Environmental_Science

Return for the Swifts

Two years ago (Fire Swifts, 3 July 2020) I wrote about enjoying the flight of Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica) while I sat on my back patio. In summer mornings and evenings I could see a flight of ten to twenty Swifts gliding above my house and over the close-at-hand stand of trees as they sought and caught flying insects that lived in the trees, under the leaves, on the branches and trunks. The Swifts also gobbled up the mosquitoes that liked to breed in the ponds along the stream beneath the trees.

But now the Swifts are mostly gone. Sometimes when I am working in my yard I might hear twittering in he sky. I look up and might see three to five Swifts overhead.

Have I noticed a change in the number of insects I have to swat or other troublesome flying insects? Not so much, but maybe there are more gnats this year than in others.

Where did the Swifts go? I have no idea. But I hope they found a place to their liking and have not just become part of the 5 billion songbirds that we lost since 1970. That comes to a false number average of 60 million birds lost in each of those years. If we were to think of birds as people that is Nine Times the population of the United States lost each year. Now it sounds like a big number.

There are numerous factors that are leading to a decline in the number of songbirds in the United States. These factors include: tall buildings – birds crash into them during their migrations; feral cats – put out of the house at night kill millions of song birds each year; diseases – some of which are suspected of becoming more prevalent due to the warming climate; and habitat destruction – when our towns and cities and suburbs are changed to accommodate our expanding population.

I believe the main reason that I do not see my Chimney Swifts wheeling overhead in the early morning and at twilight is because of habitat destruction.

Was there some forest that was cut down in my neighborhood? No; the last large tract of timbered grazing area in my town was destroyed and filled with houses in the 1990s. Swifts might live in hollowed out trees that happened to stand in an old forest.

Audubon tells a story of when we was cataloguing and painting the birds of North America of finding a tall, hollowed out sycamore tree in Kentucky. He stepped inside and found it filled with Chimney Swifts which had made nests on the interior walls of their “chimney”.

My Swifts had no such palatial home as I believe they nested in an old brick chimney of a boiler/heater for a small hotel on the highway near my house. When the motel was torn down to make way for a gas station and store, the chimney was torn down. This was the same time that my Swifts disappeared. I have made the assumption that the Swifts nested in the old chimney.

Is there a way to bring the Swifts back to the area of my neighborhood?

I think there is.

A quick search of the internet (searching “Swift Tower”) turns up initiatives by individuals, groups and communities to maintain a healthy and helpful population of the insect-eating Swifts. The individuals and groups do not build free standing brick chimneys. They build stand alone “Swift Towers”. Several State Audubon societies have articles on building Swift Towers on both private and public lands. There are links on these pages to other organizations as well, including designs for the towers. As one article states, if you are asked what you are building, just tell them it’s a bird house.

And what of my small population of Swifts. I will approach the company that is building the gas station, and tell them the story of my neighborhood Swifts. And I will ask them if they would build a Swift Tower to replace the old chimney.

And for my City I plan to attend a council meeting and ask that they consider requesting that any companies that are tearing down old establishments that have chimneys to replace that chimney with a Swift Tower.

I think the twittering I hear in the mornings and evenings is worth that little bit of effort.

Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania (ASWP) is supporting Chimney Swift protection through a variety of approaches. We have installed nearly 150 Chimney Swift towers to provide breeding habitats for these birds. Audubon’s Chimney Swift Tower Program | Audubon Society of Western PA (aswp.org)

John James Audubon’s experience in visiting a large dead sycamore tree filled with the nests of Chimney Swifts is provided at American Swift | John James Audubon’s Birds of America. He estimated their number to be 9,000.

To read more information about the decline of our songbird population see the 2019 study as published in Science magazine. It may be found at – Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone | Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Where Have the Songbirds Gone? | NASA Applied Sciences

Fighting Climate Change

“Give me a fast ship, because I intend to go into harm’s way.” John Paul Jones

In this decade, the nations of the world must come together to protect our Earth from the effects of our industries of the last several hundred years.

Our vessel must be worthy, if it is not, we will not succeed.

The 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be the starting point of these Stone Fig Climate Change postings. The IPCC is a body of the United Nations tasked to assess the science related to climate change. Created in 1988, the objective of the IPCC is to provide all levels of government with scientific information that can be utilized in developing climate policy.

Its website may be found at IPCC — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC not only provides information to the nations of the world but to each of us as well. It is appropriate that we should understand the reports by the IPCC. Our nation and other nations will use this 2021 Report, and the reports that follow, to establish climate change policy and regulations.

To support our country, we the people, must have a basic understanding of the chemical and physical processes within our Earth’s climate. We should be able to understand and have a reasoned opinion on the actions developed to combat climate change. The basic principles and ideas of climate processes can be easily found, and refreshed through numerous sites on the internet.

When we read the reports and the proposed laws and regulations it is appropriate for us to use our personal skills of critical thinking to determine whether the proposed regulations are supported by the science. The regulations passed and the support we give to the enforcement of those regulations will determine whether we have a “worthy vessel” and whether or not we will, in the end, succeed.

I will focus my Climate Change postings on reading the documents published by the IPCC. I will start with the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) from the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Report. The SPM may be found at IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf.

The SPM begins with an assessment of “The Current State of the Climate”. In this assessment reference is made to “AR5” which is the IPCC 5^th Assessment Report (AR5). The SPM states that since AR5 was released in 2013 improvements have been made in recording the geologic records of ancient paleoclimate. These ancient records are reached by taking core samples of glaciers, tree rings, and sediments from the ocean floors. These core samples can provide us with climate records that reach back long before the early industrial age of the 1700s and 1800s. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) the study of Paleoclimate provides an essential perspective for assessing the potential impacts of future climate on “natural systems and the people who rely on them”. Scientists use the geologic evidence of past climate changes to understand the rates and patterns of Earth systems’ responses to a broad range of climate and landscape changes. When integrated into climate models these paleoclimate data provide a means to improve our understanding of the impacts of climate change.

When we review just the last 100 years, we can see the beginning of a significant increase in average global temperature. This is shown in Figure SPM.1 of the SPM. The graph is shown below.

In my view, after the Second World War (1945) the nations of the world, led by historically industrialized nations and nations with the resources to become industrialized nations, began a significant increase in activity These activities reinforced the change from farm-based/agrarian activities as primary human-activity to that of industrial-labor activities which had begun in the 1800s. To support these industrial-labor activities our collective power requirements for light, energy, transport, and transportation increased apace with this change.

This increase can be seen in the graph above.

It can be seen from the graph that in the last 50 years the average global surface temperature has increased at a average rate of 0.018 degrees Celsius (C) per year. This is an increase of 0.9 degrees C in 50 years. The upward angle of the graph will likely continue to rise if something is not done. What is “something”? It is action by each person, by every nation, to reduce the effect of human-activities that contribute to the increases in average global temperature.

To borrow a phrase from the movie Jaws, “We are going to need a bigger boat.”

We are in need of a revolution against our own past.

I am not saying the past was wrong or evil. Those activities built a standard of living for the people of the industrialized world who should now help raise the standard of living in the non-industrialized world.

We are on the threshold of a new age. We will step through; but what will we find?

If we do not address the rising global temperature and the changes to the climate it is causing, the poorer will suffer even more, and the rich will become poor and suffer as well. If we address the issues of climate change we can likely maintain a standard of living and can raise up those who do not yet have it.

In the pictures below of heroes of the American Revolution we see the spirit of the men and women who chose to fight to bring change to their way of government. Would they be ruled, or would they govern themselves?

We have to fight again, but this time against ourselves. We must use our individual critical skills to determine what actions each of us can take and should take. Then we must act!

The future does not belong to the timid.

We are all called. These pictures of John Paul Jones and Molly Pitcher (Mary Hays/McCauly) call to mind the fight that is ahead and the determination with which we must face it.

Their fight was for a new nation in a new world. Our fight is one to save the world for ourselves, for our descendants, and for all of life on the planet.

Picture “Captain John Paul Jones” 1938, by N.C.Wyeth

Figure SPM.1 copied from Summary for Policy Makers, 2021 United Nations Climate Change Report

Picture “Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth ” 1912, by C. Y. Turner

Ride in Death Valley

I have alluded in several posts that I traveled for my work. I was an engineer in the federal government and served several agencies. My work usually involved environmental compliance and land/real estate management for those agencies. My work often took me to California and New Mexico. When I would go out to the west coast which was generally once a year, I would usually stay at least a week and sometimes two in order to meet with personnel from the several installations that I had cognizance or purview over.

My agenda for a two-week trip included visits and discussions with installations in San Diego, Los Angeles, a large installation in the California desert. This desert installation was close to Death Valley and as I had to drive up to Los Angeles for my next site visit, on the Saturday I was traveling I decided to drive up the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and see what there was to see. This route took me past Death Valley. I had never seen it, so I decided to make a stop and see it.

I started driving north on CA-395. This was all strange territory to me not only being from the east coast, but it was the rocks, the shapes, the plants, and the different birds that intrigued me. As I drove north, I came to a place called the Alabama Hills. The formations looked like giant stones had been dumped out onto the ground. The tumbled formations of rocks were intriguing. I found a place to park and climbed on the rocks while looking for the fish-filled brooks and pools that the signs implied were round there. The hills of stone looked like an old movie set, and were actually used in numerous westerns since the formations were so striking.

I left the Alabama Hills and continued north on CA-395. Soon I was in a dust storm as the wind was blowing in from the east across what I learned was Owen’s Dry Lake. At one time it had been a fresh water lake feed by the Owens River. The Owens River was used to support agriculture in the valley, and later it was diverted to supply Los Angeles with water. I stopped and looked out over the sandy flats that had once been covered in water. The alkali dust drove me back into my car.

The next road to the east, in the direction of the dry lake bed, had a sign that said to me, Turn here for Death Valley. Who had not heard of that tortuous place? We had played cowboys back in the east and roamed an imaginary Death Valley. From countless Saturday matinees we knew it as the driest and the hottest place the United States, if not the entire planet.

I followed the road to the east, not knowing what I might find. The road, CA-190, draped around the east side of the dry lake. I stopped on that far side and got out of my car to look at it again. I could see more now as the wind was blowing at my back. The dust was no longer blowing into my face as it had been at my first stop. I drove on toward Death Valley. And now, about every mile or so, I saw a car pulled to the opposite side of the road with a bicycle rack on top. As I saw more and more of these cars I realized there was probably a bike rally or a race going on.

On the south side of CA-109 I saw the crest of a volcanic dike or a collapsed volcanic lava tube now exposed and weathered. I stopped and walked along one. It looked like a great place for rattlesnakes and scorpions, so I kept a respectful distance. I set up my camera tripod and took several pictures to send to Geology professor including the self-portrait above. Then I packed my camera gear and continued on my way.

By the time I reached Father Crowley Point, I had seen a dozen cars with bike racks along the road. At the parking lot for Father Crowley Overlook there were several more parked. I stopped to ask what was going on.

I was told yes, there was a bike race. It was the famed and feared Whitney Classic. This race starts at Badwater Basin on the east side of Death Valley. The course crosses the Valley and then ascends on the road I was on to the top of the Darwin Plateau, and on past Owens Dry Lake. The race continues into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and then climbs to the Whitney Portals. The race is 136 miles long and includes an elevation rise 14,704 feet, nearly a 3-mile gain in elevation.

My plan to visit the floor of Death Valley was breaking down. I had to be in Los Angeles that night for a business meeting the following day. We would work the weekend when I got there. But I started my descent into Death Valley. As I went down I began to see the lead groups of bikers passing me as they went up the road. I realized that I would likely get stuck behind larger groups of racers who were following the leaders. If I got behind them, they would slow down or block my exit from the park. It could cost me hours of lost time. I found a wide spot in the road and turned around to go back to the top of the plateau.

The Wilson Classic is an endurance bike race. I was glad to have seen the edges of it. And I was glad to have glimpsed Death Valley from the height of Father Crowley Point. And I had gotten out and marveled at the lava dike which was only a part a small part of this tortuous and wonderous terrain. Perhaps on my next trip I will go up to the verdant forests of the Whitney Portals and listen to the babble of Lone Pine Creek.

Death Valley as seen from the area of he Father Crowley Overlook; photo by Daniel Perez posted to Google Earth.

Young Man/Old Man

The tree has stood here for generations. Its wrinkled features speak of Springs and hot Summers and Winter storms and Fall Hurricanes rolling out of the Sea.

Yet here it stands. Right where the mountain man had stopped over 300 years before, and leaning on his staff he paused to look out to the Sea beyond the valley – and he has stayed here – still thinking. His hand clutches the shaft of his staff. You can see his fingertips curling around from the back of the shaft as he rests his temple against his hand. His hair is blown upwards and back as he stares stonily out towards the distant Sea.

The years have washed soil and stones and leaves out of the hills above so that the man’s shoulders and torso and hips and legs are now buried deep below. Yet still he stands and looks outward and wonders. When he decides, will he rise up and tear his roots from deep within the earth and walk these hills again?

These are tales of the deep woods.

The young man pushed out by his tribe,

Walked toward the sound of the Sea.

He crossed mountain peak and fast glacial stream.

He forded broad rivers.

He climbed stones as if they were steps to the top of the ridge.

And from his new vantage point he could see the great Sea before him.

He leaned his head on his staff and he wept, because he had found Ocean, his mother.

What would he say to her when she saw him and rose up? Would she be in a fury? Would she rejoice that he had found his way back to her?

He leaned on his staff, for a year, and another, and another ten and then a hundred and then more.

He stands there still wondering how he will be greeted when he reaches the rolling wave and the murmur of shale rolling in the retreating wave.

What will he say that he has accomplished? Who will he say that he has helped? Has he made his path a better place? Has the world benefited from his life?

He leaps up and leaves his body behind, still, standing, staring.

His spirit goes out and back along his path to correct what he has damaged.

When he sees a tired person sitting next to the road, the wind blows down and refreshes the weary. The rain falls upon the parched . The sun shines on the lonely.

The young man in the wind and rain and sunshine is rebuilding his story.

And he will smile.

One day he will return to this tree and shake loose the binding roots and finish his walk to the Sea and be greeted with joy.

This is one of the trees that I remember. There are many others. These are the trees I see while I am in the woods. They speak to me as the warm spring rains patter down on their budding branches. When the Summer storm whips the limbs and branches, they howl with strength. When the Winter winds bring snow and ice that crackles on the branches when the sun returns and when I cross the snowy field to visit them, they moan and creak like an old gate on rusted hinges.. The trees are always with me, they are everywhere. They are of many ages, and they always welcome me to the deep forest and woods by the lane.

Some have forgotten how to leaf and bud and leaf, but still stand as a home for birds and squirrels and the members of the fourth kingdom, the fungus that returns the tree to the soil. Some have fallen in the wind. Some have fallen to the ax. But they all live on in my memory and in the memory of all who visited them and touched their bark, or played in their shade, or picked up their Fall leaf form the ground. Or watched a bird fly among its branches.

They are our friends. Each has its story. You must listen to hear it being told.

Look out for the Pendulum

NASA photograph of Apollo 16 Astronaut next to Plum Crater on the lunar surface. The “Moon Buggy” is in the background.

I am not making this up – well, mostly not.

On the surface of a distant moon, a lone space traveler steps away from his companions and approaches the edge of a large pit. It appears nearly round with no crater wall. He approaches the edge carefully. Then suddenly the lip slides-out beneath him, and he rolls down the side tumbling towards the apex of the cone shaped pit. All he can call out in his soft Texas drawl is, “reminds me of a doodlebug hole”.

I exaggerate, no astronaut fell into a pit, nor was one paralyzed and devoured by an extraterrestrial Antlion. But a similar discussion took place on 24 April 1972 during the third “extra vehicular activity” (EVA) by the crew of Apollo 16 while exploring the surface of our moon in their “Moon Buggy”.

The discussion of the doodlebug took place 240,000 miles from the closest doodlebug as Astronaut Charles Duke described a part of his childhood in the southern United States to the folks at Mission Control.

When I grew up in rural North Carolina, doodling Antlions, also known as doodlebugs, was part of what we did. We did not have a TV. We played outside and ran to the river and splashed and played in it and ran back. On our way up and down that dusty lane, we might see that dimple in the sandy ground of an Antlion’s nest. We generally called them doodlebugs, and we sought to bring them out of their hiding at the bottom of their conical pit. We would disturb the side of the pit gently with a bit of pine straw to see if we could bring the tiny beast out from his hiding place at the bottom of his trap.

These tiny larvae are ferocious looking with jaws nearly half as long as their body, with sharp fangs for grabbing and devouring their prey.

My attention was recently turned to Antlions by an article in Science News which described a study of the Antlion behavior of “throwing sand” upwards from the bottom of its pit. The Antlion of the southern United States is the larval form of Glenurus spp of the family Myrmeleontidea. This family designation is explained by Barb Ogg on the website of the Nebraska Extension Service at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “The Antlion family, Myrmeleontidae, literally means Antlion family (myrme = ant) + (leon = lion) + (idae = family). Antlions belong to the insect order Neuroptera, most of which are predators.” The designation “spp” means plural or multiple species. A picture of an Antlion is shown below.

The authors of the Antlion paper studied the Antlion behavior of throwing sand. It was determined that this action is useful in maintaining the correct geometry of the trap the Antlion digs as well as aiding the Antlion in capture of its prey.

The Antlions trap or “pit” is dug in sandy soil by the tiny beast by using its broad body as a bulldozer and working the sand in ever decreasing diameter circles as it moves backwards until the pit is dug. The pit is an inverted cone. The Antlion buries itself at the center of its pit and waits for its dinner to walk in.

Antlion behavior has been observed by countless generations of children who live in areas with sandy soil and also by the adults that the children grew into. After digging its pit the Antlion will lie in wait for its dinner. When a small insect like an ant enters the pit, the sand on the slope of the pit will often give way and slide, with the insect, down to where the Antlion may capture it. However, not just any angle for the slope of the pit will suffice. The trap needs to be constructed so the sides are inclined downwards at an unstable angle. This angle is technically discussed as the “angle of repose” of the soil. A slope less than the angle of repose is flatter and stable and will not shift except under significant pressure. However, a slope greater than the angle of repose is unstable. This means that as a tiny insect like an ant tries to crawl out of the pit, the unstable sand will slip and slide towards the bottom of the pit.

When the Antlion notices the vibration of the ant’s footsteps and the vibration of the falling sand, the Antlion will begin to fling the sand from the bottom of the pit up onto the sides of the downward slope. As described in the study, this produces two results. The prey becomes confused due the torrent of sand falling on it and will be more likely to tumble into the center of the pit. Second, the sand being flung by the Antlion by flipping its head like a shovel, removes the sand that has fallen into the pit and throws it onto the sides of the pit to maintain an unstable configuration of the slope. By these actions as the Antlion’s dinner is tumbling downward, the trap is being set for another insect.

According to the article by Barb Ogg, as well as other articles, these tiny insects do not bite humans nor do they damage plants, so they may be left alone.

I have heard that Antlions respond to singing or chanting a ditty such as “Doodlebug, doodlebug, come out and play”. As fun as this might be there is no proof of its efficacy. However the vibrations of our voice may dislodge sand on the unstable sides of the pit causing the Antlion to investigate the event.

The NASA transmission of the EVA (extra vehicular activity) may be found at https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/a16a1690707.mp3. At time 0:58 Astronaut Clark refers to the structure on the moon’s surface as a “doodlebug hole”. It starts out rather loud and you may want to turn it down. In the discussion, the depression is referred to as an endogenic crater. An endogenic crater is a pit formed by processes beneath the soil surface like a gas bubble moving outwards and erupting through the upper soil layer, or perhaps like a sinkhole. It is not an impact crater.

The transcription of the .mp3, plus other transmissions not recorded in the transmission, may be found at Return to the LM (nasa.gov) starting at the entry for 169:07:53 and going through 169:08:25. The transcription of the conversation contains more information of what was said than the .mp3 recording. Perhaps it was on a separate channel.

The Science News article may be found at https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/how-voracious-antlions-engineer-deadly-sand-traps. To read the article may require a subscription or permission.

The referenced study of Antlion behavior may be found at Sand throwing in a pit-building Antlion larva from a soil mechanical perspective | bioRxiv .

The article by Barb Ogg on he University of Nebraska-Lincoln may be found at Antlions: Amazingly Adapted Predators | Nebraska Extension: Community Environment | Nebraska (unl.edu) .

A video of an Antlion digging his pit may be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AT0J8cBS-U. Watch carefully. You can see the tiny creature throwing sand onto the sides of its pit.

This article’s Title refers to the tale by Edgar Allan Poe, which is a tale of another conundrum.

Birds Range of the Home

In 2017 I was conducting bird surveys as a volunteer at the Manassas Battlefield National Park. I was helping to catalogue the presence of two species, The Northern Bob White Quail and the Henslow’s Sparrow. The Park Wildlife Management personnel and I were interested in seeking out the birds in selected areas of the Park

I would go out to the Bob White areas in the early morning hours so I could be there in time for sunrise. I usually went out earlier than necessary, and I walked well-known paths to be at the listening point while it was still dark. I would pack-out a folding chair and a thermos of coffee. When I got the listening point, I would sit and watch the stars in their motion across the night sky and see them fade as night turned into Dawn. At Dawn I opened my coffee thermos, and poured a cup, and toasted the new day.

The survey was conducted in the Spring and we would listen for the daybreak calls of the coveys of quail we hope to hear. There were twenty of these sites scattered around the Park. The Park personnel and I divided the sites up so we could cover all of them during scope of the annual survey.

The sky might be clear when I went out in the early morning before dawn, but on the ground it was dark. If I had not had several decades of experience in walking the Park, I might have gotten turned around. I wrote about my experience in an article titled Frosty Morning and published on this site on 15 November 2018.

The Park personnel and I would often talk about the birds of the Park and how we thought that they would be affected by climate change, especially as the average temperatures warmed in the more northern parts of the species’ range.

In order to develop a better understanding of the potential impact of climate change on bird species, I searched for related articles. A good one I found regarding bird species and changes in their range due to climate changes, was based on surveys of numerous species in Finland between 1974 and 2010.

The results are basically that yes, the ranges do change due to changes in climate. The ranges of the various bird species change with an expansion at the northern/top/cold edge. But the southern edge is not moving northward/poleward. Part of this is that a species would have to lose their niche, basically become extinct, in the southern regions in order to say that they are no longer using the southern/warm edge.

I had initially thought of a bird’s range as a box that would move north as the climate warmed. However, that does not appear to be the case. As it turns out the box stretches and gets bigger as the range extends to the North. The range expands northward with the increasing temperature and the birds take advantage of more range.

Climate change may affect a bird species physiologically in that its old range may become too hot or too wet for the bird species to thrive. They have to change or move. But these conditions, even if they do not directly affect the birds, may cause a portion of the bird’s range to become unusable at the level of the current population if a food source dies out due to the change in the overall climate, or if the food source moves out to a more acceptable range, or if the food source becomes unavailable at a time that it is need for the bird’s reproduction and life cycle. An example of this latter was published in Science New in 2006.

The first article I read about the impact of climate change on bird species was a 2006 article in Science News concerning the timing of the arrival of the European Pied Flycatcher in their nesting area. The article pointed out that the birds migrate based on the length of daylight in their wintering area in Africa. But the appearance of the caterpillars, the major food source at their nesting area for feeding their chicks, was based on temperature. With the northern temperatures warming earlier, by the time the birds arrived, the caterpillars had reached the next stage in their life cycle and are no longer available for the birds and their nesting brood. The numbers of the Flycatchers in some of their historic breeding areas had fallen by 90%. The study found “a correlation between declining Flycatcher numbers and the timing of the peak food for their chicks.”

I recently ran across a journal article concerning birds of China and the effect of climate change on their range. The article pointed out that the extension of a bird’s range may meet an obstacle that it cannot pass through. This might be a range of high mountains or an open ocean. The birds at that point have reached the limit of their range. The birds may well have to make a change in their diet or risk being unable to maintain the new range that they have colonized. For the birds to succeed in the new region they must find fruiting plants or insect or other food stuff available in an abundance on which the species colonizing the area can survive. This is especially hard if the new range is populated by a species that already relies on a limited supply of that food. The picture at the top of this article is a version of some of the charts from the article showing potential movement of species.

What about the Quail and Henslow’s Sparrow at Manassas? Will they have to move? So much of a bird’s ability to use a region is predicated on their ability to find suitable habitat. Destruction of habitat will force out a population. However, as the climate grows hotter and more humid over the next several decades these bird’s ranges may expand, but it is different for each species. The southern edge of the Quail’s range is well below us, extending into Mexico. I do not believe we will see a change in the population of Quail due to climate change. However, for Henslow’s Sparrow, here in the Mid-Atlantic region, we are between the breeding (northern) and the non-breeding (southern) range. We may lose our small, but for me dynamic, local population. There may be issues for the Henslow’s Sparrows in the southern reaches of their breeding range where we are located. as it becomes hotter and wetter. Only time will tell.

Article regarding study in Finland, The breeding ranges of Central European and Arctic bird species move poleward. may be found at: http://europepmc.org/article/PMC/3447813

Science News article (only available to subscribers to Science News) on European Pied Flycatcher may be found at: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/no-early-birds-migrators-cant-catch-advancing-caterpillars.

Article regarding range shift of Chinese birds under the potential of climate change: (PDF) Shifts in bird ranges and conservation priorities in China under climate change (researchgate.net)

ART as a Verb

We had gone to spend a few days in Newport, Rhode Island to see friends and to participate in the crowning event to the Summer, The Newport Art Museum Wet Paint show. It’s a wonderful time to visit a wonderful place. And the added fun is that anyone can enter the art show for a modest entry fee. The entry fee includes being supplied a box lunch.

We heard of the show by chance several years before and had determined that we wanted to come back and enjoy what sounded like a great deal of fun. I must say that I am not much of an artist, but I do enjoy sketching. And I have some colored pencils, so I was ready. My wife is much more the artist than I am, and she came prepared with her paints and brushes.

The week before Wet Paint had been very pleasant summer weather. The day of the show started with rain and clouds. Soon the rain stopped, but the clouds remained. That was fine as I believe that the subdued light enhances the colors of the Earth.

The grounds, gardens, and lawns of several of the grand ocean-front houses were open for the professional, the talented, and the budding artists. The homes encouraged artists to be inspired by their grounds and gardens and to draw the flowers and landscapes found there. No detail was too small to capture the imagination. We could also go out to the wonderful seaside walking areas and “art” there. As a note, I do not believe there is a verb form of the word “art.” It is generally a noun. However, the word can be changed to be an adjective, e.g., artsy.

We had numerous choices of where we could go to sketch and paint. We decided on a home called Rough Point. It had been the home of Doris Duke, the heiress of the Duke tobacco and energy fortune. She used a great deal of her time and energy and wealth to support active philanthropy including art, preservation, horticulture, and support of the troops in World War II. She founded the Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF) in 1968. The NRF remains active in restoring and preserving historic buildings in Newport. . We were guest of the NRF while we were on Rough Point as it maintains and operates the house and grounds, as well as other homes in Newport.

We arrived ready to do “art”. We had brought our chairs and each of us had a board to use as a lap easel. Before we started to draw – or do “art” – we walked around the large lawn and visited the flower garden in the North front of the vast yard. We also walked back to where the NRF keeps a vegetable garden. The gate to this garden is pictured above. It is nicely maintained with an array of vegetables and flowers. We were offered some of the fruits from the small wood crate resting at the gate. I tried some of the small golden tomatoes, and found them delicious, tasting of sunshine.

We settled in behind the formal flower garden and began our work. My wife’s work with the flowers was very good. I tried to sketch some of the flowers but without success. I got up and walked around some more. During this excursion I looked up at the house and saw its façade, wetted by the earlier rain, had begun to dry off in the wind that blew in from Easton Bay. Enjoying the breeze and the coloration of the stone façade of the house as the dampness was drawn out, I returned to my board and sketched a small detail of the roof line.

At the auction that evening I purchased my own sketch. I liked it, and there was no other bid for it. Now I have it to remind me of a quiet, rainy day off the Atlantic Ocean, and that “art” can be a verb.

The website of the Newport Restoration Foundation may be found at https://www.newportrestoration.org/roughpoint/ .

Information about the 2019 Wet Paint event may be found at, https://newportartmuseum.org/events/wet-paint-2019/ .

Petroglyph Trail

It was 1993. We went out west to see the land and the National Parks. We traveled in the arc of the states of the Four Corners; New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona.

Our first stop was Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. We wanted to see the magnificent remains of the cliff houses built by Native Americans centuries before.

But 700 years after they built the cliff house, they left them. The community was not destroyed by fire or earthquake, but something happened, and the People left. Other People known as the Pueblo Indians came hundreds of years after the original inhabitants had left. The Pueblo Indians called the builders of the cliff houses the Ancient Ones, the Anasazi.

The Anasazi had lived on these mesas for nearly a thousand years, from approximately 600 C.E. (Common Era, after the birth of Christ) to 1300 C.E.). Then, suddenly, they had left their homes, their places of ceremony, their work, their pottery, and they had gone. It is surmised that perhaps the cause was a change in the climate that made the crops fail. Several theories have arisen, but it is generally felt that their descendants are the modern day Pueblo Indians.

When we visited the ruins of the cliff houses, we had a fascinating experience. We were able to tour some of the ancient homes and see their construction. We climbed ladders. We entered rebuilt pit houses. We hiked trails. But it always seemed that we were with a rather sizable group. And we did not see much in the way of wildlife. I would see some Mule Deer when I would go out in the early morning for a walk at sunrise. But other than that and the occasional bird heard up in the trees, it seemed as if we humans were alone on Mesa Verde.

My son, a young outdoorsman, felt the same way. He and I wanted to get on a trail that was not so heavily traveled so we might see what we might see. His interest lay in snakes. Mine did not.

We stopped at the Visitors’ Center and asked the Ranger where we might go for a hike where it was not so crowded. We thought perhaps in the forests along the rim of the mesa. We were told that at that time of day the Petroglyph Trail was usually not crowded.

We made sure we had water with us. And as always, I carried a trail map so we would know where we were. And we set off.

We quickly moved from the trail head into the pine forest that then covered much of the park. It was a well-marked trail. There were some tight spaces and steep climbs up hewn stone steps, but it was very enjoyable. The trail was about 700 feet above the canyon floor.

The trail wandered along the side of the mesa about 100 feet below its top. From our map I could tell that we had covered a good part of the trail and were approaching an area that looked out over the lower portions of the park. Near the end of the mesa, the canyon widened to meet another canyon. We would have a good view out across the canyons.

The trail had been rocky, and as we neared this point I was focused on the trail in front of me. If it hadn’t been for the sign, we might have walked right past the petroglyph panel. The sign said, “Do Not Touch”.

Touch what I thought? But it caused me to stop and look up. The petroglyphs we were looking for were high above the sign, well above the level of my head. The Petroglyphs were inscribed in the sheet of stone that formed the side of the mesa. The Petroglyphs were in good condition.

The height of the inscribed figures above the trail has doubtlessly protected the panel from damage as they are out of the reach of curious hands. The Petroglyphs were plain to see and included animals, hand prints, human shapes, and geometric designs. However, their meaning, implied by the ancient carvers, is lost in time. One circle did catch my eye as the possible cycle of the moon with the new moon hidden from view behind a mesa jutting high into the night sky.

As we walked back, we talked of the possible meaning of the glyphs and why and when they might have been carved. We talked of how some of the mysterious glyphs may have been carved by an ancient man who walked out to the point of the mesa with his son to read the messages left from before his time. Perhaps they carved a message of their own.

Our return trail crossed the top of the mesa. Before we reached the trailhead, we saw a whip-tail lizard dart across the surface of the rocks. Perhaps he was looking a bug for his dinner. He was in a hurry, so he did not become dinner for a watchful hawk.

And on this hike, no snakes.

Information on Mesa Verde National Park including trail maps can be found at https://www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm .

UPDate – Sails from Sweden

This article is an update on modern wind-propelled ocean-going ships. This was previously discussed in the article, Cylindrical Sails, posted October 1, 2018.

Naval architects and marine engineers are continually working to make ocean transport of cargo more environmentally sustainable. The vast majority of the world’s cargo whether it is manufactured goods (farm machinery or transistors/semiconductors), raw material (food stuff or metal ore), or consumer products (small appliances or clothes) are transported from point of origin to buyer by ships.

The map above is a screen shot on a summer day in the Northern Hemisphere. The number of ships traveling between ports can be seen crowding the favored shipping lanes. Other areas of the ocean are nearly empty in comparison. These shipping lanes are crowded because they are the most direct routes between ports of call. The most famous route being the Great Circle Route.

I remember as a boy seeing the ship I was traveling on being marked on its daily passage with a magnetic ship on a wall size map of the oceans. When I asked why the ship was moving up towards the North rather than going straight across the ocean, I was told that we were on the shortest route, the Great Circle Route.

This route is the shortest distance across the globe of the Earth. By taking the shortest route the ship takes less time in its crossing, thereby saving expenses and fuel costs.

The graceful arc of a Pacific Great Circle Route is shown as a black arc between Asia and North America (California). The congestion of this route can be easily seen. These routes can be made between any two ports on an ocean. Although they become more flattened near the equator and form an upside-down arc in the Southern Hemisphere.

In the last half of the 20^th century people began to realize the damage to the atmosphere due to the amount of fossil fuel being burned. This included ocean shipping which at the time burned “bunker oil,” a fossil fuel whose use and emission added tons of pollution to the atmosphere and to the sea each year.

Modern vessels use diesel generators and more efficient power plants to generate electricity that is use to drive the propellers that push these ships. The trend has been from direct drive systems for propulsion (a boiler generates steam to turn a geared shaft on which is mounted the propeller), to an indirect-drive (a diesel generator produces electricity which runs an electric motor to turn the shaft on which is mounted the propeller).

All of these systems use fossil fuels for their main power. Over the years the fuel efficiency of the ships and their engines has greatly improved. This was brought about through improved design of the vessels and their power plants. The results have been reduced operating costs as well as reductions in environmental contamination. At the same time the number of ships transporting cargo has greatly increased. The cargo tonnage offloaded in the Port of Los Angeles, California has significantly increased in the recent years. From 2000 to 2019 the general cargo off-loaded in the Port of Los Angeles more than doubled. It rose from approximately 82 million metric tons to more than 190 million metric tons. All of these goods were transferred by ships burning fossil fuel.

In order to reduce the effect of fossil fuel on the world’s atmosphere and oceans, a consortium being led by Wallenius Marine and including the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and SSPA, a marine consultancy, have designed and tested models of the hull design for a modern sailing ship. These tests have been on the open water and in a testing basin.

The modern sailing vessel they are designing is a wind Propelled Car Carrier (wPCC). Wallenius Marine is leading the design of the wPCC. This type of vessel is used to transport manufactured cars and trucks. It is often referred to as a roll-on roll-off (RORO) vessel.

While the sail mentioned in the previous article was a spinning cylinder, the wPCC sails resemble the rigid sails of modern racing yachts. They are expected the propel the Car Carrier across the oceans and achieve a reduction in emissions is 90%. However it is noted that the vessel is slower than a standard RORO.

The sails have yet to come to a final design. These rigid sails will rise up from within the ship. They can also be lowered when the ship is under the control of tugs while in port.

And although I might think that I cannot wait another moment for my new Volvo to arrive, knowing that its transportation had a significantly reduced carbon foot-print is worth the small delay before I have the keys in my hand.

The initial article I read on this was from TNW (The Next Web) and can be found at https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/09/10/swedes-boat-powered-by-wind-sailboat-ship-cargo-transatlantic/ .

A fact sheet on the wPCC may be found at https://www.sspa.se/sites/www.sspa.se/files/field_page_files/wpcc_fact_sheet_may_2020_v_1.0.pdf .

The map at the top is a screen shot of a maritime information map found at https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/centery:24.8/zoom:2 . It is noted that there is an agreement associated with the use of material on this web site.

Tonnage statistics for the Port of Los Angeles may be found at https://www.portoflosangeles.org/business/statistics/tonnage-statistics .

South Works

I took this picture in the early 1970s when I worked for a friend of mine as a Cargo Surveyor in the ports around Chicago, Illinois.

It was long days and hard work. But I was able to be outside most of the time. If I was not outside, on the deck of a ship, climbing up or down the 90-foot ladders that led to and from the ship’s holds, or walking the huge outdoor storage lots confirming off-loading of the giant rolls of steel, I might be inside a steel manufacturing facility, or a cheese importer in one of the Chicago suburbs, or in a warehouse full of imported items. It didn’t matter if it was hard work; it was fun and fascinating work. The ships on which we oversaw the unloading were from nations around the world.

We were up early and on the ships watching the longshoremen and the huge cranes unloading the rolls of sheet steel, bundles of steel beams, or railroad wheels, or 40-foot containers filled with wine or cheese or beef hides or any number of amazing products that were being imported into the Chicago from around the world. These good would be transported for sale in the Chicago area or to other locations in the Midwest.

We worked while the Great Lakes were open for shipping. We worked in the heat of summer and the frigid days of early winter with ice on the decks and snow in the air. The only weather that we did not work in was the rain. When it rained the owners would close the massive steel covers over the ship’s holds so the cargo would not get wet. Steel rusts. Cardboard falls apart. Food stuffs spoil. All of this had to be taken into account as we oversaw the work and inspected the cargoes, usually working for the owners of the shipping line.

The Great Lakes are open for international ocean cargo shipping as long as the locks along the Saint Lawrence River Seaway are ice free. The locks are the portal for ocean going shipping on the Great Lakes. The locks were scheduled to close before they iced up. That was the day by which all ships that had other places to go, had to be off the Great Lakes. For example in 2019 the Locks and the Great Lakes were opened to ocean traffic on March 29, 2019. The season was closed on December 31, 2019, and ships could no longer transit out of the Great Lakes.

It can easily be imagined that the closing weeks of the season were busy weeks as no shipping company would want their cargo vessel trapped in the Great Lakes for three months while the locks are closed.

On this morning I had arrived just at sunrise. The ship we were unloading was docked near the mouth of the Calumet River. The Calumet River stretches from Lake Michigan down into the industrial areas south of Chicago. The entire length of the river was wharves and turning basins, for the ships to tie up, unload, and maneuver back out to Lake Michigan. To the west the Calumet River joins the Des Plaines River via the Cal-Sag (Calumet-Saganashkee Channel) Canal, which carried barges from the Mississippi into this same maze of wharves in the industrial area.

I could not be further from the forests surrounding Chicago than standing on the deck of that ship on the Calumet River. When I turned to the North and looked to the other bank of the river, I could see the decrepit US Steel South Works. Its furnaces and mills were shut down, but the steel assets still stood against the rising sun of that morning.

It was odd, this behemoth of American industry shut down due to foreign competition from more modern facilities in Asia and in Europe, and the products of those foreign mills traveled to their buyers by landing on the wharves and docks along the Calumet River, and by first passing the US Steel South Works, the ancient and ruined guardian of the Lake shore.

The wind was blowing from the North. As it blew across the old South Works, it picked up dust and particles of steel. I could see the flecks of metal catching a glint of the morning sun as they floated in the air around me while I stood watching the cargo being unloaded on that cold winter morning.