Watching Our Water Ways

When I hear about research taking place in Earth’s polar regions, I often wonder how our amazing ice-breaker ships make it through the ice. Do they just plow forward without hesitation, or do they worry about getting stuck?

Cassandra Brooks, a doctoral student at Stanford University, recently compiled an intriguing video showing time-lapse scenes of the Nathaniel B. Palmer on a cruise just completed in the Ross Sea of the Antarctic.

Cassandra’s narration provides a clear explanation of all kinds of ice encountered by the ice breaker, and she touches on the research itself.

“It was so beautiful,” Brooks told NBC News’ LiveScience. “And it was such a neat experience to be on this crazy boat that was just screaming through the ice.”

The video was part of a blogging project she undertook for National Geographic. The blog includes just seven entries, but each is an enjoyable science lesson for the reader. Take the entries in chronological order (bottom first) to get the full story of the adventure.

Before entering the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Brooks worked in both basic research and environmental education, according to the bio she wrote for her own website.

She holds a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has published articles for both scientific and general audiences.

Casandra informs me that she hopes to write a final closing blog related to the recent cruise and will probably continue blogging about other projects.

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I’m intrigued by the unusual friendships that somehow develop between very different animals, such as the story of Owen, a baby hippo, and Mzee, a 130-year-old tortoise.

The baby hippo was found on a beach near Malindi, Kenya, following the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. He was brought to Kenya’s Haller Park, where he was cared for and soon formed a bond with a giant tortoise. The story, which drew much attention at the time, is best told in the National Geographic video on this page.

You may recall that in February I featured a couple videos about an apparent friendship between a dog and a deer. See Amusing Monday for Feb. 13.

Other unusual pairings that I think you’ll find amusing:

Cat and crow: National Geographic

Orangutan and hound: National Geographic,
with musical version by bouju1

Deer and mother goose: WGRZ, Buffalo, N.Y.

Lioness and oryx: National Geographic

Cat and dolphin: n24our

Elephant and dog: National Geographic,
with CBS News — Assignment America

Gorilla and kitten: Kokoflix,
with Koko befriends a new kitten

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Scott Simon of National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition” seems to have a thing for moose. On Saturday morning’s broadcast, he interviewed a man who was attacked by a moose in the woods of Western Massachusetts.

It was amusing enough to hear how the man, who had undergone two hip replacements, was able to dart among the trees where the moose had trouble maneuvering with a full rack of antlers. If you didn’t hear the interview, you should probably play it now by clicking the start arrow in the box at right.

What struck me as especially funny was that the man had only been attacked one other time in his life. I was thinking it was probably some kind of bird or possibly a more dangerous animal, such as a bear. But no, his only similar encounter was with a flying squirrel. It took little prompting to get the logger to do a pretty good impression of Natasha from the cartoon “Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
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Great blue herons, which we commonly see along Washington’s shorelines, belong to a family of birds containing 64 recognized species — though some are known as “egrets” or “bitterns.”

This family, Ardeidae, can be found on all continents except Antarctica, according to an entry in Wikipedia. They survive in the cold Arctic, dry deserts and even high mountains. Generally, they are found in the margins of wetlands, lakes, streams and saltwater estuaries.

The first embedded video on this page features some special moments this year at the nest of a family of great blue herons living in Sapsucker Woods Pond near Ithaca, New York. Two cameras, installed and maintained by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, captured the action.

For more about the installation, watch this video featuring Charles Eldermire, who leads Cornell’s BirdCams Project.

To learn more about great blue herons, visit a web page of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which includes some videos from Washington state.

The great blue heron may be interesting, as it stands motionless waiting for a fish to pass by. But more amusing is the grey heron, which has been known to fish with bait. Check out the second embedded video on this page.

For another video of a heron fishing with bread, check out this YouTube video, complete with narration. “Oh, what a clever bird!”

Other fishing methods include the “canopy technique,” in which the black heron appears as an inanimate rock while searching for prey.

Herons seem to swallow their food whole, even when it comes in big packages. Here’s a video of a black-crowned night heron eating a rather large Pacific mackerel.

Less appealing are videos of herons hunting and eating rats. It’s great to know that somebody is taking care of the abundant rodents, but these videos are not for those uncomfortable at the sight of a struggling rat.

Heron eats rat

Rat gets away

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Among locals, the Kitsap Peninsula has long been known as a great place to go kayaking, but now the 300+ miles of shoreline are quickly becoming a destination for out-of-area folks.

Kayakers paddle near Port Gamble.
Kitsap Sun photo by Larry Steagall

A new map of Kitsap’s shoreline features has been produced for the paddle crowd by the Kitsap Peninsula Visitor and Convention Bureau. The map is helpful for those trying to identify stopping points along the shoreline — whether one wants to spend days on the water or just a few hours.

Patricia Graf-Hoke, manager of the visitor bureau, said she believes it is the first map of its kind in Washington state and may be just the second or third in the nation.

Tourism on the Kitsap Peninsula is growing, she told the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council last week. As a whole, it is becoming a major industry and one of the largest employers in Kitsap County.

In a Kitsap Sun story about the new map, John Kuntz, owner of Olympic Outdoor Center, told reporter Rachel Pritchett that more than half the people who paddle around the peninsula come from somewhere else.

“It’s definitely a part of tourism that Kitsap County hasn’t really embraced in the past,” Kuntz was quoted as saying.

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I’ve always been interested in how things sound, sometimes more than how they look.

When I was a child, someone gave me a little tape recorder for some occasion, such as my birthday or Christmas. I went around recording everything from flushing toilets to my dad snoring to cats drinking milk from a bowl.

One of the first record albums I ever bought was one that contained dozens of sound effects. My younger brother and I used that album and also made up our own sounds while putting together radio plays, which we recorded on a massive reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I’ve always taken great pleasure from music, the sounds of nature and other pleasant noises, such as wind chimes. But it has been years since I’ve done anything with sound just for fun. Recently, I began playing around, just for amusement, on a website called Nature Sounds for Me.

About the sound players on this page, you can start them by clicking on the big arrow. To stop them and start them again, click on the little speaker at the bottom.

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When I lived in Kansas as a child, I would sometimes see flocks of starlings swarming around, each bird moving in concert with the others until they landed in trees, where they would carry on in loud raucus voices, all talking at once.

Yes, I’ve seen starlings, but I’ve never seen anything like the huge mass of swirling birds captured in this video by two young women on the River Shannon in Ireland.

The two, Sophie Windsor Clive and Liberty Smith, have established an independent film company they call Islands & Rivers. According to their website, the women “find inspiration from bike rides, being by water, making things and meeting people.”

A flock of starlings is called a murmuration, which is the title to the accompanying music by Nomad Soul.

What makes these birds fly in such a coordinator manner? The question is the subject of some scientific study — not just for an understanding of natural behavior but also for improving the efficiency of human activities.

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We have a plain and simple bird bath in our yard. The birds don’t seem to need a fancy place to take a bath, but I got to wondering if anyone has produced an amusing bird bath. I found a few, which I’ll share with you here.

Frogs seem to be a common theme for bird baths, but it is interesting that cats — of course enemies of birds — are sometimes willing to help them take a bath or even to feed them (bird feeder).

If you would like to take a closer look or get purchase information about these bird baths, click on any of the photos.

At the very bottom, you’ll find an animation, based on a true story of a sneaky cat trying to share a bird bath for his own advantage. That’s followed by a video of a parrot who has plenty to say while taking a spray bath on his perch.

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Parahawking is a relatively new sport combining falconry with paragliding.

Birds of prey tend to understand updrafts like no human ever could. It’s part of their instinctual nature to conserve energy while flying.

Paraglider pilots have always paid attention to where these birds are soaring. But now some of the rehabilitated birds are being trained as majestic aerial companions, coming and going from the glider to take a bite of food and then lead the way to more adventure.

The stunning two-minute video provides a glimpse of a training session with a Harris’s Hawk. (Be sure to click to full screen.) Lite Touch Films, which produced the piece, plans to introduce the sport to the U.S. I’m attempting to get more particulars about this video, which includes music by Asche & Spencer. Thanks to Chuck Hower of South Kitsap for bringing this video to my attention.

Parahawking reportedly got its start in 2001, when Scott Mason, a British bird trainer and conservationist, traveled to Nepal to go paragliding with a wide variety of raptors in the Himalayan Mountains. He hooked up with a paragliding company to create a commercial enterprise, which donates a portion of its income to bird conservation groups. Check out his story in the newspaper Gulf Times.

The 20-minute video below was produced by Mason to show some of the trips taken in Nepal during the 2010-2011 season of parahawking. For details, check out Parahawking and Himalayan Raptor Rescue.

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A dozen environmental groups say they will boycott the nine “scoping meetings” the Navy is holding to kick off a new round of studies regarding testing and training activities in the Northwest.

In a letter dated March 13 (PDF 16 kb), the groups said the format of the meetings is not designed to encourage public discussion or even allow public comment. In addition, the Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have ignored ongoing calls for the Navy to better protect marine wildlife and the environment along the Washington Coast and other biologically important areas, they say.

Navy's Northwest testing and training ranges. Click to enlarge.
Map by U.S. Navy

The Navy will seek a new permit from NOAA for the incidental harassment of marine mammals during testing and training activities. Most of the activities are identical to what is taking place now, but some new activities are added — including the testing of sonar from ships docked at piers.

Between now and 2015, Navy officials will describe and study the effects of various activities on marine life and update existing mitigation with new research findings. See my initial story in the Kitsap Sun, Feb. 27, and a related post in Water Ways, March 6. Also, you may review the official notice in the Federal Register.

Back to the letter, which states in part:

“As you know, the scoping process is the best time to identify issues and provide recommendations to agencies on what should be analyzed in the EIS. However, a process developed for activities with controversial impacts, like those at issue here, that does not provide opportunity for the public to testify or speak to a broader audience, or to hear answers to questions raised by others, and that fails to engage major population centers is not designed to help citizens and organizations effectively participate in agencies’ environmental reviews.”

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