I received an awesome book just in time for summer: The Songs of Insects by Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger. This gorgeous book provides species accounts for 75 North American crickets, katydids, and cicadas, and includes an audio CD of the songs of each of them.

Introductory material includes chapters on the biology of insect songs, human perception, appreciation and aesthetics, and understanding sonograms.  Each group of insects (e.g., true katydids, cicadas) is preceded by a short overview, with an emphasis on singing behavior. The section on cicadas includes maps of each of the twelve broods of the 17-year cicada (Magicicada septendecim), with the years of the last two and next two emergences for each.  Having experienced the spectacle of Brood X in 2004, I can enthusiastically advise you to look at the maps and plan a trip to the next emergence near you.

Each species account has several beautiful, detailed photos of the featured insect, a range map, a sonogram, and a brief description of the insect and song.  The information is not overly technical or dense, but instead offers a few interesting and pertinent highlights regarding their appearance and behavior, and they are charmingly written. I cannot emphasize enough how stunning the photography is!

The audio CD has wonderful recordings of each insect and its calls and songs — now familiar songsters of the night have identities. For me, putting a name to an organism really enhances my appreciation and interest. There are also several tracks at the end from another upcoming CD, Insect Concertos, which is one-hour of non-narrated insect choruses.

Lang Elliott is well-known for other excellent “audio field guides” such as Know Your Bird Sounds and The Calls of Frogs and Toads, among many others. Wil Hershberger is an incredible photographer. I can’t think of anybody else who could do such a spectacular job on such a book.  I have a wonderful field guide to orthopterans — Field Guide To Grasshoppers, Katydids, And Crickets Of The United States — but The Songs of Insects, while not a field guide per se, is nonetheless my hands-down favorite.

This book is a must for any nature lover, and it’s a bargain at under $14.00 at Amazon. I am really looking forward to mid-summer when I can put this to book and CD to use. Highly recommended.

My last book review was of Marie Arana’s Cellophane, one of a number of books I have read that could be considered Latin American fiction or literature. It is a genre I enjoy, and when I ran across Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia, I was especially eager to read it, as it was about three generations of women in a Cuban family. Cuba is near and dear to me, and I find little by American writers — even those who were born in Cuba, as Garcia was — that really capture the heart-moving feeling of the island.

Garcia does that, and more. Much of the impact of experiencing Cuba is in the smallest details. It is difficult for me to describe — but that’s what we have authors like Cristina Garcia for. I’ve seldom read a writer who has such mastery of detail, exemplified in some of these lyrical and evocative passages:

“The lines in his face look as if each were put there by a distinct calamity rather than a slow accumulation of sorrow. … He keeps his wedding ring in a blue velvet box with tight springs. I remember how he used to slip the ring on and off his finger easily, as if it were greased, and the things he did when it was off didn’t count.”

Descriptions that with only a few simple words speak volumes: “We made love slowly, with discovery.” A “faded mantilla” is “soft as a moth.”

I thought Garcia made each female character come to life, although each was very different, and the story shifted from one perspective to another frequently. I think some readers might find this comes across as a little disjointed, but for me it highlighted Garcia’s skill in speaking in a variety of voices. It added greatly to the way she explored the depths of each woman’s thoughts and motivations. I was drawn in, even beguiled, by the craftsmanship of this novel. I think I would have been enchanted reading Garcia no matter what the subject matter.

So I was really looking forward to moving on to her The Aguero Sisters, a novel also based on Cuban sisters and their different worlds. Their parents were Cuban zoologists, and there were passages regarding Cuban wildlife and wild places where I have conducted my own field work.

I was a bit disappointed in Sisters. It was, more or less, the same sort of story as Dreaming in Cuban, with different characters. I found her writing just as sweet and agile, and the story was actually quite intriguing.  The characters just did not engage me quite as much. More of it took place outside of Cuba, although I will say she captured the feel of Miami, for example, equally well.

I recommend both these books, and will read more of Cristina Garcia’s work in the future (her new novel, A Handbook to Luck just came out). Her writing is a joy to read, pure and simple. A bonus for me is how it gently rouses memories of my times in Cuba, a place so vastly removed from my everyday life that even the most powerful experiences quickly seem unreal upon my return home.  As one of Garcia’s women remarks,

“Cuba is a peculiar exile, I think, an island-colony. We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all.”

Cristina Garcia, at least, brings it a little closer.

Once again, oddball search strings that landed people here at Bootstrap:

• da da da song in commercial with green couch
• elderly farting cure
• birds with 2 heads
• ear candling in Israel
• circus cannibalism
• consequences of eating rabbit poop
• dunk stool medieval torture
• hog in a chair
• contractor low bid humor
• naked woman and google earth map
• 101 ways to torture marshmallow peeps
• asinine cat
• where to recycle a used commode
• how to run away
• hard peck
• humongous woodpecker
• freaky moths
• bighairyasses
• do baby kingfishers thermoregulate
• pennyfarting car
• ghengis khan intestinal gas

And I would like to throw in common search strings that irritate me, for one reason or another:

• Robospanker.  Yes, I mentioned Robospanker once, and apparently, this is one popular invention.  All I can say is, save your money and use your hand!
• Flak seed.  People, it’s FLAX seed!  You know — from flax plants, flaxen hair…
• Kelly Tripucka.  I was going to say, Kelly, quit the vanity searches.  But I actually received a really creepy email from a guy who went to grade school with Tripucka, and he asked me all sorts of questions about my encounter with him. Can you say…unhealthy obsession?  Haven’t had a search since then.

If this lifted your skirt, you can view the rest in the series here, here, here, and here.

Okay, so for the most part I’m really not into self-promotion. My tendency to focus on my work rather than myself has in some ways handicapped my career advancement. It has certainly not helped make the jobs of the development officers who coordinate fundraising for my position any easier.  That last fact made it doubly-flattering that one of them nominated me for a big award, one of the three top honors in different categories given annually here.  My category was for an individual who

"…demonstrates creativity, dedication, and a long-term, positive impact… and an application of professional expertise to benefit the public good and whose work … enhances the reputation of Our Grand Institution."

Last night at a dinner ceremony I received this honor, only the third non-faculty member in 25 years to have gotten this award. The short presentation featured some of the highlights of the nomination package, and I’ve seen some of the extremely nice support letters that were included. There was even one from the former head of Our Grand Institution. There was also one from my supervisor, whom I understand actually initially declined to write a letter and apparently only reluctantly agreed when he was told his former boss wrote one.  It’s no particular secret that our philosophy and style are quite divergent, but obviously I’ve managed to do a few things right over the last 15 years and, I think, this has reflected well on him. I think I know where I stand now, thanks.

Anyway, this recognition meant a lot to me, in no small part because of this lack of enthusiasm from immediately above that I’ve been working under for years. People at the dinner seemed genuinely interested in my work — I think my low profile made me the least-known of any major awardee in Our Grand Institution history! However, I’m not sure it raised the eyebrows of as many people as the research interest of another honoree: "mathematical imagery in European folk costumes." I’ve joined an exclusive club, it seems!

I know a few people who supported this nomination read Bootstrap — my sincerest thanks, again. Time for me to go into the office now, and hang the big plaque in plain sight!

Bootstrap Public Service Announcement: Tubes used to protect young trees can trap and kill birds.

Since bluebirds aren’t especially common right around home, I was not aware that they can become easily trapped in the tubes people use to protect saplings. With the increase in ravenous deer, these tubes are becoming standard issue with new plantings.  I imagine wrens would also be apt to explore and get trapped in the tubes as well.

This was posted as a reminder to the MDOSPREY list in Maryland; I’ve paraphrased a little. Thanks to my friend Cath for sending this along:

Bluebirds and tree tubes

It’s a good time to warn all bird lovers about tree tubes.  These are used to protect saplings from deer.  Usually consisting of a plastic tube about 4′ high held up by plastic ties and wooden stakes, these tubes are attractive nuisances for bluebirds: the male bluebird wants to explore all possible nesting cavities, so he will go into the tube and fall to the bottom and not be able to get out (this kind of thing doesn’t exist in the wild).  I have freed quite a few trapped bluebirds from these infernal devices, and have removed even more dead ones.

The tree tube manufacturers sell (or include) woven plastic tops, or “socks” to go over the tops of the tubes.  These will effectively prevent male bluebirds from going into the tubes.

If not, you can use some means to create a small exit slot or hole at the  bottom of the tube, such as pulling the stake out of the ground 1.5 inches. I don’t want deer to eat saplings, but even more than that I don’t want any birds, much less native birds already suffering from competition from invasives, to die of starvation or dehydration due to thoughtless human activity.

Paul Kilduff, Baltimore

Tree Pro provides bird excluders with their tubes; instructions are at the bottom of the page.

Hard to believe I’m beginning my third year as a blogger, considering how many blogs go extinct. Of course, at times Bootstrap has felt a little moribund (like lately).

Nonetheless, the year in blogging has had some cool highlights for me:

• Being named as one of the journal Nature’s 50 Popular Science Blogs (Bootstrap was #29).
• The Annals of Improbable Research blog linking to one of my posts.
• Asking to be part of the ScienceBlogs stable, even though I declined the invite.
• Having one of my posts being chosen for the “The Open Laboratory,” the 2006 science blogging anthology.
• Making “Favored Nation Status” (now called the “Favored Faithful”) over at Somewhere on the Masthead.  Magazine Man is a writer and editor I totally admire, so I was slightly giddy when I saw he felt I was worthy of linkage.

I must have done a few things right over the past year, although I don’t feel like I’ve lived up to expectations recently. I just had dinner with my good friend Bob, who thinks I should write more personal stories.  In honor of all the big changes coming up in his life, maybe I’ll do that!  Just need to carve out a little more time…

The other day, I found a plastic grocery bag tied to my mailbox, with a softball-sized wad of … something inside. I admit my first thought was that someone had left me a bag of dog crap. I looked inside with some trepidation, but I discovered the sack contained something more surprising and interesting: five Red Crossbills. A friend, knowing I had a permit and would have the them made into study skins, had picked up these road-killed birds coming home from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

There were two females and three males. All were young birds, hatched
within the last calendar year, based on plumage characteristics, although one
female may have been older. Ageing crossbills is complicated by the fact that they can breed nearly any time of the year. In most bird species, feather replacement follows a seasonal pattern that is quite predictable.  In Red Crossbills, the timing as well as the number of times a young bird replaces feathers during the first year depends upon when it was hatched.

Red Crossbills are intriguing. They are highly variable vocally and morphologically. There are eight different flight call types which roughly correspond with some of the recognized subspecies, which are in turn based on bill and body size. Although the types do not differ much genetically, there is a strong tendency for birds of the same call type to flock and mate with their own types. Bill and wing measurements verified that these birds fell neatly into "Type 3," Loxia curvirostra minor, the dainty subspecies and call type which would be expected in the UP.

The variation in bill sizes in Red Crossbills are adaptations that allow them to feed on different kinds of conifer cones. You might recall from my previous post on crossbill bills, the top mandible may cross the lower to the right or to the left. In my little sample, I had two lefts and three rights.

Crossbills, unfortunately, are frequently struck by cars. They are attracted to roads, which might be the only place in a snowy landscape where the grit they need to ingest is exposed. The birds may also be attracted to salt or other chloride-containing road de-icers. The salt itself may be fatal, but in the case of these crossbills, they were purposely struck by a car and a snowmobile.  My friend said he say this behavior more than once, where cars did not slow down when approaching a large flock of birds that were easily visible. In one instance, a vehicle swerved and aimed at a group of these sociable finches that were gathered at the side of the road.  Repugnant.

While of course I’d rather look at live crossbills in the trees than dead ones in my hand, when these birds are made into study skins, they will serve as teaching tools. Few people in southern Michigan see crossbills — or even know they exist. The curious bills of these birds present lessons in adaptation, the story of the various types illustrate selection and evolution. And the provenance of the little bodies provides an example of human ignorance and cruelty. Perhaps a newfound appreciation of these birds in death will result in an intolerance for such callousness. If so, it could be the most valuable lesson they have to offer.

Many of you may have read the recent coverage of the effort to save amphibians from a fungal infection by creating safe captive populations. This news was also covered by mainstream media, and I saw this story in my local paper: “Scientists meet to stem frog deaths” by Dorie Turner of the Associated Press. In it, I read the following sentence.

“…prevent the disappearance of more than 6,000 species of frogs, salamanders and wormlike sicilians.”

That’s right. Sicilians. Who knew Italians needed to be saved along with amphibians? Perhaps those “wormlike” island-dwelling Italians are more susceptible to lethal fungi than those from Naples or Milan, for example.

Of course, the reporter meant caecilians, limbless tropical amphibians in the order Gymnophiona. I’m sure the reporter had no idea what a caecilian was, and she made absolutely no effort to find out. Neither did her editors, despite the fact this must have seemed odd or at least curious.

It’s just the latest in a long line of sloppy journalism that I see on a regular basis.  Most lay people wouldn’t have caught this, just as I might not catch egregious errors on topics such as international banking or golf, which I know little about. Yet I believe in many newspapers, slipshod treatment of the facts is the rule rather than the exception.

This belief is based not only on mistakes I detect, but also on the many times I’ve been interviewed for newspapers and other media. Nearly every article has had errors, misquotations, or other inaccuracies, although I have been careful in what I say and always offer to review the piece prior to deadline. Exceptions are a few reporters I find reliable (usually columnists) and the time I was interviewed on NPR. Despite often ending up looking like a ninny who dispenses misinformation, I am in a position where I am required to continue to speak to the press.

Another thing that drives me nuts is the notion that every story has two (or more) sides, all of which get equal time. Every story does have multiple perspectives, of which there will generally always be two or more that are flaky, misguided, irrelevant, or just plain wrong.  If the responsibility of the press is to inform the public about the truth, then giving equal time to marginal viewpoints, or any time to incorrect ones, is a violation of the standard of ethics for journalists regarding accuracy of information and reliability of sources.

It’s bad enough that poor, or at best uninspiring, writing is the norm in newspapers. To some extent, I at least get why that is — half of Americans read at the 8th grade level or lower.  But there is no excuse for negligent and unmeticulous handling of facts.

Caecilian photo from the recommended website Livingunderworld.org; go learn about caecilians!

Do you know of any signs mounted on those metal posts that have holes all down the middle?  If the sign isn’t fastened in the top holes, they remain exposed and have been found to trap raptors, which get their toes stuck in the holes.  I was provided with this photo by the USFWS of an unfortunate Great Horned Owl that met this fate.  The inset shows the easy solution: bolts in the empty holes.

So be on the lookout for these perforated metal posts (also used for fencing) and let the owners know they are a hazard, and how to correct it.