A slippery slope

That I am at least mildly obsessed with natural history is well established. I relish opportunities to watch the various types of macrofauna I might encounter, whether in the wild or at a zoo.

Lisa's fear: "Honey, I'm afraid you're becoming a birder."

I'm not a birder, I'm a guy who likes to watch birds. But I acknowledge that I'm on a slippery slope.

• I now own two books which cover the identification and basic natural history of the birds of the Hawaiian Islands (more on the book problem later)
• I may start to attend Chicago Audubon Society meetings - this is because they help manage the Forest Preserve site where I work
• The prospect of starting a "life list" of critters I've seen in the wild has crossed my mind more than once

I recently bought a new camera (a Canon Powershot SX110 IS) and I'm completely in love with it. The optical zoom is fantastic. The photo at left shows the result of my first opportunity to play with the new camera: a northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) high up in a tree. I estimate the base of the tree was about 50 feet from me.

The picture was taken in late March at the Dwight Perkins Woods, a Cook County Forest Preserve District parcel in northwest Evanston. It's less than two miles from my home, but I had no idea it existed until very recently. Anyway, the Perkins Woods is a remnant of the "Big Woods" that once stood throughout Evanston.

Just last weekend, I went a little crazy at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I got a few fantastic pictures of a common grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) and an American robin (this familiar passerine is saddled with the unfortunate binomial Turdus migratorius).

Am I doomed to slide from "a guy who watches birds" to to "a birder?" Unless the City of Evanston establishes a slothpital or some kind of municipal tapir sanctuary, it seems likely that birds will become the primary source for my natural history fix. I'm going to write my alderman about that.

Math agnosticism

Here comes another rant inspired by a Calvin and Hobbes strip - this one ran on March 6, 1991.

I'm not a math atheist, but I am a math agnostic: math may or may not exist, but there's no way to know, and it doesn't affect my daily life.

Perhaps surprisingly, this attitude has only rarely impacted my engineering career thus far. When something comes up that I don't understand - which occurs often - I'm often willing to accept it as a deus ex machina solution that magically brings everything to a tidy conclusion. My father, a man both smart and wise, pointed out that this is indicated on process flowcharts by the symbol TAMO - "Then A Miracle Occurs." Sounds good to me!

Maybe that means that rather than adopting a systematic math theology, I, like so many others of my generation, identify as "spiritual, but not religious."

Arboreal skunks and other surprises

Three things blew my mind while watching "Is that Skunk?" on the PBS program Nature.

1. Spotted skunks (Spilogale spp.) commonly climb trees to forage and hide.
2. Skunks are not members of family Mustelidae, the weasels, as was long thought. Apparently skunks compose their own family, Mephitidae.
3. Skunk spray is highly flammable. Significantly, this was reported by an organic chemist rather than a field researcher.
   

Bonus: "For these orphaned skunks, Jerry is acting in loco parentis. However, many would call him just plain loco." Oh, Omniscient PBS Narrator, you're so clever.

Pi

My algebra teacher gave extra credit to students who would memorize pi to one hundred decimal places or some other ridiculous precision. This Toothpaste for Dinner cartoon pretty much says all that needs to be said about that.

Knowledge brings fear

Before I took classes in soil mechanics, I wasn't afraid of liquefaction. Before I took a materials science class, I wasn't afraid of creep - there was no such thing as deformation under constant stress; if it was holding now, it would hold forever. I knew the concept of fatigue¹, but I didn't lose sleep over it before I understood the effect of stress concentrations and stress corrosion.

I wonder what else I'll learn to fear during my engineering career.

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¹Don't let anybody tell you that bending a paper clip back and forth until it breaks is an example of metal fatigue. When the paper clip is bent that way, it deforms plastically; by definition, fatigue occurs within the elastic region.

Muskrat Love

My skills as a critter enthusiast ("amateur naturalist" sounds way too pretentious) have finally proven useful to humanity. At work yesterday, one of my colleagues got a report from his wife that there was an unusual critter swimming in the creek next to their home. She thought it might be an otter. I decided that a river otter (Lutra canadensis) in a shallow Chicagoland creek would be highly unusual, though not inconceivable¹, so I asked if she could send me a picture². This is what she sent:



It's a muskrat! Oh, excitement!

The muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) is one of my favorite local critters. Curiously, muskrats are not closely related to beavers, in spite of the superficial resemblance and similar habits. While they are both rodents, muskrats are most closely allied with voles and lemmings, while beavers' closest relatives are the pocket gophers and kangaroo rats.

I learned only yesterday of the song "Muskrat Love," made popular by The Captain and Tennille in 1976. It seems elicit strong reactions in people - it was a Top 40 hit, but was also placed high on CNN's list of the worst songs in popular music. Apparently you either you love it or it. At this point, frankly, I'm just confused by it.

The utility of muskrats, however, transcends even the music of the mid-seventies. According to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, muskrat is considered "fish" rather than "meat" for the purpose of observing meatless Fridays during Lent. Legend holds that this custom dates back to a priest ministering to trappers in southeast Michigan during the early 1800s who found that trappers' families were going hungry without meat during Lent. The priest reasoned that the aquatic muskrat could be considered "fish" and not "meat," allowing the faithful to obtain needed protein without breaking their Lenten vows. A 1987 opinion by the bishop of Lansing held that this "immemorial custom" was acceptable under canon law; perhaps more importantly, the bishop was unimpressed with the gastronomic value of muskrat, declaring that "anyone who could eat muskrat was doing penance worthy of the greatest of the saints."

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¹In December 2007, commuters leaving Union Station in downtown Chicago saw otters along the South Branch of the Chicago River.

²Sending a picture of a critter for me to identify constitutes implied oral consent for me to redistribute the picture. This means you, Major League Baseball!

Flags: State of Colorado

My ridiculous travel schedule has afforded another opportunity to reflect on the flag of the state in which I am currently sitting - this time, I'm even sitting in the state capital.

I like to think that the prominent C flying over the state house in Denver represents not only "Colorado" but "centennial," since the state entered the Union during 1876. While Colorado is widely known as the Centennial State, the notion that this figured into the flag design is pure conjecture. Still, the flag is attractive and distinctive. It's even featured in the design of the state highway signs - the only state to do so, though Alaska and New Mexico incorporate elements of their flags into their highway markers.

Colorado's official animal symbols - living and extinct - are superb; they're so fantastic, in fact, that I'll forgive the legislature for using the word "animal" when the mean "mammal." With that in mind, let's start with the official state mammal, the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis). In addition to their spectacular head-butting ability, I admire the ability of an animal weighing up to three hundred pounds to balance on precipitous slopes.

The official state fish is the greenback cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki somias), a beautiful subspecies of the cutthroat trout (so named for red slash marks on the lower jaw) found from the Rocky Mountains west to the Pacific. The Centennial State is not alone in its admiration for these handsome fishes; the Lahontan cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki henshawi) is Nevada's state fish¹. Anyway, it seems that the once-common greenback cutthroat was severely affected by human activity and was feared extinct until intrepid biologists found relict populations in a few backcountry streams in Rocky Mountain National Park. There are plans to reintroduce the greenback to waters in its former range.

Colorado is lucky to have one of the best-known dinosaurs as its official state fossil. Stegosaurus lived in Colorado during the Jurassic Period, before the rise of the Rocky Mountains for which the state is now famous. One prominent specimen was discovered by high school students from Cañon City, west of Pueblo. Moving on to scaly critters with us yet today, the state reptile is the western painted turtle (Chrysemys picta bellii), a handsome shellback found throughout the state.

There are many more awesome things about Colorado, from the subtle beauty of the high plains in the east, to the sudden rise of the Front Range, to the blooms of the short alpine summer, but these will have to wait. Read more about Colorado state symbols from the state's Department of Personnel & Administration web site.

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¹ When I checked the list of Nevada state symbols to confirm my suspicion, I found that Nevada's official state mammal is the desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni), closely related to the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep of Colorado. I don't know who's copying whom, but it's a good thing that Utah separates the Centennial and Silver States, preventing them from bickering like siblings in the back seat of a station wagon.