Science

Vampire Bats

October 1, 2020 By Zola Zeester 2 Comments

Bats are the second largest group of mammals in the world (rodents are the largest) including more than 1,330 different species. They can be found on every continent (except frigid Antartica), and are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Habitats and diets of bats are varied, but most are nocturnal and bugs, both flying and ground dwelling, are their primary food source, each bat typically consuming several hundred insects in a few hours and a third of its body weight during one night of hunting. Only three bat species consume animal blood exclusively: the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundas) go for livestock, while the hairy-legged (Diphylla ecaudata) and white-winged (Diaemus youngi) vampire bats prefer birds.

It’s chilling to think about this bat sinking its teeth into flesh on a dark night, and visions from Dracula movies come quickly to mind. So, first impression—not much to love. However, studies of vampire bats have revealed their surprisingly amiable traits and extraordinary intellect.

Vampire Bats Don’t Suck, They Lick

First, we must address the most disturbing and frightening vampire bat behavior — they drink blood. The common vampire bat will feed on any warm blooded animal, but it doesn’t bite, suck and slurp out blood as shown in horror films. Rather, the process involves a painless bite with razor sharp teeth while the target is sleeping and lapping up about a tablespoon of blood. Rarely does a vampire bat feed on human blood, and the risk of rabies infection is minimal; however, incidents have been documented. Admittedly, this information is not altogether comforting. Let’s move on.

They’re Social, Sharing, and Caring

All three vampire bat species can be found in the arid to humid, tropical and subtropical areas of the Americas, from Mexico to Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and the island of Trinidad. They live in small and large colonies located in totally dark places, such as caves, old wells, tree hollows and buildings, and the relationships within the colonies are cooperative and caring. For example, vampire bats maintain social contact with vocal exchanges, and form strong bonds by engaging in social grooming and food sharing. They have been observed within a colony feeding a hungry bat in danger of starving by regurgitating and sharing a small amount of blood, and it’s believed the benevolence is later reciprocated by the grateful bat. Signs of true friendship.

They are Scary Smart

They need to be clever to survive in this hostile world, and have proven to be more than capable. Researchers are just beginning to understand the aptitude of these intelligent animals as lab experiments seem to indicate vampire bats can be trained to perform tasks and will retain the learning for a significant period of time.

Watch vampire bats in action, and learn more about their social behaviors in this short video (3 minutes) from Gerald Carter, a biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

BAT HOUSES: Bat species around the world are experiencing habitat loss. Placing an artificial roost in your backyard gives them a safe and comfortable place to live and is a great way to help them survive. Find out everything thing you need to know about bat houses and how to attract bats to your backyard → HERE

Information/Resources:
Common Vampire Bat, The Animal Files and National Geographic websites
Prepared Learning in Bats (Sept 11, 2016) social bat.org
What Can Vampire Bats Teach Us About Friendship? (Aug 11, 2016) by Leah Shaffer, sapiens.org
Vampire Bats, Wikipedia
The Art and Science of Bats, Smithsonian collections and study
Bat Conservation International (find out what the problems are and how you can help)
Organization for Bat Conservation

Find out about Bat Week – an international, annual celebration designed to raise awareness about the need for bat conservation (2020: October 24 – 31)

The photo of the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundas) was taken from the Field Guide to Amazonian Bats (2016, National Institute of Amazonian Research, Manaus, Brazil), López-Baucells, A., Rocha, R., Bobrowiec, P.E.D., Bernard, E., Palmeirim, J.M. & Meyer, C.F.J. The guide is free to view and download from the Tropical Conservation Bat Research Group website page.

Bat flying under a full moon feature photo by Flickr user, Jeroen Zwaal, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

If Stars Could Speak

September 29, 2020 By Zola Zeester Leave a Comment

Awake by Zach Rogers is a short video beautifully photographed and produced using a time-lapse process that results in mesmerizing views of star filled skies above stunning landscapes. It was a 3 year “passion project” involving the selection of 6,870 photos from a collection of 50,000.

“A philosopher once asked, ‘Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?’ Pointless, really….. Do the stars gaze back? Now, that’s a question.” — Neil Gaiman, Stardust (1999)

Experiencing a night sky teeming with glittering stars awakens curiosity, perspective and inspiration, and is a recreational activity enjoyed by amateur astronomers throughout the world. The opportunity to see such a sight, however, is getting more difficult as dark skies are vanishing from the glaring effects of light pollution. In fact, more than 99% of people living in North America and Europe see light polluted night skies rather than stars, and the Milky Way is hidden from more than 1/3 of the world’s population. The International Dark-Sky Association (“IDA”) works to protect night skies and ecosystems within parks and conservation areas around the world. Find dark skies for your best stargazing experience via the IDA locator map HERE, and look around for Telescopes and Stargazing Guide Book * to learn more and get started.

The short video Lost in Light by night sky photographer, Sriram Murali, dramatically demonstrates the affects of different levels of light pollution on our view of the night sky.

If you can’t get outside—-Watch the Night Skies channel here to see more amazing stargazing views captured on video by talented photographers.

More about stars⇒ Sol Invictus Super Star Sorcery Mysteries of a Galaxy

Pros give advice on how to take great photographs of the night sky in this free-to-watch info-video series → Shooting Stars

Have you tried moon gazing? Humans have revered the Moon for thousands of years, and celebratory customs of moon viewing add a spiritual component to the experience of seeing a big, bright, beautiful moon in the night sky. Simple, but awesome.

References/Information:

“Light Pollution Hides Milky Way from 80 Percent of North Americans, Atlas Shows” by Nell GreenfieldBoyce, NPR All Things Considered (June 10, 2016)

Night Sky Network – Search tools to help you find astronomy clubs and special events throughout US

Earth Sky (List of astronomy events, festivals, star parties & workshops)

Ten of the Most Breathtaking Night Skies on Earth by Michelle Douglass, BBC Earth (August 27, 2015) Some the world’s best dark skies are over remote, hard to reach locations, while other sites are astrotourism hotspots encompassing national parks and observatories.

Lassen Volcanic National Park (located approximately 3 hours northeast of Sacramento, California) has meadows freckled with wildflowers, jagged peaks, clear mountain lakes, a rich diversity of plant and animal life as well as numerous volcanoes, steaming fumaroles (steam and volcanic-gas vents) thumping mud pots, and boiling pools. Stargazing & Astronomy→ park info Dark Sky Festival

Atacama Desert, Chile

Pic du Midi – Hautes-Pyrénées, France

Rakiura National Park, Stewart Island, New Zealand – This ‘Land of Glowing Skies’ was designated an International Dark Sky Sanctuary in January, 2019

Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve – Mackenzie Region, NZ

Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona becomes International Dark Sky Park in June 2018

Dark Sky Festival – Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, California USA

Acadia Night Sky Festival – Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine USA

Jasper Dark Sky Festival – Jasper National Park, Jasper, Canada

Night Sky Festival – Joshua Tree National Park, California USA

Mayo Dark Sky Park – Newport/Mulranny/Ballycroy, Ireland

Brecon Beacons National Park – South Wales, UK

Galloway Forest Park – Scotland

Dark Skies Festival – North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales National Parks, UK

Winter Star Party – Florida Keys, USA, usually scheduled each year during the full moon in February

OzSky Star Safaris The “Classic” is held at the outskirts of Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia, and the “Spring Edition” takes place at NSW Southern Tablelands

Exmoor Dark Skies Festival – Family stargazing weekend at Exmoor National Park, a large beautiful and peaceful area of wild countryside in the South West of England and Europe’s very first International Dark Sky Reserve

Star Search: A Night Guide for Urban Texans by Wes Ferguson (Texas Monthly, March 2018) – Where to find dark, wide-open skies or a big telescope for star gazing in the state of Texas

Thebacha & Wood Buffalo Dark Sky Festival, Canada

Fountain Hills Dark Sky Festival, Arizona

We’d love to hear from you! If you’d like to comment on this article, join the conversation, or share your inspiration, and you have not yet registered as an On2In2™ playmaker, please sign up via the ‘Engage page’. Don’t worry, it’s pretty quick and easy (unless you’re a robot).

The feature photo is a still shot taken from the video, “Awake” by Zach Rogers

The title of this article “If Stars Could Speak” comes from the title of original music by Alexandr Fullin. It was used by Zach Rogers as the soundtrack to the “Awake” video.

*This page includes an affiliate link to a shop website. If you purchase a product or service directly through the link, Zeester Media LLC may earn a small commission. This in no way affects the price you pay for the purchase.

Birds of America

September 19, 2020 By Zola Zeester 1 Comment

Some time around 1820, French-American artist and naturalist, John James Audubon (1785-1851) started work on a personal project to paint every bird species located in North America, using unique methods and materials as well as extensive field observations. It was a tremendously challenging and costly endeavor, and many doubted Audubon’s ability to pull it off. In fact, the idea would seem a little wild & crazy even today with 21st century technology. But, Audubon was no ordinary guy. He was also totally committed to finding and illustrating every bird in North America for publication, working more than 15 years toward his goal and raising cash by teaching, selling art works, taking oil painting commissions, hunting and selling animal skins, and conducting exhibitions and demonstrations.

How to view and download John Audubon's extraordinarily beautiful illustrations in The Birds of America. — Common American Swan (The Birds of America, plate 411) is courtesy of the National Audubon Society, John James Audubon Center and Montgomery County Audubon Collection

The result of Audubon’s work is The Birds of America, first published in England as a series of 87 sets of prints between the years 1827 and 1838. Now considered to be the greatest study of birds in history as well as one of the greatest examples of book art, the original publication included 435 hand-colored, life-sized prints of North American birds on handmade paper that were produced from copperplate etchings and engravings with water-coloring applied by assembly-line colorists. An accompanying text (‘Ornithological Biography’) was written by Audubon and the Scottish ornithologist William MacGillvray and published separately in five volumes (1831-1839).

The cost of printing the first edition of The Birds of America was an amount equivalent to more than $2 million US dollars in today’s money. Audubon financed the massive print project with pre-paid subscriptions, but only the wealthy could afford the subscription price which limited the publication to no more than 200 complete sets. Consequently, more affordable editions were later produced using lithography and published during the mid-19^th century.

“The Birds of America’ will then raise in value as much as they are now depreciated by certain fools and envious persons.” — John James Audubon

Almost two centuries later, Audubon’s bird art is still captivating and revered among birders and art collectors, and his influence on ornithology and natural history has been widespread and enduring as The Birds of America and Ornithological Biography significantly contributed to the understanding of bird anatomy and behavior. Watching the short video, ‘Audubon’s Birds of America’ from the Lost Birds Project, you’ll get a sense of the massive beauty of these works of art as David W. Carson, curator of the History of Science Collection at Cornell University, conducts a private viewing of The Birds of America.

Six of the birds illustrated by John Audubon in The Birds of America are now extinct, and many more are endangered. Also — According to a recent study, North America has lost more than a quarter of its entire bird population during the past 50 years. [North America Has Lost 3 Billion Birds, Scientist Say by Nell Greefieldboyce (NPR, September 19, 2019)] ⇒⇒ Learn how you can help by visiting the National Audubon Society’s Action Center.

A copy of the complete The Birds of America series is available FREE of charge for viewing and high-resolution downloading via ⇒⇒ the National Audubon Society’s digital library, courtesy of the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove in Audubon, Pennsylvania and the Montgomery County Audubon Collection. Be sure to check it out, and let John Audubon inspire your own creative work.

Audubon’s personal copy of The Birds of America is held within the Stark Museum of Art Rare Books & Manuscripts Collections in Orange, Texas. An original, complete series is on public display (one page is turned each week) in the Audubon Room of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. It was purchased by the university in 1839 for the astonishing price of $970 (equivalent to approximately $80,000 today). Undoubtedly, a wise investment. In December 2010, a complete first edition from a private collection was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in London for US$ 11.5 million (a record breaking auction price).

Other permanent public display locations: Trinity College (Watkinson Library) in Hartford, Connecticut; University of Pittsburg (Hillman Library); Liverpool Central Library; Woodstock Inn in Woodstock, Vermont; and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (Ewell Sale Stewart Library) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Look around– there are surely more opportunities for viewing a first edition as there are currently 107 held by institutions, and many periodically offer special exhibits.

Information/Resources:
The Life of John James Audubon: The Naturalist (1869) [FREE ebook] The primary source material for this biography was Audubon’s notes and journals, written/edited by Lucy Green Bakewell Audubon and Robert Williams Buchanan. The JJ Audubon image is an engraving by H.B. Hall based on a portrait by Henry Inman that appears in the book.
John James Audubon – The Making of an American (2004) by Richard Rhodes*
Audubon’s ‘Birds of America’ at Yale: Creating a masterwork one feather at a time. Article by Mike Cummings, Yale News, June 30, 2015
“Ornithological Biography” or an Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America Vol 4, (1838) by John James Audubon [FREE ebook].
Featured photo of Columbian Hummingbirds is from plate 425 of The Birds of America
Wikipedia: The Birds of America

If you just can’t get enough about birds, there’s more here ⇒ Bird ID Challenge (test your birding skills); Birdsong Melody (the music and magic of the mockingbird); The California Brown Pelican; and Fast and Fearless (the Hummingbird).

Audubon was the first, but there’s a new illustration of birds to get excited about! The Wall of Birds* tells the remarkable story of artist Jane Kim’s 2,500 square-foot mural celebrating the diversity and evolution of birds at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It took her 2 1/2 years to create the one-of-a-kind, life-size mural showcasing all 243 modern families of birds, and the book “is a visual feast, essential for those who love art, birds, and our natural world”.

*Zeester Media LLC may receive a small commission for a book purchase you make via a link to Amazon within this page. This in no way affects the price you pay for the purchase.

The Overview Effect

August 25, 2020 By Zola Zeester Leave a Comment

The iconic Earthrise photo was taken in 1968 by NASA astronaut William A. Anders during the Apollo 8 mission, the first manned spaceflight to orbit the Moon. Never before had a human observed the Earth rising, and Anders’ amazing, first-ever color photo of our stunningly beautiful planet emerging from a lunar horizon still takes your breath away.

“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” — William A. Anders

To See The Earth As It Truly Is*

[su_quote cite=”Frank Borman “]It was very, very sobering to see this little blue marble in the middle of all that darkness. [/su_quote]

The awe-inspiring effect of seeing the whole Earth from the vantage of space (known as “Earth gazing”) is most often described as an overwhelming sense that Earth is an “interconnected whole with one destiny”. An understanding that’s key to our survival. Of course, we can’t see it and feel it firsthand (only 24 humans out of 7.3 billion world population have had the experience) until space travel becomes practical for the general public, but innovative technology continues to provide us with more and better information and visuals.

The short documentary Overview (from Planetary Collective) explores a cosmic worldview with reflections from “Earth gazing” astronauts and philosophers as well as beautiful space imagery. Watch and be inspired by the “unity and oneness of all life on Earth”.

Earthrise: Remembering Apollo 8. Launched on December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to reach the Moon, orbit it and return, and its crew became the first humans to see and photograph the Earth emerging from behind the lunar horizon. Watch as the Griffith Lab All Space Considered team recalls the lead up, events and discoveries of this historic mission in celebration of its 50th anniversary.

*”To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers.” Archibald MacLeish (1892 – 1982) American poet

Take a virtual ride on a satellite for awesome views of Earth

Apollo 17 photo taken December 13, 1972 on the lunar surface — Moonwalk (December 13, 1972) NASA

Want to see more of what’s out there in space? The short video documentary, “The Last Steps” will take you to a ‘back to the future’ moment in time with original film footage, photographs and audio recordings from Apollo 17, NASA’s final Apollo program mission, and the last time a human walked on the moon. Watch more “out of this world” videos via the “Cosmos Channel“, free to watch, on-demand.

A retrospective look at discoveries and images of Saturn
captured during the 20 year Cassini Mission, plus some
info on when and how you can see Saturn in 2017

“The Overview Effect” is an edited version of an article originally published on the “Zblog” by Zeester Media LLC.

Earthrise photo credit: NASA

Mysteries of a Galaxy

July 1, 2020 By Zola Zeester Leave a Comment

“A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars – billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.”
— Carl Sagan

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that contains our Solar System. — Milky Way, artist’s concept, NASA PD

Our Solar System is located within the “Milky Way Galaxy” about 2/3 out from the center, the name deriving from its appearance as a band of hazy light when seen from Earth. It looks as it does because the Earth view of the Milky Way is from inside the galaxy structure. The Milky Way is a ‘barred spiral’ shaped galaxy with a diameter between 100,000 to 180,000 light years, and contains an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars and 100 billion planets or more. Getting a good shot of the Milky Way is tough even with all the space telescopes floating around because of location and dust cloud coverage; therefore, the 2015 artist’s concept drawn using data sourced from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (“WISE”) was the best image available until the European Space Agency (‘ESA’) released the amazing Gaia’s Sky in Colour on April 25, 2018 showing an all-sky view of our Milky Way based on measurements, brightness and color of nearly 1.7 billion stars observed by the ESA satellite Gaia between July 2014 and May 2016. Now, we can see just how beautiful our home galaxy is!

Our first really good look at the Milky Way came from the satellite Gaia on April 25, 2018 — Gaia’s Sky in Colour, Copyright: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, 4-25-2018

Brighter regions seen on the image indicate denser concentrations of exceptionally bright stars, while the darker regions correspond to patches of sky where there are fewer bright stars. The bright horizontal structure is the Galactic plane (the flattened disc that contains the majority of the stars). In the middle of the image, the Galactic centre appears vivid and teeming with stars. In the lower right side of the image, the two bright objects are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way.

But, as incredible as it is, our Milky Way is just one of many billions.

It’s estimated there are 200 billion or more galaxies within the Universe, ranging in size from dwarf (containing a few billion stars) to giants with 100 trillion stars. In addition to stars, galaxies contain stellar remnants (endpoints of star evolution), gas, dust and dark matter, all held together by a gravitational pull while orbiting a center mass, and they are classified by their form and structure: elliptical (almost featureless, bright profile and stars orbit randomly), spiral (flat rotating disk shaped with spiral-like arms), barred spiral (a spiral galaxy with a bar-shaped formation in its center, e.g. Milky Way), and irregular (no shape, chaotic in appearance). About 25% of all galaxies are irregular, and while they may seem ordinary when compared to the other galaxies with symmetry and shape, irregulars are invaluable to the study of galaxy evolution and interaction.

The formation of a galaxy involves gravity, gases, star formation, and stellar explosions as well as a lot of time, but exactly how it happens has not yet been determined. There are different theories as to how spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way are formed that can be generally categorized into two basic types: 1) “top-down” which describes a large scale collapse of a large gas cloud during a period of 100 million years, and 2) “bottom-up” referring to small ‘clumps’ of stars (or globular clusters) merging to create a large galaxy.

ESA/Hubble & NASA image of elliptical galaxy IC 2006 — Elliptical Galaxy IC 2006, NASA/ESA Hubble, PD

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases the remarkable galaxy UGC 12591. It is located just under 400million light-years away from Earth . — Spiral Galaxy UGC 12591, NASA/ESA Hubble, PD

ESA/Hubble & NASA image of Barred Spiral galaxy UGC 12158 — Barred Spiral Galaxy UGC 12158, NASA/ESA Hubble, PD

Galaxy NGC 2337 is an irregular galaxy located 25 million light-years from Earth. It was discovered in 1877 by the French astronomer, Édouard Stephan — Irregular Galaxy NGC 2337, NASA/ESA Hubble, PD

WATCH the video Galaxies Across Space and Time for a quick exploratory VR trip through the Universe to see galaxies via the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s a bit like taking a ride with Captain Kirk and a NASA tour guide on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

See more wonders of the Universe on “The Cosmos Channel”, a collection of On2In2™ favorite videos FREE 2 WATCH, and discover its cosmic mysteries at Explore the Universe.

Feature image is the Messier 74 galaxy (aka NGC 62) taken using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Located about 32 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Pisces, M74 is a stunning example of a spiral galaxy with about 100 billion stars (making it slightly smaller than the Milky Way). M74 can be viewed from Earth nearly face-on, allowing observers to see its perfectly symmetrical spiral arms emanating from the central nucleus along with dotted clusters of young blue stars and glowing pink regions of ionized hydrogen. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, Public Domain

Image of Milky Way (2015 artist’s concept) NASA/JPL-Caltech, Public Domain

Images of galaxies in gallery are courtesy of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, Public Domain

Information/Resources:
Galaxies, nasa.org
Wikipedia: Galaxies, Milky Way, Galaxy formation and evolution

Monarchs on the Move

May 19, 2020 By Zola Zeester 1 Comment

A UNA MARIPOSA MONARCA (To a Monarch Butterfly)
by Homero Aridjis (translated by George McWhirter)

Tu que vas por el día
como un tigre alado
quemándote en tu vuelo
dime qué vida sobrenatural
está pintada en tus alas
para que después de esta vida
pueda verte en mi noche

You who go through the day
like a winged tiger
burning as you fly
tell me what supernatural life
is painted on your wings
so that after this life
I may see you in my night

Don’t know why exactly, but there is something special about a monarch sighting. Maybe it’s the mystery of where it’s going, where it’s been, or the mystical legend of monarchs as returning spirits of deceased loved ones. But, to watch thousands of monarchs flying en masse………..well, you just have to see it!

The Wings of Life – Monarch Butterflies is a short video from Disneynature studio that captures in spectacular time-lapse/high speed/macro cinematography many thousands of monarchs wintering in Mexico, with close-up views of these amazing butterflies in action. The video documentary was directed by award-winning nature filmmaker, Louie Schwartzberg, and narrated by Meryl Streep.

Monarch Migration
–One of the most remarkable natural phenomena on Earth–

The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is an iconic pollinator species native to the New World where it can be found from southern Canada to northern South America. Monarchs can also be found hanging out in other parts of the world: Caribbean, Hawaii, Cook Islands, the Solomons, New Caledonia, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Azores, Canary Islands, Gibraltar, the Philippines and North Africa, and they make an occasional visit to the UK as an ‘accidental migrant’ (displacement is caused by storms, high winds, swift currents). Bright orange coloring with black and white markings make monarchs easy to spot, but they are commonly misidentified as the smaller viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus), another North American butterfly with similar pattern and coloring.

A monarch’s life is spent on the move, and it’s complicated. Each year in late summer to early autumn, millions of monarchs migrate thousands of miles south from central and northern US states and southern Canada to Mexico, Florida and the coastal areas of southern and central California where they make a winter home in large clusters of colonies high within trees. Taking advantage of air currents and thermals and traveling only during daylight hours (roosting in clusters to stay warm at night), the trip takes about two months, covering 50-100 miles a day at a flight speed of about 5.5 mph (9 km/hr). In spring, they make the journey back north.

During the spring migration northward, the travel itinerary is quite different as monarchs mate and produce four generations along the way. The first three generations have life spans of only 2 – 6 weeks, but each continues mating and moving north. The fourth generation lives 6 – 8, sometimes 9 months, and is the generation of monarchs that will migrate south for the winter. No one really knows how these later generation monarchs navigate their way to a winter home they have never before visited. Clearly, they must rely on instincts rather than learning as the last generation with knowledge of the route is long dead. Some experts have determined that monarchs must be genetically programmed to migrate long distances and use some sort of biological sun and magnetic compasses as orienting tools.

No other butterfly is known to make an epic round-trip migration as the monarch does every year. While this makes the monarch extraordinarily unique, the long journeys also cause monarchs to be particularly vulnerable to climate conditions and human activities that disrupt and destroy their habitat. Consequently, their numbers have decreased significantly during the last 20 years (a decline of more than 80 percent over the past two decades), and there is great concern that monarch migration is at high risk of failure. Conservationists, scientists, and federal, state and local organizations in the United States, Mexico and Canada have begun efforts to stop the destruction before it’s too late, and yes— everyone can do something to help monarchs and have fun doing it!

• Create a Monarch Habitat Make a special spot for monarchs. Maybe it’s just a small pot on your front steps, patio or balcony, a backyard garden, pasture, farm or ranch land. Plant milkweed and nectar plants that are native to your area and free of pesticides, insecticides and neonicotinoids.

• Help Scientists Study Monarchs

• Get Involved as a Community Join forces with friends, neighbors and colleagues to develop ‘monarch friendly’ landscaping at schools, businesses, community parks and gardens, and urban green spaces with native plants and wildflowers for monarchs.

• Garden Organically Using organic methods in your garden will reduce your impact on monarchs, their food plants and other pollinators.

• Support Conservation Efforts

• Spread the Word about Pollinators, Conservation, and How to Help It’s easy to get started with this one — Share this article with your friends!

Monarch travel many miles in migration, and there are things each of us can do to help monarchs survive the journey — Monarch on a Thistle, Lake of the Ozarks, by Sean Stratton/Unsplash CC0

References/Information Sources [To learn more about helping monarchs, check out these selected resources]:

Monarch Butterfly Basic Facts, Defenders of Wildlife website

Monarch Migration, University of Minnesota website, Biology & Research

Migration and Overwintering, USDA Forest Service website

Monarch Butterfly Migration Interactive Map It’s fun to keep track of monarch migration. This interactive map has the best up-to-date info on Spring 2017 first sightings (January – July). Check it out, and report your sightings, too.

Monarch Migration Could Collapse as Population Remains Low, Center for Biological Diversity (March 5, 2018) More milkweed needed! The count of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico (released 3/5/18), shows a decrease from last year’s count, and “confirms the iconic orange and black butterfly is still very much at risk”.

The Monarch Butterfly is in Trouble —You Can Help! US Fish and Wildlife Service

“Monarchs Still Need Your Help” (Open Spaces, US Fish & Wildlife blog, 2/14/2017)

How to Build a Butterfly/Pollinator Garden in 7 Steps, US Fish and Wildlife Service (May 18, 2016). Regional Milkweed Planting Guide –The Xerces Society website

Study Monarchs: Citizen Science Opportunities. How to help scientists count and track monarchs.

Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve Located within rugged forested mountains about 64 miles (100 km) northwest of Mexico City, researchers first discovered monarchs overwintering within the area in 1975. It was designated a federal reserve in 1980 by presidential decree and a World Heritage Site in 2008.

WWF Monarch Butterfly Tours – Ecotours of central Mexico provide an opportunity to observe and photograph large colonies of monarchs at their remote winter roosting sites in the highlands of central Mexico. “The Kingdom of the Monarchs” 2018 tour dates are scheduled January thru March.

Myth and Mystery in Mexico’s Monarch Kingdom, Good Nature Travel (October, 2009)

“Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move” by Hugh Dingle (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Nature is full of extraordinary sights to experience and explore, and talented photographers bring it all to life on your screen. You’ll be amazed! Watch and discover Natural Beauty via On2In2™ selected videos. Free to Watch – On Demand

Feature photo of monarch butterfly is courtesy of Pixabay/Pexels CC0

Among The Trees

May 7, 2020 By Zola Zeester 4 Comments

“No more walks in the wood;
This is the aftermath
Of afternoons in the clover
Fields where we once made love
Then wandered home together
Where the trees arched above,
Where we made our own weather
When branches were the sky.
Now they are gone for good,
And you, for ill, and I
Am only a passer-by.”
— John Hollander, An Old-Fashioned Song

The Life and Loves of a Tree

We start loving trees as children because they are so much fun to climb and offer endless playtime adventures and hiding-out opportunities. As we get older, explore and learn more about trees, we find more to love and cherish.

Trees do many good things for the world — like cleaning the air, providing oxygen, and protecting us against a changing climate (to name just a few), and trees have incredible healing and restorative powers along with an ability to spark creative and spiritual inspiration. Just a short walk in the woods can lift your spirits. And, take a look around along the way. You may be surprised at what’s really going on among the trees.

A forest is actually a lot like a community of social beings. Yes, that’s right — trees in the forest are social, sharing, caring and also smart, having evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships through communication and collective intelligence. And, all this extraordinary interaction among trees is happening underground, just inches below the surface.

Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences in Vancouver, studies the below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and enable their underground “inter-tree” communication and interaction. In her TED presentation How Trees Talk To Each Other, Suzanne describes her field research (which included some tense moments with a bear) and the exciting discoveries during 30 years of study. [Ted Talk, courtesy of TED, CC BY–NC–ND 4.0 International]

Peter Wohlleben’s international best-seller The Hidden Life of Trees (2015) fascinated readers to the many wonders of the forest. In a new, illustrated edition, beautiful images provide the perfect complement to the original book, with striking close-ups of bark and seeds, panoramas of vast expanses of green, and a unique look at what is believed to be the oldest tree on the planet. [If you purchase a book via the link here to Amazon, Zeester Media LLC may receive a small commission. This in no way affects the price you pay for the purchase

FOREST THERAPY
Go To The Woods – Breathe Deeply – Be At Peace

In Japan, shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), is the practice of spending time within a forest to benefit from its therapeutic powers as well as to enjoy being surrounded by nature. Introduced in the early 1980’s as a Japanese national health program, it has become a popular healing practice throughout Japan and around the world.

Forest bathing activities may include relaxation techniques such as mindful meditation, yogic breathing (yoga deep breathing exercise) and aromatherapy as well as walking or simply standing in a forest absorbing it all through the five senses (sight, touch, smell, sound and taste). For the best experience, participants are encouraged to select a safe, secure forest and relaxation methods that best fit their needs and preferences.

Forest Bathing – Forest Therapy Society (Tokyo, Japan)
Association of Nature & Forest Therapy – find a forest bathing guide, workshops and programs

Technical Recreational Tree-Climbing, a style of tree climbing requiring special equipment and techniques, continues to grow in popularity as an enlightening outdoor experience with therapeutic benefits as climbers ascend into the crowns of tall trees and canopies of forests. Basic training is essential to learning how to use the ropes, saddles, and techniques safe for both the climber and tree.

Once a year, Tim Kovar, an adventurous arborist and tree climbing instructor, takes a few people on a climb up one of the tallest trees in the world — an 850 year old California redwood called the Grandfather. It’s a summit Tim says less people have attempted than Mt. Everest.

Go Tree Climbing – The Global Organization of Tree Climbers provides information on training, climbing programs, and safety. Tree Climbers Rendezvous 2018 is a tree climbing event open to all levels of experience, scheduled to be held in Costa Rican Cloud Forest August 24-28.
Tree Climbers International – promotes tree climbing as a safe recreational activity for people of all ages, and offers recreational tree climbing courses from basic to advanced.

Information/Resources:

Do Trees Talk to Each Other? by Richard Grant, Smithsonian Magazine (March 2018)
Alternative Healing, A Walk in the Forest by Catie Liebeck, Pulitzer Center (April 25, 2016)
How Trees Calm Us Down by Alex Hutchinson, The New Yorker (July 23, 2015)
Immerse Yourself in a Forest for Better Health, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation

When You Give a Tree an Email Address, by Adrienne LaFrance, Atlantic Monthly (July 10, 2015) The city of Melbourne assigned email addresses to trees so that citizens could report problems with a specific tree. Instead of reporting problems, people wrote thousands of love letters to their favorite trees.

Find a Forest Near You – interactive map & online search tools to help you find forests in US and Puerto Rico
10 Incredible Forest Walks To Add To Your Bucket List by Richard Madden, The Telegraph Travel/Tours (August 7, 2017)

Want to get involved and help trees? Our world can certainly benefit in many ways with more trees. Here’s a list of just a few of the organizations dedicated to planting trees and restoring and protecting forests around the world:

National Forest Foundation – Nonprofit partner to the US Forest Service (chartered in 1993) that promotes health and enjoyment of America’s forests with community involvement, tree planting programs, collaborative research, funding grants, and information resources

Arbor Day Foundation – Nonprofit conservation and education organization that provides information and support for the planting of trees in cities and communities and restoring forests around the world. [Search for Arbor Day celebration dates across America and around the world → here]

Tree People – A nonprofit organization that inspires and supports the people of Los Angeles, California to plant and care for trees, harvest the rain, and renew depleted landscapes.

3 Ways To Get Involved – Crowtherlab – Includes a global interactive map and list of organizations to help you learn more about tree planting and forest restoration and find a project you’d like to support.

Feature photo is courtesy of Spring Fed Images/Unsplash CC0

The Silence of Nature – escape the every day stress and noise to experience natural sounds of silence in beautiful, undisturbed environments. Free 2 Watch & Listen

The California Brown Pelican

May 2, 2020 By Zola Zeester 2 Comments

Brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) can be found on both coasts of the Americas and are quite common along the coast of California, but it is a very unique pelican and its survival was at one time threatened.

A close-up photo of California Brown Pelican in flight — Frank Schulenburg CC BY-SA 4.0

While it’s a large bird, the brown pelican is the smallest of the eight species of pelican, and one of only three found in the Western Hemisphere. It’s also one of only two pelican species that feeds by diving into the water—a spectacular sight to see as it power-dives, bill-first, submerging underwater for a few moments before surfacing and swallowing its catch. Amazingly, they can spot a fish up to 60-70 feet above the surface of the water, and that height makes for some high diving and big splash-down.

Brown pelicans are also social and gregarious birds, living in flocks of both sexes and nesting in colonies on offshore islands. They are extraordinarily buoyant in the water as well as beautifully graceful in flight, flying in single file or “V” formation often low over the surface of the water.

Watching the skillful performance of brown pelicans is some of the best entertainment on the beach!

The brown pelican is protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. In the early 1970’s, scientists discovered pesticides threatened the brown pelican by causing its eggshells to be too thin to support an embryo, which led to its listing under the Endangered Species Act, a ban on the use of the pesticide DDT in the United States, and curtailed, controlled the use of toxic insecticide. As a result of those protective government actions and other conservation efforts, the brown pelican made an eventual recovery. In a 2008 US Fish & Wildlife report, the brown pelican population in southern California was estimated at more than 11,000 breeding pairs, and it was officially removed from the endangered and threatened species list in 2009.

It’s a happy story of a great recovery and an example of how wildlife conservation efforts can help save endangered species, but brown pelicans still need some protection. There’s concern they are highly susceptible to climate change and destructive human activity, and the only breeding colonies in the western US are located within Channel Islands National Park on the West Anacapa and Santa Barbara islands. Consequently, preservation of this vital habitat along with continued monitoring are critical to the health and survival of the California Brown Pelican.

The Brown Pelican Survey project is a biannual citizen science-based survey organized and initiated in 2016 with the joint efforts of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Cornell Lab of Ornithology (eBird), state agencies, Conservacion de Islas and the National Audubon Society in order to better understand the abundance and distribution of Brown Pelicans in California, Oregon, and Washington and track shifts in population. To see the May and October 2016 survey results, and for information on how you can participate in the survey, click/tap ⇒ HERE A total of 1,976 brown pelicans were counted across 18 sites along the Oregon coast in the fall of 2017 (reported by the Audubon Society of Portland ⇒ The Oregon Fall 2017 Survey Results)

It's a happy day when you meet up with a California Brown Pelican on a beach in Malibu, California — California Brown Pelican, Big Rock Beach, Malibu CA

It’s a happy day when a big, beautiful California Brown Pelican
comes along during a walk on the beach.

References/Information Sources:

California Brown Pelican, Channel Islands National Park
Brown Pelican, National Audubon Society Field Guide
All About Birds – Brown Pelican Life History, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 “makes it illegal for anyone to take, possess, import, export, transport, sell, purchase, barter, or offer for sale, purchase, or barter, any migratory bird, or the parts, nests, or eggs of such a bird except under the terms of a valid permit issued pursuant to US federal regulations”. The US Fish & Wildlife Service has statutory authority and responsibility to enforce the Act.

If you’d like to see and learn more about the birds of the world,
you’ll find helpful info and links to resources as well as brilliant
photos of birds here ⇒ Bird ID Challenge

Audubon's The Birds of America includes an illustration of the Brown Pelican — Brown Pelican, Audubon’s “The Birds of America” Plate 251

This image of the Brown Pelican (plate 251) is taken from The Birds of America by John James Audubon courtesy of the National Audubon Society, John James Audubon Center and Montgomery County Audubon Collection. The full series of Audubon’s illustrations of birds is available for viewing and downloading free of charge.

Feature photo of Brown Pelicans in flight at Big Rock Beach, Malibu, California is courtesy of Zeester Media LLC, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Explore the Universe

March 9, 2020 By Zola Zeester 1 Comment

[su_quote cite=”Carl Sagan, Cosmos”]We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries. [/su_quote]

[su_dropcap]T[/su_dropcap]he Universe has been defined as ‘everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist’. In other words, the Universe is all of time, space, and its contents. What is currently known about the contents of the Universe can be categorized into three types of substance: normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy.

Normal matter is everything comprised of atoms, including stars, planets, and human beings. Only a small portion of the Universe (approximately 1-10%) is normal matter.

Dark matter can’t be seen with current technology because it doesn’t emit or absorb light, but scientists know it’s there because its gravitational effects on the motion of galaxies and stars can be observed. It’s estimated that a quarter of the Universe contains dark matter.

Dark energy makes up approximately 70% of the Universe, but nothing much more is known other than it’s a mysterious cosmic phenomenon that affects the expansion of the Universe.

The size of the Universe is another mystery, and it’s believed it has neither an edge nor a center.

So…that’s a lot of unknowns, and you’re probably asking, “What do we know about the Universe?

During a 2008 interview, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” His answer is recited in this short video, The Most Astounding Fact, from Max Schlickenmeyer.

WATCH LIVE & FREE On2In2™

Astronomers know quite a lot about the history of our Universe, but there is one significant unknown — the cosmic dawn, a period of time when the first stars and galaxies were born and drastically changed it from darkness to first light. During the March 18 presentation, Glimpses of the Cosmic Dawn, Dr. Alex Ji takes us on a short tour of the early history of the Universe and explains how glimpses of the cosmic dawn era have recently been observed.

If you missed the live stream broadcast of Glimpses of the Cosmic Dawn, there’s still time to watch a video recording of the presentation. Just click/tap the “Watch Again” button located on the media player below ↓

If you missed the May 7, 2018 live stream broadcast of Dark Energy and Cosmic Sound, there’s still time to watch a video recording as Dr. Daniel Eisentein (Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University & Director, Sloan Digital Sky Survey III) describes how sound waves scattered throughout the Universe have given scientists the most precise measures of the composition and history of the Universe. Just click/tap the “Watch Again” button on the media player below ↓

The formation of our Solar System was a chaotic collapse of gas and dust as well as catastrophic collisions between forming celestial bodies — a process that resulted in the Sun, planets, asteroids, and comets that exist today. Dr. Joseph Masiero, Scientist and NEOWISE Deputy-PI, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, discusses how the asteroid families in the belt are the last remnants of those massive collisions, and provide a glimpse into the processes that have shaped our Solar System. If you missed the April 23, 2018 live stream broadcast of A Tale of Asteroid Families, there’s still time to watch a video recording of the event. Just click/tap the “Watch Again” button on the media player below ↓

Dr. Clifford V. Johnson is a professor in the Physics and Astronomy department of the University of Southern California, and he’s been awarded the Institute of Physics Maxwell Medal and Prize (2005) and a Simons Foundation Fellowship (2016). His research focuses on the development of theoretical tools for the description of the basic fabric of Nature in pursuance of an understanding of the origin, past, present and future of the Universe. Dr. Johnson is also the author of The Dialogues: Conversations About the Nature of the Universe*, a graphic, novel-style non-fiction book that uniquely brings the reader into conversations about exploring the Universe. It’s a fun read for the non-expert. On February 2, 2018, Dr. Johnson talked about his work and the book at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California. If you missed the live stream broadcast of the event, there’s still time to watch a video recording. Just click/tap the “Watch Again” button on the video player below ↓

More about the Universe
Mysteries of a Galaxy The Sun Stars Cosmos Channel

Information/Resources:

Universe: Dark Energy, Dark Matter – NASA Science (contents of the Universe explained)
Questions and Answers: What is an atom? (defined & described in simple terms) The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab)
The human body — what is it made of? (cells, molecules and atoms within the human body) Socratic.org (Anatomy & Physiology)
Wikipedia: Universe

⇒ ⇒ NASA App (FREE to download for smart phones, tablets & digital media players) Includes a huge collection of NASA content, including images, videos on-demand, NASA Television, mission information, and much more.

⇒ ⇒ Digital Universe Atlas, a 3-D atlas of the Universe developed by the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History (FREE to view and download)

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Feature photo is courtesy of Unsplash CC0

Sol Invictus

January 30, 2020 By Zola Zeester 1 Comment

Since the launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in 2010, humans have had an unprecedented close-up view of the Sun, and the images captured are breathtaking, revealing a red-glowing Sun ablaze with flares, filaments and eruptions. The short video, SUN, by Michael König, is an edited time lapse sequence of SDO images obtained between the years 2011 and 2015. It will change forever how you see the Sun.

Editor’s Note: Solar Orbiter, an European Space Agency (ESA)-led mission with strong NASA participation, is due to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Sunday, February 9, 2020 at 23:03 EST. Over the course of Solar Orbiter’s mission, it’s expected to provide unprecedented views and insight into how the Sun works as well as investigate the Sun-Earth connection for a better understanding of stormy space weather. For more information about the mission and launch (including live streaming) go to ESA – Solar Orbiter → Here

There are billions of stars like our Sun scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy, and many are bigger and brighter. What makes the Sun uniquely superior (at least from the human perspective) is that it has made life on Earth possible, providing warmth and energy and holding the solar system together with its gravitational pull.

Just like all the other stars, the Sun is a big ball of gases. It has a radius of 432,168.6 miles/695,508 kilometers (1.3 million Earths would fill the Sun’s volume), with a surface (photosphere) temperature of about 10,000°F (5,500°C) [carbon such as diamonds and graphite will boil at that temperature]. Above the photosphere is the chromosphere and the corona, where it is even hotter (3.5million°F/2million°C) and features such as flares and sun spots appear.

The Sun will one day run out of energy and die as all stars eventually do, first swelling to a size large enough to engulf Mercury, Venus and perhaps Earth as well before collapsing and shrinking down to its burned-out core (becoming a ‘white dwarf’). Scientists have predicted the Sun has approximately 6.5 billion years remaining in its lifecycle. So, there’s still some time to enjoy life under the Sol Invictus before packing your bags and taking off to a new home planet.

“So we here on Earth, we actually live in the atmosphere of the Sun.” —- Dr. Nicky Fox

In the November 15, 2017 NASA Gravity Assist podcast, Jim Green, Director of Planetary Science at NASA, is joined by Dr. Nicky Fox from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, for a conversation about the Sun — how hot is it, what are solar flares, and how does space weather affect us here on Earth?– and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe—a mission to “touch the Sun”. Just click/tap the play button ▶️ to listen to the audio recording.

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE
August 21, 2017

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, causing the Sun to be totally or partially obscured for a viewer on Earth. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon blocks all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness within a narrow path across the Earth’s surface (a partial solar eclipse appears in wider area alongside the path of the total eclipse).

Everyone in North America can experience the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017 — 2017 Total Solar Eclipse Path, NASA

It was the first total solar eclipse to move across the entire US since 1918, and eclipse watchers were able to take in the ‘total’ experience on August 21, 2017 as it entered the US from Oregon (crossing between Lincoln City and Newport), and exited in South Carolina between Georgetown and Charleston. For information and 2017 total solar eclipse resources, go to ⇒ NASA Total Solar Eclipse 2017

⇒ Watch The US National Park Service in collaboration with NASA, the National Institute of Aerospace, and Southwest Community College, hosted a special event and live broadcast of the 2017 eclipse as it passed over Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If you missed the live stream broadcast or just want to see it all again, click/tap the “Watch Again” button or select from the posts on the video players below ↓

⇒ Another viewing option is provided by The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Information/Resources:

Sol Invictus (“Invincible” or “Unconquered” Sun) From 274 AD, Sol Invictus was the primary deity of the later Roman Empire and favored by Roman emperors, Aurelian (270-275 AD) until Constantine the Great (306-337 AD), Wikipedia: Sol Invictus

Sun: In Depth, Solar System Exploration, NASA website

Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Launched on February 11, 2010 on a mission for NASA’s “Living with a Star” Program, the SDO is a spacecraft containing measuring and imaging equipment that orbits the Earth at an altitude of 22,238 miles (35,789 kilometers), allowing almost continuous observation and study of the Sun.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe successfully launched on August 12, 2018 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. It will travel directly into the Sun’s atmosphere with a never-before mission to “touch the Sun”.

Discoveries of Cassini’s exploration of Saturn are a sight to see!

More cosmic wonders & mysteries can be explored here → → Galaxies The Universe Moon Stars Cosmos Channel

Feature image of solar prominence is courtesy of NASA/SDO/AIA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Public Domain

Science

Vampire Bats

If Stars Could Speak

Birds of America

The Overview Effect

Mysteries of a Galaxy

Monarchs on the Move

Among The Trees

The California Brown Pelican

Explore the Universe

Sol Invictus

MUCH 2 SEE

THINGS 2 DO

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PEOPLE 2 MEET

FOOD & DRINKS

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MUCH 2 SEE

THINGS 2 DO

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PEOPLE 2 MEET

FOOD & DRINKS

JUST LAUGHS