Summer Evening

I used to spend my quieter summer moments with the hummingbird. It would always arrive when I least expected it but always at that perfect moment of calm. I could never photograph it, which at first frustrated me to no end, but I came to realize that to capture its beauty in one single image would be utterly impossible and would taint the feeling of mystery and wonder it brought to me.
One particular evening it seemed to taunt me as a dream that can’t quite be remembered. It was the beginning of a heat wave and two previous days in the sun didn’t help my humor when the temperature rose above 90ºF. I would perhaps have been alright had my mother not excitedly chosen this particular day to get hay. Easy choice for her considering she had been resting in Maine for the Fourth of July weekend but I, I had been taking care of all of the horses and I was exhausted before we even began to load the 200 plus bales. As it was I disappeared into the house after we’d emptied our first truck load. I was burning and unable to breathe in the hot air and she left me to rest as she went to get the next load with my aunt.
After nearly drowning myself in lemonade and stumbling through the house looking for a book to distract me from my dizzy state, I went out onto the porch to read and let the breeze cool me off. It was still warmer than in the house but not by much. We’d never had air conditioning. I wanted fresh air and the wind nearly made the temperature difference.
I lay down drenched with sweat and the sweet smell of freshly cut hay. I pulled at the strands of hay still clinging to my clothing and let them drop onto the grey, weathered wood beneath the reclining chair supporting me. I began to read a short story about an eccentric street kid who wanted to set bicycles free. When I got to the end when the boy was mistakenly shot by a cop I began to hear a soft drone in the back of my mind, like an echo of my heartbeat coming to life. As I read the last lines and felt the slight tug in my chest that comes with any depressingly realistic story, my gaze went to the sunset and my mind took a breath. That’s when the hummingbird came.
I was vulnerable in my weakness of both body and emotion. It appeared as a mirage slipping into my peripheral vision as an embodiment of all that I needed in that moment. Calm. Beauty. Breath. Its colors captured the fading light of the sun. Its eyes reflected the shadows. Its feathers made the wind. I was frozen for a moment in its glamour and then an innately human desire made me nearly leap up. Where was the camera? I had to get the camera. Sensing my wish to capture it the hummingbird took one final look at me and disappeared behind a tangle of flowers that hung over the deck railing.
I slowly got up, feeling only slightly less affected by heat stroke and went inside to grab my camera. I took it back out with me and had it rest by my side in case the hummingbird again appeared. Of course it didn’t. The sun began to sink and I heard my mother driving in with the last load of hay. I forced myself up and went to help her unload into the hayloft. This time hunger was added to the list of hay day symptoms. In the fashion of a normal summer day I’d had an oatmeal cookie and lemonade lunch and no dinner yet. My mother took the truck to my aunt’s to give her the remaining hay as I again went to cool off on the porch, forgetting the camera.
I had picked up my book but was too tired to really read it. The hummingbird returned and fed on the delicate pink flowers dangling from the railing. Its elusive form hovered in the cooler air and sung a rhythm of the earth’s heartbeat. I didn’t want a camera. I didn’t need one. After all, how can one truly capture the mystery of a memory? The hummingbird laughed at me. I looked at it in the twilight and smiled.

Harbor Seals

So it seems I am becoming merely a wildlife photographer. I keep getting so many cool shots I don't have time to think about actually studying these animals. Not that I'm complaining- keep the seal and raccoon sightings coming! These seals are incredibly curious. I was using a short lens for all of these photos so the young seal actually let me get that close to it without being disturbed. The ones in the water originally were farther away and were a bit startled by me but as I waded into the ocean a number of them actually came closer to see what I was doing. Some even followed me as I slowly walked back up the beach.

Drawing and Naming

Last winter I began keeping track of individuals in a population by creating detailed drawings from photographs I've taken. So far I've only worked with birds. The first two I drew were a Blue Jay and a male Evening Grosbeak. I referred to the jay as Jazz and the grosbeak as Eridin. I refuse to number animals- ignoring the anthropomorphic reasons it just makes it much more difficult to remember an individual. Besides, Jane Goodall named her chimps so I have few qualms about doing the same. One method I'm trying to use however, is to keep all of the individuals of the same species named with the same first letter which is chosen from the first letter of their common or scientific name. Blue jays are named with 'J', Evening Grosbeaks 'E',
Catbirds 'Ca', Barn Swallows 'Ba', etc... Hopefully I'll learn to recognize these individuals without having to refer to photographs.

Time machine anyone?

How wonderful it would have been to be born 200 years ago with so many species still to be discovered. Now we are discovering the loss of species rather than their existence. Almost everything has been classified and the hope of finding anything new is diminished by the impossibility of knowing every species currently documented. This is not to say I believe well known species are uninteresting but that the general public can look at the photo of a raccoon and go "that's just a raccoon" without the slightest bit of emotion being impressed upon them. This is frustrating. It is an incredible challenge to create or discuss something that has already been dismissed as common and even more so something that is rare, but yes, already discovered and studied. When a creature falls under the 'endangered species' category suddenly it is political. When it doesn't it's banal. So what is a naturalist to do in a world where a photo of a new iphone is far more exciting than a photo of an old species?

Doe

An afternoon visitor. She was quite unperturbed by my presence. At first I was trying to be as sneaky and quiet as possible- taking photos out of windows, sneaking around the back of the house- but I quickly realized she didn't much care that I was there, just so long as I didn't get too close.

Swallowtails

Last week I observed an interesting behavior in swallowtail butterflies. I know very little about insects so it is possible what I observed is very common. There was a dead butterfly in the road and upwards of 8 butterflies were flying around it in a way that can be interpreted as mourning. There was one individual in particular who stayed near the dead swallowtail. It circled around the lifeless wings, seemed to nudge it once or twice, flew around it(never going more than a foot away) and repeated the whole process again. The images are of this individual with the dead butterfly and another flying around it(top) and of the individual on one of its flights around its dead companion(bottom). There was no aggressive behavior observed.

Once Upon a Pine...

I found a raccoon! Last Monday my dog and I went on a walk to a waterfall so that I could take some photographs. Afterward I decided to continue along the old dirt road into less traversed land up in the mountains. By chance I looked up and discovered this raccoon lounging on a branch in the afternoon heat. It was barely perturbed by our presence but it did give us a look as if to say 'please don't make me move.' Maybe that's anthropomorphic but I think scientists need to stop being so pretentious because everything is how we interpret it. The only reason scientists are generally disinclined to interpret animal behavior the way they interpret human behavior is because it scares them to consider that the animals they do tests on may not be as different as themselves as they would hope. Being ignorant of contradictions to one's morality is the same as being amoral. I'd argue that in order to be as accurate as possible observations must be made in the manner most easily related. Anything else is censorship regardless of how unconsciously it is done.

Three

Just a few pages from a book I wrote from a bird's perspective. The book also reflected on how humans impact this world. The story behind the deer, observed by the birds in the woods, leans towards the opinion that human involvement is almost a tragedy. The bird on the left, the endangered bobolink, is more confused and slightly bitter. The robin is unaffected by humans and goes about its day with not a care in the world. There is always food and habitat for robins.

Studies of Canine Anatomy

These studies were done roughly a year ago and were meant as an exploration of the canine form. There's the external anatomy of the paws(top) that were drawn after the close examination of the (left) front leg's bone structure(bottom) as well as a simple study of the skull(right). This artwork is mine, so duplicate and die. Glad we have an understanding.

c fern

Alright, time for some of those promised pretty pictures. Observations of the Polka Dot mutant and wildtype gametophytes of the aquatic C. ferns. These grew into a handful of little plants still developing in a coke bottle terrarium. As I am very fond of my photos please do not copy and paste them and call them your own. Cool. Thanks.

At the top is a hermaphroditic gametophyte. It is a polka dot mutant because the chloroplasts can clearly be seen clumping around the edges of the cells giving them a silvery, clear appearance.
In the middle is a close up of a mutant. The individual cells are more easily seen. The green dots around their edges are the chloroplasts.
At the bottom are two wild type gametophytes. A male gametophyte covered in antheridia is on the left. On the right is the larger hermaphrodite with both antheridia and archegonia.

Spring 2010 Research

No the text does not come separately. Essentially we found that within the length of our experiment birds were unable to associate palatability of a prey to an auditory cue. We looked at mimicry in avian prey and designed an experiment expanding upon the typical visual warning coloration. We used the same colored bait only occasionally it was mixed with distasteful quinine. We went out every morning and afternoon for two months and observed wild birds as they chose baits. We remained there, rain or shine (more often snow), until at least half of the baits were gone or until an hour had passed. We started thinking we could go out three times a day starting at 7am but that just didn't work. We switched our times to 8am and 4pm. We observed random behaviors in the birds which though interesting, were irrelevant to our experiment- which took three or more attempts to complete. We used a trilling bell-like noise as our sound cue. We began at the beginning of February, so yes, often it was very cold,though that was occasionally useful on the first early mornings.

N.Y.O.S.

Dear Viewer,
This blog was created as a way to compile photographs, artwork, and research related to biology. It is meant to be accessible to any individual but hopes to lean towards more professional work. This means that yes, there will be pretty pictures, but there will also be large, unnecessary words that every biologist strives to use as a way of confusing English majors. Also, no humor will be allowed. Ever. And no sarcasm of any type. Occasionally, I predict, there will be controlled rants but they will be censored dutifully so as not to alarm anyone. Because obviously we don't want that. Again the will be NO SARCASM. None. That is all dear viewer. Don't steal. Don't judge. Don't leave without learning anything- even if that's just learning that this blog is terrible.
I suppose I should also mention the reasoning behind the name of this blog. Despite my multimedia involvement I'm 'not your ordinary scientist' because my mind is more similar to the mind of a white tailed deer or bobcat than to the mind of a human. In other words I have the animal perspective. I consider the subject or research as an individual. I do not think it degrades from my observations. Because I also like to make specific case studies of people I think I've developed the ability to separate the individual personality from the object of study.
For now, that is all.
Your Wild and Unruly,
Black Cat Shining