Birds on Stamps

If you are looking for bird-related stamps, there are some new stamps depicting birds of prey from the US Postal Service. Here is what the USPS has to say about them, from the product page:

The U.S. Postal Service® salutes five kings of the sky with the Birds of Prey stamps: the northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), osprey (Pandion haliaetus), and northern harrier (Circus cyaneus).

These powerful birds are depicted in colorful portraits and shown from the neck up. The artwork appears against a plain, white background.

Birds of prey, also known as raptors, thrive in diverse habitats and live on every continent except Antarctica. The roughly 500 species of raptors include birds that hunt by day, such as falcons, eagles, and harriers, and birds that hunt by night — the owls. They share several common characteristics; birds of prey are carnivorous and use their powerful talons to capture prey. Their exceptionally keen eyesight allows them to see small objects in detail, even from a great distance. As predators high on the food chain, raptors play an important role in maintaining the balance of nature.

Illustrator Robert Giusti worked with art director Howard E. Paine on this issuance. Giusti painted the original designs in acrylic on canvas board. The "Birds of Prey" stamps are being issued in self-adhesive sheets of 20 at an 85-cent denomination, which is the price for single-piece retail First-Class Mail weighing more than two ounces and up to and including three ounces.

I doubt I would have use for a sheet of these since I rarely send letters that heavy, but if you do, these are some stamps to use. Other wildlife-related stamps currently available include the 65-cent Baltimore Checkerspot stamps and the first-class Save Vanishing Species stamps featuring an Amur Tiger.

From a Brown Thrasher to a Chicken?

To date, Georgia has been one of the handful of southern states to name a bird species other than the Northern Mockingbird or Northern Cardinal as its state bird. Instead of the more popular choices, Georgia has been represented by the Brown Thrasher since 1935. A Georgian restaurant owner is now campaigning to change the state bird to a chicken.

One evening last spring, Chris Cunningham was sitting on his patio enjoying a cocktail and observing the state bird of Georgia, the brown thrasher. It was out in the yard doing whatever it is that thrashers do when Cunningham was seized by a thought.

"The brown thrasher hasn't really done anything for Georgia," he said to his wife. "But the chicken is huge."

His campaign includes a video that praises chickens and describes the Brown Thrasher as "inedible, lazy and migratory." It is hard to tell how serious this is or how likely the campaign is succeed in its stated goals. To me it seems that its real goal may be generating publicity for his restaurant chain or perhaps for some future venture.

If Georgia did make the proposed switch, it would join Delaware and Rhode Island in using the domestic chicken as its state bird. Those two states each chose domestic chicken breeds that are connected with the state, Delaware's Blue Hen and the Rhode Island Red. It is not clear whether this proposal involves a breed specific to Georgia. The only chicken named on the campaign website is "Cornish chicken," which appears to be a common meat industry breed. The fact that a Georgian breed has not been named is one factor that makes me suspect that the proposal is not very serious or likely to get far.

Whether the campaign is serious or not, it is not necessary to defame Brown Thrashers in the process. A migratory bird could hardly be described as lazy, as migratory birds expend much energy and undertake great risk to make their journeys. The Brown Thrasher is a short distance migrant, and in fact overwinters in most of the southern states, including Georgia. Even so, the cycle of moving between breeding and winter grounds and caring for young makes for a very demanding lifestyle. The assertion that Brown Thrashers have not done anything for Georgia is also not true. For one, the Brown Thrasher lent its name to Atlanta's professional hockey team. (Would they become the Atlanta Chickens?) More broadly, they contribute to the proper functioning of Georgia's ecosystems. As omnivores, they eat a variety of insects and other invertebrates, some of which could be harmful to the state's agricultural industry. Healthy and diverse ecosystems contribute a variety of other economic services, such as cleaning pollutants from air and water. While the Brown Thrasher alone is unlikely to attract many visitors, thriving and diverse bird life can attract ecotourism.

In the end, this is not my state, so I am looking at this entirely as an outsider. However, I would be saddened to see such an extraordinary singer and feisty wild bird dropped as a state bird in favor of a domesticated one.

(Thanks to Nick for sending me the link.)

Update: Georgia Conservancy has a petition to keep the Brown Thrasher as state bird.

Bird Poop in Space, Part 2

As we all know, bird poop is a powerful substance. Splotches of it are easily visible on pretty much any surface. Once it has dried, it is hard to clean off without a good deal of scrubbing. If left to accumulate, it can corrode a surface or become a health hazard. On at least one occasion, bird poop arrived in space when several splotches of it were stuck to the right wing of the space shuttle Discovery. In places where birds congregate, guano can accumulate in very large quantities.

These qualities make bird poop very useful for anyone seeking out bird colonies in remote areas. And, in fact, some scientists have started looking for penguin poop from space. While orbiting satellites are unable to track individual emperor penguins, they can detect the poop-stained ice that marks a breeding site.

"We were mapping one of our bases on an ice shelf, and we knew there was a penguin colony close to there," said Peter Fretwell, a geographer at the British Antarctic Survey.

"I was using a satellite image as a backdrop for the map and it happened to have a reddish-brown stain on one of the creeks that was a possible location for the emperor penguin colony."

"It was quite a lucky find because just a few months beforehand, we had made a mosaic of these satellite images of the whole of Antarctica, so we could go round and track all the colonies."

By studying satellite imagery, the team found 10 unknown colonies and 6 colonies that changed locations, while showing that another 6 that had disappeared. The research, while perhaps ignoble, provides needed information to track how climate change and other threats are affecting emperor penguins.

Bluebird of Happiness?

This LOLcat-inspired image has been going around the birding blogs. (via)

more animals

Tofu Trees

A column in today's Baltimore Sun begins with this paragraph:

When gas prices were clunking along in the low 3-buck-something range, mass transit didn't seem nearly as interesting as it does now. For the vast majority of us, the idea of sharing the commuting experience with strangers was as remote as planting our own tofu trees.

Yes, that does seem remote, because tofu does not grow on trees.

High Gas Prices

Here is Stephen Colbert on the causes of high gas prices:

[Link here if video fails to embed.]

On a related note, the rise in gas prices has led more people to use public transportation.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots....

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges — of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year — are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited....

Transit systems in metropolitan areas like Minneapolis, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Francisco reported similar jumps. In cities like Houston, Nashville, Salt Lake City, and Charlotte, N.C., commuters in growing numbers are taking advantage of new bus and train lines built or expanded in the last few years. The American Public Transportation Association reports that localities with fewer than 100,000 people have also experienced large increases in bus ridership.

Public transit still accounts for a very small portion of overall commuting trips. However, a surge in ridership could encourage more cities to invest in new or expanded systems and thus encourage higher ridership. That would go a long way towards reducing carbon emissions and urban traffic congestion. It would be even better if increased ridership encouraged investment in regional rail.

World Series of Birding

Patrick found this old video from the Daily Show in which Steve Carell reports on the World Series of Birding. Or, rather, he distracts some teams while they are trying to find birds – all in good fun, of course. Enjoy!

Good luck to the Sandy Hook Century Run and all the other teams heading out today!

[If the video does not embed properly, you can find it here.]

Flying Penguins?

The idea of penguins flying is preposterous. Their wings are far too small to generate the lift necessary to lift their heavy bodies. Yesterday, the BBC promoted a video purporting to show penguins flying from the Antarctic to the tropics. I think it executes the trick quite well.

Including Terry Jones as a narrator may be a tip-off as to the video's intent.

Trebuchet

Click to enlarge.

(via xkcd)

Accidents

Via xkcd.

Prior to this post, "died in a birding accident" returned zero results on Google.

Meanwhile, "died in a blogging accident" now returns 6,830 results.

Dueling Headlines

These headlines appeared on consecutive articles in the RSS feed for the Earth Times Online Newspaper:

ANALYSIS: Expert says German carmakers cannot afford CO2 cuts
Stuttgart - Luxury automakers cannot afford to use emissions-cutting technology because their powerful cars would become impossibly expensive, an industry expert warned Wednesday. The European Union's executive arm, the Commission, put itself on a collision course with the German automobile industry on Wednesday by approving strict limits on average carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions of cars.
Wed, Dec 19, 2007 11:21 AM

Experts discount German outcry at CO2 cuts - Feature
Frankfurt - Germany's premium carmakers worked themselves into a rage this week over coming EU limits on carbon-dioxide emissions, suggesting they face punitive fines and must slash jobs. But many experts disagree, saying the 748,000 Germans working in the automotive industry can rest easy.
Wed, Dec 19, 2007 9:12 PM

Birds Appear

From xkcd.

Pardon the Droppings

White House intern Nick Butterfield, who was assigned to watch May, the National Thanksgiving Turkey, follows the bird sprinkling wood shavings over his droppings, prior to a ceremony where President Bush pardoned the bird in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Book Meme

Via Patrick and others, I learned of a silly book meme. The idea is to go to Amazon's Advanced Book Search and put your own name in the Title field to see what appears.

I did that, and this was the first result:

Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle Johns Bathroom Reader) by Bathroom Readers' Institute

I never knew that such a book or such an institute existed.

Owl Cleaners

Because of my recent relocation, I have been sorting through a lot of old possessions and deciding which to keep and which to throw away. In the course of the project I came across an old address book emblazoned with the name "OWL CLEANERS." This was presumably some laundromat or dry cleaner that may or may not still be in business. For me, the name conjured images of devices for washing this guy - presumably a daunting task.

In other silliness, we have an important warning from The Onion:

WASHINGTON, DC—The Environmental Protection Agency issued a bulletin Tuesday warning the bodies of American citizens, with their large concentrations of artificial, synthetic, and often toxic substances, have been reclassified as industrial waste.

"The average human body is now only 35 percent organic," EPA chief Ralph Johnson said. "Due to changes brought about by modern detergents, silicone implants, and processed cheese food product, it is no longer safe to allow human tissue to come into contact with our nation's topsoil."

Given recent headlines, it is tempting to think The Onion is doing real journalism instead of satire.

What Kind of Pet Would You Be?

You Would Be a Pet Bird

You're intelligent and witty, yet surprisingly low maintenance. You charm people easily, and they usually love you a lot more than you love them. You resent anyone who tries to own or control you. You refuse to be fenced in. Why you would make a great pet: You're very smart and entertaining Why you would make a bad pet: You're not interested in being anyone's pet! What you would love about being a bird: Flying, obviously What you would hate about being a bird: Being caged

What Kind of Pet Would You Be?

(via GrrlScientist)

Sibley

Someone finds a misidentification in the Sibley Guide:

Which leads me to another worry. It's plain that Mr. Sibley is a supreme incompetent; but could it also be that the ornithology establishment and birding public don't share my concern either? If they did, the outcry would be enough to inspire a revision. But so far, and to the best of my knowledge, there's been complete silence on the matter. Is there some kind of mass collusion going on here? Or is this Sibley's scheme to make his work more accessible—to make it just as factually deprived as its readers? The world is insane.

News and Notes

These are a few stories that showed up after my last Loose Feathers post.

Alewives and blueback herring are able to spawn in the upper reaches of Rock Creek again. Habitat mitigation money from the Beltway bridge project made it possible to design and build ways for fish to swim around artificial obstacles blocking the stream. The most serious obstacle was the dam at Peirce Mill, which is now bypassed by a fish ladder. Biologists from DC Fisheries and Wildlife have found some alewives upstream from the Peirce Mill dam already, but most fish have not caught on yet.

Last Saturday, there was a cleanup along the Anacostia River watershed. The cleanup was sponsored by several organizations, including the National Wildlife Federation and the Earth Conservation Corps. It removed 20,000 pounds of garbage from the river banks and tributaries. Volunteers uprooted many invasive plants as well.

The X Prize Foundation is offering a $10 million prize for someone who can build a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. Given that American vehicles currently average about 20 miles per gallon, and even the best top out at about twice that, such an improvement would be remarkable. One of the requirements of the competition is that the winning vehicle be commericially viable since the goal is to produce designs that will lead to more efficient vehicles being sold.

A California condor has laid an egg in Mexico for the first time since the 1930s. The egg is about 45-50 days old, meaning that a chick should hatch soon. The nest is located on the Baja peninsula.

On Sunday, someone reported a goosprey from Huntley Meadows.

Bushism

Words of Wisdom:

"I'm a strong proponent of the restoration of the wetlands, for a lot of reasons. There's a practical reason, though, when it comes to hurricanes: The stronger the wetlands, the more likely the damage of the hurricane."—Discussing post-Katrina wetland improvements, New Orleans, March 1, 2007

Bird Spam

This recently showed up in my spam folder, under the subject line "was go bundle."

Speak English. said the Eaglet. I dont know the meaning of which passed over the hill-top, with the broad and hollow sound as looking anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something; that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she nursery; and while she sat darning she heard a crow. Then the window laughter, by which he had been interrupted. I was deceived, She is such a dear quiet thing, Alice went on, half to herself, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her viler wretches, whose cowardice had destroyed their friends; beast, has been destroyed by this vile and ineradicable weed: its bedpost crowing gloriously, while Jane in her nighty was flying other.

What?