Yesterday was my birthday. Kingfisher left me a card and a couple small gifts on my desk in the morning. He often signs notes and cards “me” instead of using his name. We laughed at the ambiguity of his inscription in my birthday card:

It took me a few more hours to come across the main gift. I have ten coffee plants which I have grown from ripe coffee cherries collected on our various trips to coffee farms. As some of the plants have grown into small trees, I’ve jokingly called my collection “Finca Dos Gatos” in honor of the cats.

Our finca takes up a lot of space. The plants spend the summers outside, and winter under lights in front of a bedroom window, usually all lined up on metal plant stands. When I headed upstairs yesterday, imagine my surprise to see that the name had become official.

How cool is that?

I have a backlog of friend requests on Facebook. They are all from people I don’t know. Of course, not all “friends” on Facebook are friends IRL (<– how hip am I?).  But since I’m not a “friend collector,” I don’t automatically accept friend requests. If you want to be my friend on Facebook, you’d better either 1) make more of your own Facebook profile public or 2) send me a personal message with your request, so I can figure out if I want to let you in the gate.

Why do you want to be my friend, Stranger? Since my own profile is well-guarded, and because usually we have two dozen mutual friends (who are also mostly people I don’t know whom I did accept,) I usually assume you are are attempting to network in some shape or form.  But if I see that you have hundreds of other “friends” here are the other things I assume:

• You won’t even notice if I don’t accept your friend request.
• If I do accept, you’ll do nothing to personally acknowledge that, ever.
• You will post things to your wall on a fairly frequent basis, because you have some need to reach out to lots of people, or you wouldn’t have 5618 friends to being with.
• Those things are unlikely to interest me, but will clutter up my wall.

This does not make me eager to accept your request.

Maybe, just maybe, you actually Googled me — I’m easy to find — and thought my work and other writing was interesting, and that’s what motivated you to reach out. I’m pretty responsive to flattery — had you sent me a message, I might have accepted. Instead, you sit, with the others, in Friend Request Limbo.

My friends on Facebook are a mixed lot — actual Friends, former co-workers, professional connections, people I have met on my travels. I’m not averse to connecting with new people, but I hate it when my Facebook experience goes from fun to unwieldy. That’s when I let friend requests languish and, yes, do some unfriending, often of those same people I have never met but accepted anyway. “Unfriending” sounds so harsh, and I don’t mean it to be anything personal. How can it be? We didn’t know each other personally to begin with.

The fundamental tools-of-the-trade for a field ecologist are pretty basic: good boots, “Rite-in-the-Rain” notebooks, and binoculars. For a long time, I only had two pairs of binoculars: my good Leica bins and a cheaper pair I wear bird banding (a lesson I learned when I had to send my Leicas in for professional cleaning when errant bird poop finally froze up the eye pieces). Soon I felt the need for a little travel pair to keep in the car.

Then, middle age rudely diminished the close-focus range of any binocular I owned. As I started doing more grant work involving insects, especially dragonflies, I found that I needed not only a good insect net, but bins with really good close focus. Late this summer, I picked up a pair of Pentax Papilio 8.5×21 binoculars.

They* rock! Advertised close focus is 18 inches, easily obtainable. I thought that sometimes I could get even closer. This is achieved through some sort of optics magic. The blurb at the Pentax web site explains it is via “new design technology that automatically compensates for the misalignment of right and left image fields at close ranges.”  I read that the close focus amounts to holding something ten inches from your face and looking at it with a 5x hand lens. Since I do a lot of insect surveys, this is extremely worthwhile. The image is bright and clear. When I took a look at my first fly in the yard, it reminded me of when I first got glasses as a kid — a kind of “wow” experience.

Whereas good high-end birding binoculars only take a half turn of the focus knob to go from at-your-feet to in-the-next-county, the Papilios offer sharp focus at close range through many swipes of the knob. Switching back and forth between my birding bins and the Papilios is a little challenging because they are so different. The Paps are adequate for casual birding, but the need to paw at the focus means a bird flying by you as you are examining a Monarch will likely go unidentified. It just takes too long to get on a moving object and focus.

The Papilios are very lightweight (10.2 oz) and small (less than 5 x 5 inches). I typically kept them tucked in the front pocket of my camera bag when I was doing serious field trips, but often had them around my neck in the yard, where they were easily forgotten. The strap attachment is the most hassle-free I have encountered in neck-dangling optics: a post-in-groove locking arrangement. It’s not only quick and secure, but allows very free swiveling movement. While it eliminated the tedious process of having to thread a strap through a little potentially-fragile loop on the bin body, it also prevents replacement of the rather standard webbed nylon strap with anything else but another strap with the same attachment. However, at this light weight, a padded strap isn’t necessary.

The bins have a rubberized coating, but are not waterproof or fogproof. I did have them on our rainy Panama trip, and had no problems, although admittedly there were not a lot of insects out in the rain to look at.

Other features include fully multi-coated lenses, 15 mm eye relief, and a threaded hole on the bottom for tripod attachment.

I’m really pleased with these binoculars (this binocular!), especially at their very reasonable price. I’d recommend them to anybody who likes to look at insects, if you need a spare pair of travel bins, or even for casual or beginning birders, who often start out looking at close-by birds anyway.

Cross-posted at Urban Dragon Hunters.

*A pair of binoculars is really an “it.” This sounds weird to me. I am usually a technically-precise writer. It’s one reason why I quit writing this blog for awhile. I have to write publication-quality material all the time and my own internal editor made me do it here, too. I’m going to try to let my hair down.

During the boring period on a plane when “anything with an on/off switch” must be turned off, Kingfisher and I like to browse through the SkyMall catalog in the seat pocket. Recently, we contemplated an item called “The Slanket.” As have, apparently, so many before us.

The Slanket comes in several different models and many different colors. We wondered why some colors had ordinary names (“pink”, “purple”) while others were more, well, colorful (the skull and crossbones patterned Slanket was called “Walk the Slank”).  We modified the “chocolate” color Siamese Slanket (for two) to something more evocative.

Kingfisher and I have been to Panama twice before. I had a project I wanted to finish researching down there, so the long Thanksgiving weekend was a good opportunity for a short visit.

Home base was Canopy Tower, in the Soberanía National Park near Gamboa, where we’ve stayed before. I can’t say enough great things about it. Go take a look at their new web site. It’s not hype, it’s all true.

Canopy Tower is a former radar facility.

Our cozy but comfortable room, just under canopy level.

As far as wildlife watching was concerned, our plan was to spend most if not all of our time at what is probably my favorite place in the world to do so — Pipeline Road. It was originally constructed in WWII along an oil supply line in case the canal was attacked, but ended up never being used.

Pipeline Road sign indicating stream crossings. Stern-looking husband on right.

It’s about 24 km long, but only the first 10 km are accessible (up to the red on the map above; here is a better map). Beyond is restricted mostly to Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute personnel. Many types of research take place here, including long-term bird banding (in fact, we saw a color-banded Red-throated Ant-Tanager).

You can now drive farther up than on our previous trips, up to Quebrada Juan Grande.  In part, this is to accommodate visitors to the new Panama Rainforest Discovery Center, located about 600 m off Pipeline. They have a 32-m tower that provides great views of the surrounding forest.

Perhaps the last blue sky we saw for days, at the top of the Discovery Center tower.

We’ve been to Panama in the wet season, when the road turns into a quagmire — we were even stuck behind a tree that fell across the road one time. Right now should be the end of the rainy season, but we did not factor in that it is a strong La Nina year. After the first day, the dry periods were measured in minutes, not hours. I don’t mind birding down there in the rain (it was very warm, and we had plenty of rain gear), but it was nearly impossible to find insects, which was a real bummer for us.

Between downpours, at Rio Frijoles, Pipeline Road.

We found most of the coolest insects right at the Canopy Tower. This lovely butterfly landed on the awning below the dining room level, along with some other colorful species.

White-spotted Prepona (Archaeoprepona amphimachus).

The guides at the Tower also hung out a sheet with both an incandescent and black light a couple of nights. In addition to many small moths (we’ll do a post over at our Urban Dragon Hunters blog in a week or so) was this wild thing.

Pointy!

This looks like a planthopper (Fulgoridae), something related to the peanuthead that Kingfisher so badly wanted to see. This might be in the genus Zanna.

In other insect news, I managed to wade right in one of the first army ant swarms we encountered. There wasn’t much way to avoid it, as it stretched several yards across the trail, but it apparently wasn’t a hunting party (no attending birds, unfortunately) so there was no commotion to alert us. Many of the ants that got on me just clamped on to my shoes and socks, but some made it up my pants and I got about a dozen bites. They just felt like a sharp pinch. They are able to sting, so I’m not sure if they only bit me, or stung me, but they only left little marks that didn’t itch or anything.

We did find good birds at other swarms, and I ended up with a couple dozen new birds for Panama and ten life birds. I think the coolest were the Green Shrike-Vireo (a lifer) from Canopy Tower, and the three Great Tinamous (often heard but rarely seen) that wandered out on Pipeline Road in plain view, one about 10 yards away. The guides provided by Canopy Tower are excellent, but we generally birded on our own. We love finding, scrutinizing, and identifying our own birds.

Black-breasted Puffbird (Notharchus pectoralis)

In an especially torrential downpour, we took shelter at the Discovery Center on their nice deck, drank coffee, and chatted with our new Dutch friends David and Lennaert, whom we kept running into on Pipeline. In addition to the hummingbird frenzy at the feeders, we saw some nice birds, like this puffbird. Since I didn’t have much use for my macro lens for insects, I decided to see how it worked for a bird shot!

We saw many more mammals on this trip than previous times:

• Brown-throated three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus)
• Hoffmann’s toe-toed sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni)
• Mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata)
• White-faced capuchin monkey (Cebus capucinus)
• Geoffroy’s Tamarin (Saguinus geoffroyi)
• Central American wooly opossum (Caluromys derbianus)
• Allen’s Olingo (Bassaricyon alleni)
• Kinkajou (Potos flavus)
• Central American agouti (Dasyprocta punctata)
• White-nosed coati (Nasua narica)
• Forest rabbit (Sylvilagus brasiliensis)
• Red-tailed squirrel (Sciurus granatensis)

Also an unidentified rat, at least two types of bats, and a dead anteater.

I made it above 300 identified life butterfly species, and 200 life dragonflies as well. We met some great people, and I think I might have an announcement soon about a new writing gig. All in all, a good trip despite the rain.

I’m a member of The Wildlife Society, and I read their blog, Making Tracks, which has a lot of great posts of interest to an urban ecologist. In particular, I like the posts of Michael Hutchins, the executive director of the organization. He is an unapologetic straight-shooter,  especially on invasive species issues. He frequently writes about the problems with feral cats, which I consider a serious ecological problem.

This week there was a post linking to the Keep Animals Safe web site, sort of the Canadian counterpart of the American Bird Conservancy’s Cats Indoors campaign. What really attracted my attention was a piece on the Keep Animals Safe site from the Toronto Globe and Mail.

It’s an op-ed article looking at the ecologically detrimental contradictory public attitudes on domestic and wild animals. The author frames it around people freaking out when coyotes are spotted in residential areas, while having no problem* with the extremely heavy toll outdoor cats have on native wildlife. Add to this the irony that urban coyotes, given the circumstances they find themselves in, like to dine on outdoor cat.

The piece concludes:

It makes no sense to criminalize wild animals for doing what is normal for them, and then throw up our hands that domestic cats are too “wild” for us to limit their predation of native species. We have an obligation to give our wild animals the space they need, and to guard the animals that we have bred to be our companions.

Exactly.

*“That’s my Fifi; stone cold killah.” Repugnant.

After a hiatus of nearly a year, I am finally moving Bootstrap Analysis to a new web host, and will eventually begin posting here again, although not as regularly as before. Initially, there will be some broken links and missing images until I clean up the database. The wonky spacing might remain forever, I don’t know if I’m up for going through every post again.

This has turned into a  tradition. Here are links to 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.

• New life birds: 37. Most were from my trip to Nicaragua in March. The last one was either Banded Wren or Long-tailed Manakin. The latter were amazing.
• Total life birds: 1011. Number 1000 was Ruddy Woodcreeper (Dendrocincla homochroa) at and ant swarm at the Selva Negra coffee farm in Nicaragua. Gotta like that.
• Total ABA-area birds: 578 (no new species this year).
• Total state birds: 310 (no new species this year).
• Total birds in my home county: 257 (no new species this year).
• Total city birds: 220 (I saw 156 this year). New for me
  this year were Semipalmated Plover, Dunlin, and Vesper Sparrow.
• Total birds at work: 190 (new this year, Common Goldeneye and White-winged Crossbill).
• Yard birds: 135 (no new species this year).

Next chance for life birds, I expect, will be in western Mexico in a couple months.

A couple years ago I lamented that I didn’t see silkmoths much anymore.That was the year our friend Dr. Steve gave us a couple of Polyphemus (Anthera polyphemus) cocoons, so we got to see (and release) the adults that emerged. Dr. Steve has a big piece of property nearby, and his brother owns a tree nursery. They are able to find and raise several species of silkmoths every year. This spring, they gave us a bunch of eggs, mostly Cecropias, Hyalophora cecropia, but also a few Polyphemus and some Lunas (Actias luna).

The latter is, I believe, one of the most beautiful insects in North America. In all my time in the field these past decades, I’d never seen one, even though at work we have abundant black walnut, one of their favorite larval host plants. I intended to raise all three species and release them at work, with the hope of augmenting very sparse local populations.

We started out with about 50 Cecropias, 15 Polyphemus, and 20 Lunas. I know that doesn’t add up to 100, but as usual we were also raising some Monarchs, and Black and Giant Swallowtails. This year we’re also raising some Carolina Sphinx (Manduca sexta). You know these as tomato or tobacco hornworms. Purposefully raising what many people still consider the scourge of their garden may seem really weird, but they seem to have been wiped out in this area and I’d like to see a few adults again. So yes, I have been raising over 100 caterpillars this summer (so far!).

Luna eggs hatching

The silkmoth ranch starts out innocently enough. Once the eggs begin to hatch, the tiny caterpillars are put in small groups in tupperware containers with damp paper towels and some leaves of their host plants. I raised the Lunas on black walnut, the Cecropias on box elder and lilac, and the Polyphemus on maple and dogwood. Everything but the walnut was available in the yard.

Cecropia eggs and newly hatched larvae.

Twice a day the containers have to be cleaned out and restocked with fresh food. This takes longer than you might think. It’s pretty common to lose a percentage of young larvae to bacterial or fungal infections, mishaps, or parasitoids (if you raise them outside, more on them later). I was careful to make sure no frass (poop) was clinging to the tiny cats when I cleaned the containers. When they were all spiky little things only a few millimeters long, this required a soft brush.

They outgrow sandwich-sized containers pretty quickly, and graduated to plastic shoeboxes within 10 days. At this point, they were still stacked up all over my office.

The next upgrade was to aquariums and empty cat litter buckets in the garage. Food was kept fresh by inserting branches into plastic carry-out cups of water — the lids with the holes for straws are perfect for holding the plants while not allowing the larvae to fall or climb into the water.

We kept some on the bench by the open window, and the rest we moved outdoors in dappled sunlight during the day, and back inside at night. It’s important they get some light and be exposed to natural cycles of daylight. This, apparently, influences whether multi-brooded species will emerge after pupation the current year, or overwinter. At this point, fortunately, I was home on vacation, because it took about 2 hours a day to tend to all these things!

The Cecropias in particular were voracious, and there were a lot of them. I think we only lost around ten. By the time they were 3 inches long, I took a dozen to work and let them go, hoping they’d fend for themselves. By the time they started spinning cocoons, they were the size of large sausages. This species is supposed to be single-brooded here, so we’ll keep these cocoons overwinter and release the adults next year.

Polyphemus cats. There was much more variation in their individual
growth rates compared to the other species for some reason.

We lost quite a few Polyphemus to some pathogen when they were still very small. Once they reached second and third instar, they had been moved to mesh-covered containers outside. One day, we found two very tiny wasps had made their way through a small opening in the mesh. They were some sort of female braconid wasp. These are common parasitoids of many types of caterpillars. Within days a few more Poly cats died. The remaining ones seem fine and are starting to spin cocoons, but we shall see.

We ended up with 11 Lunas spinning cocoons. I’d heard conflicting reports of whether they were double-brooded or not in Michigan; most people told me these would overwinter. But they were wrong.