books
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Dinosaurs Past and Present
What do we know about dinosaurs now and, perhaps more interestingly, how do we know these things? Michael J. Benton lays it out in Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology . Origins, taxonomy, intelligence, reproduction, diet, locomotion, and, of course, the cause(s) of extinction are topics covered here. Surely the most notable and surprising…
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Against the Grain
“The founding of the earliest agrarian societies and states in Mesopotamia occurred in the latest five percent of our history as a species on this planet. […] Measured by the roughly 200,000-year span of our species, then, the Anthropocene began only a few minutes ago.” And look what we don’t that tiny bit of our…
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Migratory Restlessness
Of course the Germans have a word for it: Zugunruhe. Migratory restlessness is best known in birds, but other animals have it as well. In spring and fall, these animals feel the need to get a move on. Hormones trigger it. Here’s Melville making an analogy in Pierre, or, The Ambiguities, published in 1852: “So…
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A Reading List
I’m just catching up to the Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America by Jeffrey Glassberg. Glassberg is an old butterfly hand, who’s written a couple of other guidebooks to the subject. (Never enough guidebooks!) He takes a firm stand against amateur netters and collectors (i.e. killers), commercially raised butterflies, and butterfly releases at weddings…
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Osprey
Alan F. Poole’s Ospreys: The Revival of a Global Raptor In my half century life, there has been a great recovery of Osprey populations after ruthless persecution and even more ruthless chemical warfare. Luckily, this long-distant migratory bird is highly adaptable. They readily take to artificial nesting spots: 3 of 5 pairs in North America…
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Renegades
Our week of books continues with Gods of the Upper Air, by Charles King. This is a collective biography of anthropologist Franz Boas and his students Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, Ruth Benedict, and Ella Deloria, who took on the “scientific” racists, eugenicists, ethnocentrists, and anti-immigrant forces of a century ago. It is a fascinating…
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Scapegoat
Oh, the French! Everybody knows Gérard de Nerval had a pet lobster, but who knew Henri Toulouse-Lautrec had a trained cormorant he would walk on a leash? “Tom” “supposedly” drank absinthe but met his (it’s hard to sex them) demise when a hunter shot him. Hunters being hunters… Richard King’s The Devil’s Cormorant: A Natural…
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The Incredible Egg
Tim Birkhead’s The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg is a perfect thing in and of itself. This a short but intense look at what we know and don’t know about bird eggs. We know an awful lot because of hens and the billions of chicken eggs that are produced every year…
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Degenerate Americans
Does the stereotypical boastfulness of Americans — da biggest & da bestest, by jimminy! — stem from a deep insecurity? Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America, by Lee Alan Dugatkin, is about the mammoth chip on the shoulder of the early European Americans. Their betters in France told them they…
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Re: Wild
“We’re not just losing the wild world. We’re forgetting it. We’re no longer noticing it. We’ve lost the habit of looking and seeing and listening and hearing. We’re beginning to think it’s not really our business. We’re beginning to act as if it’s not there any more.” I am preaching, as they say, to the…
Backyard and Beyond 