There’s no doubt that the avian biodiversity that exists today is absolutely breathtaking. From the sword-billed hummingbird in the Andes to harpy eagles in the Amazon and colonies of emperor penguins in Antarctica, the list of amazing birds truly never ends. If you think you’ve seen it all, check ...
In 21st century science, we love to use advanced technology and complex models to predict what will happen in the future -- in other words, we like forecasting stuff. Perhaps the most common example of this is the daily weather. After considering a set of variables -- such as time of year, barometric ...
Human history owes its success to women. While historically not occupying traditionally powerful roles, women have always held the true power in families and social groups, which are ultimately the major factors leading to the perseverance of our species. With the rise of the feminist movement and younger, more progressive generations, this power is finally becoming recognized publicly. My mom is the bread-winner in my family. Female senators are no longer a surprise to the public. Women in science are revolutionizing the field. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the presidential election but unjustly suffered from the outdated rules of old white men. I can’t wait to see where women take our world once all the sexist, racist, idiotic baby boomers finally die out -- why is it taking so long?
Put simply, babies are parasites. Don’t believe me? Just look at your own life. For your nine months as a fetus, you sat inside your mom literally doing nothing, not to mention the fact that you were connected to her via an umbilical cord siphoning away all her nutrients. Then you were finally born, but you were still taking your mom's nutrients because she had to produce all that milk that you sucked out of her chest. And you cried, puked and pooped yourself and didn’t even say thank you. Then you were a kid going to school, and you just used up your parents' time and money in the form of rides to school and keeping your lunchbox full. Now you’re a big adult, except your parents may still pay for your college tuition, which in this day and age, might be even worse than all those previous things combined. What’s my point? Raising kids is damn difficult. And that’s why some birds just avoid it all together.
For everyone aged 21 or above, alcohol may play a role in your life. For some, it brings out the honest version of themselves. For others, the wild crazy side unbeknownst to the general population. For most, sometimes it just helps you relax at the end of the day. In our anthropocentric environment, we tend to think we are the only species that rejoice in the luxury of alcohol. But remember -- alcohol is one of Mother Nature’s natural elixirs, and while we may craft it in exquisite ways, store it in fancy bottles and drink it in unconventional ways, its pure and natural form exists throughout the world and is available to a select group of animals that can find and exploit it. Mainly, birds.
The particularly observant and ornithologically biased eye will have noticed recently that our neighborhood blue jays are busy. Doing what, you ask? Winter is coming, and blue jays across the Northeast have begun preparing for it. As humans, we worry about the colder temperatures and dangerous storms associated with winter. While these factors certainly pose a threat to blue jays as well, the main threat for them is a reliable source of food during the winter months. What if there was a food source of generally high abundance now that could be stored and eaten later when no other food sources exist? Turns out, there is — acorns!
It’s always fun to examine the beautiful, crazy, wild, extravagant species of birds from around the world online, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing better than going outside and actually seeing birds yourself — even if they don’t happen to be pretty and decorated like a bird-of-paradise. Turns out, our campus attracts all sorts of cool birds annually. In just four years of data collected by a handful of bird nerds, we’ve collectively recorded 136 species of bird! On the right day during spring migration in May, you could walk from Dewick to Dowling and find over 20 species in 10 minutes. Hard to believe, right? At first it doesn’t seem possible, but if you consider where we are located geographically, it starts to make some sense.
Put simply, a niche is the ecological role a species plays in its environment. Think about the classic backyard birds and the niches they occupy — American robins hop around on the ground hunting for worms, downy woodpeckers drill holes in trees extracting insects and house finches crack thick seeds in their powerful bills. If you live somewhere like the tropics, the increased availability of resources leads to a higher quantity of occupiable niches. With more available niches, more species can coexist. And once two species start to utilize the same resource, they attempt to avoid competition by specializing on one part of that resource over years of evolution, effectively dividing — or partitioning — that niche. (For example, a hummingbird eats the nectar of a flower, while a tanager eats the insects on or around the flower.) This is one of the leading theories explaining the marvelously diverse array of species present in these ecosystems. Twenty species of shorebirds can happily coexist on the same mudflat because their unique bill lengths and foraging strategies target different invertebrates living just below the surface. Mixed flocks exceeding 30 species of Amazonian songbirds can hang out in a fig tree together gulping down insects, flowers, berries, fruit and lizards, among other things. It makes me wonder — do we, in our modern, civilized world, partition niches too?
I spent this summer up in New Hampshire working as a loon biologist for the Loon Preservation Committee (LPC). Yes, that is a real thing. The LPC has been around for over 40 years now and hires several loon biologists each summer to monitor the entire loon population of N.H. It was such a sweet job; I basically kayaked around in the sun all day.
How refreshing it is to arrive back on campus and watch all the starry-eyed first-years gallivanting from class to class, excited and eager to “discover themselves” and figure out “what life is all about.” Good luck with that. Many of my observations of these new college students are derived ...
