Here Comes The Heat

An unseasonably strong high pressure ridge sitting over the Eastern Pacific is resulting in a heat wave here in Northern California. The high temperature for the next three days is expected to reach 102° F. Today it wasn’t that hot; some high cloudiness circulating in from the north moderated it.

This Saturday we will be providing radio support for the Davis Double Century, the 200-mile bicycle event that starts in Davis and circles through five counties. They are not going to have an easy time of it in this heat.

Gray-haired, Gaunt, Giddy

I see it. The reflection in the mirror. The face of my great-aunt, of my grandmother, of my mother’s cousin. We are one, across the years, across the barriers that seem at this point artificial.

Death will unite us. I hope between now and then, for me, I will cause enough mayhem for these hellraisers to be proud of me. And if they forget themselves and sniff instead, a silly nod to their perceived station, I’ll take it up with them on the other side…

Our Lord Vetinari

Apologies to those who are not fans of Terry Pratchett, but I think axmxz is on to something when he suggests that there is more similarity between Barack Obama and the gently Machiavellian ruler of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork than one would suppose at the outset.

Mimsy

It’s wedding invitation season, a process that can make you go a little crazy. I’ve been addressing envelopes in Spencerian, a nineteenth-century American outgrowth of Copperplate.

Today at the Whole Earth Festival I heard, and heeded, the siren call of a beautiful hand-turned cherry pen holder. (Dale will laugh when he reads this, because he’s seen this look in my eyes before.)

Italic nib, good paper, contaminated with Spencerian crazyness: I give you

Below is the first stanza of a poem I wrote for my niece back when she was about three or four five or six and had just been to Florida (I illustrated it and made an accordion-fold book for her, and was pleased to find out this afternoon she not only still has it, but knew exactly where it was and was able to read me stanzas two and three).

Mimsy. There you have it.

In case you want the second and third stanzas, such as they are:

Said Poly to young Tesla:
“Now mark me well, and harken
My bath I cannot leave to play
On meadow, beach, or wold.”

Said Tesla, “Poly, I’ll come in!
And play till sun goes down.”
Said Poly, “Roll and swim with me—
My bath is never cold.”

Cosmological Graffiti

I’ve been puzzling over this graffiti which is by the bike path underneath the freeway near the UCD Arboretum for some time now. Browsing through my copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy this evening an answer came to me. The upside-down V must be a capital lambda and the statement would be a reference to the cosmological constant.

This parameter was introduced by Einstein as a modification of the theory of general relativity because of his belief at that time that the universe was static. Later, after Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding, Einstein withdrew this modification and considered it to be his “biggest blunder”. Stepping forward into the late 1990s with the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, this parameter has now made its way back into contemporary cosmology, as something needs to counteract gravitation. What could be more theologically profound?

Hey, the physics building is only a half-kilometer away from from the graffiti.

The Texas List

Hill Country, Big Bend, Davis Mountains

April 17-27, 2008

Here’s my bird list. I have placed an asterisk next to those I managed, however meagerly, to sketch… The three life birds are in all caps.

Black-bellied whistling-duck
Mallard
Scaled quail
Montezuma quail*
Great blue heron
Great egret
Cattle egret
Yellow-crowned night-heron*
Black vulture
Turkey vulture*
Sharp-shinned hawk
Cooper’s hawk
Gray hawk
Common black-hawk*
Harris’s hawk
Red-shouldered hawk
Broad-winged hawk
Swainson’s hawk*
Zone-tailed hawk
Red-tailed hawk
Crested caracara
American kestrel
Rock pigeon
Eurasian collared dove
White-winged dove*
Mourning dove
Inca dove*
Common ground-dove*
Greater roadrunner*
Western screech-owl
Elf owl
Lesser nighthawk
Common poorwill
Chuck-will’s widow
White-throated swift*
Blue-throated hummingbird
Lucifer hummingbird*
Ruby-throated hummingbird
Black-chinned hummingbird*
Ringed kingfisher*
Green kingfisher*
Acorn woodpecker*
Golden-fronted woodpecker*
Ladder-backed woodpecker*
Hairy woodpecker
Olive-sided flycatcher
Western wood-peewee
Cordilleran flycatcher*
Black phoebe
Eastern phoebe
Say’s phoebe*
Vermilion flycatcher*
Ash-throated flycatcher
Brown-crested flycatcher
Cassin’s kingbird
Western kingbird*
Scissor-tailed flycatcher*
Loggerhead shrike
White-eyed vireo
Bell’s vireo
BLACK-CAPPED VIREO*
Gray vireo
Yellow-throated vireo
Hutton’s vireo
Red-eyed vireo
Western scrub-jay
Mexican jay*
Chihuahuan raven
Common raven*
Purple martin
Tree swallow
Violet-green swallow
Northern rough-winged swallow
Cliff swallow
Cave swallow*
Barn swallow
Carolina chickadee
Black-crested titmouse*
Verdin
Bushtit
Red-breasted nuthatch
Cactus wren*
Rock wren
Canyon wren
Carolina wren
Bewick’s wren
House wren
Blue-gray gnatcatcher*
Black-tailed gnatcatcher
Eastern bluebird
Western bluebird
Hermit thrush
Northern mockingbird*
Long-billed thrasher*
Curve-billed thrasher
Crissal thrasher*
European starling
American pipit
Cedar waxwing
Phainopepla
Orange-crowned warbler
Nashville warbler
COLIMA WARBLER*
Yellow warbler
Yellow-rumped warbler
GOLDEN-CHEEKED WARBLER*
Townsend’s warbler
Black-and-white warbler
Common yellowthroat
Hooded warbler*
Painted redstart
Yellow-breasted chat
Summer tanager
Western tanager
Green-tailed towhee
Spotted towhee
Canyon towhee*
Cassin’s sparrow*
Rufous-crowned sparrow*
Chipping sparrow*
Clay-colored sparrow*
Brewer’s sparrow
Field sparrow
Black-chinned sparrow
Vesper sparrow
Lark sparrow*
Black-throated sparrow*
Grasshopper sparrow
Lincoln’s sparrow
White-throated sparrow
Dark-eyed junco
Northern cardinal*
Pyrrhuloxia
Black-headed grosbeak*
Blue grosbeak
Indigo bunting
Varied bunting*
Painted bunting
Red-winged blackbird
Eastern meadowlark
Yellow-headed blackbird
Brewer’s blackbird
Great-tailed grackle*
Bronzed cowbird
Brown-headed cowbird
Orchard oriole
Hooded oriole
Bullock’s oriole
Scott’s oriole*
House finch
Pine siskin*
Lesser goldfinch*
American goldfinch
House sparrow

Cosmic Latte

Next time you are in Starbucks sipping your latte, marvel at the coincidence that it is the color of the universe, all averaged out.

It’s not getting really dark now here until 9:30 PM. This doesn’t leave too much time for stargazing!

Big Weekend Coming Up

We’ll be participating in the birdathon to benefit Yolo Audubon Society this weekend — trying to see as many species as possible by bike (we’re a week late but better late than never). We haven’t been doing too much birding by bicycle over the past three weeks, and have missed a lot of the migrating birds, but we’re going to do our best. If you’re interested in sponsoring us on a per-species or flat total basis, let us know! Thanks.

Into The Virgo Cluster

Look to the east these spring evenings and you will see a triangle of three bright stars: Arcturus, in the constellation Bootes, Denebola, marking the tail of the lion Leo, and Spica, in the constellation Virgo. In that triangle lies one of the biggest challenges in my Messier big year: navigating the Virgo cluster of galaxies.

This is the nearest big cluster of galaxies, about 60 million light years distant, containing maybe 2000 galaxies total. In dark skies many of these can be seen in a moderately-sized telescope, and it is quite a region for the amateur astronomer to get lost in. In bright skies it is a challenge to see any galaxies at all, and finding the 16 or so galaxies on the Messier list takes effort.

There is about one week left until the moon goes into the evening sky again, so I need to make progress now. Last night I viewed M98, M99, and M100, starhopping east from Denebola. M98 was quite tough, M99 and M100 were faint but evident.

Not Just Birds

We saw lots of birds in Texas. I sketched a good number of them; some of those sketches will be appearing on Bird by Bird.

There were other critters out and about, though, including javelinas, deer, coyotes, and bats. Millions and millions of Brazilian free-tailed bats that emerged from the mouth of a cave mere feet below us, at a rate of about 500 per second, for ages and ages. They swirled up into the air to be picked off at random by awaiting red-tailed and Swainson’s hawks (and be summarily eaten mid-air) yet drifted off toward Austin unfazed, eventually looking like smoke.

There are some sights that defy description, verbal or pictorial. This is one of them. I offer my meager attempts knowing that nothing at all can compare with being there. Certainly nothing at all can convey the ammonia stink of twenty million bats emerging from their sleeping quarters…