And now for something completely different. Here’s a fact I found surprising. Maybe you will, too.
Did you know that silver kills bacteria?
And even weirder: Did you know silver turns dead bacteria into zombies that kill more bacteria? Here’s how.
It sounds wonderful but silver isn’t useful in every situation. Read this Wikipedia article about the medical uses of silver before you use it.
Weird and wonderful.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original.)
Let’s go birding indoors!
Come to Carnegie Museum’s Section of Birds on Saturday, February 18 for a behind the scenes tour led by Collection Manager Stephen Rogers and other bird specialists (including myself).
Stephen manages both the Birds and Amphibians & Reptiles collections at the Carnegie, both ranked in the top ten collections in the North America. The Bird collection contains almost 190,000 specimens, most of which are preserved as study skins, but also includes skeletons, eggs, fluid specimens, mounts and other preparations. Steve is also a skilled scientific preparator and taxidermist who has prepared roughly 15,000 birds for the collection.
When: Saturday February 18. Walk-ins welcome 10:30am to 12:30pm at the Section of Birds office.
Where: Carnegie Museum of Natural History
4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
*** Come to the Section of Birds Office, midway along Bird Hallway on the 3rd floor. ***
Who: Anyone can walk in. (Please leave a comment below if you plan to attend so we can get a crowd estimate.)
Cost: There is no extra fee for this tour but there is an admission fee for the museum.
Free to museum members. Non-member rates are: Adults $19.95, Seniors (65+) $14.95, Students with ID and children 3-18 $11.95. Click here for details.
For directions and information about Carnegie Museum, see their website at www.carnegiemnh.org.
Hope to see you there!
p.s. The ivory-billed woodpecker pictured above is just one of the many specimens in the Section of Birds.
(photo by Kate St. John)
On a birding trip to Costa Rica:
While looking for birds in Costa Rica it’s impossible to ignore the magnificent butterflies. Though February is a slow time for them there are many wonders to see. Here are just three of Costa Rica’s 1,500 species.
The common blue morpho (Morpho peleides), pictured above, is one of 29 species in the Morpho genus. Huge and beautiful with a wingspan of 5 to 8 inches, its color comes not from pigment but from the blue light reflected by its dorsal scales. It hides from predators by closing its wings to show off its spotted brown ventral side (click here to see). In the rainforest it flashes blue — on and off — as it flaps its wings.
The glasswinged butterfly (Greta oto) has no problem hiding since most of its 2.2 – 2.4 inch wingspan is transparent. But does it need to hide? Perhaps not. Its caterpillar host plant is Cestrum, a member of the toxic nightshade family that probably makes these butterflies poisonous.
With an 8 inch wingspan the owl butterfly (Caligo memnon) is the largest in Costa Rica. It earned its name from the large ventral spot that looks like an owl’s eye, perhaps reinforced by its crepuscular habits. Its caterpillars feed on Heliconia and bananas, so this butterfly is sometimes considered an agricultural pest. Alas!
Butterflies are most plentiful in Costa Rica during the rainy season, June to November, so I’ll have to come back later if I want to see more.
Goodbye, butterflies. I’m flying home today.
(photos from Wikimedia Commons)
Day 10: Fly home
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On a birding trip to Costa Rica:
100 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs, North and South America were far apart and Costa Rica didn’t exist. Instead the oceans were connected by the Central American Seaway that flowed from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
The earth’s crust kept moving, as it still does today. The North American Plate drifted close to South America and two smaller tectonic plates smashed into each other at the site of Costa Rica (center of the diagram below). The Caribbean Plate still remains on top and the Cocos Plate continues to dive into the subduction zone.
Subduction zones are geologically active places with earthquakes and volcanoes. They often create archipelagos like Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Costa Rica began as a group of volcanic islands but the plates kept approaching and accrued land around them. Eventually a bridge formed at Panama 3 to 15 million years ago (the timing is disputed).
And then, three million years ago, mammals of all kinds began walking across the bridge from one continent to the other. Llamas walked out of North America into South America where they live today. Porcupines and armadillos walked north. The armadillos are still walking.
Today Costa Rica and Panama are narrow mountainous countries with enormous biodiversity for their size, not just because they’re in the tropics (where biodiversity is naturally high) but because they are the bridge, the mixing zone, where north meets south and both cross over.
Panama’s volcanoes are dormant but not so in Costa Rica. Recent ash eruptions from Turrialba Volcano, pictured above, closed San José’s airport in January.
Costa Rica started with volcanoes.
(image credits: Turrialba volcano and Central American plate tectonics from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals. Map of North and South America approaching each other is linked from Woods Hole Oceanus Magazine, April 2004)
Day 9: Forest trails at Cerro de la Muerte, return to San José
On a birding trip to Costa Rica:
This bird with unusually silky feathers is only found in the mountains of Costa Rica and western Panama.
The long-tailed silky-flycatcher (Ptiliogonys caudatus) is one of four birds that used to be in the Waxwings’ family. Like their former relatives, long-tailed silky-flycatchers eat fruit, flycatch for insects, and flock together in the non-breeding season. They also have a fondness for mistletoe berries just like North America’s only Silky-flycatcher, the phainopepla.
This blurry photo from Wikimedia Commons gives you an idea of how easy it is to find a long-tailed silky-flycatcher if you’re in the right habitat.
I think I’ll see one today. We’re birding at Cerro de la Muerte where these photos were taken.
(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals.)
Day 9: Forest trails at Cerro de la Muerte
On a birding trip in Costa Rica:
Today we’re traveling up-mountain to 7,000 feet above sea level to San Gerardo de Dota, the cloud forest home of the resplendent quetzal. This legendary trogon is the national bird of Guatemala and a must-see species for birders visiting Costa Rica.
Resplendent quetzals (Pharomachrus mocinno) live in moist, cool, mountain rainforests from southern Mexico to Panama where they eat fruits in the avocado family. Both sexes have iridescent green bodies but the male has a deep red breast, a helmet-like green crest, and a magnificent long green tail.
Their genus name, Pharomachrus, means long cloak and refers to the male’s “tail” which is actually four long upper tail covert feathers. At 30+ inches, they can be three times the length of the male’s body — so long that when he enters the nest hole his tail remains outside. In the photo above, a male is leaving the nest while his tail is still going in!
Legends of the resplendent quetzal date back to Mayan and Aztec cultures where he was considered the “god of the air” and a symbol of goodness and light. In Guatemalan legend the quetzal guided Tecún Umán in his fight against the Spanish conquistadors. When Tecún Umán died, the quetzal’s breast became red from his blood. The quetzal is also a symbol of freedom because he could not be kept in captivity, dying so quickly in a cage.
And so tomorrow I will have my fingers crossed, hoping to see this resplendent bird.
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(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)
Day 8: Traveling to San Gerardo de Dota
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On a birding trip in Costa Rica:
Back in 2011 I made a bird identification quiz that featured this bird because it looks cool and I’d never seen it before.
Today I’m in Costa Rica within this bird’s home range.
Follow the link below to figure out what bird this is.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)
(*) p.s. As I mentioned on Jan 27, I wrote this article before I left home so I couldn’t know if I’d see this bird. I’ll let you know when I get back.
Day 7: Las Cruces Field Station
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On a birding trip in Costa Rica:
Smaller than a golden-crowned kinglet this bird is actually a woodpecker!
His common name, piculet, is a double diminutive of the Latin word for woodpecker, picus. He’s distinguished from 27 other “little-little-woodpeckers” by his olive color so he’s “olivaceous.”
The olivaceous piculet (Picumnus olivaceus) moves among the trees like a nuthatch, using his tiny bill to dig out and eat ants, termites, beetles, and cockroach eggs.
He lives in a wide variety of habitats from Guatemala to northwestern Peru and is a specialty at the Esquinas Rainforest Reserve where we spent the day yesterday.
Like the golden-crowned kinglet, his name is longer than his body.
(photo by Neil Orlando Diaz Martinez, Bogotá, Colombia via Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)
Day 6: San Vito, Las Cruces Biological Station