Lonesome George (1910± – 2012) was a Pinta Island species of saddleback tortoise, and the very last of his kind. The ecology of Pinta Island was devastated by introduced goats, which consumed much the available vegetation on the remote island. Including the vegetation upon which the tortoises relied. Lonesome George was the last surviving tortoise…
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of the distinguished British biologist, J.B.S. Haldane, who found himself in the company of a group of theologians. On being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, Haldane is said to have answered, “An inordinate fondness for beetles.” 1959…
WC is obviously biased in favor of birds, and makes no apologies for it, but from time to time will aim a camera at mammals, too. Including Old World Monkeys, our distant cousins and wildly diverse primates. WC’s Old World experience is mostly limited to Thailand, but that country offered a nice selection of species.…
The Ramphastidae is a family of some 36 species spread across 5 genera. All of the species in the family have . . . generous-sized . . . bills, but the seven or so members of the genus Ramphastos, the Toucans, are the undisputed champs. Fans of the Old World Hornbills may try to argue,…
WC is obviously biased in favor of birds, but from time to time will aim a camera at mammals, too. Including the New World Monkeys, our distant cousins and wildly diverse primates. The Howler Monkeys are the poster child for that diversity: there are about 15 species of Howler Monkeys alone. And Howlers provide another…
Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray it will not become generally known. Attributed to the spouse of the Bishop of Worcester (or Birmingham), likely apocryphal1 Very few scientists have had a greater impact on our understanding of our world than Charles…
It’s common knowledge that anthropogenic climate change, along with modern humans’ other activities, have triggered an ongoing mass extinction event. But depending on how you look at it, what’s happening now is either the Second Anthropogenic Extinction Event or just an acceleration of a process that’s been under way for at least 50,000 years. Hannah Ritchie,…
Volcanoes erupt. An irruption is something different, an irregular event in which large numbers of a species move far beyond their normal range. That’s distinct from migration, which is an annual movement common to all or almost all of the members of the species. Migration is normal for about 18% of the world’s species. Irruption…
It’s time for another mental health Rx courtesy of Wickersham’s Conscience. Not all medicines come from a bottle, after all. And it seems right to start the New Year with a brief dose of WC’s sovereign remedy: photos of beautiful birds. This time we’ll have a tour of Trogons, a family of birds found on…
Birders, as you might suspect, aren’t the only ones obsessed very interested in identifying the critters they see. It turned out there was a field guide to the jaguars of the Pantanal when WC visited the big cats this past September. Of course WC bought the field guide; of course WC used the field guide to…
Anna’s Hummingbirds are small, even for a hummingbird, weighing in at 3-5 grams. For reasons that are only partially understood, the species has greatly expanded its range over the last 30 years. Formerly confined to the southern half of California, it’s now known to breed across the western states, perhaps even as far north as…
This will be WC’s sixth and final post on the Furnariidae, the huge family of wildly different birds bound together by mitochondrial genetics. The 307 species, spread across 70 genera, includes . . . WC once again stretches his fingers here . . . Leaftossers, Miners, Woodcreepers, Scythebills, Xenops, Treerunners, Earthcreepers, Horneros, Cinclodes, Treehunters, Foliage-gleaners,…
There seems to be an “emerging consensus” that ornithologists need to change the common names of a very large number of birds. Too many bird species, many birders argue, are named for reprehensible people, or people who had nothing to do with birds or birding, except being friends with an early ornithologist. The American Ornithological…
The Ovenbirds – not be be confused with Ovenbirds1 – are the eight species of Horneros that make up the genus Furnarius. They are yet another part of the huge family of birds called the Furnariidae that are very different from their cousins, so different that you wonder how the classification can possibly be right.…
Woodcreepers are another group of birds lumped into the Furnaridae, and definitely part of the Furnaridae problem. An exclusively Neotropical group, there are a bewildering number of species – at least 51 species spread across 19 genera. In both behavior and appearance, they are much the same. Longish birds with longish tails and bills, that…
As WC argued last week, the Furnariidae, the Ovenbirds and their avian cousins, are an improbably diverse family of birds. Readers have met a few Spinetails; today we’ll have a look next at another group of Furnariidae birds, the Cinclodes (pronounced “sin-clo-dees”). They are the the LBJs – the Little Brown Jobs – of the…
Geek warning. This blog post gets into the taxonomy of birds, most of those birds completely unknown to most of regular readers of Wickersham’s Conscience. But you all know WC is geeky, and it has been a long time since WC indulged his geekiness. There’s a family of birds called the Furnaridae. It’s huge, with…
In 2002, WC and Mrs. WC were engaged in a “Birdathon,” a fundraising effort that involves seeing as many bird species as possible in a 24 hour period. That effort involved traveling from Valdez, Alaska to Paxson, Alaska as quickly as possible. In the back seat of the car were two teenagers, Nick and Luke.…
WC mostly photographs birds, of course, but if an interesting mammal wanders by, WC will sometimes point his lens at it. The first quarter of WC’s most recent trip to Brazil, in fact, targeted a mammal, and was successful. But there were other mammals, course. WC was able to photograph a few of them, in…
WC can see it in his mind’s eye. The craton that would be part of Africa appearing on the eastern horizon, approaching the craton that would become part of Brazil, shoved westward as a result of plate tectonics. About 200 million years ago, the southerly Iapetus Ocean closed as it was subducted under what is…
WC doesn’t have the time or the bandwidth to address this thoroughly, so will make do instead with a single, striking example of convergent evolution. Consider the common Black-billed Magpie, found pretty much across the State of Idaho. It’s a black and white bird, with a long tail and a longish, pointed bill. Then have…
Charles Darwin once wrote to a colleague that “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” But that didn’t stop him from deducing and developing the idea of sexual selection as a mechanism of natural selection and a part of the process of evolution. Darwin probably didn’t imagine…
WC has written here before about the BUCIP1 that is the wild horse population in the West. WC and Mrs. WC recently spent some time in the South Steens Herd range and had a chance to seee what, if anything, had changed since our first visit in 2018. The answer? Not much. The South Steens…
One of earliest and clearest scientific proofs of evolutionary adaptation to changes in environmental conditions was Peter and Rosemary Grant’s fine work with Darwin’s Finches, showing how the finches’ bills adapted to seed availability over the El Niño/La Niña Oscillation. The impact of Oscillation on the Galapagos is to shift the islands between drought and…
Okay, a fruit-eating, nocturnal, cave-dwelling, echo-locating bird whose calls sound like a man being tortured. Nothing to see here; move along. Evolution has some ‘splainin to do. Oilbirds – the species’ hatchlings are heavier and fattier than a full-grown adult, and were rendered for oil on occasion; hence the common name – are distant cousins…
Birds and flowering plants have had a long, mutually beneficial relationship. Flowers offer nectar to birds; birds, in obtaining the nectar, pick up the flower’s pollen, carrying it to the next blossom. Some flowers and birds have specialized. By evolving into long or strange shapes, the flowers select for species of birds with specialized bills,…
Not only did evolution give the American Bittern amazing camouflage; Darwin’s discovery also altered the Bittern’s skull to allow it to look down while its head was held up. American Bitterns are a poorly studied species of heron found in marshes and swamps across much of the Lower 48 states and southern Canada. It’s a…
WC isn’t an ornithologist and doesn’t pretend to be one. But WC has considerable experience with birds, especially wild birds. Among other things, for many years WC helped Mrs. WC care for three unreleasable wild owls – a Great Gray, a Great Horned and a Boreal Owl – that lived with us. While significant, that’s…
This post is dedicated to the late Dr. Vera Alexander, marine scientist, equestrian, musician, philanthropist and much more. It was WC’s privilege to serve as a marine technician on the R/V Acona in 1967 on a cruise where Dr. Alexander, a newly minted PhD, did some of the original research on the relationship between Harbor…
A reader recently asked how birds with extraordinarily long bills could possibly get the food from the end of their bill into their throats. WC can offer an insight. One of the North American bird species with a long bill is the aptly named Long-billed Curlew. It has a body length of body length 500–650…
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