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13 March 2018
The Evolution of Beauty, by Richard Prum
This fascinating new work by ornithologist Richard Prum re-examines sexual selection (mate choice) as a driving force of evolutionary change independent of (and sometimes in contradiction to) the mechanism of natural selection (environmental adaptation). Prum positions himself as a modern advocate for the ideas Charles Darwin expressed in The Descent of Man, and that Alfred Russel Wallace argued against in the years following Darwin’s death. In The Evolution of Beauty, …
1 January 2018
2017 Yard List
New year’s day is the time I tally up my accumulated bird species seen in my yard on the forested slope of Massanutten Mountain. This is my sixth such annual list. Here are the previous iterations: 2012 (39 species) 2013 (51 species) 2014 (58 species) 2015 (65 species) 2016 (59 species) Here we go, in chronological order of first appearance in our yard: Red-tailed hawk Red-bellied woodpecker Mourning dove Raven …
3 April 2017
Virtual owl pellet
Owls are nocturnal birds of prey that eat rodents and grasshoppers, digest the good stuff, and cough up the rest in compressed “pellets” of fur, bone, and chitinous exoskeleton. I found an owl pellet in my yard a few weeks ago, and imaged it using my GIGAmacro Magnify2. I rotated it around to get multiple views, as seen here. I’ve got both Flash and non-Flash versions of the GigaPan embed …
31 December 2016
2016 Yard List
Eastern bluebird (and its lunch, a camel cricket) Purple finch (male) At New Year’s, I post my “yard list” here. It’s a list of all the bird species observed in my yard in Fort Valley, Virginia, over the course of the previous calendar year. I have been posting this list every year since I moved here: 2012 (39 species) 2013 (51 species) 2014 (58 species) 2015 (65 species) Yellow-billed cuckoo …
28 November 2016
Scenes from the Wildlife Camera
Here’s a look at some of the wild critters that have been visiting my yard this year: [youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh8muzLOE54″] The video’s organized in alphabetical order, so it starts with bears, and ends with a walking stick insect. See how many you can identify! Plus, here’s a compilation of 125 still photos of black bears from June of 2015: [youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBkFUQ_igmU”]
3 October 2016
A virtual field trip to Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland
Rathlin Island lies north of mainland Northern Ireland, a few miles offshore. I spent three lovely days there this past summer, investigating the geology and appreciating the wildlife (puffins and other sea birds, and seals). The geology is pretty straightforward: Paleogene basalt overlying Cretaceous “chalk” (really not so chalky here – technically, it’s the Ulster White Limestone). Here’s a suite of interactive imagery that you can use to explore Rathlin’s …
20 April 2016
Who ate the woodpecker?
Occasionally, our big windows get in the way of birds. The latest casualty was a hairy woodpecker, Leuconotopicus villosus. While it’s sad that our home being where it is caused the end of this bird’s life, its body was an opportunity to teach my son something about wildlife and ecology. We have a motion-sensitive wildlife camera trained on our compost pile, and so I put the woodpecker’s body there in …
31 December 2015
2015 Yard List
It’s that time of the year – a time to state my “yard list” tally for the previous year. I have been posting this list every year since I moved to the Fort Valley: 2012 (39 species) 2013 (51 species) 2014 (58 species) In 2015, we had 65 species of birds spotted and definitively identified in our yard. In order of first appearance, they were: Carolina wren Dark-eyed junco American …
1 January 2015
2014 Yard List
A list of birds seen in my yard this year. Lists for 2013 (51 species) and 2012 (39 species) here. Downy woodpecker Mourning dove Dark-eyed junco Tufted titmouse White-breasted nuthatch Black-capped chickadee Goldfinch Pileated woodpecker Red-bellied woodpecker Turkey vulture Hairy woodpecker Eastern phoebe Red-tailed hawk American crow American robin Cardinal Bald eagle Brown creeper Barred owl Carolina wren Brown-headed cowbird Chipping sparrow Whippoorwill Turkey Broad-winged hawk Black vulture Blue-gray gnatcatcher …
10 February 2014
Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams
When Michael Collier came to visit last year, he recommended a couple of books to me. I finally got around to reading the first of them – Refuge, a memoir mixed with natural history of Utah by Terry Tempest Williams. The arc of the story is essentially twofold: the women in Williams’ family get cancer, and get treated for cancer (mastectomies, chemo, nutritional supplements to negate the nausea of the …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.