the evolving mind

Last I checked, birds had not been acknowledged as a psychic order of biological life. That is why this headline caught my critical eye:

Tropical Birds Waited for Land Crossing Between North and South America, Study Finds

Perhaps my eye is nit-picking in this case. You be the judge. Here’s the wording of the claim:

Despite their ability to fly, tropical birds waited until the formation of the land bridge between North and South America to move northward, according to a University of British Columbia study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Okay, good science writing ain’t easy. The number of words at our disposal is finite, after all. But the question remains, is wait the best word to describe what the birds did? Doesn’t wait imply a knowledge of the something being waited for? If so, how did the birds know a land bridge would form?

How would you word what the birds did? Keep in mind that you are writing about science.

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On the eve before Christmas
some biologists gave to me –
A new bird species found in distant trees.

The ScienceDaily article tells it:

A diminutive, colorful bird living in the rocky forests of Laos and Vietnam has been discovered by a team of scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Lao PDR Department of Forestry, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, Swedish Museum of Natural History, BirdLife International and other groups.

Named the “limestone leaf warbler” because it breeds in Laos’s limestone karst environments — a region known for unusual wildlife — it is similar to other warblers in this area of Southeast Asia, except for its distinct vocalizations and slight morphological differences. [source]

I love it! For this bird-watcher, the discovery is waaaaay better than a six-pack of tube socks.

[photo by Peter Davidson]

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It is winter in Central Florida. Which means that the verdant green landscape has turned browner. Not slate gray like in northern climates. But duller nonetheless.

As I look out my window, a few things tell me it isn’t summer.

- The neighbor’s dogwood tree is half naked. The remaining leaves are reddish/greenish/brownish. And limp.

- Similarly, the bald cypress tree in our yard has lost most of its soft needles. The remaining ones are a bleached green or a shade of brown.

- The birds at the feeder. Chipping sparrows and goldfinches come around only when their food up north runs scarce.

I wonder how changing seasons (thanks to a wobbly planet) have influenced human beliefs. How different would our metaphysics be if the temperature was a consistent 75 and trees held their leaves all year.

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Many a morning in the growing-light, or evening during the dimming of sky, I’ll spy a leopard frog on a lily pad in our goldfish pond. Build it an they will come.

This morning I re-realized that I have been feeding the hawks in the area. Indirectly. Just after dawn today one made off with a mourning dove that had been scavenging on the ground beneath our feeders. The hawks (red-shouldered variety) also dine on the squirrels that invariably find a way to steal seeds.

Hmm. Should I not feed the wildlife? My guess is that the loss due to predation is offset by the gain of better-fed stocks. But maybe not.

Certainly, I make sure to situate the feeders where predation is more difficult. There is some overhead cover and nearby brush for the feeding birds to make a hasty retreat into.

Would that red-shouldered hawk have snagged a mourning dove searching for a meal in a more wide-open area, had it not discovered one relatively hidden in the trees adjacent to my home? I wonder.

Food and shelter. You need both to attract wildlife. Perhaps the same is true for humans.

Technorati Links: birds, nature photography

Technology leads to an increase in our knowledge. For example, things once seen only at a distance (the very far and the very small), can now be viewed up close. The result: more information.

As for the above bird photographed here in Florida, from the photo I can only guess that it is either a snowy egret or an immature little blue heron (I don’t remember what I pointed my lense at). Because the snowy has “golden slippers” (yellowish feet), and I can’t see a hint of that above, and because little blue herons are plentiful in the area I snapped the photo, my guess is a little blue (which are fully white as juveniles). But with better technology, in the form of a more powerful telescopic lense, I could have determined that with greater accuracy.

Hmm. I guess there is a slight chance that the bird is actually a great egret. But judging by the size of the blades of the grasses, and the width and bow of the tree branch, I don’t think that is possible.

Any other birdwatchers care to weigh in?

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Hummingbird food, at least that found in nature, tends to be served on gorgeous platters. Well, it tends to be found among colorful flower petals (or bracts, as the case may be). The above photo of an immature blossom is from a backyard shrimp plant. Its segmented flower apparently resembles cooked shrimp. (Boy, do I wish the shrimp plants would grow real shrimp! I’d go munching my way through the garden, with or without a cup of cocktail sauce in hand. Sweet peas are nice, but . . . .)

Yesterday evening I watched, and listened to, a female ruby-throated hummingbird feed from matured shrimp plant blossoms. I knew it was a female hummingbird because it lacked the ruby throat coloration of the males. And because we only get one variety of hummingbird around here.

I wonder why there is only one species of this type of bird in central Florida. When I lived in New Mexico, we had several. At first blush it seems that the desert ecosystem wouldn’t be as diverse as that around here. But then again, drastic changes in elevation and varying amounts of rain isn’t something to overlook. And Florida lacks this. Do we also lack an overhead flyway from diverse environments that might funnel other types of hummingbirds here?

So many questions.

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Is the brain the organ of behavioral options? If the best response to stimulus x was always behavior Y, what need would there be for a brain? Any creature with a brain is capable of learning. Learning better responses, learning to process more ambiguous stimuli, etc. Those with more elaborate cortexes are even capable of problem-solving.

Take birds. Their brains are relatively pea-sized. And yet they can learn. The more intelligent species can even problem-solve. A couple species have recently been found to use make-shift tools to problem solve.

That’s smart. In one piece of research, rooks (black birds in the crow family) placed stones in a vial of water to raise the fluid level and float a worm within reach. Impressive.

In another piece of research, crows engaged in more clever and complicated tool-use.

New experiments by Oxford University scientists reveal that New Caledonian crows can spontaneously use up to three tools in the correct sequence to achieve a goal, something never before observed in non-human animals without explicit training.

Wow. Some human beings would have difficulties with a three-step tool task.

It seems it is not the size of the brain that counts, but how you use it.

As a tangential matter, many cultures have been biased against black birds. Like crows and ravens. They are the harbingers of evil, etc. Is it in part because they are so clever and can quickly learn to be unafraid of our kind?

Lastly, would it be ornithologically-incorrect for me to point out that in the avian world blacks score higher than whites on tests of intelligence?

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Some who doubt evolution say there is a lack of proof. What they want is one slam-dunk piece of evidence of evolution occurring. Trouble is, like the motion of flip-book images, a single page, a single piece of data, will never encapsulate the whole of a dynamic process.

Take this photo of evolution in action [source]:

It’s just a bird, right? Well, yes, but it is also a likely “transitional form.” Two populations of one bird species are undergoing a plumage divergence. And that change is likely heading down the road to speciation.

In the article Study Catches Two Bird Populations As They Split Into Separate Species you will read:

The question of whether these two populations are on the road to speciation comes down to sex. When two populations stop exchanging genes—that is, stop mating with each other—then they can be considered distinct species. Uy and his team wanted to see if these flycatchers were heading in that direction.

One crucial bit of “evidence” that speciation is likely occurring consists not of a single photo or of a preserved skeleton or of anything you can hold in your hand. The evidence is bird behavior. Behavior.

That males from the two populations no longer view the other as a reproductive threat is a good indication that not much mating is taking place between the two groups. Their evolutionary paths are diverging, Uy and his team found—all because of a change in plumage.

Fascinating.

While science does take more effort to comprehend than the blind acceptance of religious claims, the payoff is immense.

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In the above photo you can be found a red-shouldered hawk feasting on a squirrel. In the nearly ten years we’ve lived in our present house we’ve had many generations of squirrel come and go. Sometimes their numbers blossom noticeable. But then they go down again. What makes their numbers dip after a climb? Disease and predation, for two.

Will the same hold true for the human population as it blossoms into the many billions? While predation is unlikely to play a role, warfare might. And what is disease but a form of microscopic predation? That could trim our numbers as well.

Of course, we are not squirrels. At least I hope we aren’t.

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In the article referenced yesterday about new thoughts on bird evolution, I found this interesting tidbit:

Warm-blooded birds need about 20 times more oxygen than cold-blooded reptiles, and have evolved a unique lung structure that allows for a high rate of gas exchange and high activity level.

Wow. Personally, whenever I watch cooking and travel shows, and see all the human eating going on, I marvel at the incredible about of calories we must stuff into our pie-holes just to ride around in automobiles, walk from there to there, chat with others, and navigate a computer mouse.

Also . . . lungs! What wild and fantastic organs. They are a bit like a cross between a radiator and a catalytic converter. Except we needn’t be in continual locomotion to send air across their surfaces. Instead, we constantly employ muscles tissue to “bellow” the air in and out. Which burns a lot of energy.

Another piece of a pie, anyone?

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