Learning bird calls by ear

This is one of the most informative videos about birding by ear that I've ever seen:

Happy Halloween!

From our pack to yours...




























The onesie was too big to fit Anakin, so hopefully these uh, lovely, pictures of Nauga will suffice!

Midweek laughs: Donut vs. Rock

Donut is the most well known dog in Marathon, a dear little creature with a heart of gold and a coat of white fluff to hide the ferocious beast within. She's also the owner of a fellow named Tim. The video below is by Noble Baker, who was inspired by Donut's approach to chasing/attacking rocks. Clearly! The video is about three minutes long, so please put down your beverages while Donut shows you how to properly deal with the vicious threat of a large rock:



Happy Wednesday!

Bike Tire Flip Flops

Back in 2004 I fell in love with a pair of flip flops, $20 from the REI in St. Louis. By the following summer, they were pretty well worn through. So another $20 and voila, another pair (sadly, the store was out of black, so they weren't an exact replacement). By the following summer, the new pair was almost worn through. The first pair - by then house flops - were REALLY worn through. So, knowing that Teva would re-sole some of their models, I dropped an e-mail to see if their flops were among the re-soleable shoes... the predecessor of this is what I have. No luck. No love for the cushy foam-soles. I was out of luck.

Now, add 8 hrs of a drive to the nearest REI. Ignore that; pretend shipping was free. How to face the guilt of retiring a perfectly reasonable TWO PAIRS of some of the fondest foot-memories I have ('flopping 2 months in CA, 'flopping through streams in IL, 'flopping across two college campuses and countless birding trips, the list goes on!) ...when only the soles were a problem? Every walking-of-the-dogs was a new thorn poking through the soles, a new bur jabbing up from the heel, a fresh reminder of what, unfortunately, needed to be replaced.

How do you re-sole a flip flop? Easy. You admit defeat and call yourself a waste of resources and wish that shoe repair places actually existed or maybe that things were made to last (good-old-days syndrome).

But then, a glimmer of hope: Bike Man is a friend of ours. Matt's bike is from Bike Man (can we call him John yet?) and I have a new set of tires from him and I thought, just maybe, if WWII era 'flops were made out of stamped tires, where could I find a lighter, thinner substitute? Perhaps an old bike tire? John had a pile out back, and soon I was merrily chopping a tire into Heidi-foot long segments. Two pairs of flops, 6 or 7 Heidi-foot-lengths in one tire, plenty of room to experiment!

You can see where this is going:

For those interested in flops with awesome tread*:

1) Cut up tires
2) Trim off wire-reinforced edge of tire (thankfully I have narrow feet, so it worked nicely)
3) Clean inside of tire, bottom of flop
4) Apply Goop with abandon; smush together for ~48 hrs
5) Trim excess tire
6) Run around like a madman and brag about it all over the internet ;-)

* These treads are GRIPPY, it's awesome! Because the tread on a bike tire is only in the middle, though, it's taking a bit of adjusting - there's less support under my big toe. For less grippy tires, or really worn treads, I think it'd work out more smoothly. Just depends on how/where you want to use them.

So go forth and don't give up on your beloved flops! Reduce, reuse, re-flop!

About that "tickled" penguin...

A snippet of the above video has been circulating with the "tickled penguin" tag - the first minute is just an introduction of Cookie, a little fellow with bumblefoot on his right foot (which is bandaged). From the one minute mark on, it's... well... Cookie working his penguin charms on the hand of an unidentified object of affection.

*cough*

Yeah, tickling. That's what the kids call it these days...

January's Public Service Announcement

Admittedly, this PSA would have been fresh off the press in 2007, but the message is timeless. Similar to our water conservation PSA, it's brilliantly inspirational. Since we no longer live in a place with water in the toilet, our water conservation has been pretty easy; our next goal is to balance out our use of plastic bags (we've got canvas bags and used them obsessively in Waco, but here we get them because they double as trash bags...)



Another version of the song with introduction can be found here.

Those of you not familiar with Tim Minchin may think of him as, perhaps, the Weird Al of Australia, but with his own music and heavy eye makeup most of the time.

awkward names and spying vultures

You knew the day would come: someone would name a Bald Eagle "wowie-cakes" ...I kid you not. Of course, it was meant to be pronounced wo-whee-jah-kah, but that clearly wasn't going to happen! So it has been renamed Celilo (suh-LEYE'-loh); so it went from being "that which is real" to an "Indian fishing village on the Columbia River that was submerged by the construction of The Dalles Dam." That's an improvement? Wowiecakes works just fine for me.

As for spying vultures, I posted a little something about avian Israeli espionage over at ifoundabandedbird.blogspot.com - and here's the video from it:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Israeli Vulture Spy
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

PSA - Water

This is brave new territory for See Trail; Matt and I tend to post about birds and bugs hoping that conservation is adequately addressed. It's hard to save a species when it has no habitat, but it's also important that we're just plain practical in our daily routine.

So here's our first Public Service Announcement - Water

Brain food from GOOD Magazine & Whole Foods:



Water conservation is a beautiful thing. We all know that leaving the water on while brushing teeth is a waste... but it's not often that we look at our food choices for water conservation ideas. As a former vegetarian of five years, I can attest to the difficulty of going veggie in Texas. But simply promoting vegetarian options at a restaurant by ordering something without meat is making a statement; and it supports the demand for fresh, flavorful options that aren't all peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.

Anyway, the above video made me a little bit braver in promoting the following video, which I finally found a translation for:





Since most Americans take one shower a day* (I'm stereotyping without citations here), there's one flush saved per day. That's only a few gallons. One of the comments posted for the video was this, from CraniumOnEmpty:

Brazilians take a lot of showers because of the heat and humidity. It would be hard to get through the day without taking at least two. Granted most showers are very quick so they don't use as much water as the toilet would. Since they are in the shower already, might as well take a leak and conserve a little water.

A simple, elegant solution. I'm still waiting for most residential areas to embrace gray water reuse, but that seems incredibly unlikely, given the stigma that hand-rinsing water is suddenly tarnished and not even the front lawn deserves such impure fare. Given that this is Texas, I'm pretty sure the lawn wouldn't care.

Thanks for braving the videos, we'll return you to your regularly scheduled blog program eventually!

so long and thanks

On Thursday afternoon, my wisdom teeth were excavated. With bleeding gums and liquid diet, my weekend has turned into catching up on the list of movies that I wouldn't otherwise be watching. I tend to average fewer than 5 movies per year, sometimes 1 of them being in theaters. This song from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy happened to strike a chord.



So Long & Thanks for All the Fish (the sing-along)

So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that grow (around you)
So long so long and thanks for all the fish

The world's about to be destroyed
There's no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the world dissolve (around you)

Despite those nets of tuna fleetes
We thought most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your pregnant women

So long so long, so long so long, so long so long, so long so long
So long so long, so long so long, so long so long, so long so long
So long so long and thanks for all the fish

If I had just one last wish
I would like a tasy fish
If we could just change one thing
We would all have learnt to sing

Come one and all
Man and mammal
Side by side in life's great gene pool

So long so long, so long so long, so long so long, so long so long
So long so long, so long so long, so long so long, so long so long
So long so long and thanks for all the fish

(lyrics from allthelyrics.com)


On the note of tasty fish, Matt et al have been absolutely wonderful in keeping me comfortable, fed and preoccupied. He even took a break from spouse-sitting and braved the ridiculously cold weather to run errands for me and fetch non-chew food items. Smoothies and soups and jello, oh joy! Still, I'm looking forward to eating sharp, crunchy objects again. Say, Amish peanut brittle, perhaps?

"There's A Hair In My Dirt"

Oh, Gary. Yesterday's mail included There's A Hair In My Dirt! A Worm's Story by Gary Larson. It came via Paperbackswap.com, which rocks my little world.



This is an absolute gem that must be read without a beverage, lest it be laughed out the nose. Laughing any beverage out of one's nose can be remarkably painful. Here's the wiki summary:

There's a Hair in My Dirt!: A Worm's Story is a short illustrated story of a worm who feels his life is insignificant. The main plot is told by the young worm's father and follows a beautiful maiden named Harriet, who takes a stroll across a woodland trail encountering different aspects of the natural world. She admires it, but knows little about the land around her, and that eventually leads to her downfall.

...so, yes, go forth and procure a copy to read the best bedtime story ever!

importance of the cartoon

We're quite aware that satire plays an important role in media. When it highlights human impact and causes us to think about our role in the environment, and at a very basic level, it borders on genius.

Melissa Packer correctly assumed that this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon would make my day. It is sheer brilliance. It is also something that looks like it fell right off of the VHEMT (Voluntary Human Extinction Movement) website.

Matt commented that trophy bucks aren't the entire population, the doe population should be well represented as well. Easier to shoot a lot of deer than to reintroduce cougars, wolves, coyotes, etc. right?

Back to the impact of cartoons.
One of the most influential cartoons of my youth was also a Calvin and Hobbes bit: it involves a dead bird, of course. Calvin's outlook is inquisitive and very insightful when it comes to human behavior and impacts and overall sense of the world. Somehow grown ups just don't get it. We've not learned.

Edit: the Calvin & Hobbes image link for the dead bird isn't working anymore, so until I can find a new link, here's the text from wiki -

Calvin: Look, a dead bird!
Hobbes: It must've hit a window.
Calvin: Isn't it beautiful? It's so delicate. Sighhh... once it's too late, you appreciate what a miracle life is. You realize that nature is ruthless and our existence is very fragile, temporary, and precious. But to go on with your daily affairs, you can't really think about that...which is probably why everyone takes the world for granted and why we act so thoughtlessly. It's very confusing. I suppose it will all make sense when we grow up.
Hobbes: No doubt.


So the irony of it all is that we go around shooting deer in the name of keeping their populations healthy, while our own population staggers under problems related to indulgence (greed as much as food). We discount the worth of our light-boned masters of flight and pass over dead birds with a blind eye and cling to status quo.

On the bright side, we can chuckle at other forms of demise instead (all from NOTFUNNY Cartoons):
dinosaurs
unicorns
gullible sheep

There are far too many awesome cartoons out there (NOTFUNNY is the English equivalent of NICHTLUSTIG, for all of you German speakers), but few have quite the significance of the first two shared. That said, Gary Larson's "The Far Side" has the lifeblood of ornithology, entomology, herpetology and sociology coursing through its panels. Now there's even a set of books, beyond "There's a Hair in my Dirt" (all of the aforementioned publications are on our wish list).

How do cartoons impact you? Any favorites? How have they changed who you are or how you see the world?

Birds of Britain

While I relish my last day of unemployment, let me share a gem of wisdom from the Look Around You series. Birds of Britain is not characteristic of their other films, but it is certainly no less amusing. I encourage watching all of their films at least once for the sake of it, and Birds of Britain on a regular basis, just because it's that awesome.

There's so much puzzling hilarity that you almost wish that a "backskipper" weren't strictly British fiction. Put down your beverages and enjoy!