Rigor Vitae: Life Unyielding

EXHIBITION IN THE GREATER NYC AREA

2011-12-20T14:28:00.000-08:00

BIODIVERSITY in the ART of CAREL PIETER BREST van KEMPEN is now up at the Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum in Oradell, New Jersey. The show includes 50 original paintings spanning over twenty years. If you'll be in the New York City area between now and the end of March, please consider visiting. Otherwise, you can see the show online. There will be a public reception at the museum on March 4th.

THE MOST VULNERABLE ONES

2011-09-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

Ninety-seven years ago this month, a pigeon named Martha died in the Cincinnati Zoo. She was the last member of a species that had numbered around 5 billion just a century earlier—the most abundant bird on the planet. Exterminated for its impact on agriculture and commercially hunted for food, the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was completely eradicated in a few decades with 19th century technology.. How was such a thing possible?

Three and a half years later, the same zoo lost another resident. “Inca” was the last Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), a notorious raider of orchards and another once plentiful species brought to extinction in surprisingly short order. These two birds certainly weren't the only animals to have been subjected to intense hunting pressures, which begs the question, why did they succumb? What enabled egrets to survive a similar onslaught during the seller's market for their plumes? Why do jackrabbits and pocket-gophers continue to thrive in the face of centuries of concerted efforts to effect their elimination?

Over the past few centuries, hundreds of species have fallen victim to the changes wrought by Humans. Very few of these, though, could have been called plentiful. What was it about the American Bison that made it possible to reduce its vast herds from 50 million to a few hundred individuals within a century? Last century, the US Government's program to eradicate Gray Wolves and Coyotes managed to wipe the former species from the lower 48 within 35 years while Coyotes, seemingly oblivious to the campaign, increased their numbers to fill the gap. What can explain this?

If you haven't yet figured out the common thread, it's that all of these creatures are extremely social. We all understand the advantages of societies, but they come with their liabilities, too. Obviously, living in social groups makes it possible for large numbers of animals to perish in a single event, but probably more important is the fact that social creatures are dependent on their societies. Once a society is fragmented beyond a certain point, it ceases to be viable. Ancient Roman generals understood this principle when they practiced decimation, the killing of ten percent of a newly conquered population, weakening the culture to the point that assimilation was possible. Fragment the society further and it becomes moribund.I contemplate these gregarious ghosts of the past as Utah's congressional delegation lobs the latest volley in the ongoing war over the Utah Prairie Dog (Cynomys parvidens), smallest and rarest of the five prairie dog species. It is restricted to parts of six counties in southwestern Utah, a region with one of the fastest-growing human populations in the country. Poisoning campaigns reduced an estimated 95,000 adults occupying 1,800 sq. km. in 1920 to a current population estimated at just under 8,000 adults occupying 28 sq. km. and falling. The IUCN lists the Utah Prairie Dog as endangered, but the USFWS, under the influence of agricultural lobbying, continues to list the species as threatened. Worst of all for the prairie dogs, they're extremely social.
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upper: Passenger Pigeon (1898) by J.G. Hubbard (public domain)
lower: White-tailed Prairie Dog (closest relative of the Utah Prairie Dog 2004) by CPBvK

TODAY'S LOGIC QUIZ

2011-09-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Matt from Florida phoned in to “Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio's weekday call-in show. The topic concerned the effects of government policies on hiring in the private sector. Here's the excerpted transcript of Matt's conversation with host Neal Conan:

MATT: I am a dock photographer, or I own the dock photography businesses down here on the marina. Two years ago - my last two didn't really count, with the oil spill. But three years ago, we had 72 days of snapper season, which is a busy time of the year. Almost every boat goes out and charter fishes. This year, we only had 48 days. So I had two less employees. We're 30 less days this year because of federal regulations.
CONAN: And that's presumably to prevent overfishing?
MATT: Presumably, yes. The fish were - have never been bigger, and have never been more plentiful as they have been this year. I actually went on a scientific mission with the Florida Wildlife - Fish and Wildlife here. And in an eight-hour trip, we caught 302 red snappers. I caught 50-some that day. These were all catch and release. But they were very plentiful out there. Hopefully, the science will catch up with the regulations soon enough. But, yes, directly because of federal regulations, I don't have two more employees for 30 extra days this year.

He wasn't called on it, but what's the critical error in Matt's thinking?

A transcript of the entire program can be found here.
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illustration: THREE MORE WORLDS--RAINBOW TROUT & OSPREY (2000) acrylic on illustration boards 30" x 20"

CONSERVATION vs. MANAGEMENT

2011-08-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

Forming good natural resource policies first requires looking to the future, and establishing what objectives we want to reach and what kind of outcomes we want to avoid. I like to divide the strategies we use to reach the goals we set into two categories: conservation and management. Conservation strategies seek to halt change to natural systems, while management manipulates those systems to try to reach an outcome. Where conservation is passive, management is active. Since these systems involve lots of chaos, conservation strategies are far safer: their outcomes are more predictable and less likely to backfire. As relative newcomers to planet Earth, our species has come to thrive in the ecological climate as it currently exists. It's fair to assume that any random change to that climate will be detrimental to us as a species. So the underlying principle of our policies should be one of conservation; i.e., mitigating change. This should be particularly easy for us, since we humans are the main agent of ecological change today.

Let's test these ideas against the two biggest management projects in recent U.S. History. In 1982, a meeting of the Raptor Research Foundation made the decision to trap the entire population of California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) and attempt to breed them intensively, with the ultimate goal of reestablishing a greater number of them in the wild. This was a bold and unprecedented scheme, but times were desperate; the total population of the species was a mere 22 birds. Ten years after the condor plan, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the same agency that had launched a successful campaign in 1914 to eradicate Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) from the United States, decided to replace them. When the first Canadian wolves were released in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley in 1995, the wolf population along the border was already on the increase. Having once been eliminated from the southern Canadian Rockies, they retook the area on their own, then advanced on the U.S. By the time the reintroduction began, 70 of them already called Montana home, with a few in northern Idaho as well.

Both projects have been huge, expensive, and far more successful than anyone could have hoped. Today, the California Condor population totals 384 birds, including 181 in the wild, two of which were hatched in the wild, while the number of Wolves in the U.S. Northern Rockies has topped an impressive 1,651. Continued careful management of both species can be expected, to keep wolves from interfering too much with Human interests, and simply to keep the Condors from collapsing.So how well do these reintroductions square with our underlying principle of conservation—of minimizing change? California Condors are relicts from a successful group of large, carrion-eating birds that dwindled from their Pleistocene zenith to a single North American species that probably numbered no more than a couple of thousand by the time Christopher Columbus set sail. The species has basically outlived its niche. Good arguments could be made on conservationist grounds both for the policy of saving the species or for allowing its natural demise. It's much harder to justify the Wolf reintroduction as a conservation project under these definitions. Both examples underscore an unavoidable contradiction: that change is a basic characteristic of nature, and every time we work to keep ecosystems from changing, we impede to some degree their normal adaptation to change. It can be tempting for wildlife managers to look for a template in centuries past, as in the “Rewilding” proposals of Josh Donlan and others, but ecosystems can no more go back in time than can we. There are no clear rules to guide us in our policies, and there is no way that nature is “supposed” to look. Our California Condor and Gray Wolf projects were not designed as routes to nature as it should be, but to nature as we decided we want it.
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upper: CALIFORNIA CONDOR (2007) acrylic 30" x 20"
lower: CALIFORNIA CONDOR (2004) oil 72" x 108"

REFECTIONS ON CONSERVATION, PART I: WHY CONSERVE?

2011-05-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

Cŏn-sērve', v. “to keep in a safe or sound state; to save, to preserve from loss, decay, waste, or injury; to defend from violation.” -Webster's Dictionary

At a recent public meeting, I was accused of caring more about tortoises than people. It wasn't the first time I'd had such charges leveled against me; in fact, it's the rare argument against conservation that leaves this rhetorical barb in the quiver. Of course, if it came down to an actual choice between the lives of tortoises and people (rather than between tortoises and the further enriching of a handful of fat-cats), I'd have to side with my own species. But the real fallacy of this accusation is that at its core, conservation is a practice based in self-interest.

Our sustenance-culture forebears engaged personally each day with the resources they consumed. To them, the conservation of nature was basic common sense. Those cultures that consumed resources faster than they could replenish themselves simply died out. It was a folly analogous to outspending our own weekly paychecks. In today's industrial world, most of us consume resources gathered from far away lands, and gauging the sustainability of their harvest is difficult. Still, by the Nineteenth Century, as the global population passed one billion, the alarming decline of the of the Northern Hemisphere's forests alerted visionaries like Henry David Thoreau and George Perkins Marsh to the need for a new conservation philosophy. This philosophy was informed by two assumptions: first, the undeniable fact that Humans, as facets of ecological systems, are dependent on those systems, and have a vested interest in their remaining healthy and operational, and that Humans have an intrinsic need—call it spiritual, biological or psychological—for nature. The ecologist Edward O. Wilson called it “biophilia.”

Since the days of Marsh and Thoreau, the Human population has expanded exponentially, more than doubling during my own lifetime, stressing the biological systems that ultimately support us all. In addition to increasing resource consumption, population growth exacerbates the non-consumptive displacement and stress caused by human activities, elevating innocuous enterprises to ecologically devastating ones. Adding to this is the increasing per capita rate of consumption, which is harder to assess. It's probably best measured with the closely related indicators of standard of living and economic growth, which are usually expressed with the soft metric of currency, but its rise over time has, if anything, exceeded that of population.Conventional wisdom has told us that economic growth will alleviate the problems of overpopulation and ecological degradation. Standard models predicted the Human population stabilizing at about 9 billion by the middle of this century. The latest U. N. study, just released on May 3, casts doubt on this assumption, predicting continued growth, and a population exceeding 10 billion before century's end. More dubious yet is the oft-cited idea that as poor countries become wealthier, the state of their ecological systems improves. While it's true that more efficient technologies become available to the masses with increased wealth, along with better education, which depresses fertility, most of the fuel for this hypothetical process comes from the historical fact that as their living standards improved, northern nations looking increasingly beyond their own shores for natural resources, relieving themselves of many of the downsides of resource extraction. This option will not be open to the currently developing world. Where the natural impact of Humans in wealthy countries is global, that of poor countries is local. While the ecologically devastating land-use practices of a few very poor nations like Madagascar skew the picture, the ecological health of the world's poor nations is inversely proportional to their wealth, just as the planet's total ecological health is inversely proportional to the overall wealth of its Human population: a sobering realization.As ecology defines how energy circulates among organisms, economics defines how wealth circulates among individuals, and the same principles govern both sciences. It's the outstripping of resource renewal by consumption-- that same paradigm we call “economic growth,” and are used to seeing as an amenity--that makes conservation necessary. Clearly, the primary goal of any conservation philosophy must be to reach a point of economic equilibrium. Planning a route to that equilibrium will cause hardship, but failing to plan for it will ensure that same hardship in spades. Those of us in wealthy countries have the most power to act for the ultimate good of all, and each of us as individuals must decide how much of the burden we're willing to shoulder. It's not for the tortoises, it's for ourselves.

Next up in the series: Conservation vs. Management
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upper: DESERT TORTOISES (2008) acrylic 20" x 30"
center: Graph from Wikimedia, adapted by CPBvK
lower: BIOPHILIA--WESTERN LOWLAND GORILLA & CRESTED CHAMELEON (2001) acrylic 20" x 15"

...DROP TOGETHER

2011-01-09T15:59:00.000-08:00

While walking home yesterday, I noticed a dark, cylindrical form teetering on the sidewalk's edge. The fresh carcass of a European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) was cool but still limp. Finding one of these common birds dead under its perch after a very cold night is hardly surprising, yet my thoughts turned immediately to Beebe, Arkansas and the dead blackbirds that we've all heard so much about. That was a surprising story that gave us all a new context through which to view something like this single unfortunate starling. It's only natural to make connections about such things, and connections we've been making. Newspapers reported a separate accident on January 3rd that befell another mixed flock of Red-winged Blackbirds in Louisiana, as well as what appears to have been around 100 dispersed, unrelated bird deaths in Kentucky. These were just the first of many to come. Accounts of the numbers and species have varied wildly. Reported bird deaths in Manitoba have ranged from 400 to “tens of thousands.” Dead corvids in Falköping, Sweden seem to number around 100. Add to this reports of fish die-offs--100,000 Freshwater Drums in the Arkansas River and 2 million fish of various species in the Chesapeake Bay--and you've got plenty of potential connections to make. I've been trying hard to make some of my own, but to no avail.

Most of these stories seem like the starling I found: mundane events that would normally merit little more than a shoulder shrug. The limited supply of reliable information makes it hard to piece together what caused these various deaths, but a common thread is hard to conjure. The Louisiana incident appears to have been a single accident that befell a flock of birds, as does another near Tyler, Texas. During the winter, blackbirds and many other bird species live at high density. In such a flock there's safety, but a disaster can take a staggering toll. Cold weather is deadly for birds as well, especially ones that aren't in the best of health to begin with. Only a small percentage of the birds that hatch each year survive to the next summer, and many, if not most of these deaths occur during winter cold snaps. I don't suspect that the dispersed Manitoba deaths fall outside of normal winter events. Like Tarzan said, “Life in jungle no bowl of cherries.” Cold weather, winter flocking and West Nile Virus seem a likely explanation for Sweden's dead Jackdaws. For now, I'm assuming that the phenomenon we're witnessing is not an ecological, but a psychological and social one.

That's also the line that Wildlife authorities are taking in articles like this one. They explain the cause of the Arkansas die-off as firework-shy birds panicking and flying into objects. Here, though, I think their confidence is overstated. Most birds, including blackbirds, employ a unique type of flapping, approaching a hover, when flying blind. Typically they will fly in circles, rising for a while before gently descending to a crash landing. The blind flight of a blackbird is nowhere near the 25 mph cited in the article. I wouldn't expect more than a handful of deaths from a thousand frightened, blindfolded blackbirds charging into a brick wall. Judging from the numerous accounts, the Beebe flock sustained losses of around 10%, maybe more. It's difficult for me to imagine this effect from a dozen fireworks, even if they all exploded in the middle of the flock. I used to work at Tracy Aviary, which is located in a park in the heart of Salt Lake City. For years, despite our annual protests, the city launched its 4th of July fireworks and the even bigger 24th of July fireworks right next to the aviary. The birds were subjected to around a half-hour long barrage, the entirety of which they spent smashing themselves against the walls and wires of their enclosures. Unlike the wild blackbirds, they were unable to escape the source of their anxiety, but losses were invariably below 1%, excluding broken and unincubated eggs and young birds that became hypothermic when their brooding parent left them. Birds in large flight cages that could potentially reach high speeds fared much better than birds in smaller enclosures, which were frequently battered, but rarely killed.

It seems likely to me that fireworks were what launched the Beebe birds from their roosts, but I think there must have been at least one secondary factor involved, although I can't offer any good suggestions. An updraft could have carried them high into a storm where rapid decompression, high-altitude hail, or perhaps just cold wet conditions did them in, or a strong crosswind could have increased their speed to the point that the wildlife management explanation becomes more credible—who knows? The Arkansas State Veterinarian stated that the birds his office necropsied showed no damage except for internal hemorrhaging. This was inferred as being caused by “blunt force trauma,” a phrase that has been picked up as the cause of death in most subsequent accounts.

Perhaps the Beebe deaths will forever remain a mystery, but for now I see no evidence of a single epidemiological, toxicological or any kind of logical factor that that has caused these deaths, or even that there have been an unusually high number of them in the past week. Nonetheless, as varied reports of mass Turtle Dove deaths in Italy flow in, I can't help but continue to try to draw those connecting lines.
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illustration: WORKING THE FLOCK--MERLIN & STARLINGS (1988) acrylic 30" x 20"

TECHNOLOGY OFFERS HOPE FOR CURBING CLIMATE CHANGE

2010-11-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

Just a few examples in honor of all the delegates who've jetted down to Cancun to pretend there's an agreement to hammer out...

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images ripped off from the internet by CPBvK

THE CONTINUING SPREAD OF WHITE-NOSE SYNDROME

2010-04-22T13:57:00.000-07:00

Bat Conservation International has released a map (above) showing the current distribution of White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), which appears to be devastating New England colonial bat populations. The disease has now spread into 12 states, and north into Quebec and Ontario. It's crept west to Missouri and south to Tennessee, where it has been confirmed at a cave in Great Smoky Mountain National Park that hosts the state's largest colony of endangered Indiana Bats (Myotis sodalis), a species of special vulnerability, since 85% of its known population hibernates in just 7 caves.
In February 2006, bats in a hibernaculum near Albany, New York were found with a crust of white fungus on their face and wings. The fungus was originally identified as belonging to the genus Fusarium, a group primarily associated with plant disease, but including vertebrate pathogens as well. At the height of the Cold War, both the U.S. and Soviet Union conducted biological warfare research with Fusarium fungi. In 2008, it was determined to belong to another fungal family altogether, and was ascribed to the genus Geomyces. Last year, it was identified as a new species: G. destructans.

By February of '07, several infected hibernacula were identified in the area. Within a year, White Nose Syndrome had spread to most of the known hibernacula in New York, and into Vermont and Massachusetts. Mortality of affected bats at these sites has been 90 – 97%, but it is not known how many, if any, survivors made it through the summer. Whether the fungus is the cause of a fatal disease or just an opportunist associated with an unidentified pathogen is also unknown. Afflicted bats exhibit radical behavior change, including increased winter activity. They often fly about the cave entrance, even leaving it to flutter about in broad daylight on a frigid winter day. Not surprisingly, necropsied bats have shown depleted fat stores. The disease could be directly responsible for this, or it could be the result of increased activity and inability to find food, or both. Is the activity caused by hunger or vice versa? It's possible that the pathogen interferes with the bats' ability to thermoregulate. In the winter of "06 -'07, an infected bat was taken into captivity, fed up, and released in spring, which suggests that it may be possible for bats to fight the infection if their condition is sufficiently raised. Some articles have blamed global warming, but there is no basis for this. Within the affected sites, all cave-hibernating species have been found to be affected, except the Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus) and the Eastern Small-footed Myotis (M. leibii). The latter species, listed by New York state as a species of special concern, hibernates in different sections of the hibernacula, and work is underway to establish if they are infected; it's assumed that they are. Some dead bats have been found without the fungus, and fungus has been collected from asymptomatic bats. Last year, G. destructans was found on an otherwise asymptomatic Greater Mouse-eared Bat (Myotis myotis) in France, suggesting that there may be more to WNS than a simple fungal infection. Preliminary findings suggest that immune functions of infected bats may be significantly impaired. Like Chytridiomycosis in frogs, White Nose Syndrome is a darkened room with far more questions than answers, and the potential of real ecological devastation. Disinfection and general behavioral guidelines (similar to the ones established in 2007 for Chytridiomycosis) are being hammered out for biologists and spelunkers. Nine universities and a number of state and federal wildlife and health agencies are involved in studying WNS, along with a number of independent researchers. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Indiana Bat Recovery Team is overseeing distribution of funds.
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upper: Map from Bat Conservation International
lower: Spotted Bat (2007) acrylic on illustration board 20" x 30"

SOME CONSERVATION NEWS

2010-03-10T09:22:00.000-08:00

A couple of recent news items caught my eye, one with profound conservation implications, the other without. The Department of Interior has been considering listing the Greater Sage Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus - above) under the Endangered Species Act, and last Friday it announced its decision. Beyond their spectacle and interesting biology, Sage Grouse are notable for being completely dependent on the sagebrush steppes that covered much of the western United States until recently. As livestock grazing, development and extractive industries degraded these communities, a population of around 16 million birds has dwindled to well under 5% of that number today. Halting the grouse decline means maintaining healthy, virgin sagebrush habitat and disallowing the practices, essential to continual economic growth, that destroy them. The situation is a microcosm of the global conservation situation: meaningful conservation and the paradigm of continued economic growth are incompatible. This incompatibility is the metaphorical elephant in the sitting room of public conservation discourse. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar's limp-wristed decision last Friday, to assign the Sage Grouse “warranted but precluded” status (meaning essentially that the bird deserves protection, but won't get it, although its status will be re-reviewed annually), is a clear sign that moneyed interests will continue their reign and the DOI intends to continue denying that elephant. For more on sage brush ecology and conservation, see here, here, here, and here.

The second story describes the rediscovery of the “extinct” Australian Yellow-spotted Bell Frog (Litoria castanea – above), which hadn't been seen since 1980. Six tadpoles were collected and transferred to the Taronga Zoo near Sydney, where a captive propagation effort will be implemented. This species and several close relatives, all found in the southeastern quadrant of the continent, are rather hard to untangle taxonomically. The whole complex has seen a rather steep population decline in recent years, the causes of which are not clear, although chytridiomycosis has been implicated, as have chemical pollutants and invasive Gambusia fish. The Yellow-spotted Bell Frog's small range in the highlands of SE Australia is not well-studied, and contrary to the popular press implication, it was never declared extinct because the possibility of this news has always been considered very real. The discovery of this population, and the hope it represents for survival of this species, while happy news, tells us nothing about the broader picture of worldwide frog decline.
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upper: WINTER SAGE GROUSE (1989) acrylic 14" x 14"
lower: Photo of Litoria castanea by AP, lifted from the Internet

MASTERWORKS IN MINIATURE

2010-03-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

The time has come, once again, for one of the country's biggest sale exhibitions of small artworks. Masterworks In Miniature opens tomorrow, March 5th at Gallery One in Mentor, OH. Among the 150 or so paintings on view will be my Red-breasted Paradise Kingfisher (above).
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illustration: RED-BREASTED PARADISE KINGFISHER (2010) acrylic 10" x 8"

OPEN LABORATORY 2009

2010-02-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

I'll say it again: the paucity of good mainstream science journalism is more than regrettable. Science blogs represent the best source for intelligent assessment of science news, but sorting the good ones from the bad can be a trick. So I was pleased to serve as a judge for the latest Open Laboratory, a compendium of the best science blogging of 2009. It's now available in print for $14.50 or as a pdf download for $7.50.

A BACKWARDS STEP FOR THE CALIFORNIA CONDOR

2010-02-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Few species have been featured on this blog more than California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus). There is no better school for conservation than the struggle over the past few decades to find a way to support these birds on a continent that no longer harbors much of a home for them. The recent trend has been a hopeful one; from a mere 22 individuals in the early '80s, a concerted management program has lifted the tally to nearly 350, over half of which live free in a sort of 3/4-wild state.

Some bad news arrived yesterday, of the recent deaths of three members of the Arizona population. All three had succumbed to lead poisoning, a persistent plague in the region. The entire population was trapped and subjected to chelation therapy a few years ago, but obviously, more needs to be done. The Arizona and Utah Departments of Fish & Wildlife are stepping up efforts to change the habits of local hunters, including handing out coupons for free non-toxic ammunition.
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illustration: CALIFORNIA CONDOR (2008) acrylic 30" x 20"

BAD RAPTORS

2010-02-18T09:57:00.000-08:00

One of my perennially favorite themes is the taking of outsize quarry by predatory birds. I was recently alerted to a couple of nice documentations, the first describing an apparent case of a Spectacled Owl (Pulsatrix perpicillata) preying on a Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus) that had come to the ground to defecate. Spectacled Owls are common through most of tropical America, although I've never found a nest nor handled one in captivity and have little knowledge of their behavior. They're medium-sized forest owls that I've always assumed subsisted mostly on lizards, arthropods and mouse-sized mammals. A grounded three-toed sloth is hardly an imposing foe (unlike its rather distant cousins the two-toed sloths), but the taking of anything that big by a Spectacled is quite surprising to me.

Our second link documents an attemped predation on a White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) by a Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), featuring some great shots accompanied by somewhat less great commentary, said to have been taken in Illiniois, of all places. While this behavior isn't typical, it's far from unheard of. It can't be denied that Golden Eagles are very powerful and effective predators. I have spent many hours watching wild Golden Eagles and have watched them hunt many different types of quarry. Some day I hope to witness something like this in person.While on the subject of large prey, I received an email yesterday with a series of photographs showing a Black-headed Python (Aspidites melanocephalus) swallowing what appears to be a dull-colored Gould's Monitor (Varanus gouldii). The email identified the location as Cloudbreak, Arizona, although it's clearly Australia. These photos may not be new, but they were of special interest to me, since they illustrate a situation similar to the one I painted in 1994 for the cover of Brian Kend's Pythons of Australia. My painting was criticized for showing the snake applying its belly to the prey instead the sides of its body. Some of the photographs, like the one in the upper left, clearly show the python using its sides, while in others the belly is against the prey. The entire photo series appears to show the process at a later stage than my painting (the prey seems to have already been killed in the former), but hope remains that Kend's book cover may actually be somewhat accurate.
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upper: SPECTACLED OWL (2009) acrylic 10" x 8"

TRUTH AND ART

2010-02-17T22:01:00.000-08:00

I was asked the other day about the veracity of the cover of my book, Rigor Vitae. The painting (above) shows a trio of African Softshell Turtles (Trionyx triunguis) startled from their perch atop the back of a Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) that appears to be lurching in a threatening way towards an unknown target. So how representative of reality is this painting?

I can best answer this question be retracing my thinking in its conception. The adjectives that spring to mind when I think of softshell turtles are: active, fast, graceful, and above all, intelligent (as turtles go). The species T. triunguis is one of the smartest of the bunch; observations in both wild and captive specimens have shown they can spend over half their waking time engaged in play behavior. Even though this consists of underwater, hunting-related exercises, the knowledge inspired me to approach the piece with an air of whimsy.

In my work, I nearly always try to deal with truths of natural history, but different truths call for different approaches. More often than not, the approach is a direct sort of story-telling that's not difficult to understand. When I invent a situation I've never seen nor heard of, biological credibility is an important consideration. The initial idea of this painting, African Softshells basking on a Hippo, is just such a situation, and the placing of my protagonists on that platform was done with a clear conscience. Although they spend a great deal of time basking, I don't feel that this static activity defines softshells' essence well at all. The painting called for fury and for speed, so I set the whole thing in motion, in that instant of my initial basking concept's irrevocable replacement with an absent hippo and the turtles returned to their brisk native depths. Caught in midair, the main subject's placement strains the limits of credibility, especially considering the fact he'd be more likely to favor a quick downward slide. In placing him, I tried to find the highest conceivable point such a reptile could reach if all factors of friction and inertia could be favorably aligned. The entire composition is built around enforcing the painting's movement: the surface ripples, the Papyrus stems, the flock of St. Helena Waxbills, and a mysterious arc of water all cooperate in a scene theoretically possible, yet so unlikely as to disqualify it as an illustration of animal behavior. But is it a betrayal of my “natural history truth” objective? I answer with a firm “No.” Exaggerated, contrived and skewed, I could never create a painting containing more truth about African Softshells.

Anthropomorphism is a present danger whenever engaging in such exaggeration. My rule of thumb is to take care when when comparing a non-human's behavior to my own, but when the situation is reversed to throw caution to the wind. Emotions and instincts are identical in some cases, analogous in the rest, and indulging instincts accords a certain satisfaction. In Call of the Monsoon (above), a Couch's Spadefoot (Scaphiopus couchii) rises from subterranean summertime torpor to feed and breed in the monsoon moisture. Again, the subject's position here is anatomically possible, yet not typical, even a bit exaggerated: a bit like a purring cat. The intent is to stretch the immediate truth a bit to express a greater truth than a photographic representation could, without falling into the mire of anthropomorphism.
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upper: HIPPOPOTAMUS & NILE SOFTSHELL TURTLES (1995) acrylic 20" x 30"
lower: CALL OF THE MONSOON--COUCH'S SPADEFOOT (1996) acrylic 18" x 12"

A COLD LOOK AT GLOBAL WARMING Part i

2010-02-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

WHO PUT THE "GATE" IN THE CLIMATEGATE?Memories of the Copenhagen climate summit have dissipated with the contrails of the jets carrying the delegates back home, but the public discourse continues. For now we put the important talk on hold in favor of a silly strawman: the debate over climatological data. Special thanks to my right-wing pals D, J and S for keeping me abreast of the latest articles, blog posts and email forwards making the case that the evidence showing a general anthropogenic warming of the earth over the past 50 years is a hoax, disingenuously cobbled together by various entities of bad intent. Over the past year, I've studied their arguments, and regret to report that it's pretty weak stuff, misunderstanding the research at best, but more often intentionally misrepresenting it to support the preconceived resolution that the earth's climate is not warming, and even if it was, it wasn't caused by humans, and even if it was, it would make things better, not worse. I have a few arguments with the major voices on the other side, too, and will voice those in future posts, but for now, let's ask how we can get past this argument and why we haven't yet.

Any discussion of climate change has policy implications, and it's only natural for one's political desires to color one's sight. Also, climatology is a difficult science to understand, involving lots of sophisticated statistics, and understanding it takes some work. Most science is sort of like looking at a yard through a picket fence; you can get a fairly good idea of what's back there, but you have to make some assumptions about what you can't see, some of which will likely be wrong. Looking through a single gap will yield a false impression. It can be tempting to consider each gap, seeking the one that best represents your assumptions about the yard, but that's a sure recipe for self-delusion. Only by taking them all into consideration will you approach a true understanding. Last, the sad paucity of good science journalism makes it extremely hard for us layfolks to keep up. I keep waiting for Science or Nature or even the Journal of Applied Meteorology to turn up on the racks at the local Barnes & Noble, to no avail. Peer-reviewed science journals, like Medieval bibles, are not meant for proletariat eyes.

As an example of mainstream science journalism at its worst, I offer a tidbit from last Sunday's Daily Mail, the UK's 2^nd most widely-read daily paper. It describes a BBC interview with Phil Jones, the director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), the group whose emails were hacked and made public on the eve of the international climate summit in Copenhagen. For those interested in wading through them, the emails can be accessed here. The evidence in these emails has been heralded as a “smoking gun,” proving the following wrongdoing by CRU researchers:

1. Attempting to bar research conflicting with their own from peer-reviewed journals.
2. Hiding incriminating evidence.
3. Manipulating data showing a cooling trend to make that trend disappear.

Without going into depth, I'll just say that #1 was clearly discussed, although there's no evidence any action was ever taken. The evidence for #2 looks fairly damning—exactly what was deleted and what, if any, rules were broken remains unclear, at least to me. Jones says it was done out of frustration with a deluge of FOI requests that were impeding the actual work of the laboratory. The evidence for #3 is extremely weak, and can be interpreted in many ways. Overall, “Climategate,” as it's been dubbed, falls far short of discrediting any of the CRU's work, much less climatology in general.

I hope you can take the time to read the Daily Mail article along with the original interview it claims to describe.

While the Daily Mail headline states that Dr. Jones “admits there has been no global warming since 1995,” what he clearly says is that the data for that period are insufficient to make statistical sense of. Imagine a white wall with three small chips in its paint. Two chips show blue paint underneath, one shows red paint. Your data suggest that more of the wall is blue than red, but you have no idea what the true ratio is. This is the climatologist's dilemma. The CRU data appear to suggest a small warming trend from 1995 to the present and a small cooling trend from 2002 to the present, but they have no idea what color that wall is. (Data from other groups, such as the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, show slightly higher temperatures, but are still statistically insignificant when isolated). The Daily Mail article also misrepresents Jones' statements about the “Medieval Warming Period” as well as incorrectly suggesting that the CRU's surface temperature data were used to assemble the paleoclimatic model represented in the famous IPCC “hockey-stick graph.”

It's hard to attribute the libelous errors in this article to a writer's inability to understand his subject. This isn't journalism, it isn't opinion. It's propaganda intended not to enlighten but to deceive. It's disheartening to see more and more of this from mainstream news organizations, and to realize that more eyes will read the bogus Daily Mail story than the interview it misrepresents. Climatologists simply try to understand the systems they study; it's plain to see from which side the real climatology hoax is perpetrated.
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illustration: LESSER FLAMINGOS (2005) oil on canvas 72" x 96"

HAPPY 201ST, CHUCK DARWIN

2010-02-12T18:17:00.000-08:00

At a party a couple of weeks back, I got into a discussion with an “evolution skeptic,” who trotted out that aggravating old line that evolution was only a “theory.” He, it seemed, was holding out for the day that the theory would be passed into “law.” This inspired me to offer a humble birthday present to good old Charles Darwin on his 201^st birthday: A very quick, very unsophisticated primer on the difference between theory and a law. A law is basically an observation of nature, and a theory explains an observation. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation described the force of gravity, and his Theory of Gravitation, which has largely been superseded by Einsteins Theory of General Relativity, attempted to explain it. In this manner, the Law of Evolution could be stated that organisms change morphologically over time. Darwin's Theory of Mutation and Natural Selection explains the mechanics of that change. Theories don't become laws, they modify them. Class dismissed.

Illustrating this post is a new painting of a Red-bellied Paradise Kingfisher (Tanysiptera nympha), one of six members of a New Guinean complex of streamer-tailed forest birds. It was in this region that Alfred Russell Wallace saw such simple island speciation and began to understand how it worked, just as speciation on the Galapagos awakened Darwin to the same ideas.
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illustration: RED-BELLIED PARADISE KINGFISHER (2010) acrylic on clay board 10" x 8"

WYETH'S DEADLY SINS

2010-01-28T19:06:00.000-08:00

Jamie Wyeth doesn't have a clue what it's like not to be immersed in art. He grew up in the studio of his father, Andrew Wyeth, one of the artists whose work defined 20th century American art, which itself lay in the shadow of another legendary studio, that of his grandfather, N.C. Wyeth. Even so, the credit for his own artistic stature belongs to him alone. Of course his famous family made possible his early professional success, but even as a teenager his technical skills were immense, and to the most casual observer it's obvious that his work is the result of a lifetime of serious toil.

So it was a privilege for me to attend last night's opening of his new exhibition, “Seven Deadly Sins,” where he dressed up that tired old Catholic concept in gull's garb. Living in coastal Maine, Wyeth has drawn and painted gulls all his life, and it shows. Each piece (the exhibition consists entirely of gull portraiture in mixed media) is drafted and painted with supreme confidence. Seven of them form the base of the show—each one representing one of the famed sins: Anger, Gluttony, Lust, Envy, Sloth, Greed and Pride. These are painted on handmade paper and floated upon a slightly larger sheet painted with fluorescent lobster-trap buoy paints, effectively rimming each image with a harsh suggestion of hellfire. Seven more gull portraits complement the show, and a large corrugated cardboard piece, Inferno, anchors the whole in place.
In a formal discussion with curator Michael Komanecky last night, Wyeth spoke of the conception of his idea, watching gulls and imagining these medieval principles reflected in their behavior. He described them as “nasty” birds, saying, “they're not doves!” (Of course, doves are not doves, either.) This is where my problems with the exhibition lay, and I couldn't help regard it with the eyes of a naturalist along with those of an artist. The anachronistic list of seven sins is a silly and useless tool for humans, not to mention other vertebrates. Gandhi updated the list with his own, more sophisticated version:

-Wealth without Work
-Pleasure without Conscience
-Science without Humanity
-Knowledge without Character
-Politics without Principle
-Commerce without Morality
-Worship without Sacrifice

Better for people, but try to characterize these principles using gull portraits.

There's a long tradition in western thought, beginning with the expulsion from paradise, that nature is something base, to be overcome--that we should yearn for a system where “the lion will lie down with the lamb.” As the “War on Terrorism” creates an international terrorist movement, this “red in tooth and claw” view of a corrupt natural world is corrupting the natural world, and by overlaying his beautiful exhibition with this philosophically lightweight theme, Wyeth undermined the whole to a regrettable degree. Of course, none of the seven sins are sinful in themselves*, only in certain contexts, and the only way to find “sin” outside of human culture is by such lowest-common-denominator reduction.

That said, the paintings are wonderful, and should be seen. The show runs through May 22nd at the Salt Salt Lake Art Center. Admission is free, and a decent, reasonably-priced catalog of the show is available.

*(well, maybe greed)
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upper: GREED (2008) by Jamie Wyeth, mixed media on handmade paper 34.5" x 24.5"
lower: photo of Michael Komanecky and Jamie Wyeth by CPBvK

YET ANOTHER TIME-LAPSE CLIP

2010-01-22T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here's my last time-lapse clip for a while. This one's a vertically-oriented diptych. Each panel depicts a different viewpoint of the same event, and illustrates some of the common evasive strategies employed by frogs. The Brilliant Forest Frog (Rana warszewitschii) inhabits rain forests from Honduras to Panama. When resting upon leaf litter, its drab dorsal colors are cryptic, but bright yellow spots on its thighs flash when it leaps, and a glimpse of its brilliant underside is even more likely to startle and confuse a predator. Upon disappearing beneath the water's surface, it usually follows a wild, zig-zag course, ending up some distance from where the naïve viewer might anticipate. This painting's antagonist, the Agami Heron (Agamia agami), ranges through most of Tropical America, but does not occur in great numbers anywhere and is infrequently seen. Long of neck and short of leg, it haunts streams within heavy forests and feeds upon small fish and amphibians. Incidental subjects in this painting include a water strider (Gerris sp.), damsel fly naiads (family Coenagrinionidae) and a White-necked Puffbird (Notharchus macrorhynchus).

REVIEWING ATRAZINE

2010-01-18T13:41:00.001-08:00

I've never been much for handing petitions around; in general it's not a very effective way of solving problems. I'm making an exception today, though.

I've blogged more than once about the herbicide Atrazine, 80 million pounds of which are applied in the US each year. It is the commonest chemical pollutant in ground and surface water, where it can persist for over fifteen years. A powerful endocrine disruptor, it feminizes and sterilizes frogs and other wildlife and reduces immune function. It has been shown to cause prostate and breast cancer in laboratory rodents, and studies suggest it poses similar threats to humans. In the US, Atrazine is mostly used on corn, less than 2% of which is used for human consumption. Most studies have shown Atrazine to increase corn yields by 0-2%.
The EPA is currently reviewing their policies on Atrazine. The last such review, in 2003, included over 50 closed-door meetings with Syngenta, Atrazine's manufacturer. Please take a moment to click this link, read and sign this petition to join with US farmers calling on EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to hold a fair and open review that represents the interests of American farmers and families – not Syngenta.
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illustration: RIPARIAN RASHOMON--AGAMI HERON & BRILLIANT FOREST FROG (2009) acrylic diptych 15" x 20"; 15" x 20"

2010-01-18T13:27:00.002-08:00

Here's the whole series of holiday cards I started back in '89. It's all over now -- from here on out I'll have to depend on Hallmark.

THIS YEAR'S HOLIDAY CARD

2009-12-12T11:01:00.001-08:00

For several years now, I've rendered a pen-and-ink drawing to use as a holiday card each year (I missed a few). The series ends with this image: a selection of woodpeckers from around the world. The first person who can identify all twelve species will receive a dozen of these cards to use as they see fit (offer ends Tuesday, December 15th). I'll post the entire series, one per day.

ANOTHER TIME-LAPSE PAINTING CLIP

2009-07-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

Eastern Painted Turtle

THE MANDATORY FOURTH OF JULY POLITICAL POST

2009-07-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

As in much of the country, conservatives are throwing “Tea Parties” here today in protest of what they see as irresponsible spending of federal funds. I'm sympathetic with the basic gist of their gripe and agree that only fools spend their money faster than they earn it (such behavior, of course, is always temporary). I notice though, that the loudest voices are the same ones shouting “drill baby drill,” and can't for the life of me figure how they reconcile their monetary and natural resource policies. However much you love it, the former is the abstract element of the two, and is wholly dependent on the latter. Despite my sympathy with the conservatives' denouncing our living beyond our financial means, I'm still more inclined to protest our using up our real resources faster than they're replenished. At this point it would be appropriate to post a Bald Eagle painting, but I've never painted one. Another big endemic American bird will have to do. Happy Fourth of July!
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illustration: CALIFORNIA CONDOR (2008) acrylic 30" x 20"

ART OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM XIV

2009-06-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

Today, Saturday, June 13th, The Bennington Center for the Arts will host the opening of their annual exhibition of animal art, Art of the Animal Kingdom. This year's Special Guest Artist is the newly-Canadianized Terry Isaac who will give a presentation at 11 in the morning. It promises to be entertaining and enlightening, but that's just too early for me. The exhibition,which is accompanied by a full-colored catalog, runs through July 26th.
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illustration: RUFFED LEMUR & PANTHER CHAMELEON (2007) acrylic 18" x 24"

WILDLIFE ART JOURNAL

2009-06-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

Back in 1988, when I decided to try to make it as an animal painter, my work had never been shown in public and I was as ignorant of the outside world of wildlife art as it was of me. The task of changing that reality seemed daunting, but I had a secret weapon at my disposal. Wildlife Art News was a bi-monthly periodical that featured articles about artists, exhibitions and the natural world. Like most of its ilk, it was almost offensively shy about being offensively denigrating, but I couldn't have asked for a better window through which to peer and plan my attack. New clues to understanding this world were offered with each issue and myriad opportunities for the aspiring wildlife artist were enumerated before me. Before long, the whole staff became good friends, both professionally and personally. Without the nice coverage they gave my work, I would likely be scrubbing urinals instead of typing this post. In the early oughts, the publisher, Bob Koenke, retired and sold the magazine, which moved from being a labor of love to one of commerce, and ultimately mailed out its final issue in the summer of '07.

After nearly two years of absence, frequent Wildlife Art News contributor Todd Wilkinson has launched an online journal to fill its vacant niche. Todd, whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Christian Science Monitor, etc., and has published a number of books, including Science Under Siege, expects this new publication, WILDLIFE ART JOURNAL, to be broader in scope than was its predecessor. He hopes to showcase more iconoclastic artwork from artists working in every part of the globe. So far, it appears to be off to a nice start.
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illustration: LANJAK DAWN (2009) acrylic 20" x 30"

FALCONER ON THE EDGE

2009-05-07T11:29:00.001-07:00

I grew up in Emigration Canyon, Utah, which, 15 years earlier, had been a small, rural, working-class town with a distinctive culture. Fifteen years later and it would become a rich bedroom community that would all but extirpate that old culture. The community I knew seemed much closer to the former than the latter, but that could have been because I naturally gravitated towards those elements. One of those distinctive cultural peccadilloes was falconry, a practice that many local boys indulged in. More often than not, it was a passing fancy, but for a number of us, the rare privilege of developing close personal relationships with complex, wild predators led to insight and obsession that would shape the rest of our lives. None of us were quite like Steve Chindgren, though. His passion for falconry and his drive to excel in it reached an almost absurd level. By the time he was 20, he was hawking game more successfully than most, and 37 years later, it's probably safe to say that no person alive has taken more wild game with falcons.

Meanwhile, in upstate New York, writer Rachel Dickinson was trying to understand her falconer husband's own obsessions. She decided to contact a second falconer – a stranger – and study him as her own subject, get to know him, write about him, and hopefully, grow to understand falconry. She couldn't have picked a better subject when she called Steve, and this book is the result of her journey.

It's an odd experience to read a book about a good friend whom you've known all your life. Dickinson draws a portrait that's quite accurate, though. I spotted a few factual errors, but they're pretty insignificant ones. (For example, two long-dead Gyrfalcons, one gray and the other dark-phased, are both described as “white.”) A number of different routes were available to an author seeking to write a book about a complicated guy like Steve, and, although she touches a number different topics (his efforts at Sage Grouse conservation and raptor breeding, his feuds with the law, and how falconry has molded him philosophically), Dickinson seems mostly interested in how the sport has affected his life, both professional and, especially, familial, and how he and his wife and daughters have worked around it. My own preference would have put a tighter focus on Steve's philosophy, and the supreme paradox of his life, as I see it, how the Sage Grouse and their habitat, which mean so much to him, are threatened by the petroleum industry that makes it possible for him to hawk that wonderful country.

Not only does Dickinson render Chindgren in a fully recognizable way, but she does the same for the art of falconry. Towards the end of the book she wonders if she'll ever really understand the discipline that captured her husband so fully, but in her prose she displays that, on some level at least, she gets it.
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 240 pages 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches 11.2 ounces

PAINTERS OF UTAH'S CANYONS AND DESERTS

2009-05-06T16:43:00.000-07:00

Strangely enough, last Friday (my birthday) saw the release of two books with particular personal significance for me. Painters of Utah's Canyons and Deserts was timed to coincide with the centennial celebration of Zions National Park in the state's southwest. The fact of its concurrence with the news of what seems to be the solution to the Everett Ruess mystery is purely serendipitous. Ruess, a California native, was an artist, printmaker, writer and vagabond who loved the Utah redrock, where he famously vanished nearly 75 years ago at the age of 20. Denny Belson, acting on a story his grandfather had told him, found a human crevice burial near Comb Ridge, on the Navajo Reservation, over 100 miles east of what was thought to be Ruess' last camp. Belson's grandfather, a Navajo, claimed to have witnessed the murder and robbery of a white man by two Utes in the '30s, and had returned to the site to bury the man. Only days ago, forensic analysis determined the remains to be Ruess'.

His story is one of the most compelling, but he is only one of dozens of great artists who've been inspired by the spectacular, rugged country of the Colorado Plateau. Two of the state's most respected art historians, Vern Swanson, PhD, director of the Springville Museum of Art, and Donna Poulton, PhD, associate curator at the University of Utah Museum of Fine Arts, have compiled this weighty volume with over 300 paintings, chronicling the artistic depiction of our state's canyon country. The unfortunate tradition with such histories is to begin the tale with the in-migration of white settlers, and this one is no exception. The earliest work dates to the period of the first Mormon pioneers' arrival. Still, the history detailed from that period on can only be described as comprehensive. The illustrations are well selected and reproduced. I was especially pleased with the several plates of my favorite Utah artist, Doug Snow, who merges abstract and representational painting more successfully than anyone else I know. The accompanying text is well researched and nicely written, except for the fact that my name isn't spelled exactly right, but this isn't the first book to have erred there.
Two upcoming events will celebrate this book: Tomorrow evening (May 7th) at 6:30, there will be a short lecture and a book signing at Williams Fine Art on 2nd East and South Temple, and on Friday, May 15th a small exhibition and book signing at Ken Sanders' Rare Books on 2nd East and Broadway.
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Gibbs Smith Publisher 12.8 x 11 x 1.3 inches 304 pages 5.6 lbs.

MASTERPIECES IN MINIATURE

2009-04-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Masterpieces in Miniature opens at Picture This! gallery in Sherwood Park, Alberta. The show, featuring paintings less than 155 square inches by 40 invited North American artists, officially opens on Saturday, May 2nd, and runs through the public drawing on May 21st. The entire show, including my "Wilson's Bird of Paradise" (above) can be seen online, and intent-to-purchase forms can be filed over the internet over the duration of the show.
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illustration: WILSON'S BIRD OF PARADISE (2008) acrylic 6" x 9"

QUIZ RESULTS

2009-04-30T10:27:00.001-07:00

Having such a smart readership is both gratifying and terrifying. Yesterday the Rigor Vitae ID quiz was trounced once again within the span of a couple of hours. Obviously, the photo was of a softshell turtle of the family Trionychidae, but closer identification was much trickier. The heavy lifting was done this time by Neil of Microecos, who correctly identified the subject as belonging to the genus Cyclanorbis, the African flap-shell turtles. I was unable to honor his request for a beetle box, and his coin-toss for the species came up tails. Had he done a Google image search for "Cyclanorbis," he'd have seen that I'd posted the picture earlier with the proper ID, which is what I suspect he did right after the fact. That proper ID (C. senegalensis) was supplied by Andrew R. Special thanks to hand-model Paco, whose distinctive arm-tone seemed to direct everyone to the correct continent. Aside from the prefrontal bones, the Senegal Flapshell is smaller and darker, with a narrower and differently-shaped shell (it also has distinctive throat callosities which aren't visible in the picture). No votes came in for the related and poorly-known genus Cyloderma, but C.J. covered the last base by taking up the card for Trionyx triunguis, the African Softshell (pictured above). A big applause to you all. I think it's only fair to declare the quiz a tie, so if Andrew and Neil can email me at cpbvkATjunoDOTcom with their subject requests and mailing addresses, I'll get to work on their drawings.
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photo taken in southern Cameroon by CPBvK

ANOTHER QUIZ

2009-04-29T08:50:00.001-07:00

Grab your field guides, it's quiz time again. Last month's puzzler turned out to be easier than I expected; Clare barely gave me time to punch the "publish" button before correctly identifying it, with several correct responses following quickly behind him. This time, then, we'll try something devoid of feathers -- still, not a terribly hard one. The creature in the photo above is typical of its species. The first person to comment with the correct species before the end of May 6th will receive a pencil drawing of the subject of their choice. Good luck!
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photo by CPBvK

THE ARRAIGNMENT OF TIM DECHRISTOPHER

2009-04-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning at 11:45, Tim DeChristopher will be arraigned at the Frank E. Moss Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City.

For those who don't know, Tim is a 27-year-old economics student at the University of Utah, who became a sort of folk hero around here last December. In one of its final acts, the Bush administration set up a last-minute BLM auction for oil and gas exploration leases in rural Utah. Tim, with the sort of financial backing typical of undergrad students, signed up as a bidder and won 13 parcels near Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, totaling 22,000 acres, drove up the prices of numerous other parcels, and threw the entire auction into confusion. His total bill: $1.7 million.

I speak for many when I say I wish I had the inspiration and chutzpah to have engaged in such elegant sabotage. Tim caught us all by the imagination, and his support from the community has been a wonderful thing to watch. A website was set up to collect funds to cover the down payment on his BLM invoice, which was raised, though the government refused to accept it, saying it was late. On February 1, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ruled that the auction had been improper, and ordered the BLM not to cash any of the checks. It's hard to say for sure, But I imagine Tim's act of civil disobedience played a big part in that decision. Even so, Brett Tolman, Utah's US Attorney, has decided to charge him with two felony counts punishable by up to ten years. Tim's attorney, Pat Shea, says he expects his client to plead not guilty tomorrow before the federal magistrate.

At 11:00am, DeChristopher's supporters will gather at Library Square in Salt Lake (4th South & 2nd East). Samba Gringa will entertain and former NASA climatologist James Hansen will speak, then we'll all march over to the federal courthouse for a silent protest until Tim's arraignment. After that, it will be back to Library Square, where Hansen and DeChristopher will speak.

All too often, activists are hotheads whose philosophies are weakly constructed and whose actions are poorly thought-through. Tim is one of those rare individuals who not only has the courage of his convictions, but who's scrutinized those convictions thoroughly. We need to publicly demonstrate the civic support behind this thoughtful young man and not allow him to waste his next decade behind bars. See you there.

A NEW TIME-LAPSE PAINTING CLIP

2009-04-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

I've given the time-lapse treatment to a new painting. Feeling more confident with the process, I tackled a major painting this time: A pair of courting Crowned Flying Lizards (Draco cornutus) in the foreground compete for our attention with a big old male Orang-utan (Pongo pygmaeus) calling from his sleeping nest in the background. In celebration of getting it done, I've used some real music instead of the silly original compositions I've relied on in the past. Of all the great Salt Lake musical combos that I've listened to over the years, my absolute favorite was Thirsty Alley. We're favored with 1½ wonderful compositions, I Formed the World with my Tongue, I Cleared the Bar with my Diaphragm and Haloumi (Part II).

THE ASSASSIN DOCK

2009-04-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

(originally posted two years ago)
I'm devoting today's post to a very unusual arthropod that's rather common in the immediated vicinity of my home, although I've never seen it anywhere else. The Assassin Dock (Lappazoon sarcophagus) displays an extreme sexual dimorphism: the small, flying males live but a few days, fluttering weakly upon the breeze. The much larger females are sessile, saprophagic, plant-like creatures anchored to the soil by their rootlike heads.
Every other year, these females, which can reach over a meter in height, "flower," giving rise to numerous burr-like sexual bodies. Attached weakly to their stalks, the mature sexual bodies break away if snagged on the fur or feathers of a passing animal, and begin growing "feeding tubes," which pierce the skin of the victim, secreting a potent toxin, while extracting nutrients. The injection kills the host in a few days, and the sexual body, after being fertilized, scatters eggs about the corpse. The larval Assassin Docks feed on the flesh of their host, and overwinter as cysts. Most larvae metamorphose into mature males the following summer. Female larvae live in the enriched soil for two seasons before metamorphosing, and "sprouting" from the ground.
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illustration: "ASSASSIN DOCK" (2004) watercolor 24" x 18"

A FLASH OF LIGHT IN A MOMENT OF DARKNESS

2009-03-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Last night I shut off the power, locked the door, and wandered through the neighborhood, following the lead of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), who suggest a cessation of non-essential energy use from 8:30 to 9:30pm on the last Saturday of each March. I left a couple of minutes early, hoping to witness a perceptible dimming of the city at the appointed moment, but saw only a normal March evening in Salt Lake City, with the glare of streetlights, automobile headlights and well-lit parking lots brightening the pallid bellies of migrating sandpiper flocks as they passed overhead. Even the newly vacant shell of a Circuit City continued to favor its interior with perpetual illumination. From my vantage, the tall buildings downtown were hidden, but a friend tells me that only the Mormon Temple darkened in deference.

The point of Earth Hour, as the observation has been christened, is to bring about greater consciousness of our everyday energy-consumption. Begun two years ago in Australia, it is said to have caught on a bit already in certain parts of the world. This year, the Swedish power transmission authority estimated a 2.1% drop in the nation's power consumption during Earth Hour, and reports of Toronto's decrease range as high as 15.1%. For the most part, though, Earth Hour was met with a big collective yawn. The mainstream attitude was reflected in a number of snarky articles; the smartest one I saw came from the Libertarian think tank The Competitive Enterprise Institute, who lampooned the idea by vaunting a simultaneous observation of their own: “Human Achievement Hour,” where we're encouraged not to change our behavior in any way. The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto made a similar, feebler effort, and Keith Lokitch, PhD, that Ayn Rand Institute stalwart best remembered for his fallacious smear campaign of Rachel Carson on her 100^th birthday, had his own suggestion:

“Try spending a month shivering in the dark without heating, electricity, refrigeration; without power plants or generators; without any of the labor-saving, time-saving, and therefore life-saving products that industrial energy makes possible. an entire month without fossil fuel.”

His tone was decidedly tongue-in-cheek, but his recommendation was one that would do any of us a world of good. Before they die, Dr. Lokitch's grandchildren may well bring those very words to life, courtesy of the philosophy that Grandpa jovially celebrated.

Proud they may be of their grasp of the obvious link between porcine energy consumption and porcine standard of living, but the critics of Earth Hour miss the important points altogether. Like a secular Shabbat, last night's ritual benefited the individual, without intending a direct solution to global problems. Too few people ever spend an hour quietly reflecting on the issues raised by Lokitch, Taranto and the CEI, and too many find the very notion distasteful. During last night's peripatetic reverie, it occurred to me that a mere five minutes might be easier for the uninitiated to swallow, to eventually acquire the taste. I imagined for a mere three hundred seconds, an entire population moving with single intention, dousing their lights and their televisions, closing their storefronts and stifling their ignitions. Putting aside the concerns of ambition and commerce, stepping outdoors into the blackness and reveling, many of them for the very first time, at the simple beauty of the Milky Way.
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illustration: MARKEA NEURANTHA (1997) acrylic 30" x 15"

SPACEBALLS

2009-03-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

Of all the powerful, innate drives that guide our behavior, my vote for favorite goes to that drive to understand the natural world. We've come a long way since the days of a geocentric universe composed of four elements. The universe described in Sir Isaac Newton's Principia gave us a sensible, useful model for over two centuries that only began to fray at the edges upon the closest scrutiny. During the 20^th century, troublemakers like Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg and Bohr left us with two irreconcilable models, one describing physics on a grand, cosmic level and the other describing it on the most minute level. Later physicists, the perpetrators of Superstring and M-Theories, snuck through the back door, designing elaborate algorithms to mathematically reconcile the theories of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity.

Science periodically goes through awkward stages. Our recently acquired skills at genetic analysis will one day lead to a biological nomenclature that describes the relationships of living things far better than it ever did before, but for the moment it's left us with a confused taxonomy that's all but useless. Similarly, physics at the beginning of the 21^st century paints an insane picture of an 11-dimensional universe where space and time are woven into a fabric that's curved into higher dimensions by matter, which on the subatomic level cannot be understood or predicted, but can be affected by simply observing it. At its very core, according to current physics, nature makes no sense.

Obviously, the picture still lacks a piece or two.

It's possible that an important missing piece is the quantization of space-time, or, the idea that space itself is structured the same way as matter: of tiny “particles.” Hartland Snyder first proposed this idea in the 1940s, but didn't receive much attention for it. When viewed through the hindsight of M-Theory, though, Quantized Space-time creates a common-sense model of quantum mechanics that seems to explain away all of the last century's counter-intuitive observations. In this model, space is composed of particles, or quanta, one Planck length (about 1.6 x 10^-35 meters) in diameter, randomly moving about in superspace, much like the gas molecules that make up our atmosphere. The 11 dimensions required by Superstring and M Theory can now be defined. The three familiar dimensions, x, y and z, can pinpoint a location no more accurately than to identify a single space quantum. To describe that quantum's place in superspace, one needs another set of x, y and z coordinates, and to describe locations within the quantum, another set of three. The final two dimensions are temporal ones, one for space and one for superspace. In this model, the gravitational curvature of space described by Einstein is nothing more than an increased density of space quanta. One can visualize the particle/wave duality of light once it is seen as a wave propagating through space quanta. The bizarre behavior of subatomic particles becomes understandable when one visualizes those particles interacting with space quanta. The Quantized Space-time model restores logic to nature.

Salt Lake whiz-kid Thad Roberts recently found himself with some extra time on his hands, and he put it to good use writing an excellent book on this topic, Einstein's Intuition. Thad's still fine-tuning his manuscript, but he's ready to share his ideas with us, and he'll be giving a free lecture at the main Salt Lake Public Library on 4^th South and 2^nd East, that promises to be fascinating and exciting. Thad's a skilled communicator, and he believes that everyone will walk away being able to visualize 11 dimensions and the Quantized Space-time model. The presentation will be geared to the lay person and free of obscure jargon and advanced mathematics. It's bound to be the best two and a half hours you'll spend next week.

When: Monday, March 30, 2009 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Downtown City Library; 210 E. 400 S.; Salt Lake City, Utah
Conference Room A
Seating will be limited. Please RSVP to qst AT moebiusgroupe DOT com to reserve a seat.
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digital illustration by CPBvK

KLEINSCHMIDT'S FALCON

2009-03-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

In 1925, three pale, unusual-looking young falcons, two males and one female, were removed by otter-hunters from an eyrie in southern Chile, near Punta Arenas. They were sold to M. Carlos Strauss, a German animal dealer living in Punta Arenas, who shipped them to the Münster Zoo. All three lived through their first moult, and their skins survive today as study specimens, two in a museum in Münster, and the remaining male in Bonn. Little is known about the lives of the Münster specimens, but the Bonn bird is known to have died at the Münster zoo in October 1932, but not before being paired with a female Austral Peregrine (Falco peregrinus cassini), who laid a clutch of eggs that he was reported to have incubated, one of the first records of attempted nesting by captive falcons. He was ultimately examined by ornithologist Otto Kleinschmidt, who at first doubted the bird's South American origin, mistaking him for a Barbary Falcon (F. pelegrinoides). In 1929, Kleinschmidt described it as a new species, F. kreyenborgi, after the falconer who had brought the bird to his attention.

It was over a decade before another one of these birds would be collected, and taxonomists argued vehemently over the status of the species. Some called it a subspecies of Peregrine (in a 1939 paper, Kleinschmidt himself referred to it as Falco peregrinus kreyenborgi) or Barbary Falcon, others thought it was allied to the Gyrfalcon-Saker-Prairie Falcon complex. Some believed the birds simply represented a single aberrant clutch. Careful measurements of the specimens revealed them to be morphologically identical to the local Patagonian Peregrines, but their plumage differed so radically that most taxonomists hesitated to lump them together.

Further data on Kleinschmidt's Falcon were slow in coming. On April 7, 1940, the eminent Swedish-Argentine ornithologist C. C. Olrog collected specimen number four, followed by a fifth, a juvenile, by Károly Kovaks in August 1961. On March 10, 1979, David Ellis and R. L. Glinski took the first known photograph of a Kleinschmidt's Falcon, and in December of the same year, my homeboy Terry Roundy took the first known movie footage. From 1979 through 1981, the field work in Santa Cruz province, Argentina, of Ellis, Glinski and Roundy, along with C. M. Anderson and Cesar Peres Garat provided a solution to the mystery. Observations of nine eyries revealed mixed pairs of typical Peregrines with Kleinschmidt's as well as normal Peregrine pairs yielding phenotypical Kleinshmidt's. F. kreyenborgi was not a valid species after all, but instead just an alternate color phase in the only known case of polymorphism in the Peregrine, and evidently a recessive trait with a high level of heterozygosity in the population.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that this should have been the case, but it was common knowledge at the time that Peregrines were a monomorphic species, and such dogma can effectively block one's vision. The names “Kleinschmidt's Falcon” and Falco kreyenborgi have been relegated to the history books; the preferred name for the color phase is “pallid falcon,” but those old monikers still serve as effective reminders to always give the obvious the consideration it deserves.
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Pallid Falcon photograph taken last year in southern Argentina by Steven R. Chindgren

MERLIN UPDATE

2009-03-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

Two years ago today, I saw a small falcon spring from atop a power pole to pursue unseen prey. It was nearly dusk, and I saw the bird for but a few seconds, but its flight was far too powerful to have belonged to a Kestrel (Falco sparverius), the common little falcon of this area. Illuminated by the setting sun, it appeared quite ruddy, and I suspected it may have been an escaped Hobby (F. subbuteo) or other exotic falcon. The next dawn found me back in the neighborhood, where I soon saw the bird again, which I was able to identify as a Merlin (F. columbarius). I devoted the next couple of days to watching her, on the off chance that she might establish breeding quarters there. I managed to snap a few poor photos of her (below), but after the third day I never saw her again. I put up a post about her and she began to fade from memory.Last night I rode up the same street just before dusk and saw a small, athletic raptor fly overhead for a few yards, then wing-over and stoop, chasing another bird out of sight. It was another Merlin (or, more likely, the same one).

This morning I talked to a friend who has been telemetering wintering Merlins in southern Idaho. He tells me that they normally leave for their breeding grounds the last week of March, and that they are exceptionally regular in their routine from year to year. I had assumed they left their Utah wintering digs a month earlier than that, but his observations seem to agree with what I've seen with this bird, which appears to spend a few days in this residential neighborhood in Salt Lake City before heading north each year.
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upper: WORKING THE FLOCK--MERLIN & STARLINGS (1989) acrylic 30" x 20"
lower: Merlin photo taken March 22, 2007 by CPBvK

MASTERWORKS IN MINIATURE

2009-03-02T10:37:00.001-08:00

I was hoping to draw yesterday's contest out for a day or two, but Clare of The House correctly identified the subject as a Long-tailed Meadowlark (Sturnella loyca), a mere two hours after my posting it. John Carlson requested and received points for giving the common name of the bush, Calafate, though for all I know, it was a big bluff. Clare will receive a pencil drawing of a Gyrfalcon, and John, Ashok and the rest of you will have another opportunity down the road.

On a completely self-serving note, Gallery One in Mentor, Ohio will kick off their big annual miniatures show, Masterworks in Miniature, on Friday, March 6th with a reception from 7 to 9pm. Intents-to-purchase can be filed at the gallery or on line, and the public drawing for purchase rights will take place on March 21 at 5pm. Two-hundred original paintings are on offer, including my Golden Pheasant painting (above) .

While I'm in self-promotion mode, permit me to brag a bit about being named a "Master Member" of the Society of Animal Artists. There are 12 of us: Charles Allmond, Chris Bacon, Gerald Balciar, Robert Bateman, Carl Brenders, Carel Brest van Kempen, Guy Coheleach, Bob Kuhn, Walter Matia, Leo Osborne, Mort Solberg and Kent Ullberg. This designation was established last April, but I just got the nice surprise a couple of weeks ago.

PIGEON CONTROL

2009-02-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

(Excerpted from my book, Rigor Vitae)The ancient silo loomed before us, a monolithic silhouette incrementally blocking the night sky as my companion and I approached. While sealing an opening with cardboard I gestured to Stan with my net, indicating where he was to block the other exit. Persuading him to stop here hadn’t been easy. We were returning home from a day of hawking in northern Utah. Stan’s falcon had flown poorly and been lost. Daylight’s final hour was spent tracking her down. Now that she was hooded and calm, preening on the cadge in the back of his station wagon, he just wanted to get her home.

Stan’s grumbling was just perceptible as he fitted his cardboard in place. Once sealed, the structure's contents were ours for the taking. Inside it was warm, humid, and absolutely dark. The tower pulsed with birds, those three successful immigrants: Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), English Sparrows (Passer domesticus), and my quarry, Rock Doves (Columba livia).
I climbed the decrepit steel rungs to the upper roosts the pigeons preferred, net and canvas bag dangling from my belt and darkened flashlight gripped uncomfortably in my mouth. Stan remained below to receive the birds I lowered to him.

Halfway up a disturbed entity fluttered blindly about my face. I reflexively snatched it from the air. The alarm call of a starling is a shocking thing: a high, strident croak describing unimaginable horrors. This avian siren launched the silo’s entire population to flight around its interior, drowning their sentry’s cry with the thunder of ten thousand wings. Barely audible through the din was a string of invectives rising from Stan. As each bird became airborne it emptied its ballast, and when I returned to terra firma, my reluctant accomplice was drenched.

Just beneath their skin-deep beauty, we are all smirkingly aware of birds’ capacity for hyper-metabolizing. The tension between the lovely songster and the mess it makes has been clear ever since Basho penned his Bush Warbler haiku in the seventeenth century:

Bush warbler—
A dropping on the rice cake
At the verandah’s edge

Thirty years ago the sight of a few braying Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) overhead was a rare treat for most Americans. A few decades of concerted habitat management later, you can't swing a male model without hitting one of the birds, leaving many of those same Americans cursing as they scrape up the scuz.

In cities throughout the world, millions of man-hours are devoted to eliminating the common Rock Dove and its droppings. Originally a Eurasian species, it’s been domesticated for some 5,000 years and has accompanied humans in their diffusion across the globe. Now hardly a city fails to slump beneath the weight of the birds. Even Antarctica harbors feral pigeons.

As we’ve become more cognizant of chemistry’s dark side, many of yesterday’s toxic pigeon controls have given way to mechanical devices for excluding the birds or driving them away. Today’s most popular chemical weapon is Avitrol, a brand name for strychnine-laced birdseed. The victims that eat sublethal quantities go into paroxysms that are said to frighten off other pigeons. Unfortunately, they are also apt to attract predators to a lethal meal.Until recently, a more gruesome concoction prevailed. Fenthion is a potent organophosphate that was sold in a form that could be painted onto favorite perches. So powerful were its effects that contact with the foot of any bird that dared step in it caused necrosis, loss of motor control and eventual death. Fenthion is very stable and persists in the food web, accumulating in body fat. In 1999 the EPA came to an agreement with Rid-A-Bird, Inc., makers of the Fenthion perch to voluntarily discontinue their product. Fenthion is still sprayed in Florida against mosquitos, and is still used as an avicide in much of the world. In Australia it is an important weapon against Mediterranean Fruit Flies.

For the better part of my life I’ve played my own consequential role in pigeon control. Live pigeons are a valued commodity for falconers, used to trap falcons, train them, or serve a “bagged” quarry on the days when a decent slip at a wild duck or pheasant couldn’t be found. For many years I flew a wonderful Prairie Falcon (Falco mexicanus) named Hillary, a passage bird (trapped in her first fall). When Hillary was in the air, a live pigeon in my hawking bag was essential, to flash for a split second when her mind began to wander. Trapping pigeons during the day or netting them by night, one had to be mindful of Fenthion, Avitrol, and the rest of the day’s arsenal. Even products like Ornitrol, a sort of avian RU486 were worrisome when the birds were winding up as hawk food.

As an adolescent, my nets and I scrambled about vacant warehouses and office buildings deep into the night, arrested for it but once. I scaled the face of Salt Lake’s city hall for the pigeons in her belfry, and am surely one of very few who can boast of having smoked a joint on top of that structure’s clock tower. Deciding to seek actual permission to enter the place at night, I put a formal petition before the city council. The pigeons had been seen as a problem, and my permission was granted with surprising speed. A newspaper reporter noticed my petition in the council’s minutes, and thought it might make a good story. He had no idea. While I was at school he called my mother, who had been ignorant of my participation in the political process. When asked to confirm that I wanted the pigeons for breeding stock (My petition hadn’t been 100% on the level), she replied, “No, I imagine he’s probably going to feed them to his hawks!”

When I got home, I called the reporter and after some fancy talking hung up, believing I had convinced him not to mention my falconry. The next morning’s paper bore a scandalous article complete with remarks from the head of the local Humane Society chapter, who called falconry “inhumane.” My key to the bell tower was revoked and a poisoning campaign was unleashed on the pigeons, to which the Humane Society had no objections.

Thirty years later the Rock Doves still own that belfry.
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upper: FEAR OF FLYING (1990) acrylic 20" x 26"
lower: THE PLUMING POST--PEREGRINE & ROCK DOVE (1989) acrylic 30" x 20"

SNAKES ON A (COASTAL) PLAIN

2009-02-17T23:22:00.000-08:00

Animals move around. It's what separates us from the minerals. When I was about five, the first sight record for a Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis) was established in my home state of Utah. When I left high school the species was still considered accidental, but within five years it had become a common breeder. Today the New World population of these birds, descended from African stragglers a century ago, inhabits relatively unexploited pastureland habitat from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Any year now, Nine-banded Armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus) should cross into my state as well. In the past couple of decades, the lovely Eurasian Bluethroat (Luscinia svecica) has traversed the Bering Strait into Alaska and Yukon, as the West Indian Shiny Cowbird (Molothrus bonariensis) slipped up the Eastern Seaboard into New Brunswick. These pioneering events can be random, or can be precipitated by climatic, geological or ecological changes. The Pliocene formation of the Isthmus of Panama was one of the most profound occurrences in recent geological history, allowing the migration of placental mammals into South America, and a sparser flow northward, which included those advancing armadillos.

These days, most pioneer species are assisted by humans, either exploiting anthropogenically altered habitat or actually being transported, either purposely or inadvertently. Peninsular Florida's subtropical climate provides the most welcoming habitat in the contiguous U.S., and a wide array of recent animal and plant species have set up shop there in the past century, including some 47 reptiles. Florida's most common reptile, the Brown Anole (Anolis sagrei) is a recent stowaway from Cuba, but lately all eyes have been on the big constrictors. Boa Constictors (Boa constricor) have reproduced in the Everglades for some 40 years, but are not known to breed elsewhere in the state (since they bear live young, it's a bit harder to confirm these things). Green Anacondas (Eunectes murinus) and Yellow Anacondas (E. notaeus) have been found in southern Florida, as have Reticulated Pythons (Python reticulatus-above), with no confirmed breeders from these three species. The fifth pioneer constrictor, the Burmese Python (P. molurus bivittatus), has so far been the only constrictor to really establish itself, a feat accomplished within the past six years. The first nesting Burmese was found in 2006, but it's likely that a thousand or more eggs had been laid in Florida by that time. The graph below shows the number of individual Burmese Pythons removed from Everglades National Park over the past fifteen years (data from last year are not yet available; the only released figure so far is “over 300”). In each of the past few years, increased effort has gone into removing pythons, probably exaggerating the curve's steepness some. It's much harder to estimate the species' total population with any accuracy than it is to assume they're there to stay.
Last week, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida introduced a bill intended to address this situation. The degree of sound biological advice he received can be inferred from the bill's title alone: A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to include constrictor snakes of the species Python genera as an injurious animal. Should the bill pass muster, it would (despite the awkward phrasing) prohibit the interstate transport of Python spp. within the United States. Nelson's introductory comments were typically hyperbolic, particularly his contention that “...recently, researchers also found cougar parts in the stomachs of captured pythons. This development could signal a new threat to the endangered Florida panther, which we have been working so hard to save,” referring to an incident in November, 2005, when a Bobcat (Lynx rufus) foot was found in the lower GI tract of a female Burmese. This is just the latest in a string of hysteria, including a couple of fairly crazy USGS projections predicting python migrations into the American heartland (see below). These papers have been nicely debunked here and here.Nutty discussions about a problem, though, don't necessarily invalidate concern, and pythons in South Florida are something to be concerned about. Last year, the state initiated new regulations defining Burmese, Reticulated and African Rock Pythons (P. sebae), Green Anacondas, Amethystine Pythons (Morelia amethistina) and Nile Monitors (Varanus niloticus) as “reptiles of concern,” mandating implanted microchips in all captives over 2” in diameter and a $100 annual permit to own one. Legislators, wildlife managers and journalists have generally worked under the assumption that the wild pythons are descended from intentionally released, unwanted captives, but there is no evidence to support this. It is at least as likely that their release was a single unintended consequence of 1992's Hurricane Andrew. Whatever the case, the new state legislation is sound. The release of any exotic wildlife in Florida is a first degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $1,000. fine. Further dissemination of this fact and a bit of education for prospective snake-owners would go a long way here, especially at the pet shop end. Putting the practice of importing young, wild-caught pythons from Asia out of its misery would be a welcome blow against a destructive industry, in addition to driving the price of captive snakes out of reach of the less-than-serious keeper.

Florida Panthers (Puma concolor coryi) surely have bigger worries than pythons, and I consider the widespread agonizing over possible competition with Indigo Snakes (Drymarchon corais) to be overboard as well, due largely to the widely divergent optimum body temperatures of the two genera. The endangered Key Largo Woodrat (Neotoma floridana smalli) is another story. Perhaps the biggest concern of all is the potential spread of Reticulated Pythons further south into the Caribbean. This species swims well and has dispersed itself throughout Indonesia and the Philippines. In the simple ecology of the Caribbean islands, these snakes could wreak far more serious havoc than is likely in the complex Everglades community, where wildlife managers are busy trapping them, tracking them with dogs, and following radio-telemetered males to females. Because pythons and other poikilothermic predators do not feed regularly, a parcel of land can support far more individuals than it could a similar homeothermic species, and the maintenance of a python population at a somewhat innocuous level is feasible, if labor-intensive.
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upper: RETICULATED PYTHON & MASKED FINFOOT (1999) acrylic 20" x 30"
middle: Graph based on USNPS data. 2008 data added by CPBvK
lower: Map by USGS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHARLES DARWIN!

2009-02-12T04:10:00.000-08:00

Two hundred years ago today, Robert Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England. Over his 73 years of life, he was an ardent observer of nature and a prolific writer who published tracts on Pollination of Orchids, Formation of Volcanic and Coral Islands, Expressions of Emotion, Phototropism, Ecology of Earthworms and many other subjects, but it was the book he published in 1859, On The Origin of Species, that he'll always be remembered for. Evolution--the changing of organisms over time--had been recognized long before Darwin, but in this book he proposed an explanation of the engine behind the process. Over a century and a half, his ideas have been refined, but the more we learn about evolution, the more his theory of natural selection seems to fit.

Who'd have thought that by his 200th birthday the poor old guy would be as vilified as he is? But blaming Darwin for evolution is like blaming Einstein for gravity. Both fellows only did their best to describe how the phenomena work—they didn't invent them. So as a birthday gift to our good friend Chuck, let's agree to stop blaming him for evolution. To all of those who'd prefer to live in a world where organisms never change, blame Nature instead. She's your real antagonist.

IT'S THE STUPID ECONOMY

2009-02-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

We don't have Dubya to kick around anymore. That red, white and blue SUV of State may be high-centered down a swampy road marked “Danger! Do not enter!,” but it has a new hand on the wheel: one that, upon first inspection, appears to be a smarter, more thoughtful one than we've seen in a while. The accuracy of this impression remains to be seen, but it's sure nice to hear a president calling on us to take more civic responsibility than simply to go shopping and to “Get down to Disney World in Florida.” So as we climb down and look for an open spot on the bumper to shoulder, let's try to figure out just where we are.

Our nation faces a lot of daunting problems, but all eyes seem focused for now on the economy, which makes sense, since it affects the other problems. Our economic woes are many and varied, and blame can be aimed in many directions, but one factor can't be ignored: We've been working within a flawed paradigm for years.

I've always thought of economics as a sort of branch of ecology. Where ecologists study how energy is circulated around communities of organisms, economists study how capital is circulated around communities of humans. It's the same thing, really, and (as far as I can see) the same rules apply to both. I have nothing against economic growth--in fact I'm all for it, when discussing Chad or Bangladesh. But as standards of living rise in a nation, there comes a point of diminishing returns, and at this point America's obsession with an ever-bloating economy is to our detriment, not to mention downright unseemly. Equilibrium is sought by any system, but in our economy it's been anathema. Here, recession is enemy number one, and whenever we've caught a whiff of it, we've employed artificial props, postponing the inevitable collapse while feeding it. A nation as wealthy as ours can easily afford to weather natural downward adjustments in the economy and to protect those who are hurt by them. We like to think of ours as a true “free market” economy, but that's something the industrialized world has never known. Modern economies differ only in how, and to whose benefit, they are manipulated.

Over the past three decades, the entire conversation has been hijacked by the supply-side philosophy. Reagan got the ball rolling and Clinton picked it up and ran like hell. Since it's the wealthy individuals who create companies, jobs and livings--the thinking goes--just keep the troughs of the fattest pigs full enough and plenty will spill over for the rest. We average Americans have sat by happily and watched this process, secretly expecting to gain a place at that trough, however unlikely it may be. There's some truth to the supply-side argument, but once again, we're faced with the law of diminishing returns. Before long, the harm of the super-rich outweighs their benefit.

So what can we do as individuals? For starters, we can think about shifting our own attitudes about capital and our relationship with it. Our collective worship of money has been the ultimate root of our current state. It's caused companies to stop seeing themselves as providers of goods or services, but as generators of wealth, and caused government, industry and individuals to blindly throw cash at problems whether the solutions are financial or not. It's left many of us living frenetic, unpleasant lives trying to hang on to houses that cost four times their real value. Let's stop calling ourselves consumers and start calling ourselves citizens again. In recent weeks it's become obvious just how well the supply-side-fed fat cats have allowed their advantage to trickle down. It's been refreshing to see the widespread popularity of the recently applied ½ million-dollar pay cap for executive beneficiaries of federal bailouts. I'm hopeful that it's a step toward public repudiation of the cartoonish application of capitalism that's brought us to the position we presently enjoy, possibly even toward an embrace of such “un-American” ideas as a maximum wage, a notion I've championed for years.

In their frenzy to find a solution, our political leaders look a bit like the Keystone Cops, and the ultimate effect of their antics is anybody's guess. I hope, though, that in crafting their plan they'll think of it less as a stimulus and more as a parachute, intended to guide us safely into a healthier paradigm, where a sane standard of living (with a bit of cushion) represents a long-term line of equilibrium.
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upper: SILKY ANTEATER (1997) acrylic 17" x 10.5"
lower: SELF PORTRAIT WITH SOAPBOX (2008) watercolor/ink 8" x 4"

TIME LAPSE PAINTING CLIP: GOLDEN PHEASANT

2009-01-11T11:33:00.000-08:00

LYN ST. CLAIR

2009-01-06T17:00:00.001-08:00

If you're knowledgeable about the field of wildlife art, you're certainly familiar with Lyn St. Clair, the creator of the above coots and many other wonderful pieces. Not only is she a skilled, prolific and creative painter, she's a fine naturalist that's smart as a whip, with an eagle eye. Lyn was recently diagnosed with breast cancer—ironic indeed, as she dedicated the better part of 1993 to a project she called 48 x 48, a fund raiser for cancer research. Now it's time for her to raise some funds of her own, to cover the expenses of surgery, hospitalization and therapy for her uninsured self. With that in mind, Lyn's friend and colleague Paula Waterman has set up an art web page dedicated to helping defray Lyn's medical expenses. There you'll find for sale numerous excellent artworks by numerous first-rate artists, many of them substantially discounted (my own piece, Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk & Western Rattlesnake [below], has been cut by more than half). Check back often, the site will be updated as more work is added.
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upper: WATER BALLET (2006) by Lyn St. Clair oil 40" x 40"
lower: JUVENILE RED-TAILED HAWK & WESTERN RATTLESNAKE (1988) acrylic 18" x 24"

FLORA & FAUNA IN PERIL

2009-01-06T15:49:00.000-08:00

Conservation is a paramount cause to most of us wildlife artists, and we tend to wax self-congratulatory at the drop of a hat over the positive effect our work has in educating the public to its importance, a notion that's at best delusional and at worst a cynical sales con. Affecting positive change takes more than drawing pictures; what little intelligent preaching our work does tends to fall solely on the ears of the choir. The best we can hope to do with our work is to spark a bit of thought and conversation, and that is the idea behind an exhibition now up at the U.S. Department of Interior's Interior Museum, “Endangered Species: Flora & Fauna in Peril.” The exhibition, which consists of 50 sculptures and flatworks depicting species listed on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife's Endangered Species List, was organized by the Wildling Museum in Los Olivos, California, and curated by David J. Wagner PhD.

I'm afraid I dropped the ball on this one; I wanted to participate, but simply couldn't find the time to paint a new piece before the jury deadline. An article in the Washington Times seemed a bit short of flattery (the final sentence, in particular), but it provides a short slide show of works from ESFFIP. The decision to select Suzan Hamilton-Todd's painting of an Aplomado Falcon (below) to illustrate the article was interesting to me.

These small chaparral falcons with long tails and legs are the most accipiter-like members of their genus. With their bold black belly-band, dark blue-gray upperparts (“aplomado” means “leaden”) and distinctive facial pattern, they are unmistakable. While it's a perfectly fine image in itself, exactly what Hamilton-Todd's Saker-like painting says about its intended subject eludes me. If you see something I don't please comment. Perhaps the editors liked its “post-realist” look, or maybe a deeper point was being made. Of the nine pieces in the slideshow, I regret to say that nothing strikes me as terribly noteworthy. It's hard to judge a show of 50 pieces on the basis of nine little jpeg images, but I see the very fact of this exhibition as a good thing. Hopefully it will encourage more artists to move in this direction, and it's bound to spark at least a bit of that all-important thought and conversation. It runs through February 7th.
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upper: AYE-AYE & GIANT LEAF-TAILED GECKO (1996) acrylic 18" x 24"
lower: Northern Aplomado Falcon painting by Suzan Hamilton-Todd

OKAY, I RESOLVE TO POST MORE FREQUENTLY IN 2009

2008-12-31T18:05:00.001-08:00

Here at Rigor Vitae, 2008 pretty much began with a post about viper tails that discussed the recently discovered Iranian viper Pseudocerastes urarachnoides, so what could be more appropriate than to post this great little video that has recently turned up?

As far as I know, this is the first footage of a live P. urarachnoides. How strongly it supports my assumption that the tail is used in caudal luring is hard to say, since it seems pretty clear that the snake here is being subdued. Nonetheless, it's interesting to see this fantastic tail in action. The specimen was collected by Behzad Fathinia in Iran's Ilam province, where the two type specimens originated, and the video comes from Steve Anderson's website, Swasiazoology. I have no idea where this individual snake is now.

URBAN HERPETOLOGY

2008-12-15T15:34:00.000-08:00

Implementing effective conservation policies and techniques is impossible without first understanding wildlife population trends and how they're affected by anthropogenic factors. The third and just-released book in the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles' (SSAR) Herpetological Conservation Series represents an important step toward this goal. Consisting of 40 technical papers and 13 case studies, Urban Herpetology features sections on habitat loss and alteration, effects of roads, trails and railroad tracks, chemical and light pollution, anthropogenic water bodies and introduced species, ubanophiles and urbanophobes, among others. Like the previous books in the series, Urban Herpetology is North America-heavy in scope, but unlike them contains additional research from Australia, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, the West Indies and elsewhere.
Reptiles and Amphibians are important ecological components throughout most of the planet. Unfortunately, though, they have little direct impact on the economies of industrialized nations, and so receive comparatively little of the sort of attention this welcome volume offers. Urban Herpetology deserves a place in the library of anyone with a deep interest in herps or conservation, and especially those who care about both. 11 ½ inches x 9 inches; 590 pages.
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illustration: LEATHERBACK HATCHLING/CITY LIGHTS (2008) pen & ink; one of 50 from URBAN HERPETOLOGY

A COUPLE MORE ART EVENTS

2008-12-05T11:29:00.000-08:00

Tonight the Art Access Gallery in Salt Lake City will host a "holiday reception" for my continuing solo show there. The event runs from 6:00 until 9:00pm.
Tomorrow the Germanton Gallery in Germanton, North Carolina will host the opening of their annual Small Works Show. Doors open at noon.
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illustration: A TRICK OF THE TAIL-- BLUE-CROWNED MOTMOT & LANGSDORFF'S CORALSNAKE (2008) acrylic 15" x 20"

2008-11-27T06:03:00.000-08:00

THIS WEEKEND'S ART SHOWS

2008-11-21T16:08:00.003-08:00

Tonight my solo show at the Art Access Gallery here in Salt Lake City opens at 6pm. The reception runs until 9:00, and the show through December 19th. Another "holiday reception" will be held on December 5th, same time, same place.

Howard/Mandville Gallery in Kirkland, Washington is holding their annual "Small Works Show," and tomorrow evening (Saturday, the 22nd) the drawing of intent to buy slips will take place.

YET ANOTHER TIME-LAPSE PAINTING CLIP

2008-11-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's high time for me to post something else, but first, another time-lapse painting clip.

I recently drew fifty pen-and-ink illustrations for the upcoming book from the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, URBAN HERPETOLOGY. It's an excellent publication that I'm really pleased to be associated with -- lots of important new research with good conservation applications -- rest assured that I'll post more about it upon its release. One of my favorite illustrations from the book is the little Brown Anole (Anolis sagrei) above. Well known to most Floridians, these successful Cuban immigrants have largely displaced the native Green Anoles (A. carolinensis) and others to become the state's most common reptile.

This time of year the galleries are clamoring for small works, and I couldn't resist using making a painting out of the sketch. Here's the film:

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illustration: BROWN ANOLE (2008) pen & ink 5" x 7"

ANOTHER TIME-LAPSE PAINTING CLIP

2008-10-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

Wilson's Bird of Paradise (Cicinnurus respublica) is a small, forest-dwelling bird of paradise endemic to two islands, Batanta and Waigeo, off the NW coast of New Guinea's Vogelkop Peninsula. Here a male busies himself preparing a display-ground, where he will perform his courtship rituals. I've never seen this species before, and relied on observations of a close relative, the Magnificent Bird of Paradise (C. magnificus) to create this piece.

ARTISTIC ODDS & ENDS

2008-10-07T10:18:00.000-07:00

I just completed a new stop-motion painting video. This one records the formation of a male Poison Rock Frog (Rana hosii) calling from a flooded spiny bamboo (Bambusa sp.). Poison Rock Frogs are common along fast-moving forest streams from southern Thailand through Sumatra and Borneo to western Java. While on the subject of herpetological subjects, Bay-area artist Larnie Fox reports that his 40-foot "Giant Snake" is seeking a good home. Originally commissioned by Coyote Point Museum, the sound and light sculpture was ultimately rejected for display, due to a misunderstanding about code issues. Larnie says the snake "was made mostly of elements from an older sound sculpture, Airliner, which I showed at The Lab gallery in San Francisco in 2003. It was built with bamboo and recycled plywood and many other recycled materials. Each segment has a motorized sound component and an electrical light component. It has been thoroughly checked by an electrician, (thanks Kent!) was found to be very safe and pretty much fireproof."Above is Larnie's original sketch of the sculpture, and below is a video of the head in action. The finished piece features a deep, booming sound in association with this action. Photos of some of the snake's components can be seen here. Larnie is willing to donate the piece to a willing museum, gallery, or other space and help with the installation. If you're interested, contact him through his website.

Finally, a reminder that there's still time to get in on the upcoming ART OF THE MANGROVES touring exhibition. Interested and excellent visual artists are encouraged to get started on artwork depicting mangrove communities, and to email me at carelbvk AT gmail DOT com to get on the list. More information is available here.
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upper: CALL OF THE MONSOON (2008) acrylic 10" x 8"
center: GIANT SNAKE SOUND & LIGHT SCULPTURE SKETCH by Larnie Fox
lower: DUSKY-GILLED MUDSKIPPERS (2008) acrylic 9" x 13"

CONSERVING KILLER KOMODOS

2008-09-11T16:58:00.000-07:00

Like most newspapers, the Wall Street Journal has a point of view, in their case, a market-obsessed one--still, their journalism is mostly rigorous and well-informed. When they cover the conservation beat, though, it's best to beat it to the next page. Their editors love economic growth like some of us love nature, and when those two interests collide, as they inevitably do, their standards often deteriorate. Science fiction fans consistently turn to the WSJ for the latest fabrications of “scholars” like Dennis Avery, who specialize in the Armageddon that will be brought upon us all by the efforts of conservationists.

Thanks to Steve Bodio for drawing my attention to the latest of these articles, one whose theme is a sci-fi classic: Yaroslav Trofimov's When Good Lizards Go Bad theorizes that Komodo National Park's 25 year Management Master Plan, like radioactive detritus, has changed the behavior of the Park's most famous residents, turning them into maneaters. Matt Mullenix took time out from hurricane preparation to comment, and LabRat took the bait as well. Now it's my turn (mwahaha).

Since the article was written without the benefit of much background knowledge, let's try to fill in some gaps. Komodo Dragons, or Oras (Varanus komodoensis) are, of course, the largest modern monitor lizards (family Varanidae). Males can exceed 10 feet in length and 200 pounds in weight.Like all monitors but a couple, Oras are carnivores. Opportunistic generalists, they eat carrion, small prey like rodents and snakes, and kill mammals as large as Timor Deer (Cervus timorensis floriensis), Timor Pigs (Sus scrofa vittatus) and Water Buffalo (Bubalis bubalis). All three of these large herbivores were introduced by humans: the pigs probably long ago, the other two in the 19^th century, the buffalo by Floresians and the Deer by the Sultan of Bima, from the island of Sumbawa. The preeminent Komodo Dragon scholar Walter Auffenberg surmised that the species originally evolved to feed on the dwarf elephants Stegodon sondaari and S. florensis that inhabited the region until a few thousand years ago, and transferred their techniques to the large newcomers. As far as I know, reports of Oras preying on the wild horses (Equus caballus) that the Sultan of Bima introduced to Rinca have yet to be confirmed.
Over 50 strains of virulent bacteria have been found in Ora saliva, including a very deadly strain of Pastuerella multocida. After being bitten, large prey often succumbs to septicemia or blood loss within a few days and can be tracked down by "scent" [update--Since posting this, researchers from the University of Melbourne published a paper describing venom glands in the lower jaw of the Ora that produce complex toxic proteins capable of inducing hypothermia, paralysis, haemophilia and loss of consciousness]. Oras are capable of stuffing themselves with as much as 50% of their own weight. Such a meal can sustain them for over a month. Usually everything but the hair and bones are digested, ultimately leaving nothing but a dry fecal pellet. Their distribution is as tiny as their mass is great; they're restricted to a section of Indonesia's Lesser Sunda Islands known as Nusa Tenggara, more specifically, to western Flores and four smaller islands to the west, Komodo, Rinca (formerly spelled “Rintja”), Nusa Kode, and Gili Motang (or “Gili Mota”). The lizard I'm befriending in the top photo is a tame one at the Bali Reptile Park. It, like practically all captive Oras, is descended from a few lizards captured on Flores in the 1980s. These lizards are distinct from those of other islands, where they lack the bluish tones. It seems like genetic transmission across the narrow strait between Flores and Rinca has been minimal, presumably due to the treacherous currents there. In the late 1980s, the population on Padar vanished after a wildfire scorched most of the island, and it's likely that the surviving Oras, unable to find prey, swam to nearby Rinca. Since the fire, Timor Deer have recolonized the island, and park officials are considering translocating Oras back to Padar, a notion I object to, since the lizards are arboreal for the first two years of their lives. Since there are not yet many large trees on the island, any experimental introductees would likely eat their offspring faster than they could produce them.

The island of Flores is well populated with humans, although Labuan Bajo is the only town on the western end of any size. The Oras on this island have been persecuted as livestock-killers for centuries, and they persist only in a few rugged areas. In what numbers is anybody's guess, but it's likely that between 1,000 and 2,000 individuals survive on the island. At the moment, probably around 1,200 call Komodo home, while 1,000 are shared between Rinca and Nusa Kode. Fewer than 100 live on the single arid cone of Gili Motang. Oras can live as long as 50 years, and they become sexually mature at 4-5 years of age. Beginning in June, males, who outnumber females by more than 3:1, become more active, attempting to domineer and intimidate other males, while seeking, courting and eventually copulating with females. The courtship season lasts through August, and eggs are usually laid a couple of weeks after fertilization. More often than not, the female selects an orange-footed Scrubfowl (Megapodius reinwardt) mound as a nesting site. Like other members of their family, these birds construct huge piles of sand mixed with leaf litter where their buried eggs are incubated by the compost. The female Ora guards her 12-30 eggs for four months, until they hatch. From that time on, they're on their own. Oras were first protected by law in 1915 by the Sultan of Bima, just three years after Peter Ouwens described the species to European science. In 1928 the Colonial Dutch Government declared the island of Komodo a wilderness reserve, adding Padar and southern Rinca 10 years later. In 1980, the Indonesian government established Komodo National Park, which comprises Komodo, Padar, Rinca, Gili Motang, and all of the tiny adjacent islets. The park is mostly uninhabited by humans; only four villages occur within its boundaries. Today, Komodo Village (Kampung Komodo) is by far the largest of these, with over 1,600 inhabitants. Small human settlements have come and gone over the centuries, but Komodo Village is the biggest the island has known. It was established early in the 20^th century by the Sultan of Bima as a penal colony. Bugis fisherman from Sulawesi, drawn to the region's rich fisheries, also settled here (the Bugis have a long tradition of seamanship; in past centuries, the region's most feared pirates were of this ethnicity, and European sailors returned with terrifying stories of them, giving rise to the term “boogie-man”).More recently, ethnic Manggarai from Flores have joined the population, which has exploded from a mere 30 citizens in the 1920s. Culturally, Komodo Village is still closer to Bima than anywhere else. It is situated across the bay from Loh Liang, the Park's main ranger station and visitor's center. On the island of Rinca, two villages, Rinca (settled near the turn of the 20^th century) and Kerora (settled in 1955), are each less than half the size of Komodo. A small eponymous village on the island of Papagaran completes the list of human habitation, save a handful of research and ranger stations with part-time populations. Each village boasts an elementary school, but college-preparatory studies are out of reach. The communities are dependent on fishing, which supplies 97% of village income. Squid, shrimp and milkfish (Chanos chanos) are the most important quarry, but mantis shrimp, sea cucumber, abalone, and various groupers, tuna, sharks and billfish have historically been sought after. Most farming is subsistence-level only, although some produce is sold in markets, along with some wild products like Tamarind (Tamarindus indica), a dominant tree on the islands. A growing number of Komodo Village artisans make their living selling woodcarvings and other crafts to tourists at Loh Liang.In 1995, officials of Komodo National Park, the Nature Conservancy, the Indonesian Government and local municipalities began hammering out a 25-year management plan for the Park. This plan, designed to cope with expanding human populations, both permanent and transient (especially tourists) while maintaining a viable Ora population and a healthy Marine environment, began implementation in 2001. I consider it a thoughtful and practical attempt at a rather Sisyphean task. A pdf of the entire plan is available here. Today, the Oras are in no imminent danger. Their populations are currently declining, but not to a worrying degree. Deer, pigs and other dragon food abounds on Komodo and Rinca, but an unchecked human explosion will doom the dragons. More urgent is the situation beneath the ocean's surface. This part of Nusa Tenggara is especially rich. Its vast coral reefs contain crucial spawning grounds for Napoleon Wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) and other fish of great economic importance to the region. The Management Plan bans a number of destructive and effective fishing methods, including explosives and poisons, reef gleaning, long lines, gill nets and demersal (bottom) traps, effectively restricting fishermen to using hook and line and traditional light nets. It also imposes catch limits and denies access to grouper and Napoleon Wrasse spawning grounds. A long list of fish species is proscribed, as are all marine invertebrates except squid. Some rather Draconian measures have been taken on land. All immigration has been disallowed; not even marriage confers a right to residency in the Park. Dogs and cats have been banned, as have most other domestic animals save goats and chickens, and restrictions have been put on use of fresh water. The gathering of firewood is no longer allowed and the laws prohibiting hunting of deer, pigs and buffalo are being strictly enforced. It's the fishing restrictions, though, that have impacted the already struggling villagers the hardest, and they've caused considerable anger. There have been shootouts between rangers and fishermen, resulting in several deaths. Balancing the needs of the burgeoning villagers and those of the finite ecosystem is difficult, and the fact that it's being imposed from outside causes real resentments. This is the story's true lead, but it's one that requires a nuanced hand. Mr. Trofimov opted instead for a more dramatic tale of predation on humans. For powerful predators adapted to kill large prey, it's surprising how rare Ora attacks on humans are. The earliest documented fatality was a 1931 attempted predation on a 14-year-old boy, whose adult companions frightened the lizard off, but couldn't prevent his death of blood loss. Some years later, an adult deer hunter who fell ill was left behind by his companions. They returned to find his lifeless remains partially eaten by Oras. A similar case in 1974 was the 78-year old Swiss Baron Rudolf von Rading, who, after climbing ¾ of the way to a summit, decided against completing the hike, urging his friends to to go on without him. They returned to the appointed meeting place to find nothing but his camera and spectacles. The marker above commemorates this spot (with camera and glasses placed for effect). Another death took place a year ago last June, when a 9-year-old boy named Mansur had the rudest possible interruption of a backwoods bathroom break. As in the 1931 case, the Ora was chased off by adults, but the boy died quickly of blood loss. Park officials attempted, but were unable to track the animal down, despite the contrary WSJ account. This was the fourth confirmed death (all occurred on Komodo Island) from an Ora, although there have been many non-lethal bites and unsubstantiated stories (many from Flores), a good portion of which are probably true. The fact is that Komodo Dragons are, and always have been a danger to people where the two coexist, but only a modest one. Their behavior towards humans has not changed; as always, an attack is unlikely but unpredictable.Mr. Trofimov's article makes much of a supposed ancient and mystical Komodo Village rite where Oras are fed to keep them from attacking. No such custom exists. It is true that legend considers humans and Oras relatives (actually more like cousins than reincarnations of ancestors), but the ritual described in the article most likely refers to on-site gutting of poached deer, for the Management Plan prohibits no other type of dragon feeding. The goat sacrifices that Trofimov mentions were staged for tourists in exchange for cash at the site in the photos above. The top pic shows the observation platform. Behind it is the famous commode, for which the island was named (okay, that's a fabrication of my own). The lower photo shows the view from the platform. The concrete ring was a pool built to attract Oras. A goat was staked in the clearing behind this pool for the benefit of park visitors. These sacrifices were discontinued in the '90s as a result of changing attitudes and the basic understanding that teaching Oras to associate humans with feeding is a pretty lame idea. The dilemma of Komodo village is a microcosm of what we all face. A century and a half ago, Alfred Russell Wallace traveled this region and marveled at the simplicity of island ecology. In that simplicity, he could see how organisms change and adapt, just as Darwin did in the Galápagos. In the same way it seems painfully obvious to us how limited the good citizens of Kampung Komodo are by the resources of their little island.
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upper photo taken by Steve Derham at Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. All other photos taken by CPBvK at or near Komodo Nat'l Park, Indonesia

EGG & NEST

2008-09-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It's a famous conundrum, but a bogus one; the mutation that created the genus Gallus induced a chicken to hatch from an egg laid by a bird not quite of that taxon. Of course, it was the egg that came first.An understanding of eggs is prerequisite to a true comprehension of the birds they deliver. Much of our modern knowledge of bird eggs, and the diverse nests that harbor them, is based on the work of egg-collectors (oologists) from a century or more ago. At the height of its popularity, commercial and otherwise irresponsible egg collecting tarnished oology's image, but its scientific value persists and cannot be underestimated. A staggering database survives in the form of well-tended egg collections, including those of the British Museum, the Smithsonian and others. Less well-known is the biggest collection of them all, that of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, founded in 1956 by Ed Harrison, with over 190,000 sets and a million individual eggs, as well as 18,000 nests and 54,000 study skins.Harvard University Press has just produced a beautiful new book celebrating this collection. Egg & Nest is first and foremost a picture book, featuring spectacular photographs by the gifted Rosamond Purcell, whose collaborations with Stephen Jay Gould and her own books, including Dice, Bookworm and Owls Head, are well-known. Over 175 color photographs of the WFVZ collection are featured, each one an aesthetic and zoological pleasure. Many of the images simply glorify the obvious beauty of their subjects: the deep glossy greens of tinamou (family Tinamidae) eggs, the marbled copper patina of Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) eggs, the dainty hieroglyphics gracing Icterid (family Icteridae) eggs, and the 2-dimensional calcium carbonate filligree shrouding the eggs of the Guira Cuckoo (Guira guira). Others aim to inform us: desiccated maggots still clinging to the collapsed hull of a Brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) egg, a victim of organochlorine pesticides; a series of deformed chicken (Gallus domesticus) eggs, some resembling pallid gourds, one of them double-shelled—a window bored into the outer shell reveals its hidden twin. Some of the plates thrill us with their rarity: eggs and study skins of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers (Campephilus principalis), Passenger Pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius), and Carolina Parakeets (Conuropsis carolinensis) stand beside centuries-old Elephant Bird (Aepyornis sp.) eggs and a mounted Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupida cupida). Others charm us with their novelty, like a number of wren (family Troglodytidae) and hummingbird (family Trochilidae) nests built in and upon chunks of human hardware. Each plate is captioned with collection data, and, in most cases, with background on the subject's natural history.

The plate section is contained within bookends: the first one containing a general introduction by biologist Bernd Heinrich and an introduction to the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology written by Linnea S. Hall, its executive director, and René Corado, its collections manager. This section includes a history of the collection and its founder, and of the practice of oology. The final bookend was penned by the photographer, and includes poetic reflections on her experience photographing the collection. Throughout, the text is well-written, with the layperson in mind, but containing enough good information to satisfy the expert.

Hardcover 232 pages ISBN-13: 978-0674031722 Available October 15.

ART AND THE ANIMAL

2008-08-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow afternoon will see the opening of wildlife art's premiere annual event. Art and the Animal is the main touring exhibition of the NYC-based Society of Animal Artists, an organization dedicated to promoting excellence in the field of animal art. This year, the juried show will open at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Doors open at 1:30pm, and David Wagner, PhD will give a lecture at 2pm, and will be available to hawk his fine new book. I was actually scheduled to speak (an activity I find terrifying) at a Lawrence University symposium in conjunction with the show, but got a last-minute reprieve. The opening night dinner will be held at the KI Convention Center (wherever that is) beginning at 5pm, where the awards, including the society's highest honor, the Award of Excellence, will be announced.

The show runs at the Neville through November 2nd. The tour itinerary goes something like this:
- November 22, 2008 - February 15, 2009: The Wildlife Experience, Parker, CO
- March 15 to April or May 15, 2009: Dunnegan Gallery Of Art, Bolivar, MO
- May 30 - July 5, 2009: Cultural Arts Council Of Estes Park Fine Art Gallery, Estes Park, CO
- July 18 - August 30, 2009: San Angelo Museum Of Fine Arts, San Angelo, Texas
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illustration: CRASH-BARRIER WALTZER (2005) acrylic 30" x 22"

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

2008-08-28T20:16:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm back from the reptile expo in Florida, I offer a few photographic highlights. Fay made her way through Daytona before I arrived, and the weather over all was quite nice. I saw lots of old friends and made a number of new ones. Especially nice were my first-time meetings with the wonderful British artist Tell Hicks and the well-known India-based herpetologist Romulus Whitaker. Special thanks to Wayne Hill, the expo director, for making the event what it is and for just being a deeply gracious guy, and to Fred Ryder for his hard work organizing the art show. The work of eight different artists was represented there, including one of my favorites, the Québécoise Patricia Pepin. Also on hand was Ron, a sand sculptor from Orlando, who, despite knowing very little about reptiles, managed to create a sharp-looking Panther Chameleon (Furcifer pardalis) during the show (bottom). I was able to sell out of books and posters and even stay fairly sober during the weekend.

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All photos taken by CPBvK in Daytona, FL 8-2008

FLORIDA BOUND

2008-08-21T15:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm off for the National Reptile Breeders' Expo. I'll post a few photographs here next week, unless the rains sweep me out to sea, in which case you can say that Fay Done away with me.
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illustration: FLY RIVER TURTLE (2006) acrylic 18" x 24"

NATIONAL REPTILE BREEDERS' EXPO

2008-08-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

Among the hoi polloi, Daytona Beach is famous as a playground for well-heeled undergrads--but this time of year the August sands can sear those heels beyond recognition, and Daytona is better suited as a gathering-place for ectotherms. This weekend, Daytona Beach will host the annual National Reptile Breeders' Expo, the world's largest reptile meeting. As usual, there will be scads of unusual captive-bred reptiles and amphibians being bought, sold and traded, and it promises to be a good opportunity to see some of the latest bizarre mutants as well as the latest technology for breeding herps and keeping them in good health, not to mention plenty of interesting tattoos and piercings. This year's symposia will cover the topics of Turtles and Tortoises (with Wayne Hill, Russ Gurley, Oliver Roempp and Ray Ashton) and Blood and Carpet Pythons (with Dave & Tracy Barker, Kamuran Tepedelen, Anthony Caponetto, Ryan Norris, Kara Glasgow and Will Bird).
Cold-Blooded Creations, an exhibition of herp-oriented fine art, has been held in conjunction with the expo for several years now, and this year is no exception. I'll have several pieces there, and will be painting on-site and signing books, so if you're in the neighborhood, stop by and say hi.
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illustration: BLACK-HEADED PYTHON & BEARDED DRAGON (1994) acrylic 18" x 24"

US MILITARY TO ABANDON WATERBOARDING

2008-08-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

Department of Defense spokesman Buck Turgidson announced this morning that the popular “enhanced interrogation” method of waterboarding® will be abandoned in favor of forcing detainees to carry midgets for prolonged periods (above). “We're sorry to lose waterboarding from our toolbox,” Turgidson said, “it was cheap, effective, and didn't require any fancy training to apply. We were really proud of the term, too. It tested well with focus groups. It's happy and light; it sounds like something the Beach Boys would sing about. Sadly, though, it's become misunderstood to the point of being counter-productive. We've worked hard to find an equally persuasive method, and I think this one may work even better for us.” Responding to suggestions that testimony from tortured individuals might be unreliable, Turgidson said, “We're not worried about learning the truth, we know that already. It's confirmation that's the key. Without enhanced interrogation we could never have seen the spectacular war crimes conviction earlier this week of Salim Hamden. It was on the questioning rack that we confirmed his participation in elite Al-Qaeda training camps, studying advanced methods of double-clutching and parallel parking.”

Turgidson feels confident that midget-carrying will become an important part of America's War on Terror®. “We're testing new jargon already. Among the favorite proposals are 'Lilliput Loading®' and 'The Dwarf Derby®'.”

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photograph by David Guttenfelder, AP swiped from the LA Times

HUMANS, NATURE & BIRDS

2008-07-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

Wildlife art is largely derided by the art ninny crowd, and with good reason. So dreadful is the majority of our genre's output, that many who should know better have learned to dismiss automatically artwork depicting wild animals.

A brand new book seeks to address that problem and to analyze just how wildlife art, or more specifically, bird art, functions. Co-authored by Science editor-in-chief/former Stanford University president Donald Kennedy and scientific illustrator/writer Darryl Wheye, Humans, Nature & Birds--Science Art from Cave Walls to Computer Screens includes 69 images of birds with analyses of each. The artwork spans the temporal range from Cro-Magnon artwork from Chauvet to artwork of the 21st Century, and is presented in the form of a virtual gallery exhibition where the work of classic bird artists like Audubon, Fuertes and Sutton hang beside masters not usually thought of as "bird artists," like Leonardo, Andrew Wyeth, Magritte and Manet, and contemporary bird painters like Bateman, Brenders and Harris-Ching. It's the accompanying text, though, that makes this book stand out. Well researched and cited, each image has been selected to illustrate a facet of the book's theme, ultimately building a powerful case for a better understanding of bird art, and by logical extension, of biological and science art in general.Among the work included is my painting, "Two Stories--Common Nighthawk" (above). A website is currently being built where browsers can find out more about the book and explore its pages.

WHITER THAN AN EAGLE

2008-07-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Rob over at Birdchaser for his post linking to an interesting account of an “albino” Golden Eagle, along with some spectacular photographs. While I would have loved to swipe one and post it, I decided instead on the above watercolor of a white phase Gray Goshawk (Accipiter novaehollandiae).
This common Australasian bird normally looks like the fellow on the right, but a morph occurs with completely white feathers--right down to the wingtips. Not all populations carry the potential for this phase. Usually, white plumage is a liability for a predatory bird, especially in tropical forests. Conventional wisdom suggests the white Gray Goshawks realize a benefit from their similarity to white cockatoos (Cacatua spp.); small prey birds are likely to mistake them for the innocuous psittaciformes until it's too late. In fact, the white phase is not known to occur in any localities where Cacatua species don't.

White phase Gray Goshawks look very much like albinos--right down to the red eyes they share with their entire species, but true albinism is rare in raptors. The North American Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) is the only species I know of where the trait crops up with any regularity.The plumage of the Holarctic Gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus - left) ranges the spectrum from nearly black birds to ones that approach the pallor of an albino Redtail or white Gray Gos. Any biogeographical trends to Gyrfalcon color phases are harder to see, although the whitest birds are said to come from Greenland.

Pigment impoverishment can result from several types of genetic mutations: albinism, leucism, hypomelanism, etc. These various conditions differ in the types of pigment cells that are affected, and are especially well-known to herpetoculturists, who, in recent years, have developed dozens of color varieties of numerous reptile species by selectively breeding from rare mutants like the Burmese Python (Python molurus) pictured below, which was wild-caught last year in northern Bali.
Leucism and similar traits are normally thought of as purely genetic in origin, but it seems possible to me that there could be a nutritional aspect to some cases. Back in the '70s, a couple of friends and I trapped an unusual adult female Prairie Falcon (Falco mexicanus) that had been hanging around downtown Salt Lake City. Her plumage was very white--similar in appearance to a light-colored Saker (F. cherrug). Not only were her feathers unusual in color, they were very poorly-formed, with weak barbs. She was in a very emaciated condition when we caught her, and it wasn't clear to us whether her thinness resulted from poor feather quality or vice versa. A pair of jess anklets and a band on her leg though, held a clue. It turned out she had been trapped two years earlier (she was a first-year bird then) by another falconer who had flown her for a couple of months before losing her. He reported that her juvenile plumage had been perfectly normal. The original trapper transferred the bird's permit to my friend, but she unfortunately died of Trichomoniasis before her next moult. A few years later an apprentice falconer of mine trapped a similar Prairie Falcon, this one an adult male (below). He was also quite starved, but since the trapping of mature falcons was illegal, we made the decision to feed him up for a couple of weeks then release him, probably to his demise. I wish we could have kept one of these falcons through the moult to see if the feathers would be replaced by normal ones once their owner was back in good health.

The eagle captured in Colorado is said to have been so thin that he couldn't fly. From the photographs, his feathers look to be in the same shape as these Prairie Falcons. He is being treated at a rehabilitation center, and the report states that he's expected to be returned to the wild in about three months. Should this plan be carried through, I'd predict one dead, white eagle in Colorado by New Year's. I'd expect any zoo director to happily take responsibility of such an unusual and beautiful bird for a year or more, and keeping him through his next moult would not only increase his chance of survival, but possibly add to our knowledge of avian pathology.
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upper: WHITE PHASE GRAY GOSHAWK (1996) watercolor 11.5" x 8.5"
second: SILVER GYRFALCON PORTRAIT (2005) acrylic 15" x 7"
All photographs by CPBvK

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TUFTS GET GOING

2008-07-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

Whenever Darren Naish blogs about owls, I end up with far more to say than can be politely typed into a comment space, and once again a short post from him inspires a lengthy one over here, and a chance to post some really old paintings. As usual, Darren's brief essay about the function of owl ear tufts was packed with information as well as interesting comments from knowledgeable people arguing for or against one of three possible tuft functions. The first of these suggests that they lend owls a mammal-like visage that is more likely to intimidate mammalian predators. The second possible function concerns species recognition and other intraspecific signaling, and the third is camouflage. Like Darren, I find the last suggestion the most plausible, but let's examine why.When mentioning feathered ear tufts, owls are the first birds to come to mind, but they're hardly alone. Paired head tufts have developed independently in cormorants, pheasants, puffins and others, including numerous groups of perching birds, culminating in the outrageous head plumes of the King of Saxony Bird of Paradise. Their uses vary from taxon to taxon; the function of the King of Saxony's plumes is obvious. Those of the two above, the Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris) and Inca Tern (Larosterna inca), are harder to explain.

Ear tufts adorn the heads of several related owl genera, including the screech and scops owls (Otus*) and the eagle owls (Bubo**). Practically all of these owls have ear tufts, while members of all other genera lack them, with the exception of the Asio owls, all of which are eared, and not closely related to the other eared owls. The roots of three odd horned owls are unsure, but the Jamaican Owl (Pseudoscops grammicus) is probably related to Asio, while the Neotropical Crested Owl (Lophostrix cristata) and the African Maned Owl (Jubula lettii) are possibly allied to Bubo, as are the oddly tuftless African fishing owls (Scotopelia spp.). In his post, Darren mentioned a new paper describing ear tuft erection as an alarm response in Ferruginous Pygmy Owls (Glaucidium brasilianum)!! The tuftless barn and bay owls of the family Tytonidae differ so much from typical owls in form and behavior as to limit their relevance to this discussion. I'll only mention that the odd facial disc apices of the Asian Bay Owl (Phodilus badius) look rather like proto-ear tufts to me. A few nightjars and owlet-nightjars also sport tiny ear tufts. So what do they do?

First, let's consider the case for the mammal-mimicking threat. My own observations throw some doubt on this one. The Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja - above) is the only bird I can think of whose behavior conforms to this theory. Its cat-like double crest is erected fully when the bird threatens, but why this adaptation would manifest itself most strongly in the one bird species best equipped to defend against mammal attacks, I can't imagine. As far as I know, ear tufts are never important in owl threat displays. These displays are most valuable to fledglings, most of which leave the nest some time before they can fly, and it must be noted that all tufted owls start out as tufted as juveniles as well. Owls' first plumage differs substantially in structure from the adult plumage, which typically comes in before the bird is one year old, and juvenile “horns” are often morphologically very different things from their adult analogs, so they're obviously important to young birds. Still I've never seen them used to threaten. The two photos (below) of a young Great Horned Owl (B. virginianus) show typical behavior. At left, the fledgling erects his horns and adopts a cryptic pose when startled by my approach. Once I get very close, his attitude becomes defensive, and the horns begin to lower (center), and continue to do so as the threat intensifies. The painting at right shows two young birds in similar poses. Within the genera of typically tufted owls, it's instructive to look at the tuftless ones. All members of the genus Bubo have well-developed ear tufts (above, left), except for the Snowy Owl (B. scandiacus - above, right), the only one that lives mostly in open, treeless areas, roosts on the ground and is diurnal. Even juvenile Snowies show no vestiges of ear tufts. It's interesting that Great Horned Owls vary greatly across their range in form. In moist, heavily forested regions they're big and dark, with large feet and narrow wings, while desert birds are small and pale with broad wings and tiny vole-catching feet, and arctic birds are massive and whitish. Nowhere, though, are their ear tufts reduced in the least. Several Otus species have greatly reduced ear tufts, though, and most of these occur on islands or high mountaintops with few or no mammalian predators, giving a bit of credence to the Mammalian threat theory. The tiny ear tufts of the peculiar little Flammulated Owl (O. flammeolus - below) of the Rocky Mountains are usually not visible in either juveniles (left) or adults (right). It's only when the birds are roosting in cover that they're elevated into visibility. It's the Asio owls, though, that best illustrate tuft development trends. The seven members of this genus are pretty uniform, but the ear tufts of two species are reduced to stubs. The Long-eared Owl (A. otus - below, left) and Short-eared Owl (A. flammeus - below, right) are well-known and widespread. Their habits are similar, but the Shortear is more diurnal and normally roosts on the ground. It seems likely that the same factors oversaw the loss of ear tufts in both the Shortear and the Snowy Owl.
Even though its diminutive horns barely affect its silhouette (left), the Shortear moves them in the same fashion as its better-endowed kin, erecting them to their full puniness at a minor disturbance. Unlike the Bubo and Otus owls, members of the genus Asio erect their ear tufts when in full threat display. Their effect is normally obscured, though, by the bird's wings (more on this later). It should be noted that juvenile Shortears have well-developed horns; it's hard to distinguish one from a young Longear. The other earless Asio species, the African Marsh Owl (A. capensis) is a little more problematic. In habits, it lies between the Shortear and the Longear, flying by day and night and exploiting a number of habitats, some of them rather well wooded. There is some controversy regarding the African Marsh Owl's phylogeny, and it's not clear whether it lost its ear tufts along with the Shortear or independently of it. If this could be established it would shed some light on the puzzle of tuft development. In fact, working out general owl phylogeny will be an important step in understanding this issue. For instance, there's fairly good molecular evidence that Bubo is a more basal genus than genera like Strix and Ciccaba (usually conflated, nowadays). Demonstrating that these nocturnal, deep-woods birds were derived from tufted owls would force some intense re-thinking on many of us.The second hypothesis of tuft function suggests that they lend owls a characteristic silhouette identifiable to conspecifics. Since owls are mostly nocturnal and recognize one another by vocalizing, such lavish adaptations seem unlikely, and since there appears to be a correlation between diurnal habits and loss of horns, I tend to dismiss this idea. It's also been suggested that ear tufts are employed in more complex intraspecific communication. When interacting with a horned owl, it's tempting to ascribe emotive intentions to tuft movements, but this is probably more a case of projection than discovery. Owls are mostly solitary, and the most gregarious species like the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia - above) tend to be earless. Burrowing Owls do communicate visually, though, by expanding and contracting the two white fields beneath the facial discs. The previously mentioned Flammulated Owl is one of the most social Otus owls -- also with reduced ear tufts. In certain cases, Long-eared Owls are colonial. It would be interesting to spend a spring in one of these colonies with a pair of night-vision goggles. Most owls have an extended dependency on their parents, and the possibility persists of tuft use in parent-fledgling signaling, not to mention courtship displaying. Again we're limited by our diurnal eyes.
It seems clear to me that whatever other uses owls put their tufts to are secondary to hypothetical function #3: camouflage. When erected, they disrupt the bird's outline, making it resemble a broken snag. The sketches above show typical roosting postures of eared owls. Figure a. shows the typical posture of an owl roosting in moderate cover. In heavier cover, tuft erection tends to be more extreme. The base of a limb is often selected (b.), and the bird often leans into the trunk, extending body and ear tufts to their fullest, as if merging with the tree. When roosting in the open, the tufts are more likely to be appressed (c.). A disturbance will often induce a roosting owl to stretch its body and raise its ears, exaggerating its cryptic aspect (d.). As a perceived danger intensifies, the posture shifts from crypsis to threat. The ear tufts begin to lower as the body feathers are erected, increasing the bird's apparent size (e.). As far as I know, all eared owls lower the ear tufts at this stage. Various vocalizations, bill-clapping and swaying may begin at this stage. In full threatening mode, the wings are spread and tilted forward, displaying the greatest possible surface area to the opponent(f.). The erect ear tufts in the sketch are typical of Asio (note how they wind up flattened against the wings). In Bubo and Otus they are normally (but not always) appressed in this display. Lifting the feathers of the facial discs so as to increase their area appears to be a more important part of threat display than anything done with the ear tufts.

*Some authorities like to split this genus. I choose to ignore them.
**Including the former Nyctea and Ketupa
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upper: NDUK EAGLE OWL (1995) acrylic 11" x 7"
second: HARPY EAGLE & TAMANDUA (1999) acrylic 20" x 15"
third: LONG-EARED OWL PORTRAIT (2006) acrylic 15" x 7"
fourth: SHORT-EARED OWL NEST (1983) watercolor 14" x 19"
fifth: BURROWING OWL & BADGER (1988) oil 30" x 18"
sixth: OWL ROOSTING POSTURES (2008) pencil sketch 11" x 8"
All photographs by CPBvK

TUESDAY AMPHIBIAN LARVAE part iv

2008-07-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

It's been over a week now with no sightings of toad tadpoles in the pond. I assume they were all eaten by the salamanders, who continue to grow at a moderate rate, without much morphological change. At this point I will stop with the weekly progress posts. Next one will be in August.

REVENGE OF THE GRAPHIC ARTISTS

2008-07-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

My first kindergarten report card noted an extreme inability to compromise with my classmates, and the intervening 45 years have seen little improvement in my skills at playing well with others. As liabilities go, this isn't the worst one an artist can have; few occupations are more solitary. Nowadays, my cardinal peccadillo only seems to crop up when my work goes under the knife of a graphic artist.

Above are four book jackets designed by graphic artists using my artwork. The two "wraparound" designs on the left are the work of Megan Davies, a graphic artist with a strong understanding of composition and color, in addition to a fluid use of her tools. These covers are the sort of uses I enjoy watching my work being put to. Both used existing paintings that weren't intended as book jackets. The painting on Biology of the Boas & Pythons appears in its entirety, while minimal cropping delivered but the slightest indignity to the painting on Rigor Vitae's cover. The original compositions are intact, and the text and overall jacket design serve to complement them. In the upper-right corner is a mock-up for a coffee-table book of my work from Abbeville Press that was never completed. The original painting was flopped and severely cropped, presumably to concentrate the viewer's focus on the subject. Although the composition and feel of the original painting has been mostly lost, the jacket takes on a new, sort of Victorian look that's not altogether unpleasant. Unlike the other three, the painting on the cover of Frank DeCourten's Dinosaurs of Utah was intended as a book cover, and I left the graphic artists plenty of room to crop and add text.
Designing artwork by committee can give the artist the unusual pleasure of working with alien inspiration. In 1994 I designed a dust jacket for Brian Kend's Pythons of Australia. The subject was to be a Bearded Dragon (Pogona viticeps) being constricted by a Black-headed Python (Aspidites melanocephalus). When I submitted my first rough sketch (above) to the publisher, he suggested a horizontal "wraparound" composition, an idea that would likely not have occurred to me. The ultimate design (below) was vastly improved by his advice. While designing the composition, I made sure that the right half of the painting would work in isolation, while the whole and the narrow, central spine (which features Australian red sand, gum trees, a kangaroo and python skin) work as well.
I also composed the painting on Dan Beck's Biology of Gila Monsters and Beaded Lizards (below) specifically for this purpose, working closely with the author. As usual, plenty of room was left for cropping, and the lower 1/8th of the piece was removed. Unfortunately, the graphic artist saw fit here to alter the painting as well, something that always rubs me the wrong way. Evidently, the depth portrayed in my original wasn't exaggerated enough for his liking, so the contrast was manipulated in the area behind the lizard's snout. For some reason, the treatment wasn't applied uniformly, with the result that the distant rock doesn't quite appear to be on a consistent plane. The change was subtle, but served only to lessen the visual impact. Below is an example of graphic artists using my work as elements with which to create something wholly new. Five of my illustrations (and pieces of others) from Dinosaurs of Utah were used for signage in the visitor's center of the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, with rather happy results.More often than not, though, I cringe at composites made from my work. Digital manipulation of art is so easy and versatile that graphic artists seem to feel like they're not doing their job unless they use some of those tools. The result is not usually good. Below is a particularly hideous wallpaper border made by chopping up and spitting out a series of frog portraits I painted in the late '90s.Greeting card companies are among the most egregious offenders. Sometimes I try to imagine the thought process that inspires their misdeeds.While flipping through images sent by art publishing houses, I picture a bored employee stopping at my Horsfield's Tarsier & Asian Frilled Gecko (above, left). "Here's an animal with big eyes. That's good. Too bad about the dark background - not very happy. We can fix it, though: zoom in a bit on the subjects and replace that macabre nighttime with an attractive marbled pattern." The new, improved image is on the right.My painting of an African Spotted Eagle Owl (Bubo africanus - above, left) got the treatment as well: "Owls are popular. We'll have to drop out that background, though - why does this guy keep painting nocturnal animals at night? - let's use the purple marbling this time. We can draw in some sweet little twinkling stars - those big ones he put in have to go - makes the crescent moon look too Islamic. We'll cut it down to a decent size, so you can focus on the owl, and just paste the moon onto the new background. Does the shadow on the moon look a little dark to you? No? Great, let's send it to the printers."

TUESDAY AMPHIBIAN LARVAE part iii

2008-07-08T17:15:00.001-07:00

We'll have to settle for an abbreviated post this week. I couldn't find any toad larvae in the pond today, but the salamanders have acquired the standard "axolotl" form.

THE CORVID SHIFT

2008-07-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

It's time to update my post from a couple of years ago about the shifting local populations of ravens and crows. Common Crows (Corvus brachyrynchus) colonized Salt Lake City just seven years ago, and Ravens (C. corax), common denizens of the deserts to Salt lake's south and west, began to nest in small numbers in the city around 1980. Over the first three years, the crow population rocketed to a few hundred birds before seeming to level off around 2005. Ravens, on the other hand, have never numbered more than a few pairs in the city itself.

I grew up in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake, and never saw a Raven in the Wasatch, north of Utah county, until last year's Blogger Bioblitz, when I watched a pair emerge from a draw to stoop at a passing goose. A thorough search of the area failed to yield anything, and I assume they failed to nest there. This past week, another pair (perhaps the same one) was observed on multiple occasions in the next canyon to the south. So far, I've been unable to locate a nest.

TUESDAY AMPHIBIAN LARVAE part ii

2008-07-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

The past week hasn't added much length to my amphibian larvae. The Barred Tiger Salamanders (Ambystoma mavortium)have increased by about half a centimeter, the Woodhouse's Toads (Bufo woodhousii) have shown no visible increase, although their morphological change has been striking (above). The front legs, virtually invisible last week, are well developed, and the hind legs continue to grow. The body has taken on a new spotted pattern and the head shape is altogether more toad-like, with protrusions at the eye and jawline developing. I can perceive no morphological change in the salamanders over the past week (below).

THE BIG PAYOFF

2008-06-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

There will be no more badmouthing the current administration on this blog. I just received my government check today--part of the "economic stimulus program," yet another brilliant solution to a sticky problem. As we all know, the U.S. economy is in the toilet because Americans don't buy enough crap. It's time now for all of us to lift together and engage in some good, intensive consumption. I'm typing at a computer that's a decade or so old--heresy, really. Maybe I'll get a new one. Or maybe I'll fill up my gas tank and drive up and down the Main Street. I'll have to think of something good, but I'd better do it quickly...the world needs me.

ART OF THE MANGROVES

2008-06-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Life began in the sea and remained there for over 3 billion years. It's learned to thrive on land just as well, but occupying the intertidal zone, that strip between the two, continues to be a difficult trick, both ecologically and physiologically. Around a hundred species of tropical and subtropical trees have become specialized to exploit this zone, and diverse ecosystems have grown up around them. These trees are known as mangroves, and the systems they support are called mangrove swamps, mangrove forests, or mangals, and constitute one of earth's most critically threatened and under-appreciated ecosystems.

In an attempt to raise mangrove awareness (and hopefully a few $$ for mangrove conservation and research), I'm trying to get a traveling group show of mangrove art going. The initial response from museums has been overwhelmingly positive, and we're presently focussed on securing a lead venue. If you're a painter or sculptor who would be interested in submitting work for the jury, please comment on this post or drop me a line at carelbvk at gmail dot com, and get to work over the next year on some mangrove work. We want the show to represent the diversity of mangrove communities, so you're better off avoiding subjects like ibises (ibes?) and spoonbills, that have been done to death.Strictly speaking, around 45 species of trees in ten genera and five families constitute the true mangroves, but plants from over a dozen other families are usually lumped into the designation as well, including a palm, a screwpine and a sedge.

High salinity, fluctuating tides, silty soils that are low in oxygen and nutrients, and harsh sunlight combine to complicate living in the intertidal zone. Among the many adaptations evolved by mangrove trees to deal with these challenges include branching systems of stilt roots and pneumatophores or “breathing tubes” rising from under the ground. Roots and stems are highly impervious to salts, and some species have evolved special glands for excreting excess salts. Mangroves exhibit many different systems for storing gases and nutrients and many of them engage in photosensitive leaf movements to limit evaporation.

The greatest mangrove diversity is in Southeast Asia, but mangals are found in 114 countries, as far north as Japan, from Polynesia west through Asia to the Arabian Peninsula, and in coastal Africa as far north as Egypt and Mauritania. Mangroves are less diverse in the New World, but are well represented on both coasts of South and Central America. In the United States, mangroves occur only in Hawaii, where they were introduced and are considered pests, and in Florida and the southern Gulf Coast of Texas. Nearly half of the world's mangal area resides in five countries: Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico and Australia.

Mangroves' complex stilt root networks provide substrates for oysters, barnacles, bryozoans and other sessile animals, as well as shelter for many species of crustaceans and fishes, while above the surface, the forests provide habitat for birds, mammals and reptiles, including many species that are completely dependent on such habitats, like the endangered Proboscis Monkey (Nasalis larvatus – below). The roots strengthen and protect coastlines and act as sinks for heavy metals and other toxins. The direct relationship between mangrove removal and destruction from the 2004 tsunami was staggering. Humans have exploited mangals for thousands of years, harvesting oysters, crustaceans and fish for food, and wood for poles and fuel. With increased population, these uses have put greater pressure on the world's mangrove communities, but commercial activities are the biggest enemies of mangals, especially tourist and urban development, shrimp and rice farming, and salt mining, which have been responsible for most of the mangrove clearing of the past 50 years. Other threats include water and air pollution, rising sea levels, loss of coral reefs (corals interrupt wave action, creating quiet waters favored by mangroves), water redistribution, erosion and extreme weather.
Estimates for total global mangrove loss range from 35% to 55%, but good data are only available for the past 25 years. Between 1980 and 2000 total mangal area decreased by about 20%. Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Panama, Vietnam, Malaysia and Madagascar recorded the biggest losses, although Pakistan has curbed mangrove destruction dramatically in recent years, as have Singapore, Oman, Barbados, East Timor, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Liberia and Benin. Recent horticultural advancements have aided greatly in restoring mangals, and this promises to be an important area for future mangrove conservation.

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illustrations: upper: Plein air pencil sketch (1996) Rio del Rey estuary (Ndian River) SWP, Cameroon 9" x 6"
lower: DUSKY-GILLED MUDSKIPPERS (2008) acrylic 6" x 12"
All Photographs by CPBvK

AMPHIBIAN LARVAE: SALAMNDERS vs. TOADS, part i

2008-06-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of humble portraits of the tenants in my front-yard pond: Amphibian larvae! On May 6th of this year I collected 4 Woodhouse's Toad (Bufo woodhousii) tadpoles, and on June 16th I collected 6 Barred Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma mavortium) larvae. Today I broke down and photographed them for the first time (click on the photos to see them full-size). Above is one of the salamander larvae. While the tadpoles of most anuran species are herbivorous, most salamander larvae feed on arthropods, as do those of A. mavortium. A wide range of prey is captured, but arthropods more than 25% of the larva's bodylength are rarely taken. Prey species that rest on the substrate are preferred. The salamander typically approaches potential prey nonchalantly, then quickly opens its mouth and expands its throat, pulling in a large amount of water and, more often than not, the desired item. A. mavortium is the most common amphibian of my area, and I've raised hundreds of their larvae over the years. Around here, the eggs usually hatch in early May, releasing larvae about 8mm long. They grow very quickly, metamorphosing before winter. In just over a week, these fellows have increased their length by about 30%, reaching a current total length of about 5cm. What were barely visible limb buds have become mildly respectable little legs. The lovely, feathered gills grow in inverse proportion to the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water. Tiger Salamanders growing in richly-oxygenated waters develop stumpy, sorry-looking gills. By late September, they'll be about 5 inches long and their gills will be all but gone. Their greenish color will give way to a brownish-gray with small, darker spots, and they'll haul up onto land to bury themselves and hibernate. Adult Barred Tiger Salamanders are mostly terrestrial and fossorial. They emerge at night and during rainstorms to hunt arthropod prey. Upon emerging from hibernation in the spring, the adults enter ponds or still pools in rivers to breed.

These Woodhouse's Toads are the first members of their species I've kept. According to the literature, they occur in my area, but I've never seen them this far north, only their relative, B. boreas. These individuals were taken from the Beaver Dam Wash in southwestern Utah. Like other toad tadpoles, they feed on algae, often hanging inside tangles of Spirogyra to graze. These tadpoles have grown far more slowly than the salamanders, having added only a few mm in nearly two months. Today their total length is about 4cm. About 2 weeks ago, their hind limb buds began to sprout, and they're coming along nicely, even developing some barring. I'll do my best to post new photos of both species every Tuesday.
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Both photos by CPBvK, taken on June 24, 2008

ENGLISH SPARROW UPDATE

2008-06-23T09:33:00.002-07:00

A couple of years ago I wrote about the North American introduction of English or "House" Sparrows (Passer domesticus) and a few of the ecological effects of that act. English Sparrows, especially fledglings, are far easier for predators to catch than any native bird, a fact that I believe is responsible for a number of behavioral changes I've noticed in other creatures, most notably American Kestrels (Falco sparverius). Here in Utah, kestrels living in human-altered ecosystems feed heavily on young English Sparrows in the summer, and tend in general to be much more ornithophagic than their wilderness-dwelling brethren.

I once saw a Raven (Corvus corax) fly down an English Sparrow, and imagine that could be common behavior in some situations. This morning I added another species to the list of species I've seen benefit from the little immigrants. An adult Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia) caught a fledgling English Sparrow on a suburban lawn and flitted over the rooftops with its prize.
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upper: AMERICAN KESTREL & ENGLISH SPARROW (2007) acrylic on illustration board 30" x 20"
lower: CRASH-BARRIER WALTZER--BLACK-BILLED MAGPIE (2005) acrylic on illustration board 30" x 22"

THREE CHEERS FOR CHIROPTERA part ii

2008-06-20T14:03:00.001-07:00

The same factors that keep the average schlemiel oblivious to the bats around him make it difficult for the odd interested party to study and understand them; they live in a world to which we are deaf and dumb. Before night vision goggles could amplify ambient light and bat detectors convert ultrasonic calls to audible frequencies, bat researchers were relegated to observing their subjects leaving or returning to their roosts and collecting droppings and food waste below. The data collected were added to somewhat random information gleaned from trapping individuals at night, and the rest of the picture was by necessity speculative. Some species like the Spotted Bat (Euderma maculatum – above) of the American Southwest, long considered very rare, are probably less rare than hard to observe (although this species is one of the few in the U.S. whose echolocation call is audible to human ears). The gap is slowly being bridged, but mystery still reigns when it comes to bat behavior. Unfortunately, this makes it hard to assess, address, or even perceive a crisis when it hits, and it's hard to say whether the current decline constitutes the beginning of a crisis or not, but something's going on.

Being mostly small and delicate, bats are especially vulnerable to stress, injury and infection. Insectivorous bats are often exposed to pesticides, many of which have endocrine-disrupting effects. Frugivorous bats can also be exposed to agricultural pesticides when they feed on human crops, and in such instances are often subject to more direct violence as well. Bats reproduce slowly; a single pup per season is the norm. Of course, habitat destruction can be devastating. For some social bats, a small piece of real estate can be crucial to a large population. Over much of their range, the Pteropus bats of Asia, Australasia and Madagascar are hunted for food or as crop pests, and typically shun areas where they're disturbed by humans. Today, large Pteropus colonies are restricted to remote regions or small, uninhabited islands, like Pulau Kalong, a flat, one-mile-square, mangrove-covered atoll west of the Indonesian island of Flores. Nearly a quarter-million P. vampyrus roost here during the day, leaving each evening to forage on adjacent islands (below). Besides removing roosting and hibernating sites, deforestation diminishes insect populations and stresses individuals.

In much of the northern hemisphere, safety/liability fanatics sealed many natural caverns and mine shafts during the last century, lots of them in such a way as to prevent the entry of bats, destroying important roosts and hibernacula. Such was the case with Ezell's cave, between Austin and San Antonio, where a large colony of Cave Myotis (Myotis velifer) were inadvertently excluded by a gate in the late 1950s. Without constant bat guano enriching the cave's subterranean lake, the water's ecology became impoverished, resulting in a decline of its top predator, the Texas Blind Salamander (Eurycea rathbuni), and its honor of being the first species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Several attempts at reintroducing bats failed spectacularly, and no bats have taken the initiative to recolonize the place on their own, probably due to human activity in and around the cave. In fact, spelunkers have always been a bit of a scourge for bats, disturbing maternity and hibernating colonies. When aroused from hibernation, a bat's metabolic rate jumps, and when disturbed too many times it can starve to death. In recent years the caving community has begun to discourage its members from entering major roosts and hibernacula during crucial periods. It's difficult to establish the overall impact on a species when a colony abandons its digs, but human disturbance in caves appears to be a major factor in the decline of numerous species, including the endangered Gray Myotis (Myotis grisescens) and Indiana Myotis (M. soldalis).

Light pollution is another bat threat that's hard to quantify. Over most of the industrialized world, the night sky has changed remarkably. The effect this has had on nocturnal ecosystems is profound, but poorly understood. In the late '80s, a wooded area adjacent to my home was replaced with a well-lit supermarket. Over the next three years, the composition of nocturnal insect species in the area was completely rearranged. Exactly how these changes transmit to insects' predators isn't well understood, but important effects should be expected. A number of faster-flying bat species have learned to exploit streetlights and the insects they attract, while some other species seem to shun them.

Wind turbines have been vaunted as ecologically-friendly alternatives to coal-fired and nuclear power plants, but, as with any system, they have their down side, too. It's become apparent that in some situations, the frequency of bat collisions with these structures is far greater than chance would dictate. Of the 45 species of North American bats, 11 have been recorded as killed by wind turbines, none of them endangered. Of the recorded fatalities, over three-quarters belonged to three species: The Hoary Bat (Lasiurus cinereus), Eastern Red Bat (L. borealis) and Silver-haired Bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans). All three bats migrate long distances and roost in trees, Lasionycteris in tree cavities, and Lasiurus usually in foliage. More data are needed, but it appears that most bats are killed during the fall migration, and then mostly on still, overcast nights. To better understand the significance of this, let's look at the behavior of the best-known of these three species.

The beautiful Hoary Bat (above) is the most widespread, and over much of its range, the biggest bat in North America. Its sturdy foot-wide wingspan can carry it for amazing distances. It's the only bat to have successfully colonized the Hawaiian Islands, and it occurs on Bermuda and even Orkney Island, north of Scotland. A close relative was one of the few native mammals on the Galapagos, but it appears to have recently gone extinct. During the summer, males and females live separately, and many populations appear to consist solely of one sex, the females tending to concentrate in the east and the males in the west. A single female raises her pups each year in a group of spruce trees not far from my home. In September, migration and contact between the sexes begins, along with courtship behavior, including copulation and fighting between males. Hoaries may migrate singly or in flocks. Like many migrating birds, they seem to follow the Pacific coastline south, and it seems reasonable to expect migrating bats in general to follow shared flyways. The sexes live together during the winter, then separate for the spring migration. Females store sperm over the winter and ovulate in the spring, giving birth early in the summer. Lasiurus bats sport four mammaries instead of the normal two, and can give birth to as many as four, or in unusual cases, five, pups. The Hawaiian subspecies, L. c. semotus, is thought to have declined from habitat loss, and is listed as endangered by the U.S.D.I. The I.U.C.N. lists its status as indeterminate.

Courtship behavior probably has a lot to do with the huge spike of collisions during fall migration without a corresponding spike in the spring. Whether the increased mortality on overcast nights is related to increased migration activity or lower altitude of flight has yet to be established. Bats seem to be hit more frequently by turbines on tall towers, especially in wooded areas, but the available data are still rather poor. It is suspected that bats may be attempting to roost on turbines. Many fatalities seem not to result from a strike by the blade, but from rapid decompression from the vortex trailing behind it. At some sites, Mexican Free-tailed Bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) may be at special risk. Current research involving coating turbines with paint of varying UV reflectivity seems to indicate that a simple paint job could reduce mortality. As the nature of the problem becomes better understood, it seems likely that a safer wind farm regime can be devised.

The winter before last, a new and especially alarming bat threat was discovered. Bats in a hibernaculum near Albany, New York were found with a crust of white fungus on their face and wings. The fungus was identified as belonging to the genus Fusarium, a group primarily associated with plant disease, but including vertebrate pathogens as well. At the height of the Cold War, biological warfare research with Fusarium fungi was carried out by the Soviets and the U.S. By February of '07, several infected hibernacula were identified in the area. Last winter, White Nose Syndrome (WNS), as it has come to be known, had spread to most of the known hibernacula in New York, and into Vermont and Massachusetts. Mortality of affected bats at these sites has been 90 – 97%, but it is not known how many, if any, survivors made it through the summer. Whether the fungus is the cause of a fatal disease or just an opportunist associated with an unidentified pathogen is also unknown. Afflicted bats exhibit radical behavior change, including increased winter activity. They often fly about the cave entrance, even leaving it to flutter about in broad daylight on a frigid winter day. Not surprisingly, necropsied bats have shown depleted fat stores. The disease could be directly responsible for this, or it could be the result of increased activity and inability to find food, or both. Is the activity caused by hunger or vice versa? It's possible that the pathogen interferes with the bats' ability to thermoregulate. In the winter of "06 -'07, an infected bat was taken into captivity, fed up, and released in spring, which suggests that it may be possible for bats to fight the infection if their condition is sufficiently raised. Some articles have blamed global warming, but there is no basis for this. Within the affected sites, all cave-hibernating species have been found to be affected, except the Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus) and the Eastern Small-footed Myotis (M. leibii). The latter species, listed by New York state as a species of special concern, hibernates in different sections of the hibernacula, and work is underway to establish if they are infected; it's assumed that they are. Important populations of the endangered Indiana Bat (M. sodalis) are also afflicted. Eighty-five percent of the known population of this bat hibernates in 7 caves. Some dead bats have been found without the fungus, and fungus has been collected from asymptomatic bats. Preliminary findings suggest that immune functions of infected bats may be significantly impaired. Like Chytridiomycosis in frogs, which has been covered extensively on this blog, White Nose Syndrome is a darkened room with far more questions than answers, and the potential of real ecological devastation. Disinfection and general behavioral guidelines (similar to the ones established last year for Chytridiomycosis) are being hammered out for biologists and spelunkers. Nine universities and a number of state and federal wildlife and health agencies are involved in studying WNS, along with a number of independent researchers. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Indiana Bat Recovery Team is overseeing distribution of funds.

According to the IUCN, nine bat species have recently gone extinct (six of them megachiropterans), 32 species (14 megachiropterans) are critical, 44 (9 chiropterans) endangered and 172 (39 megachiropterans) vulnerable.
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Thanks to Laura Ellison
upper: SPOTTED BAT (2008) acrylic on illustration board 20" x 30"
middle: Pteropus vampyrum photo by CPBvK
lower: HOARY BAT (1993) acrylic on illustration board 17" x 12"

THREE CHEERS FOR CHIROPTERA part i

2008-06-18T14:21:00.001-07:00

A good chunk of the past year's blog posts have covered the current global frog decline; still, I make no apologies. At the moment, anurans are crashing harder than any other animal group. But lest anyone infer that all is well in the rest of the animal kingdom, let's take a glimpse at another taxon, and what better direction to glimpse than toward the order Chiroptera, the bats? Few of us take notice of bats, but they're all around us. Aside from rodents, they are the biggest, most diverse mammal order, with over a thousand species and a nearly global distribution. They're only absent from a few small, remote islands and the polar regions, and they often occur in huge numbers. At over 100 million, the Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) is one of the US' most plentiful mammals, despite being restricted to the southern third of the lower 48. Even so, bats' nocturnal habits and mostly small size and secretive nature keep them out of sight and, for most of us, mind. In temperate latitudes, bats are small, insectivorous creatures that devour many tons of insects every night, but as one moves toward the equator, they become far more diverse in form and behavior. In the tropics, they have evolved to feed on fish, birds, and other vertebrates—even on blood, as well as fruits and nectar. Many tropical plants, like the Merinthipodium neuranthum feeding a pair of Lonchophylla robustum in the painting above, are dependent on bat pollinators. Many fruits, including Africa and Madagascar's iconic baobabs (Adansonia spp.) rely on fruit-eating bats to disperse their seeds.

Bats' dainty structure makes them exquisitely adapted for flight, but poorly so for leaving fossil records, and bat evolution is not well understood. The oldest known bat fossils, from early Eocene deposits in both Europe and North America, are quite similar to modern forms and don't likely represent the order's roots. Modern bats fall into two large suborders. The Megachiroptera comprises the family Pteropididae, the fruit bats, a group restricted to the Old World, including the biggest bats, the flying foxes (Pteropus spp. - above), whose wings can span a meter and a half. In all, there are 42 megachiropteran genera with around 173 species. The remaining 17 bat families reside in the suborder Microchiroptera. It was long assumed that both groups were derived from a common ancestor, but a recent and controversial theory, based on similarities between megachiropteran and primate brains, proposes that the two bat groups evolved flight independently of each other, spurring a lively and continuing debate—and that's about as far as I care to wade into those shark-infested waters. Whatever their phylogenic trajectory, the first proto-bats probably evolved from tree-dwelling gliders similar to the modern Colugo (Cynocephalus volans - below) of Southeast Asia, probably bats' closest living relative.

The largest microchiropteran family is Vespertilionidae, the vesper bats. This family of 42 genera and about 355 species is distributed globally. Typically small insectivores, vesper bats include most temperate zone species. The genus Myotis, with around 100 species belongs to this family. Aside from Homo, it's the most widely-distributed terrestrial mammal genus, with representatives on every continent save Antarctica, and as far afield as Samoa.

The most diverse family, Phyllostomidae, is restricted to the New World. This group includes the tongue-feeding bats of the subfamily Glossophaginae, like our friends Lonchophylla up top. These nectar eaters are important pollination vectors for many plants, including the crucial Blue Agave (Agave tequilana), from which tequila is manufactured. Other notable phyllostomids include the three vampire bats (subfamily Desmodontidae), with three monotypic genera, and the carnivorous Vampyrum spectrum (below), the largest New World bat, indeed the largest microchiropteran.

The fabulous-looking Old World horseshoe bats (Rhinolophidae) include two of the biggest bat genera, Hipposideros and Rhinolophus (below), with 51 and 69 species, respectively.

The afore-mentioned Mexican Free-tailed Bat belongs to the Mastiff family, Mollosidae, with 16 genera and 86 species. The family, whose tails extend well beyond the interfemoral membrane or patagium, includes some of the most social mammals with colonies that can number in the millions.
The emballonurid, or sac-winged bats comprise 12 genera and 48 species, with pantropical distribution. Most members sport a glandular wing sac near each shoulder that secretes a strong-smelling, reddish fluid. The remaining twelve bat families are small ones, with less than ten species apiece. They include such favorites as the monotypic Craseonycteridae from Thailand, whose sole species, Craseonycteris thonlongyai, is possibly the world's smallest mammal, and the ditypic Noctilionidae, whose two Neotropical species (Noctilio leporinus is pictured above) are common throughout the American tropics, including the islands of the Caribbean, wherever there is still water. Remarkably specialized for catching small fish swimming near the water's surface, they eat little else and show no capacity to forage in any other way. These creatures' sensitive hearing can pinpoint the tiny ripples made by fish swimming near the surface surface by echolocation, then, dragging their long claws beneath them, they rake up their prey, eating it on the wing. The sight of one of these large bats fishing on a foot-and-a-half wingspan, its talons raking the glassy expanse of a moonlit blackwater lagoon, is not soon forgotten. There's our glimpse of general bat ecology and biogeography. The next post will address their current decline.
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upper: MARKEA NEURANTHA (1995) acrylic on illustration board 30" x 15" (note--this plant was re-designated as Merinthopodium neuranthum a couple of years after I painted and named this piece.
All photographs by CPBvK; Locations (in order): Maraonsetra, Madagascar; Nusa Tengara, Indonesia; Sarawak, Malaysia; Fortuna, Costa Rica; Flores, Indonesia
lower: FISHING BULLDOG BAT (1997) acrylic on illustration board 15" x 20"

INTERNATIONAL HORNBILL CONFERENCE

2008-06-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

The 5th International Hornbill Conference will be held next March 22nd through 25th at the Botany Centre of the Singapore Botanical Gardens. It promises to be a great opportunity to learn more about what are, let's face it, the coolest of all birds. Alan Kemp, author of the great Oxford book, The Hornbills, and Pilai Poonswad, director of the Hornbill Research Foundation at Mahidol University in Bangkok, will be the keynote speakers. A website for the conference is in the works, and I promise to link to it once it's up. Registration for international participants is S$650, or S$500 (about US$365 at the moment) before the end of December. Got to start saving my pennies.
BAR-POUCHED WREATHED HORNBILLS (1996) acrylic on illustration board 30" x 20" collection of Pacific Securities, Taipei, Taiwan
"Like all but two of the 54 hornbill species, the female Bar-pouched Wreathed Hornbill (Aceros undulatus) walls herself into a tree cavity prior to egg laying. This species, which ranges from Bengal to Bali, has a particularly long nesting period; the female can spend 130 days or more confined in her cell. During this time the male busies himself collecting fruits for his mate and growing offspring, to whom the food is delivered through a small aperture. In this painting the female has just emerged from the nest to stretch in the sunlight while the single youngster peers from the cavity onto its newly expanded universe. Interestingly, Asian hornbills of both sexes in their first plumage resemble adult males, rather than females. As far as I know, they are unique among birds in this respect"

ART OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

2008-06-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow the thirteenth annual Art of the Animal Kingdom exhibition will open at the Bennington Center for the Arts in Bennington, Vermont. It will include just over 80 flatworks and sculptures depicting both wild and domestic animals. The exhibition was juried by John Seerey-Lester, who is this year's featured artist. John will give a lecture at the museum tomorrow at 11:00am. The show continues through July 27th.
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illustration: SPRAWL--OUSTALET'S CHAMELEON (2007) acrylic on illustration board 18" x 24"

WHAT DO FISH EAGLES EAT, ANWAY?

2008-06-12T22:41:00.004-07:00

My recent post about sea eagles started a couple of conversations about the dietary preferences of those birds and their possible use in falconry. Steve Bodio, proprietor at Querencia and an experienced falconer with an unhealthy fascination with flying eagles at game, suggested that a Steller's Sea Eagle might be flown at Canada Geese (a friend of his once flew a Bald Eagle at jackrabbits with regular success). The thought was interesting to me, even though my limited experience with sea eagles has left a distinct impression of languor. For many years, a population of Bald Eagles has wintered in the desert of western Utah, feeding largely on jackrabbits, and according to the literature, Balds capture ducks quite frequently, especially in the southeastern U.S. In the late 19th century, the great ornithologist William Brewster described Bald Eagles in Virginia capturing geese in flight. Surprising as this may sound, it's hard judge the speed of an eagle. They appear slow because they move fewer body lengths per second than a smaller bird, but watching a pair of Goldens stoop at your Peregrine makes any unmerited disrespect suddenly dissolve. This said, it's still hard for me to shake my old attitudes toward the genus Haliaeëtus.
Last week a friend emailed me a series of seven photographs taken by Tom Carver from British Columbia showing an Adult Bald Eagle striking a full-grown Trumpeter Swan. I strung them together into the video clip above to facilitate comparison. It's hard to tell for sure whether it's a case of attempted predation or mere bullying, but I'm inclined to interpret it as the former. The first photo is clearly unrelated to the rest, and serves only as an introduction. The second shot shows the eagle hitting the swan's rump, possibly without much height advantage. The original narration said the swan then dropped straight into the water below, but the photos show the eagle quickly gaining altitude, presumably to continue the chase. According to the narration, the swan landed on the water and the pursuit ended, which makes me suspect the eagle wasn't terribly serious.

I'm pleased to have seen these photos and had my prejudices shaken a bit. Clearly, sea eagles are capable of a range of behaviors, and can wax raptorial with the best of them when it strikes their fancy. Still, I keep coming back to visions of the only sort of Bald Eagle predation I've witnessed, typified by this photo I took earlier this year, of Bald Eagles feasting on cow placenta.
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UPPER: Photographs by Tom Carver of Terrace, BC; Thanks to Anne Schneidervin
LOWER: Photo by CPBvK

TOAD-NAMING AUCTION WINDS DOWN

2008-05-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that this is the year of the frog? This year a consortium of zoo, conservation and zoological groups are joining forces to spread the word about the catastrophic decline of the world's frogs. One of the prime ventures under this heading is the Amphibian Ark, a project dedicated to captive propagation of the most critical frog species. Among their innovative fund-raising schemes is the Toad-Naming Auction, bidding for which will cease tomorrow.
Let me explain. The little fellow above is a newly-discovered member of the genus Osornophryne, a group of bufonid toads known only from the northern Andes. Little is known about them, but they seem to be dependent on pristine montane forests. Unlike other bufonids, they undergo direct development, meaning that the tadpoles metamorphose within the eggs, emerging as tiny froglets. This particular species was recently found in the mountains of northern Ecuador, and will be described in a peer-reviewed journal, but, in break with orthodoxy, the second part of the Latin binomial will go to the highest bidder. In other words, if you're looking for a means to immortality, get over to the auction page and put in your bid before 12:27pm, Eastern Daylight Time on May 29th. Should your bid win, this fascinating little toad species will bear your name, and the proceeds will go to Amphibian Ark. It's as simple as that.
Update: I'm not sure what the winning bid was, but last time I looked, it was up to $5,500US. A new auction has begun for the name of a Venezuelan species of Mannophryne, a relative of the poison frogs (Dendrobatidae).
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upper: AMERICAN TOAD (1999) acrylic on illustration board 7" x 7"
lower: New Osornophryne species photo swiped from charitybuzz.com. Photographer unknown.

THE DECIDER COMES TO TOWN

2008-05-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

That's right, George W. returns to Salt Lake City tomorrow, and, as always, we've organized a protest rally to greet him. So if you're in our vicinity, show some respect and turn up at Washington Square (the City & County Building, State Street & 4th South) at 5:30pm. Daniel Ellsberg will speak as will former mayor Rocky Anderson and more.

GOING FISHING

2008-05-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

Fishing season officially opens this weekend, but to pull those really big carp from the water, a rod and reel just won't do. What you need is one of these: a Steller's Sea Eagle (Haliaeëtus pelagicus), the biggest member of its genus. This particular bird is a two-year-old captive-bred female that a friend of mine recently acquired. Six more years remain before she'll molt into her full adult plumage of solid dark gray, with a white forehead and tail, and matching "trousers" and "epaulettes." Drab though her current plumage may be, she's anything but unimposing. Her massive 20 pounds assure that; next to her, a Golden Eagle looks like a dark Redtail.

Steller's Sea Eagles range along coastal Siberia, from the Kamchatka peninsula to Sakhalin Island and the Amur River Valley and adjacent China and North Korea, wintering as far south as Japan's Ryukyu Islands. They occasionally wander into the Kodiak, Pribilof and Aleutian Islands, and as far as Midway Island in Hawaii. Apparently, a single bird has been living for several years in Dillingham County, Alaska. Like the Bald Eagle (H. leucocephalus) and the other Haliaeëtus species, Steller's Sea Eagles subsist mainly on fish, which they capture on the wing, scavenge, or strongarm from smaller predators. Ducks, hares, and other non-piscine creatures are taken, possibly more frequently than is generally assumed, and these eagles are hardly above eating carrion or human garbage. Like their two close relatives, the Eurasian Gray Eagle (H. albicilla) and the American Bald Eagle, adult Steller's Sea Eagles have a characteristic white tail, yellow eye and deep, keel-like yellow bill. The Steller's bill is even proportionally larger, almost toucan-like, and the tail is wedge-shaped, with 14, not 12 feathers. It is often held out at a peculiar angle, much like a pygmy owl (Glaucidium spp.) does. When mantling over prey, a Steller's wags its tail about in a unique and somewhat comical fashion. A Korean subspecies, with white tail feathers only, was once proposed, but it was likely just a morph. The minor controversy may never be resolved satisfactorily, since the population was extirpated some 40 years ago.

Steller's Sea Eagles are moderately social, and form strong pair bonds. One or more huge stick nests, which are often rotated periodically, are constructed in trees. In late winter, the female lays two white eggs with a greenish cast. Incubation begins once the second egg is laid, and lasts 35-36 days. Both sexes brood the eggs and young, which begin to fly at about 45 days of age. It seems quite rare for both nestlings to survive to fledging, and siblicide is probably not uncommon.

Eight species of Haliaeëtus eagles are generally recognized. They are less closely related to the typical Aquila eagles than to the kites, particularly those of the genus Haliastur. The widespread, fish-scavenging Brahminy Kite (H. indus - above) of Australasia seems to represent a transitional form between kites and sea-eagles. The three large, northern Haliaeëtus species form a distinct subgroup, and four smaller, tropical species (sometimes placed in their own genus, Blagrus) form another. The eighth species, the Central Asian Pallas' Sea Eagle (H. leucoryphus), exhibits characteristics of both subgroups, and has no very close relatives.
Of the Blagrus subgroup, the Southeast Asian White-bellied Sea Eagle (H. leucogaster - above) is closely related (and considered conspecific by some) to Sanford's Sea Eagle (H. sanfordi) of the Solomon Islands, and the well-known African Fish Eagle (H. vocifer) is likewise closely related to the Madagascan Fish Eagle (H. vociferoides). Another genus of small sea eagles is well-distributed in Southeast Asia, with two species: Icthyophaga humilis and I. icthyaetus.
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All Photos by CPBvK

A QUICK AMENDMENT

2008-05-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

In the last post I talked about the subjectivity of jurying a show, but I shouldn't leave the impression that it's always so. A few years back, I was one of three jurors for a show in Vermont. We didn't agree about much, except that "Best of Show" should go to an amazing drawing by Cole Johnson. Sometimes there is but one possible answer to a question. So it was today. I just juried a show of animal art from middle and high school students of the Salt Lake City Public School District. There were some wonderful pieces, both two- and three-dimensional, but there was no doubt in my mind about who deserved the overall "Best of Show" rosette. It went to Oliver Morgan, a middle-school student who created the scratchboard above. It wasn't the most creative piece in the show--it had obviously been copied from a photograph of a fat old zoo Orang-Utan, but I was amazed that a kid yet unable to drive legally might be capable of such mastery of the use of value. And scratchboard is a difficult medium, since we learn to draw with dark onto light--working in reverse is extremely confusing at first. Congratulations, Oliver, on an incredibly mature piece of art. Keep at it--I'm not turning my back on you.
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ORANG-UTAN SCRATCHBOARD by Oliver Morgan

REJECTION

2008-05-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

It's that time, again: the week when nature artists across the globe check their mailboxes for their jury results from Birds In Art, the premier annual exhibition of bird art sponsored by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. One hundred of those artists will receive the "big envelope," filled with forms that need to be filled out, and instructions for shipping their work to the museum. The remaining 500 of us receive the "small envelope," containing an encouraging pat-on-the-back and better-luck-next-time.

This year I submitted two works, Blue-crowned Motmot and Langsdorff's Coralsnake (above), and my ink wash painting of a poisoned Peregrine, Stargazing (below).
Yesterday, a second search of my PO Box revealed a slim envelope with the museum's return address, which, more often then not, is what I get from them. This was my 20th Birds In Art submission, and my 15th rejection--75% failure--not exactly a stellar record.
Last year I got lucky, and my magpie painting, Crash-barrier Waltzer (above), was selected for the show, after having been rejected the previous year. This year it was submitted for Art & the Animal, the big annual exhibition of the Society of Animal Artists. Results should be here in a week or so. I like this piece, and have high hopes that it will be included in A&TA, but art jurying is a subjective thing that can't be forecast. The juror considers a number of factors that are out of the artist's control. Besides looking for quality work, the total exhibition must be considered. Too many times, when jurying a show, I've had to reject art that I liked in the service of an overall show that was diverse, yet cohesive. Our own personal biases come in to play as well, and these can change from one day to the next. The same jury would come up with quite different results if they met a week later.

As artists, we can't take rejection too seriously, and likewise, can't pretend that accolades and awards mean more than they do. It's a common thing to see an artist receive a rejection for a work they're very proud of, and refuse to apply for that exhibition again. This, of course, hurts no one but themselves. Rejection remains a companion throughout one's career (at least that's been my experience), and it's important to learn to live with it. I can claim to be a rather ridiculous example of tenacity: I started submitting my work to juried shows at age 18, and received my first acceptance just a few months shy of my 30th birthday.
I consider last year's painting of an Oustalet's Chameleon, Sprawl (above), to be one of the best in my catalog, but that opinion doesn't appear to be widely shared. It was rejected by the 2007 Art & the Animal jury, and by this year's Artists for Conservation jury. Just the other day, though, I received the happy news that it's been accepted into Art of the Animal Kingdom, an annual exhibition which will be installed at the Bennington Center for the Arts in June.

ONE WORLD, MANY STORIES

2008-05-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, May 10, was Community Chalk-drawing Day in the Salt Lake City Public Library System. At each branch (save the main one), a local artist was invited to create a sidewalk drawing depicting a story from his/her life, and encourage others to join in. I took my post at the library in the neighborhood of Sugarhouse, and decided at the last minute to draw a composite of several childhood memories of wild animal sightings/captures. Never having worked in the medium of sidewalk chalk, I struggled some. I love to contrast value in my work. I always found the Impressionists' use of nothing but color temperature to give space to their work impressive, but boring, and painting in a single uniform value is a challenge for me, but a seriously positive exercise.
The best part of the day, though, was watching the work of others take shape. Below are some of my favorites.
"Octopus Man" teams up with a hedgehog to threaten the Plumridges' family crest.
A young photographer's tools, Snoopy, a penguin, and a wonderfully graceful (maneating?) plant.

Utah has been a dance Mecca for many decades, and there's no sign of that changing.
Two small but ambitious and skilled boys drew an entire reef community.

Hallie's parents should keep a watchful eye when Ringling Bros. come to town.
Commuting in the early 21st Century.
For many kids, pets constitute a major aspect of life.

MASTERPIECES IN MINIATURE

2008-05-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

The annual exhibition, Masterpieces in Miniature, will open tomorrow evening at Picture This! Gallery in Sherwood Park, Alberta. My painting above, of a Spectacled Owl will be offered for sale there, as well as the Casque-headed Treefrog painting I recently posted about. You can see both paintings here. I'd love to go on, but, having just turned fifty today, I'm going to go take a nap instead.

KINKY KESTRELS

2008-04-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

Well, it's mud season here in Northern Utah. Not much point in trying to get out, and I'm used to spending this time of year with my nose to the easel. I haven't even found it in myself to write much lately, even with plenty of material at hand. For now, I'll just post this rather surprising photograph that my friend Steve Chindgren recently took of some unusual copulatory technique. Check back later for posts on bat conservation, oil palms and other sundry items.
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kestrel photograph by STEVEN R. CHINDGREN

WATCHING PAINT DRY -- part ii

2008-03-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

I posted my last stop-motion painting clip feeling confident that my new cable release bracket would be the solution to my camera movement problems. As usual, the ghost of Robert Burns seems to have bitten my well-laid plans in the butt. My brilliant little invention forced the threads of my camera's tripod acceptor, and stripped them, causing this to be my jumpiest clip yet. Appropriate that the painting should be of a frog -- specifically, a Northern Casque-headed Treefrog (Hemiphractus fasciatus), a bizarre little fellow that lives on or near the forest floors of Colombia, Panama, and possibly Costa Rica. Long considered a member of the typical treefrog family, Hylidae, today the five or so species of casque-headed frog are believed to have diverged from other frog taxa some time back, and are generally given their own family.

Wobbliness notwithstanding, the clip shows a detailed underpainting laid down in raw umber. The board is then tinted, and the hues and values of the various components are laid in. Once a basic foundation of the subject is down, it is masked with liquid latex to protect it while the background is painted. With the background established, off comes the latex, and the final coats of paint are brushed on.

Once I've found a used digital camera with manual settings and an actual cable release port, I'll dedicate it to my animation stand, and once again, I find myself feeling confident. Hopefully I'll have the whole thing together in time to film the next painting: a portrait of a Spectacled Owl (Pulsatrix perspicillata) that's sure to have the best production values yet. Stay tuned.

If you can't access the video embed, click here.

KRUPP-TING THE DIALOG ON CLIMATE CHANGE

2008-03-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

For a long time, attorney Fred Krupp has been thinking about environmental issues, and viewing them through his own peculiar, narrow little lens. He's currently president of the Environmental Defense Fund, and a tireless peddler of the pretty little lie that all solutions to environmental problems lie within the capitalist marketplace. He'll be in town on Saturday to tell us how to halt climate change. Where will he be speaking? At Sundance Ski Resort, over 50 miles away from Salt Lake City. Sorry, there's no public transportation to Sundance. Tickets for the lecture are 95 bucks. Get 'em while they last.

WATCHING PAINT DRY Part i

2008-03-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

The last thing I needed was a new hobby - really. I've always been fascinated, though, with stop-motion film. Inspired as a kid by Ray Harryhausen, I bought a used 8mm camera and did my first crude experiments in my late teens. Graduating to a Bolex, I did some clay animation shorts, including a training film for the local transit authority that I created with my friend Melissa Jones in 1990, following that up with some slicker clay stuff with a team doing Japanese cookie commercials. For a couple of years, now, I've been contemplating the possibilities of combining stop-motion film with painting. I finally broke down and built an animation stand (above) where I can work on a painting and click off a shot after every few strokes of the brush, with adjustable and registered lights and a camera above.

For my first stop-motion painting clip, I decided on the simple medium of ink wash: diluted India ink used like watercolor. I selected a sketch I made in 1984 of a poisoned Peregrine Falcon that I always liked, in spite of its resemblance to an obese cartoon parrot (above), and redrew it with proportions more appropriate to the intended subject (below).

This was traced onto a piece of stretched Arches watercolor paper which was clamped to the animation stand. Each step of the process was photographed, then strung together as a video. I thought Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust would make a good backdrop, and tried to work out a piano arrangement of that song, which I don't really remember very well. Consequently, I'm left free of worries that the Carmichael estate might come knocking on my door with lawyers in tow. The film clip can be seen immediately below, and finished painting below that. If you're unable to access the video embed, try clicking here.

This amounts to a test clip: a means of learning the process. A few things to remember for the next piece:
1. Put greater effort into positioning the work square below the camera and setting the f-stop properly.
2. After turning on a light or opening a door in the studio, remember to darken the room again before resuming work.
3. Refrain from setting my water canister where it casts a shadow on the painting.
4. Try not to forget to trip the shutter now and then.
5. A friend built a special bracket for me that should minimize camera movement on subsequent efforts (thanks to the wonderful sculptor, Don Rambadt)--use it.
6. Put more work into practicing and recording the soundtrack music, or turn to professionals.

At this point I'm close to finishing the next video. It's of a small acrylic of a Northern Casque-headed Treefrog (Hemiphractus fasciatus), and next week should see its posting. In the meantime, you might consider reading up on this fascinating little creature, also called the Banded Horned Treefrog, on Darren Naish's blog.

On an unrelated note, The travelling exhibition, Art of the Rainforest, just opened this weekend at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut California. This will be the final venue of this show, which has been touring since November of 2005. You can see it through May 8th.

THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE FROG

2008-02-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

Posts have been sparse around here as of late, and today's a special day, so I'm indulging in a particularly long and in-depth one. It's Leap Day: a day that has been deemed, appropriately enough, The International Day of the Frog. This dubious honor was bestowed on the order Anura to bring attention to the dramatic decline that frogs and toads have suffered over the past quarter-century. In the spring of 1972, I noticed that virtually all of the Northern Leopard Frogs (Lithobates pipiens) in my area failed to rouse from hibernation. At the time I assumed it was a local crisis, and more than a decade would pass before I learned that biologists had been chronicling similar phenomena across the Americas and in Australia.

In searching out the roots of this dramatic decrease, ultraviolet radiation was one of the first suspects. A study of Western Toads (Bufo boreas) in the Cascade Mountains found adults to be mating normally and laying viable eggs. At the age of only a few days though, the tadpoles were turning white and dying. The direct killer was a fungus, Saprolegnia ferax, which seemed to attack tadpoles that had been weakened by UV exposure in the egg. In the laboratory, eggs of Western Toads and two other anuran species from the Cascades were subjected to high levels of UV radiation. The other two species were the Cascades Frog (Rana cascadae), also declining in numbers, and the Pacific Treefrog (Pseudacris regilla), whose population was holding steady. The irradiated eggs of the Pacific Treefrogs seemed unaffected, while the eggs of the other two species showed severely reduced viability. Subsequent tests with two dwindling salamanders of the area, the Pacific Salamander (Ambystoma gracile) and the Long-toed Salamander (A. macrodactylum) also showed their eggs to be vulnerable to UV radiation.

This was surely not the whole story, though. Many frogs lay their eggs in protected sites, well shielded from the sun’s damaging rays. Two declining Costa Rican frogs are good examples: the Spiny-headed Treefrog (Anotheca spinosa) lays its eggs in tree cavities, and the Tilarán Rain Frog (Eleutherodactylus angelicus) lays them in subterranean burrows.

It was in Costa Rica that the story unfolded further. In the late 1980s a herpetologist named J. Alan Pounds and his colleagues were surveying the herpetofauna of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, where weather patterns and topography conspire to create a practically permanent cloud that rests high on the mountainside. In their thirty square kilometer study area, 20 of the 50 resident frog species disappeared within a few years. Included in this dubious list of twenty was the famous Golden Toad (Bufo periglenes), known only from Monteverde. This toad once congregated in large breeding masses. In 1987 1,500 individuals were counted. The following two years only a single male was seen. He was likely the last member of his species.

Pounds noted that this frog crash coincided with abnormally dry years at the site. He posited that a warming trend was causing Monteverde’s cloud to sit higher on the mountain, thus drying up the lower regions. Many bird species moved uphill, but the frogs, which are not equipped to make such a transit, simply died. He also suggested that the drier habitat could concentrate dissolved toxins from air pollution in the sparser mist.

In 1998, another neotropical biologist, Karen Lips, was surprised to find quantities of dead frogs in her study area in Panama. Since frog corpses don’t last long in the jungle, she presumed that what she saw was just a microcosm of what was actually happening. Inspection of the dead amphibians revealed that they had all been attacked by a chytrid fungus, which was christened Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Today this fungal infection, known as Chytridiomycosis, or more simply, Bd, is generally considered the biggest threat to amphibian populations, though it is still poorly understood. It has been strongly implicated in the catastrophic decline of Stub-footed Toads (Atelopus spp.), which consist of around a hundred species, all of which have declined by 80% or so in just a few generations. Perhaps half of Atelopus species are now extinct in the wild. Ten years ago, hordes of Varied Harlequin Toads (A. varius) – pictured above – congregated streamside during the Costa Rican dry season in many parts of the country. Today it is little more than a memory. For more about Bd, check here, here and here.

A dramatic chapter in this saga began in 1995, when eight middle school students from Henderson, Minnesota began catching Northern Leopard Frogs at the edge of a pond during a field excursion. It soon became apparent that something was very wrong with these frogs. Many of them had deformed, missing, or extra hind legs. In fact, of 22 frogs the kids caught, half of them showed such deformities (of course the affected frogs were far more likely to be caught). The media latched onto this story with the enthusiasm of a Rottweiler. Word of the freakish Minnesota frogs spread quickly, and soon ponds in Vermont, Ontario, Wisconsin and beyond were yielding anurans with similar afflictions. By the year 2000, such frogs had turned up in forty-three of the fifty American states. The villain here turned out to be a fluke – a flatworm of the class Trematoda, the group that contains the agent of the dreaded tropical disease schistosomiasis.

This particular fluke was called Ribeiroia ondatrae. Like many parasites, its life cycle seems impossibly complex. The eggs hatch in open water, and emerge in a free-swimming stage called a miracidium, which must find its first host, an aquatic snail, within hours or die. While inside the snail it undergoes further physiological change, including an amplification that can result in the emergence of hundreds of the next free-swimming stage, the cercarium. It is this stage that attacks tadpoles, burrowing into their flesh, tending to attack the region of the hind limb buds. Once ensconced within its amphibian host, the cercarium forms a cyst, and enters a state of dormancy. It is the trauma caused by these cysts that induces leg deformities, and this works out nicely for the flukes, since it makes the adult frog more vulnerable to capture by R. ondatrae’s next host: a heron or other predaceous water bird. The cercarium finally metamorphoses into an adult within the bird, falls in love, and eggs are laid, to be ejected with the bird’s feces, hopefully into a body of water where the cycle can start again.

Records of frogs with legs to spare go back to the Civil War, but they are becoming increasingly common. One theory posits that eutrophication, or over-fertilization, caused by phosphate- and nitrate-rich runoff from chemical fertilizers has encouraged algal blooms, and in turn, a population boom of algae-eating snails and R. ondatrae.

Experimental evidence suggests that the presence of certain chemicals in the water increases the likelihood that parasitized tadpoles will manifest deformities. These chemicals include the popular insecticide Malathion, the synthetic pyrethroid insecticide Esfenvalerate, which has gained favor recently for being less toxic to mammals and birds than it is to insects, and the weed killer Atrazine, over sixty million pounds of which is applied to the United States every year. The levels of Esfenvalerate and Atrazine necessary to induce fluked-up limbs fall well below the EPA standards for human drinking water. Incidentally, low levels of Atrazine also appear to cause severe testosterone reduction in male frogs, causing them to become reproductively functionless.

The logic of how these chemicals increase a tadpole’s chances of developing crazy legs is admittedly elusive. It’s doubtful that it has anything to do with weakened antibodies, since tadpoles have no known antibody system to speak of, and the fluke cysts cloak themselves in an antigen-resistant pellicle, anyway. For more on Atrazine, see here, and click here to watch Tyrone Hayes' excellent lecture about the herbicide.

In short, there is no simple culprit of the current frog decline, but a partially understood collection of interrelated factors. Acid rain has been implicated in crashes of Natterjack Toads (Bufo calamita) in Southern England and Red-legged Frogs (Rana aurora) in central California. PCBs and organochlorides are blamed for the decline of Mountain Yellow-legged Frogs (Rana muscosa) in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Aerosolized clouds of these chemicals blow up the mountains from cities and agricultural areas to the west, to fall with the rain and ultimately settle into pond bottoms, where they are absorbed by hibernating tadpoles ensconced in the mud.

Invasive plant and animal species have hurt many amphibian populations, including fellow anurans like the American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbianus) and the Cane Toad (Bufo marinus). In western North America, the introduction of trout, bass, and other game fish has led to the disappearance of native amphibians from many waters. Pressure from commercial hunting for frog legs has devastated populations of the Pig Frog (Lithobates grylio) in the United States, the Edible Frog (Rana esculenta) in Europe and R. tigrina and R. hexadactyla in India and Bangladesh.
Intensive logging also has adverse effects. Not only does it destroy microhabitats directly, but it does other damage as well, such as overall desiccation of the area and soil compaction. It’s estimated that logging in the southern Appalachians has caused a 9% overall decrease of salamander populations in the region.
Nothing has had a bigger impact on the ecology of the arid western United States than water redistribution, and that has been disastrous for amphibians. Las Vegas, with its fabulous fountains and golf courses, depleted the waters of that region like a gaudy Tiddalik, causing the total extinction of the Vegas Valley Leopard Frog (Lithobates fischeri) in the 1940s.
Today, a similar growth boom is threatening the unique ecology of the Virgin River drainage in southwestern Utah and adjacent Arizona and Nevada. The once charming town of St. George, Utah currently boasts thirteen thirsty golf courses in a region nearly as hot and dry as Death Valley. We usually see beauty in chlorophyll’s verdancy, but I can think of few sights more vulgar than an emerald golf course imposed on a redrock desert. I will happily go to my grave having never hoisted a golf club, nor rubbed elbows with the greedy golf entrepreneurs who suck the lifeblood from our deserts. I cannot imagine contributing a nickel to their cause, unless it was delivered via slingshot through a clubhouse plate glass window. The Relict Leopard Frog (Lithobates onca), endemic to the Virgin River area, is surely doomed to become another of their victims.
Livestock grazing, bête noir of the conservation movement, has a mixed record with respect to anurans. Moderate levels of manure in breeding pools encourage growth of algae and invertebrates, important food sources for tadpoles. Larvae of a few species, such as the Syrian Spadefoot Toad (Pelobates syriacus), will thrive on a cow pie diet. In Scandinavia the Green Toad (Bufo viridis) is dependent on cattle to enrich breeding pools to a point where its tadpoles can flourish, and to maintain the open meadow habitat favored by the adults. In the same area, Firebellied Toads (Bombina bombina) fail to persist where cattle have dwelt. The kind of insanely intensive grazing that we happily see much less of in North America these days, tends to wipe amphibians out altogether.

The true (and still poorly understood) picture of amphibian decline is a mosaic of interlocking factors. Warming and drying trends in the climate, habitat alteration, runoff of pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals, invasive species and pathogens and plain old stress combine in various ways to strike at their victims in ways that can differ substantially in different situations. The plights of many species look hopeless, and a concerted, global effort is being put into captive propagation of the most critical cases. To find out more about this effort, visit the Amphibian Ark site, and what better way to celebrate International Frog Day than to make a donation?
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upper: BLUE-LEGGED TREEFROG (1998) acrylic 7" x 7"
second: VARIED HARLEQUIN TOAD (2008) digitally colorized acrylic underpainting 20" x 15"
third: PAINTED REED FROG (1999) acrylic 7" x 7"
lower: GREEN PADDY FROG (1999) acrylic 7" x 7"

TYRONE HAYES COMES TO TOWN

2008-01-17T09:56:00.000-08:00

You know Tyrone Hayes, the biologist from UC Berkeley who's been studying the effects of the weed-killer Atrazine for years.
Over 60 million pounds of Atrazine are applied to the United States every year. It is the herbicide of choice among corn farmers. It's persistent in soil and water, and acts as an endocrine disrupter. Hayes has shown that very low levels of the chemical can and do feminize male Northern Leopard Frogs (Lithobates=Rana pipiens), turning them into reproductively functionless hermaphrodites, both in the lab and in the wild. He's also tied Atrazine to an increased susceptibility in frogs to limb deformities caused by the trematode Ribeiroia ondatrae. These effects occur at levels far below the EPA standard of 3ppb.

Hayes' work has been harshly criticized, and reams of dodgy literature discrediting his work exists, all of it based on the research of Ecorisk, which is funded by Syngenta, the manufacturer of Atrazine.

Dr. Hayes will speak this afternoon at 4pm at the Skaggs Biology building on the campus of the University of Utah.

UPDATE: Back now from the lecture--I give it five stars. If Dr. Hayes comes to your town, don't miss him. He's a far better speaker than any other endocrinologist I've ever met. He's quite inspiring and has a lot to say about some very important issues. If he's not coming to your town, watch his lecture on Youtube.
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illustration: SOUTHERN LEOPARD FROG & TRICOLORED HERON (2000) acrylic 13.5" x 9"