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[anonsally]

I do find it fascinating that Northanger Abbey is Austen’s book that is most about other books (which is probably why I love it, honestly), and her hero is someone who LOVES words and loves interpreting them.

Henry Tilney goes on pendantic rants on the meaning of words, he manages to clear up a misunderstanding about words (and books) between Eleanor and Catherine, he makes a lot of observations on the different genres of writing that appear in the book (gothic novels and letters come to mind). He’s also a hero who by profession puts words together every week that everyone in his immediate surroundings has to hear— and someone professionally trained in the art of interpretation of very specific words in specific books.

I love the cleverness of having a hero trained in the interpretation of books then read as metaphor with heroine who has to learn how exactly to interpret gothic novels (as exaggerations and metaphors for commonplace problems) in order to mature.

[anonsally]

Introducing Claudio!

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There's something so real about a lot of these early NMTD videos that even the best of other webseries never quite captured. Maybe it's the range of styles between 4-5 different vloggers (so far we've had Beatrice, Ursula, Benedick, Hero, and Dogberry/Verges). Bea is engaging, snarky, and direct, confidently ready to film herself. Hero is cheerfully sweet and feels wonderfully tuned to the camera and her own style. Ben is a bit awkward and strange and so ready to have a relationship with viewers, without much experience to back it up. Ursula is predominantly behind the camera and seeks to film art as she sees it. Dogberry and Verges have a crappy camera and no sense for filming or vlogging, but so much passion.

The episodes leading up to PROJECT II - ONE SHOT all feel remarkably distinct and unrelated. Yes, these characters are clearly interconnected (seen in VOX POPS through Ursula's storytelling, but also with the linked scenes in "Football Antics" and the Watch's video), but their vlogs are just... different and unrelated. And best of all, they have such different filming, editing, and storytelling styles. They really feel like they're coming from different characters. And there's no clear narrative! What's the story? Is it just a bunch of vlogs from some high school kids circa 2014?

I love ONE SHOT partly because of how it's shot and all (it's great!!), but also... it's just such a COOL way to show off how so many of these threads do fit together. There's an almost-effortless naturalness to how ONE SHOT shows these teens being silly, arguing, and having fun. It's lovely. It's different. It feels so real, so unscripted, so natural.

At this stage, it's so easy to question what Nothing Much to Do is even about. If you don't know the plot of Much Ado About Nothing, I don't think there's any easy way to guess how this story is playing out. And I love that the naturalness of the different filming styles can really make it seem like, no, there's no overarching narrative, there are just a bunch of kids making silly Youtube videos (as was decently common at the time) and having fun online and sharing about their lives. Drama? What drama? (We're in a Shakespeare comedy, aren't we??)

[anonsally]

just encountered a spider so big I very seriously considered downloading tinder exclusively to find a man to come over and move it outside

[anonsally]

"Many people know about the Yellowstone wolf miracle. After wolves were reintroduced to the national park in the mid-1990s, streamside bushes that had been grazed to stubble by out-of-control elk populations started bouncing back. Streambank erosion decreased. Creatures such as songbirds that favor greenery along creeks returned. Nearby aspens flourished.

While there is debate about how much of this stemmed from the wolves shrinking the elk population and how much was a subtle shift in elk behavior, the overall change was dramatic. People were captivated by the idea that a single charismatic predator’s return could ripple through an entire ecosystem. The result was trumpeted in publications such as National Geographic.

But have you heard about the sea otters and the salt marshes? Probably not.

It turns out these sleek coastal mammals, hunted nearly to extinction for their plush pelts, can play a wolf-like role in rapidly disappearing salt marshes, according to new research. The findings highlight the transformative power of a top predator, and the potential ecosystem benefits from their return.

“It begs the question: In how many other ecosystems worldwide could the reintroduction of a former top predator yield similar benefits?” said Brian Silliman, a Duke University ecologist involved in the research.

The work focused on Elk Slough, a tidal estuary at the edge of California’s Monterey Bay. The salt marsh lining the slough’s banks has been shrinking for decades. Between 1956 and 2003, the area lost 50% of its salt marshes.

Such tidal marshes are critical to keeping shorelines from eroding into the sea, and they are in decline around the world. The damage is often blamed on a combination of human’s altering coastal water flows, rising seas and nutrient pollution that weakens the roots of marsh plants.

But in Elk Slough, a return of sea otters hinted that their earlier disappearance might have been a factor as well. As many as 300,000 sea otters once swam in the coastal waters of western North America, from Baja California north to the Aleutian Islands. But a fur trade begun by Europeans in the 1700s nearly wiped out the animals, reducing their numbers to just a few thousand by the early 1900s. Southern sea otters, which lived on the California coast, were thought to be extinct until a handful were found in the early 1900s.

In the late 1900s, conservation organizations and government agencies embarked on an effort to revive the southern sea otters, which remain protected under the Endangered Species Act. In Monterey Bay, the Monterey Bay Aquarium selected Elk Slough as a prime place to release orphaned young sea otters taken in by the aquarium.

As the otter numbers grew, the dynamics within the salt marsh changed. Between 2008 and 2018, erosion of tidal creeks in the estuary fell by around 70% as otter numbers recovered from just 11 animals to nearly 120 following a population crash tied to an intense El Niño climate cycle.

While suggestive, those results are hardly bulletproof evidence of a link between otters and erosion. Nor does it explain how that might work.

To get a more detailed picture, the researchers visited 5 small tidal creeks feeding into the main slough. At each one, they enclosed some of the marsh with fencing to keep out otters, while other spots were left open. Over three years, they monitored the diverging fates of the different patches.

The results showed that otter presence made a dramatic difference in the condition of the marsh. They also helped illuminate why this was happening. It comes down to the otters’ appetite for small burrowing crabs that live in the marsh.

Adult otters need to eat around 25% of their body weight every day to endure the cold Pacific Ocean waters, the equivalent of 20 to 25 pounds. And crabs are one of their favorite meals. After three years, crab densities were 68% higher in fenced areas beyond the reach of otters. The number of crab burrows was also higher. At the same time, marsh grasses inside the fences fared worse, with 48% less mass of leaves and stems and 15% less root mass, a critical feature for capturing sediment that could otherwise wash away, the scientists reported in late January in Nature.

The results point to the crabs as a culprit in the decline of the marshes, as they excavate their holes and feed on the plant roots. It also shows the returning otters’ potential as a marsh savior, even in the face of rising sea levels and continued pollution. In tidal creeks with high numbers of otters, creek erosion was just 5 centimeters per year, 69% lower than in creeks with fewer otters and a far cry from earlier erosion of as much as 30 centimeters per year.  

“The return of the sea otters didn’t reverse the losses, but it did slow them to a point that these systems could restabilize despite all the other pressures they are subject to,” said Brent Hughes, a biology professor at Sonoma State University and former postdoctoral researcher in Silliman’s Duke lab.

The findings raise the question of whether other coastal ecosystems might benefit from a return of top predators. The scientists note that a number of these places were once filled with such toothy creatures as bears, crocodiles, sharks, wolves, lions and dolphins. Sea otters are still largely absent along much of the West Coast.

As people wrestle to hold back the seas and revive their ailing coasts, a predator revival could offer relatively cheap and effective assistance. “It would cost millions of dollars for humans to rebuild these creek banks and restore these marshes,” Silliman said of Elk Slough. “The sea otters are stabilizing them for free in exchange for an all-you-can-eat crab feast.”"

-via Anthropocene Magazine, February 7, 2024

[anonsally]

Happy World Penguin Day (tomorrow)! 🐧

Dive into the wonderfully-winged world of African penguins with the Aquarium’s own aviculturist, Kim! From rocky shores to sandy beaches, explore where these charismatic birds call home. 💙🪨🏠

[anonsally]

Ursula made a new video! The endless patience of Beatrice and Benedick’s friends is a wonder.

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knitting tutorial made by a twenty-something knitting influencer: 18 min long, 12 of those minutes being the intro and a sponsor plug, they show the first few steps of the tutorial at the slowest speed known to man, they show the most important steps at a neck-break speed, they stop every five seconds to talk about what they just did, 40,000 comments filled with questions ranging from insightful to “how do i knit”, filmed with a camera that costs more than a car, the tutorial is incorrect.

knitting tutorial made by a seventy-something grandmother: two min long, filmed 17 years ago, shows you what you want with the skilled patient hands of a beloved deity, made with the world’s shittiest camera, the best video on the fucking internet, four comments and 30 views, you lose the video and never find it again.

[anonsally]

Shakespeare Fun Fact

[anonsally]

Sunday's bird walk

Since a calliope hummingbird had been spotted on a trail not too far from my house, and I've never seen one, I thought I would give it a shot; even if I didn't find it, it was worth looking just so I could be outside and see some wildflowers on the warmest sunniest day I've had lately.

In the end I didn't find it (or if I did, I didn't get a good enough look to know I'd found it!). But I saw a pygmy nuthatch industriously pecking at a crack in a tree (top row), lots of wildflowers (row 2), and many hummingbirds, only one of which I even attempted to photograph, without much success (row 3).

Indeed, the hummingbirds were very active. I witnessed several high-speed chases, got dive-bombed a few times until I took shelter under a tree, and spotted what I'm reasonably sure were my first rufous hummingbirds (based on Merlin's sound ID and the fact that they seemed purely orange with no noticeable green on the back, though admittedly I was far enough away and they were moving fast enough that I might be wrong about that). I ran into another birder at the spot where the calliope hummingbird had been seen, but we didn't have any luck seeing it--there were some Anna's hummingbirds around, and we saw a hummingbird in the distance, but even with my binoculars I couldn't be sure what it was, and it was zipping around too much to get a photo.

I also saw many lizards, 2 very shy golden-crowned sparrows bathing in a small stream, which was very cute, a spotted towhee (and heard several more), and a couple of Steller's jays. And I heard lots of wrentits.

[anonsally]

Saturday's Epic Bird Walk

On Saturday I went to small park/recreation area where I hadn't gone birding before, even though it's not far from my house at all.

There's a small artificial lake there, and bald eagles have been spotted there in the past few months. A few minutes after I arrived, a couple stopped to ask me if I'd seen the eagles, and I said I wasn't sure where to look, so they pointed me in the general direction but said they only saw them about once every couple weeks. I told them I didn't think I would be lucky enough to see a bald eagle on my first try.

I knew there was a trail circling the perimeter of the lake; people like to fish there. But I was surprised to find an upper trail on the west side of the park, which climbs a bit above the level of the water and is much less busy (that is, there are fewer people, but more wildlife!). I didn't even know it was there. I admired the wildflowers and enjoyed the birdsong, trying to spot the birds I was hearing. I noticed a turkey vulture soaring in the distance. Then I turned back in the direction I was walking and spotted, perched high up in a tall conifer ahead of me, an enormous bird. It was a bald eagle! Very exciting! I managed to get a couple decent photos of it. This was only my second sighting since using eBird, and my first ever in California.

Not long after that, as I proceeded on the trail, I heard some rustling in the underbrush, which I at first thought must be a bird or squirrel. But then the rustling seemed like it had to be coming from something a little larger. I was looking to try to identify where it was, when suddenly a fox ran across the trail and disappeared into the understory on the other side! I didn't even know we had foxes around here!

I later heard what Merlin claimed was a black-headed grosbeak! It took me a while to spot it, but it appeared to be a female/immature (all (terrible) photos in row 2). This was only my second time seeing this species, and my first time in California; the first time I saw it was actually on the same hike in Oregon where I saw bald eagles.

Other highlights, not all of which I managed to photograph, included a Steller's jay I could report as the coastal subspecies (top row, next to the bald eagle photo), some sort of domestic duck (row 3) which I admired but didn't bother to report, a green heron (bottom row), 2 Wilson's warblers (I don't see those very often), several black phoebes, an immature black-crowned night heron, double-crested cormorants, a killdeer, a band-tailed pigeon, and pied-billed grebes (one of which was vocalising a lot).

A few people stopped to ask me if I'd seen the eagle, so I was pleased to be able to say yes!

[anonsally]

Some recent bird and blossom photos

Top row: red breasted nuthatch peeking out of its nest cavity; Bewick's wren on a thorny tree

Row 2: foliage in the golden hour

Row 3: two bad photos of yellow-rumped warblers. (in the photo on the right, the bird is extremely faint and blurry in the background, but you can still make out its yellow chin or armpit and white eyering)

Row 4: white blossoms on a tree, a proud house finch, and pink blossoms on a different tree

[anonsally]

My camera hates western bluebirds: a photo essay

For a bird that tends to perch cooperatively in a way that might lead one to feel confident about getting a good photo, western bluebirds seem to evade my camera's auto-focus. On the rare occasions when it gets the focus right, the lighting doesn't cooperate. (I'm still struggling a bit with adjusting the setting for different lighting conditions. I should probably just learn how to use the manual settings.) These photos are from 3 different days.

[anonsally]

Highlights from no-equipment birdwatching in Germany

I didn't bring any birding equipment on my recent trip to Germany. However, I did still see some birds I could identify.

The first day and a half were spent at the home of my in-law-in-laws in Mainz. Their apartment is a few storeys above ground level, so one can see into the tree canopy out the windows, plus they have a bird feeder on their balcony. While there, I saw common wood-pigeons, rose-ringed parakeets (there's an established population descended from escaped/released pets, despite the cold winters), a carrion crow, a great tit, a Eurasian blue tit, Eurasian blackbirds, and European goldfinches. None of these were new to me, but since we don't have them in California, they're all kind of exciting to see.

The second day and a half were spent at the home of my father-in-law. In his backyard, I spotted several of the same birds, plus a Eurasian magpie. And the funeral reception was held at a golf course/country club with a pond that was home to Egyptian geese (my first in a place where they have become naturalised, so they are finally on my life list, even though this is a bird I've seen in two other geographical areas--in Italy last summer and in Southern California last month) and grey herons.

I had a 6-hour layover in Munich. I didn't see any noteworthy birds in the city (though the tulips and the hail were certainly noteworthy!), but while taxiing to and from the gate, I did spot what must have been Eurasian kestrels from the window of the plane. Based on shape, behavior, and habitat, I'm certain of that ID, but I wish I'd had binoculars to get a good look at them--that's a new one on my life list.

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Hero’s done a video! Check it out now!

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Dogberry and Verges have a new video!

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Solar Eclipse Shadows

These solar eclipse shadows form due to the distance between the sun and the leaves on the trees. The distance and the proximity of the leaves to one another cause for a "lensing" type effect, making the eclipse shadow clearer to the human eye.