The Lives of Birds

I don't normally like to just post links to things without adding some substantive commentary of my own (although I did do that some in the early days of the blog).  But I can't help sharing a fascinating site that I came across a few days ago.  (I found it fascinating; other people might not.)  It presents the maximum recorded lifespans for all species of North American birds, as derived from bird banding data.  

Say, for example, that you are wondering how long a Barred Owl (Strix varia) can live.  Simply go to the site, select the species, and find that a Barred Owl was recorded to have lived an astounding 24 years.

The Super Bowl, Again

The Super Bowl was Sunday.  I am not a sports fan, and thus I did not watch it.  I used to try to watch it just for the commercials, but the commercials were never all that great.

I once read that "Super Bowl" was the best term to generate hits for one's blog.  I can believe it;  the pointless and very silly blog post that I wrote on the spur of the moment about the 2011 Super Bowl has received 57 page views, more than twice the number of any other individual post on my blog.  

From what I can remember of Super Bowl history, which covers maybe the last thirty years or so, the game has gradually become more of a holiday than an athletic event.  I wonder how many people who watch the Super Bowl have no real interest in the game itself, and instead just want to go to a party, eat too much, and then spend the next day complaining about having eaten too much. 

But then, that's probably not a profound or novel insight on my part.  

Prehistoric Polchaete Rock

I've blogged before about prehistoric animals named after rock stars, specifically the dinosaur Masiakasaurus knopfleri, named after Mark Knopfler, and a set of trilobites named after various Eighties alternative musicians.

Now I've learned of two new instances, thanks to a December article in the Washington Times.  In 2006, paleontologist Mats E. Eriksson named Kalloprion kilmisteri, a Silurian polychaete worm, after Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead.   Then in 2012, Eriksson named another Silurian polychaete, Kingnites diamondi, after King Diamond.  

(This is just my personal opinion, but I think that naming something after King Diamond is taking things too far.)

Anyway, here is a video of Lemmy and Mark Knopfler, in their pre-fossiliferous days,  performing (along with many others, including David Gilmour) in a BBC comedy sketch. 

Ornithological Notes on The Hobbit

I finally saw The Hobbit, despite my earlier difficulties.  One thing that stood out to me was the use of CGI songbirds, particularly in association with the wizard Radagast the Brown (who, I found out in researching this post, is also the seventh Doctor Who).  I thought that I would share some ideas on the identification of these birds, although in all likelihood someone somewhere else has probably done a better job of this already. 

The birds that live under Radagast's hat looked like House Sparrows (Passer domesticus).  I also seem to remember that they were both males, but I'd have to watch the movie again to be sure.  

The bird that alerts Radagast to the location of the Necromancer is very clearly an American Robin (Turdus migratorius).  I found it somewhat disconcerting to see such a characteristically North American bird in the setting of pseudo-European Middle Earth.  

And the bird identified as a thrush that flies to the lair of Smaug at the end of the movie actually is a thrush, though I couldn't identify the exact species.  

Radagast the Brown's talent for communicating with birds was acknowledged in the world of paleontology in 2002, when his name was applied to Paraortygoides radagasti, a fossil bird from the Eocene.

Remembrance of Dragons Past

My friend John alerted me that there is a new website where one can purchase pdf downloads of out-of-print Dungeons & Dragons publications.  As a former D&D player, the site generates a great deal of interest in me.  Part of it is nostalgia for items that I remember from my younger years.  But a bigger part is curiosity about all the things that I have never seen before, because evidently there was a lot more published for D&D than what I could find at the local Toys R Us when I was in sixth grade.  

My attempts to play D&D never seemed to work out the way that I wanted. (Playing a full and enjoyable D&D campaign remains an item on my bucket list.)  In my experience, the problem with Dungeons & Dragons is that, in order to play it in a satisfying manner, one needs both maturity and free time, which vary in inverse proportion over the course of one's life.  I started playing D&D in middle school, when my friends and I had lots of free time to play, but very little maturity; as a result, our games tended to fall apart or break down into pointless arguments.  I played some in high school, when people were more grown up, but it was harder to find time to play And I even played a little in college; at that point, the other players and I were mature enough that I felt that I was finally playing the game the way that it should be played.  But the responsibilities and opportunities of college life took up too much of our time to allow for much D&D; our gaming group only got together two or three times.  

I wonder if, in thirty or forty years, we'll start seeing people in nursing homes playing Dungeons & Dragons, in the way that today's nursing home inhabitants might play bridge.

As Always, Blogging Is Hard

There are a lot of things about which I want to blog—The Hobbit, ornithology, The Hobbit and ornithology, Christmas, paleontology, Dungeons & Dragons, the Beatles, and probably some other things that I can't recall at the moment.  Unfortunately for the last few weeks I haven't had the energy to write any blog entries.  I am going to try to post of these entries in the next few days, but there is a very real chance that I will fail.  

Slimy Distractions

My friend Josh e-mailed me a while ago saying that I should change the name of the blog to Slimy Distractions and make it all about slugs.  This was because of all the pictures of slugs that I had posted.  I actually hate slugs; I only posted the computer-drawn pictures because slug pictures had worked out well in my post about how to get a slug out of your house.

I like almost all animals, with a few exceptions. The animals that I don't like generally fall into two categories.  

The first consists of slimy terrestrial invertebrates, specifically slugs and earthworms

The second consists of animals that want to drink my blood, such as ticks and mosquitoes, or otherwise bite me in a way that will leave me itchy.  

And then there are the leeches, which combine elements from both categories.