range weather watching, but I subscribed to Accuweather Premium for several years ($79/year). There's a free thirty day trial. Of course you can find five, seven, ten and fifteen day forecasts desktop weather for free. But I want my forecast with wind direction on top. Click on the old-school NOAA continental view above and you can see a week plus page from Weather Underground... a bit clunky, confusing but with wind, several days out. Things will likely change, but you'll know that, adjust, anticipate, react smartly... this could be a martial arts class, as I say the same things there. What are we trying to get an internal (core) feeling about here? After the hawks have been counted, your sense of the weather and the birds will be one. Don't take my word for this, or anything else as I've said many times before here and in the field: use your favorite maps and long-range forecasts to watch the weather like you'd watch a hawk. BTW, I have used macroweather through long-range weather forecasting as a pretty good predictor of weather & specific species/flights including Mississippi Kite flights on outer Cape Cod!
8 February 2010, Monday
The Academy Awards nominations are out and The Cove is already odds-on to win in Best Documentary. A preview and an entry about that little film is online here with some other film notes. Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival is a wrap and is sort of the opposite of the Oscars, as it gives cinephiles (like me) movies to watch for during the coming year! Grist.org attended to scout out the latest environmental films in show. In addition to brief write-ups, they've gathered up the previews to give us a hint of the content. Now, be advised, from someone who sees his share of the inspiration and the confusion in the arena of documentaries: they are all over the map, both in locale and in quality. Hopefully though, chosen for Sundance means we at least have one filter applied. Films like Frozen River (2008), a fictional slice of life from the Mohawk Nation that straddles the St. Lawrence River in NY and Quebec, while not a documentary, has its earthtones and came out of Sundance a year ago with all the proper Buzz, played around and is now on DVD. If you like that one, try and find Powwow Highway (1989). Twenty+ years old and it still works as a contemporary Earth legend, told by a three hundred pound Sioux. Enjoy.
5 February 2010, Friday
I had coffee yesterday morning with two visiting MD's from China (mainland) who are on staff at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse for four months. This is their last week in the US. Over the course of an hour our topics included the lack of Chinese food in CNY (compared to SF and Boston, well), state quarters (commemorative 25 cent pieces), North American obesity (a surprise for them), food as medicine, acupuncture, and the liver pulse... because mostly, we had gotten together to talk about the state of Tai Chi and Eastern medicine in the US. An odd connection? I'd taught Tai Chi for a year for members of the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association, and another dozen at the Cambridge Center in Harvard Square, and then... six degrees of separation. At medical schools in China, there is coursework in the subject of Eastern medicine, but only a cursory introduction. An orthopedic specialist, one doctor associates with new students from a school for this at his hospital... a cursory introduction to Western medicine for those practitioners! Kind of like here with bedside manner and preventative care. The more we talked, the more he began to realize his own disconnect. Each time he referred to reading about chi or how it was a philosophy one could understand by thinking, I worked in a thread about practicing it... with your body (less mind). At one point the other doctor, a woman, dove in (I'd actually forgotten she was there, and failed to compensate in the conversation for the cultural bias... read, her silence in between two men). You see, her family's sir name is Yang — a famous family in the history of Tai Chi Chuan. She had no Tai Chi experience herself, but had a bit more knowledge bases on her heritage. She recognized my line of discussion, just burst into the conversation with both hands and arms moving, and made a reference to Tai Chi "play"... as the more direct translation of "practice." I introduce this word myself later on in classes with Western students, but avoid it early on because it just doesn't work well. After a little success in a Tai Chi course — meaning mind and body feeling happy on the way home — I find "play" comes across better, later. So here we in Starbucks and its getting physical... let's play. To break out of mind and into body, I only did things I would do in a class to minimize the talk... and maybe the language barrier too. Weather play. The practice of weather is different, from watching the weather, for: pilots, storm chasers, surfers and hawkwatchers (toss in the esoterica that is seawatching, etc.). You would hope: hawkwatchers. But I find I can only talk serious weathertalk with a handful of hawkwatchers, either in the field or online about weather — past, present, future. They seem to know the words but not the language. And language —the nuance of culture — is borne out of everyday practice/play... meaning, finding joy. Otherwise it's work, isn't it? Weather play involves long-range weather watching: and that's macroweather. Everything else? That's what I label doorstep weather and that's all work and no play, plus, leaves you feeling unsatisfied, tired, and listless (ha!). I use my iPhone so much now for weather, both short- and long-range, that I'm having to really to dig around, both the web and in my mind, for some current desktop links for macroweather practice. Stay tuned. [Got seriously distracted for a couple of days during the week in pursuit of a new hawkmobile (previous vehicle at 200K miles and that's enough). I was doing fine, until Friday, when I constructed this post, looked it over for its content, self-approved it, and then failed to actually upload it! A key step in the internet viewing process.]
4 February 2010, Thursday
On the surface, this classic Monty Python skit from 1969 is about a man trying to return a parrot to a pet shop. His interaction with the man behind the counter slowly but surely escalates from a mere description of the situation and a request for a refund to a universal scene we've all been involved in at this scale or another (or maybe wished we had been). Was the parrot dead or was it alive when it left the shop and does that shift the sands? The thing works so well because of the shifting arguments and logic employed, or unemployed. It is apparently easy for a clerk (or ____________) to ignore the facts in favor of what best suites them: their personal, intellectual, organizational, governmental, or corporate agenda (in that exact hierarchical order... of who runs the world). That any one person can change the world is certainly true, but the ease of this act, for any individual, is very great. When this story of our own power comes to us at various stages of our lives, it comes with the proviso that if you're right in your quest, then change should come with some ease. Of course that's not true. I lined up way too many excerpts from email exchanges and discussions in the field that I've had in the past and even this week to illustrate this back and forth toward change, through seems like a process I call Dead Parrot Science, but I think Michael Palin and John Cleese have it covered. Sometimes you have to rewind and replay this skit of yours a few times... okay, over and over and over to make any headway, but what else have you got going on?
3 February 2010, Wednesday
A hundred years before Darwin's time, it was the natural world according to Gilbert White. He was the Man (gentle-), and in the 1700's, observations from his country gardenside, nearby paths and other cultivations were our observations... having cultivated our place in our world as: us and them, with us doing all the thinking and speaking, not always in that order. By the midpoints of these two centuries, things changed: White to Charles Darwin. But things change back and forth, even today, depending on who you're talking to about what, in the world we live in. Oh, did I mention this is just about the best little book I've read in many many years? It is, because it puts things in perspective... there's that word again. Klinkenborg is a master writer, and would need to be to pull off the shell game he's set up for himself (and his reader): that of retooling Gilbert White's A Natural History of Selborne into another history, via White's own words (and even receipts), told to us by Timothy, who turns out is actually a she-turtle... due to the state of men and/or their science in seventeen and something or other. All I can say is go over to Amazon.com, start reading, and see if it draws you in as quickly as it did me: standing in the River's End Bookstore in Oswego NY... after a day's hawkwatching.
2 February 2010, Tuesday But how do they taste? I think we'll leave that question for a panel of hawks and owls, meeting in a few months at a five-star forest near you. In a study just released last week and conducted mainly in migration-rich New Jersey, biologists now think that birds experience their flyways by the various scents along the way. They learn this though over the course of the first journey. Birds largely rely on their sense of smell to navigate
on their long migration routes. Indeed, the “third sense” has
been shown to be a more important for them than orientation based on
the sun and the earth’s magnetic field. Exactly how birds navigate
on their migration routes has not yet been fully clarified. How does
a bird develop an “internal map”? How does it find its
way back to last year’s nest? On the ancient side of things, it might be interesting to consider the long history of the migratory story. Both dragonflies and birds seem to follow the same rules. "The dragonflies' routes have showed distinct stopover and migration days, just as the birds' did," said Wikelski, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "Additionally, groups of both birds and dragonflies did not migrate on very windy days and only moved after two successive nights of falling temperatures. We saw other similarities as well, which makes us wonder just how far back in Earth's history the rules for migration were established in its animals." Another ancient biological event, the virgin birth, might now be more believable to the non-believers... if they know that sharks can pull it off (or is it out). On the other hand, here's another case for the evolutionary unnecessity of another appendage, the male of the species. Plants have figured it out too. There's a nifty little clip of foodite Michael Pollan talking real food with Oprah online over at Grist. And hoping this fast food quickie posting is fun, if not nourishing, I have a couple of longer weather-related ones in the works. Plus, I finally think I figured out why my all-time favorite Monty Python skit just gets funnier over the years... Dead Parrot Science — coming soon.
1 February 2010, Monday
But first, the movie. Inglourious Basterds was the best film I saw in 2009! Ranks right up there on most critics' lists and is a certain Oscar best picture nominee (in the expanded field of ten). Combine that with the best film IMO of the decade just concluded: Q's Kill Bill Vols 1&2, and you get the picture. Basterds is a WWII film about these hunters that get the ultimate prey in their sights and make the kill. Okay, he's rewritten a little history, but Tarantino does what moviemakers do all the time. Adjust things. As Roger Ebert says, the last thing you want see up front when a movies starts is, "Based on a true story." Read: "Well, we found out while making this film, the truth can be kind of dull, let us now show you just how uninteresting." So... in this case he turns the large knob, but he's a great fan of cinema too, and I'm always down for whatever he'd got in mind... I remember seeing his Pulp Fiction in '94: as vivid a memory as if it were yesterday's Merlin. Like Pulp Fiction, there is action, but there are also his abnormally long and intricate monologues and dialogues that are primo in this one (Q's both writer and director for his signature projects). Visually he knows movies, and knows how to honor the tried and true. In this one, he creates a situation where a number of the characters — good and bad — have all descended a narrow stairway into a cellar pub with no other way out, he has one of this lot comment, "Who would pick such a place, tactically, for a meeting... there's no way out," then he slows down the fuse time with some talk knowing this is a no-win... chaos and body count, to follow. I saw this in a theater, and while it should reappear, the DVD will work for you. Just standing around at Cape May, with not much going (20 Peregrines, maybe 10 Merlins, and only fifty Cooper's Hawks, etc.), when up the stairs comes a civilian, a big fish from a small pond/hilltop, asking the basterds in the corner where they would go to watch hawks... anywhere he added, then on he goes some more attempting to answer his own question with Texas, Veracruz, exotic door number 3. Silence, with frosting. Then, like a temple bell, "Duluth" from the alpha (Ligouri), and the basterds went all low-tones and nodding while the tourist looked very very puzzled, wondering off. See, the inglourious basterds want the other thing. Not to be different, necessarily, but out of a need for the thing. Let everyone else go for the warm moist zephyrs and a million hawks, we'll veer North, and find a nook, or better a cranny, and wait for it. Goshawk, adult; Golden on an updraft, close, too close to take the shot; maybe something in a dark morph. |
They've got the urge
for going, and Hawk•art•science
blog Original recipe Hawksaloft.com
Not everything that
counts can be counted
and
|
