Empire before Empire

 

- Yes, bird shit. You heard that right! 

I´m sure you´ve heard about the glory days of American isolationism during the 18th and 19th century. Yeah, so about that...

Isolationism my ass.

Guano Islands Act of 1856

List of Guano Island claims

The flight of the white pelican

 

I don´t know what on earth (pun intended) Kenneth Arnold saw that fateful day in 1947, but what if it was pelicans? American White Pelicans, to be exact, flying in formation. And this misidentification of nine majestic birds triggered the entire UFO craze, which is still ongoing! Of course, this super-flap was probably inevitable anyway. If Arnold hadn´t seen anything, some other trigger event would have taken place instead. 

Here´s an often overlooked fact. The UFOs encountered by Arnold did *not* look like flying saucers. Quite the contrary: he described them as crescent-shaped. Yet, most UFOs seen by witnesses ever since *were* saucer-shaped. *Thus, the shape of these supposedly objectively existing flying craft as reported by thousands of eye-witnesses is based on a misunderstanding of Arnold´s words*. This in itself shows that the UFO phenomenon is a cultural construct rather than an objective reality. People see whatever they wanna see. And - to repeat myself - the UFO hype would have happened regardless since the entire American pop culture was saturated with pulp magazine science fiction and feverish dreams about actual space flight. Add some Cold War mentality and you´re almost done! Again: these are cultural constructs, not objective flying saucers from Venus, Mars or Elsewhere.  

A more fringey speculation is that the UFOs aren´t physically real, but weird mental projections by the fairy. You see, the fairies can read our minds and make our observations match our fantasies and expectations. If we expect space aliens, we see space aliens. If so, the telepathic abilities of the fairy must be truly stunning, since they can brain-wash people at long distances, including in big cities! It´s almost as if a more likely explanation is that people entirely on their own "see" what matches their preconceived notions of what a strange light in the sky must be. No need for fairy lore.

I suppose another scenario is that actual aliens read American newspapers (in flawless English) and then reshape their spaceships accordingly...   

 

Republiken Jämtland

 

Fake news? Aprilskämt? Eller är det sant? En *gigantisk* pelikan har siktats i Jämtland?! 

Jättefågel i Sverige - första gången någonsin

The existence of luminous birds

 

- Maybe I just don´t feel like
 showing my ass to you guys!

A Karl Shuker exclusive, trying to shed some much needed light on the mystery of luminous birds. And yes, many of them seem to be barn owls! What else? Herons are frequently reported to be luminescent, too. There is just one little problem: according to modern science, luminous birds don´t exist. Certainly not self-luminous ones! 

Most of Shuker´s reports seem to be rather old. Shouldn´t bird-watchers see these fantastic specimens essentially all the time, had they been real? That being said, science apparently still denies the existence of ball lightning, so there´s that.

And while it has no direct relevance to this topic, I once saw a heron turn almost invisible right in front of me...in broad day light?! And no, it wasn´t paranormal, it was just a weird trick of the light at a certain angle. So who knows, maybe certain strange light conditions at night can make birds seemingly "glow"?  

Could be the fairies, too, as per usual.  

Shedding light on the mystery (part 1)

Shedding light on the mystery (part 2) 

My scary Sweden

 

"Mitt Sverige" (My Sweden) is a nature documentary by Hungarian Zoltan Török. His Sweden turns out to be the scariest part! Think icy islands in the Gulf of Bothnia (?) featuring colonies of cormorants, eagles fighting each other, and ravens harassing seal cubs. 

Later, Zoltan and his family go trekking somewhere in Lapland, with its vast and seemingly empty hill tracts and woods. Or not so empty, since we do get to see bears, foxes, lynxes and wolverines. At one point, the documentary becomes unintentionally funny, as Zoltan says that the Sami (Laps) live in harmony with nature...while the camera shows how they herd reindeer with snowmobiles! I assume these are powered by gasoline?

But sure, if you want a good argument to stay indoors in some safe burb in southern Sweden (the civilized part), I suppose "Mitt Sverige" could be worth watching! 

  

Birds are dinosaurs

 

The most bizarre bird in the world? I mean, go figure! 

Come and meet the ospreys

"Osprey: Sea Raptor" is a British documentary about - you might just have guessed it - ospreys. It´s made by Love Nature, which has also produced a huge number of other nature documentaries. While ospreys do exist in Europe (including Sweden), "Osprey: Sea Raptor" is taped in the United States. The ospreys have a breeding colony at the Connecticut side of the Long Island Sound. As the bird flies (pun intended), it´s not *that* far away from New York City!

The osprey is a large raptor (diurnal bird of prey) specialized in diving for fish, which it catches with the help of its long claws. It´s sufficiently different from other raptors to be placed in a family all its own. The documentary follows an osprey couple (these birds usually bond for life) as it returns to the Long Island Sound from South America, where it migrates during the winter. Ospreys often reuse the same nests or nesting sites year after year. 

While ospreys are pretty large, they can be challenged by both bald-headed eagles, cormorants and the great black-backed gull. In the documentary, the osprey punishes the cormorants by swooping down on their colony, and also manages to fend off the eagles, while the gull (which is of enormous size) turns out to be more of a problem! On land, foxes can sneak into osprey nests that aren´t elevated enough, and simply eat the eggs. Interestingly, humans living near the marshes help the ospreys by building nesting platforms. 

I never seen an osprey IRL, and probably wouldn´t want to live too close to one of their colonies, but I admit that "Osprey: Sea Raptor" is well-produced and even somewhat fascinating. 

Suleskär

Credit: Andreas Trepte

Äntligen en glad nyhet. En brunsula har observerats vid Måseskär utanför Orust. Måsarna har alltså fått viss konkurrens! Är man grammatik-nasse kan man ju även glädja sig åt det fantastiska ordet "ornitologanstormning" i Expressens rubrik. 

Dock oklart om sulorna fortfarande räknas till pelikanfåglarna, eller till en ny grupp benämnd sulfåglar. Jag misstänker dock att exemplaret vid Orust mest bara klagade på det västsvenska höstvädret! Brunsulan häckar normalt sett på sydligare breddgrader, däribland Västindien...

Ornitologanstormning efter unika fågelfyndet

Back to Galapagos

 

"Oceans" is the fourth part of the five-part documentary "A Perfect Planet" from the BBC. Or rather ocean, since strictly speaking there really is just one large sea on planet Earth. As usual, we get to see spectacular footage of more or less bizarre creatures. There is the flightless cormorant on the Galapagos Islands (it´s an excellent swimmer and diver) and the sea iguanas, large lizards which seek their food in the oceans...but die of cold unless they swim back to shore within 30 minutes. When really hungry, they simply attack the nests of the cormorants, eating the algae the nest are made of! 

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the Pacific, surgeon fish gather to release their eggs and sperm into the water to be carried away by the streams from any threatening predators...except the giant manta rays, which gather at the same place at exactly the same time, gobbling up substantial amounts of the nutritious mix! Another pelagic glutton is Bryde´s whale, which we see in action somewhere off the Thai coast. "A Perfect Planet: Oceans" also features sharks, sting rays, bony fish of all kinds, and a very bizarre octopus (or is it a squid?). 

The episode ends with another look at how "A Perfect Planet" was made, concentrating on the first part of the series, "Volcano". The team, led by Richard Wollocombe, descend into the crater of the dormant volcano at Fernandina, one of the Galapagos Islands. More people have been in space than down this particular crater, and I can´t say I blame Buzz Aldrin for choosing the former option! The place looks like a cross between Mordor and Dante´s Inferno, with huge rocks constantly falling down the steep slopes. At the bottom of the crater is a mysterious blue-green lake. But why on earth does anyone want to film *there*, and did they ever get an insurance, and if so, how much did it cost? If you´ve seen "Volcano", you know the answer: female land iguanas regularly descend into the crater, despite all the dangers, to lay their eggs in the warm ash at the bottom. How on earth evolution took *this* course is never explained, and perhaps we don´t even want to know...

The next and last episode of this stunning series is, perhaps ominously, entitled "Humans". Let me guess. We get to see a lot of house crows, house sparrows and cockroaches? A perfect planet indeed! :D 

I stand with the cormorants

I love the way Senator Tom Cotton goes from writing "fascist" op-eds in the New York Times to balance Arkansas fish farmers and cormorants. He shouldn´t have caved to the woke mob by deleting his tweet! 

#I Stand With The Cormorants

Tom Cotton on the cormorants

April Fool´s Day at Almtal?

A review of the nature documentary "Flight of the Bald Ibis" 

The Konrad Lorentz research station at Grünau im Almtal in Austria doesn't just keep geese (some of whom knew the Nobel Prize winner personally). They also breed ibises, Northern Bald Ibises to be exact (not to be confused with the Sacred Ibis of Hermetic fame). Today, the Northern Bald Ibis is a very rare bird, only found at two locations in Morocco and Syria, respectively.

Until about 350 years ago, this unholy avian also lived in Europe. It was hunted to extinction by sybaritic aristocrats who considered its meat a great delicacy. The goal of the research station in Almtal is to reintroduce the Bald Ibis to Europe.

Unfortunately, the stupid birds – who are supposed to migrate southwards to Africa – instead fly off north, some of them ending up in Russia! To teach the ibises the correct flight route, the scientists at the research station hire small airplanes, trying to herd the birds in the right direction…

OK. Is this somebody's idea of a bad April Fool's joke, or what?

MY 1000TH REVIEW

This actually was my 1000th review on Amazon, posted on July 13, 2012. The book I pretended to review was titled "Extreme Birds: The World´s Most Extraordinary and Bizarre Birds" by Dominic Couzens. 

This is my 1000th review here on Amazon. I took me six years to reach this point.

I know that most of my fans would really want to know how I look like. Well, I hate to admit it but...that's me, on the cover of this book.

Sure thing, I know you are disappointed. You expected me to be a cool, tanned, 20-something Latino with a gorgeous body. In reality, I'm an ugly, middle-aged, jaded liberal living in Sweden. I'm very near-sighted, too.

In order to get some extra bucks, I posed for Mr. Couzens in the belief that the book would be about the plight of the Swedish middle-aged male. Instead, he put my portrait on the cover of this bird book. Apparently, I resemble a shoebill...

Well, thank you.

I expect to write my 2000th review around AD 2018. Get a life? Why? I mean, you've seen my portrait, what would you have done?

An odd job

This is the revised edition of "Seabirds - an identification guide" by Peter Harrison. The author, who actually looks like an old fashioned sea captain, and his wife Carol spent seven years on the world's oceans to gather information for this field guide to end all field guides. Gee, don't these guys have day jobs? Maybe they do, after a fashion: Harrison worked as a deckhand aboard trawlers and crayfishing boats to more easily study and sketch seabirds. I wonder what his crew mates made of that!

As you might have guessed, "Seabirds" is illustrated by deckhand Harrison himself. Personally, I'm a bird book-watcher rather than a birdwatcher, so I tend to buy bird books for aesthetic reasons. I admit that Harrisonian aesthetics weren't really to my liking, but then, I'm a Jonsson aficionado. The selection of species is also somewhat arbitrary: very few shorebirds, but a whole lot of pelicans, cormorants, loons and grebes. Even grebes that don't live anywhere near the sea have been included. The exceedingly rare Atitlan Grebe can be found only in one lake in Guatemala (if you're lucky). That's a seabird? As for ducks, a representative selection has been included, but only in an appendix with illustrations in black-and-white. Do crayfishers have a secret conflict with eiders?

Otherwise, "Seabirds" looks like most field guides are supposed to look like. There's an extensive colour plate section, and in the main text section we get information on distribution, juveniles, various plumages, similar species and some special tips concerning identification. A problem is that the maps are tucked away in a third section at the back of the book. The colour plates don't indicate distribution. I was somewhat surprised to learn that both the Northern and the Southern Giant Petrels are confined to the South Atlantic, and that the "southern" species have a more northern range! Any explanation? Or just one of those "odd jobs"?

Still, I don't doubt that this is the field guide if your favourite haunts include South Georgia, Kerguelen, Antarctica or...Lake Atitlan. Four stars!

Lars Jonsson´s secret island

Lars Jonsson is an accomplished Swedish painter, mostly known for having both authored and illustrated a number of classical field guides to European birds. “Bird Island” is a more straightforwardly artistic book. It's coffee table format, but you probably shouldn't have it on your coffee table. Somebody could steal it! It's not clear where “the island” is situated, but my guess would be somewhere outside Gotland in the Baltic Sea, since Jonsson apparently lives at Gotland. The quasi-poetic text is of little interest. The bird paintings are the main course. The avocet, plovers and other shore birds play prominent roles. The ubiquitous starling shows up even at the small island, and there is also a magnificent painting of a hooded crow. The artwork showing herons at night is fascinating. Jonsson has even included a painting of a cow! “Bird Island” would make a good gift, or the kind of book you have on your best book shelf to impress causal visitors. Downside: could be considered somewhat boring by some. Four stars.

A handbook of exciting birds

"Handbook of the Birds of the World" (HBW) is a 13-volume encyclopedia whose ultimate aim is to describe and illustrate *all* living species of birds. Three more volumes are projected. The series began in 1992, and the last volume won't be published until 2011.

This is the first volume, and it covers many exciting bird groups, including pelicans, tropicbirds, frigatebirds, penguins, flamingos, albatrosses, and the non-flying birds, such as the ostrich and the emu. It also covers a more boring bird group, namely the ducks! Each section begins with a general introduction, followed by species presentations. These include color plates and range maps. Unfortunately, the color plates are quite bad. The birds often look caricatured, even ugly, and some of the plates are poorly printed. Thankfully, the book also contain hundreds of photos, all in color, and these are much better. Despite its high price (265 dollars), the book is well-worth buying if you are seriously interested in these particular bird groups.

As already mentioned, this is just the first volume in a 13-volume series. Naturally, a work that takes almost 20 years to publish, will tend to change over time. I noticed this when I leafed through the other HBW volumes at my local university library. The first volume looks like a regular encyclopedia. Anyone with a general interest in birds can read it. The later volumes are superbly illustrated, with much better color plates, but the text feels heavy and technical. These later HBW volumes also suffer from total information over-load. Essentially, the HBW has been transformed from a regular encyclopedia to a scientific reference work for ornithologists.

Be that as it may, I give this first volume of the HBW four stars, for the text and the photos. Had the color plates been better, I would have given it five stars. The entire series also deserve five stars, despite becoming progressively more difficult to digest for ordinary mortals, since it's extremely well-produced.