For some reason, lots of junco nestlings and young fledglings really believe they can fly.
Sorry, little guys. You are definitely wrong about this.
BBAR can totally do this.
No?
I can fly!
3
Monthly Archives: March 2014
Why be shaped like a snake? (Also, weasels)
Here’s a puzzle: you’ve gone to all the bother to evolve fins, then limbs, and then even limbs with all these complicated joints and toes and whatnot—and then you lose them. Limbs all gone.
You’re just a head and a tail now. Why, corn snake, why?
This seems counterproductive, to say the least. Yet it isn’t just the snakes going in for the serpentine body plan: caecilians, amphisbaenians, and legless lizards lost their legs, too, and they aren’t evolved from snakes—these limbless animals all lost their limbs independently.
To understand how being snake-shaped might be adaptive, we’ll also consider some animals that are almost—but not exactly—snake-shaped: the mustelids, or weasels.
Least weasel. Photo by Sergey Yeliseev*
What we know about one nest
On July 1, 2013, we caught a female junco who we banded MABY.
MABY
An already-banded male, ARKM, seemed very upset about this. Sometimes juncos do hang around when we band their mates—it’s rather sweet to see them reunite when the banded birds are released—but ARKM’s behavior seemed different to me, so after we released MABY, I lurked behind a tree and watched.
Sure enough, ARKM went down to the ground: he had a nest.
ARKM and MABY’s nest, just under the rock.
Photos from a marine invertebrate biologist who shares half of my genes
My dad, as you already know, is no slouch at photographing terrestrial vertebrates.
American Robin fledgling. Photo by M. LaBarbera.
Chickaree. Photo by M. LaBarbera.
Field season 2013 moments in photos
I’ve started planning the upcoming field season in a serious way now—deciding on dates, interviewing potential field assistants. It’s made me think a lot about last field season, and about how much I haven’t yet found an opportunity to mention in this blog. So this post is just going to be a selection of memorable things that happened last field season, without any real theme but with lots of photos.
The most beautiful insect I’ve ever seen in person. It looked like a piece of enameled jewelry.
This nest had two chicks in it; when we took them out to band them, we found two unhatched eggs. The lighter one is a junco egg; the dark one is a cowbird egg. These juncos were lucky that the cowbird egg didn’t hatch!
Think like a scientist: check your sources
In scientific papers we are very strict about citing sources. Not only do we put a list of our references at the end of papers, but we also indicate which reference gave us which fact right there in the text: “junco fledglings have big fuzzy eyebrows (LaBarbera 2012).” This makes fact checking easy.
Scientists writing for the general public don’t usually do this. Depending on the form of a science-for-a-general-audience column, references may all be at the end only, or they may not be there at all. When researchers write about their own research without any citations, saying “My research shows…” and “Many studies have found…” but not actually citing them, it’s up to you to either blindly believe them (don’t do this) or to check their sources yourself. If they do good research, this shouldn’t be hard.
Sometimes a “research” column is like a coot: fine at first glance, but when you look close, really weird feet.
You know what I mean.
Tough Little Birds 