December 2006 Archives

It's nearly January 2007--and don't you want to be able to say you ordered Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash before it was hot? Pre-order today for next month's release, and be the first to enjoy PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus Cash-inspired writings by Russell Rowland, Gayle Brandeis, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others. Impress your friends!

Yesterday my former student, budding biologist Leighton Reid, took me out for a day's birding in the counties of Madison, Culpeper, Orange, Fauquier, and Prince William. It was a productive winter day; we saw probably 7000+ gulls at the Prince William County landfill, logged dozens of Blue Jays, followed a pair of Bald Eagles on the Rapidan, saw our first American Pipits (lifer #300 for Leighton, #317 for me), and even came within thirty feet of a Red Fox at Vint Hill Farm. All in all, a wonderful day to be outdoors with a pair of binoculars and (particularly at the landfill) a weak sense of smell.

The moment that still has me thinking, however, came very early in the morning--on our first stop, actually. On a nearby pond, we discovered that among the scores of Canada Geese (and a dozen or so Ring-necked Ducks) was a sore thumb: a Snow Goose. I had mentally filed the big white one under "domestic goose" and was looking elsewhere in hopes that one of the ducks might be a Greater Scaup or something, but Leighton was gamely scoping Whitey out and realized it was something else. Once he asked me to look at it, it was the work of only a moment to identify it--the black wing feathers, pink bill, and black "grin patch" were clear and obvious in the morning light. Though I've seen only a handful of the birds up close, I didn't hesitate to say, "Oh--Snow Goose," and Leighton had lifer #299.

What lay beyond it, however, was confusion. There were two other sore thumbs in the gaggle--two more non-Canadas. Both were Snow Geese, but not the big white birds I'd seen before. No, each had a dark slaty-grey body, with the only white confined to its head and neck; this was no mere Snow Goose--this was a Blue Goose, something I'd definitely never seen before. But I'm not sure it was a life bird.

This lack of certainty is one of the things that makes birding more art than science, or at least one that shows how ornithology, like any science, is a human endeavor. It depends on human perceptions, human concepts, and human terminology--things that people use to think scientifically, rather than purely objective things that are handed to humans by the universe. Instead of a nice, clear, Newtonian observation of a factual species, I had instead made a quantum observation of a potential species.

What does that mean when it's at home? Well, the Blue Goose appears in practically every birding book written before my birth. Ornithologists did recognize that the Blue appeared in two color morphs--one grey with a white head, and the other pure white with black primaries--but as late as 1961, Oliver L. Austin referred to the latter as the Lesser Snow Goose, while the Greater Snow Goose was a completely different species. By about twenty-five years ago, however, scientists had decided that the Snow Goose and Blue Goose were in fact the same species--just two different colorations. My 1980 Peterson Guide (4th edition) identifies the Blue and Snow as conspecific.

This is hardly the only time that previously separate species were "lumped" together by the American Ornithological Union, which governs the definition of a species for birding purposes. For example, the "Great White" and "Wurdemann's" herons, long considered rare Florida species, were lumped in with the Great Blue Heron, of which they are now considered rare Florida color morphs. The nation's various species of Junco--the Slate-colored, the Oregon, the White-winged, the Pink-sided, etc.--were lumped into the vast Dark-eyed Junco complex. Perhaps most controversial of all, America's two most familiar orioles, the eastern Baltimore and western Bullock's, were lumped back in the 80s and became the Northern Oriole. In recent years, however, the AOU has reversed its position and split the Northern back into the Baltimore and Bullock's.

This will keep happening, for where there are lumpers, there are also splitters, and when the former have passed their zenith and begin settling toward the horizon, the latter begin their own ascent to the highest point. Sure enough, as splitters began taking over the AOU, the Rufous-sided Towhee was split into the Eastern Towhee and the western Spotted Towhee. The Solitary Vireo was split into THREE species: the Blue-headed in the east and north, the Plumbeous in the Rockies, and Cassin's along the Pacific coast. (My newest Peterson guide--the 28th printing of the 4th edition--has a painting of a bird identified as a Blue-headed, but the text still refers to it as a Solitary.)

In short, we have here a quantum lifer: I've seen a Blue Goose, but until we open Schrodinger's box and discover whether there's a lumper administration or a splitter administration inside, I won't know whether the AOU considers it species #318 on my life list or not.

What exactly MAKES a species, anyway? That's been an argument for centuries, I'm afraid; Linnaeus set up the classification system we use, but it was eventually discovered that the King Philip Came Over From Greater Spain model was a bit too blocky to accurately reflect reality, and new sub-categories began to appear: subspecies, subfamilies, etc. Darwin himself, in The Origin of Species, spends a lot of time considering the difference between a species and a mere variety; Homo sapiens is a species, but Poles, Pakistanis, and Polynesians are varieties--and not always clearly defined varieties at that.

The general definition for a species nowadays is one that ought to be objective: a species is a group of organisms capable of interbreeding. Thus, the existence of a young man named Woijcek Tatupu would prove that Poles and Polynesians are conspecific. At the same time, however, there is such a thing as a mule--the product of a horse and a donkey. Does that mean horses and donkeys are the same species? Well, no, because mules cannot interbreed, or indeed reproduce at all. To be a species, then, the group of interbreeding organisms must produce fertile offspring. (This is why the Bullock's and Baltimore Orioles were first lumped--because they were producing hybrids--and later split again--because the hybrid birds were reported sterile.) In short, if a Blue Goose and a Snow Goose can produce grandchildren, they're conspecific.

But such species relationships are changing all the time. Peterson included the New World vultures (such as the familiar Turkey Vulture and the all-but-extinct California Condor) as part of the order Falconiformes, which contains hawks, eagles, falcons, and other diurnal birds of prey, but some ornithologists doubted the family connection here. Sure enough, by the time my National Geographic field guide was printed in 1999, a note indicated that New World vultures were now considered more closely related to storks. DNA analysis, a whole new weapon in the taxonomist's arsenal, has recently confirmed that relationship: the Wood Stork and the Black Vulture are kissing cousins. What will DNA evidence mean for the birder who wants to know how many different Juncos he should have on his life list?

Of course, I am in no way registered with or connected to the AOU, and the only person who cares about the size of my life list is me. I can therefore afford to take whatever position I want on speciation, recognizing that the numbers may or may not pass official muster. And for my purposes, seeing a new and distinctive variety of a bird is just as good as seeing a new species. That's why my life list includes the Great White Heron, the Oregon Junco, the Eastern Towhee, the Spotted Towhee, the Bullock's Oriole AND the Baltimore Oriole.

And the Blue Goose. Bring on #319, baby.

2:13 PM

Merry Christmas, everyone! In the traditional spirit of merciless commercialism, petercashwell.com recommends ordering numerous copies of Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash, featuring PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") and Cash-inspired writings by Russell Rowland, Gayle Brandeis, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others! Beat the post-holiday blues!

Not much to say today--it's rainy and cold, and I'm remarkably sore from a productive but intense trip to the gym. Still, I'm happy to have seen my extended family for a few days, and grateful to all of them for driving up to Virginia to spare us the long hours in the car. I'm also very happy with my presents, among them a CD of James Taylor's Greatest Hits, a copy of Cerebus: Church & State I by Dave Sim, and a powder-blue (of course) LaDainian Tomlinson jersey, all of which have been on my Xmas list for some time.

But right now I'm content to bask in the glow of the Christmas tree and the presence of my wife and my dog, and maybe enjoy some of Aunt Susan's traditional gift to me: a Terry's Chocolate Orange, one of the most delicious confections ever made. We discovered them during our trip to England in 1999, and Aunt Susan, like Kelly and I, has always particularly delighted in the preliminary steps to enjoying one:




As the label above reads, "Whack and unwrap."

And with that, I'll leave you to enjoy your own holiday rituals, however eccentric.

8:55 PM

Whether they've been naughty or nice, they'll all love copies of Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash, featuring PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") and Cash-inspired writings by Russell Rowland, Gayle Brandeis, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others!

In fact, if you're looking for gifts this holiday, click on these links for some mighty fine reading:

Russell Rowland: In Open Spaces. (Rumor has it that a sequel is on the way!)

Gayle Brandeis: The Book of Dead Birds, Fruitflesh, and the upcoming Self Storage, coming in January 2007.

Gretchen Moran Laskas: The Midwife's Tale and the forthcoming The Miner's Tale (February 2007).

The long swim goes on, but at least I've found a shallow spot where I can touch the bottom for a few weeks: yes, it's Christmas break at the Forest. I'm home at last, swilling coffee, taking a leisurely surf around the Web, and breathing a deep sigh of relief that both my fantasy football teams survived close games this weekend.

For those who care--both of you--my Number Crushers team, the Scrub Jays, has made it to the championship game for the second year in a row, but we face the mighty Super Donkey Kram, so we're definitely underdogs. Over in the Fantasy League of Gentlemen/Gentlewomen, meanwhile, the Fighting Coelacanths eked out a three-point win over the Banana Slugs in the first round and now meet the Frumious Bandersnatchi in the Crouching Tiger Division championship game, with a trip to the Super Duper Bowl at stake. (The Crouching Tiger Division, I should note, comprises five teams owned by graduates of Chapel Hill High School; the other five FLOGG teams, owned by people from any other educational establishment, form the Hidden Dragon Division, where the Mighty Burners and FC Moose Jaw will contend for the title.)

I would thus probably be in a good mood regardless of what I'd done this weekend, but I'm happy to report that I got out and did something I haven't had much opportunity to do lately: I birded. At the invitation of ranger Paul Hart, I got up at the crack of dawn Saturday and went out to help with the annual Raven Rock State Park Christmas Bird Count. As usual, I made my first stop at the home of my old birding chum Mary Stevens, who had a cup of coffee ready for me, and she and I (along with veteran counter Molly Fullwood) made our way into the wilds of Harnett County before the sun had crested the horizon. (No, we didn't go out earlier to look for owls; go ahead, call us slackers.)

It was a fairly light day in terms of species--only 45 logged in the five hours or so we spent driving around--though I did see the year's first Loggerhead Shrike (high atop a tree at what Mary calls the Horny Pony Farm) and Wilson's Snipe (in a boggy field at same). Also, I somehow managed to log the first Mallards of 2006, though I can't believe I haven't seen such a common duck in that long--surely I saw one and just forgot to put it on the list. All in all, however, the closest we came to an unusual species was the Green Heron I saw taking off into the woods when we stopped atop the bridge over a beaver swamp; the yellow-orange legs left no real doubt in my mind about the identification, but since Greens are not usually in Harnett County in the winter, I had to write up an Unusual Species record. (I had to do the same last year when we spotted a Merlin at the Horny Pony Farm.)

We didn't get numbers of species, but boy howdy, we did get numbers of individuals. The flocks of American Robins were enormous, perhaps because of the spring-like weather (nearly 70 degrees by noon). We counted well over 700 in the course of the morning, most of them at a tree farm where they were swarming over the miniature hollies like teenagers on a pizza buffet. Perched nearby, obviously intimidated by the mass of Robins, were several hundred Cedar Waxwings, a few of whom would dare the proximity of red breasts every so often and swoop down to liberate a few precious berries. I've seen flocks of Robins that large, but this was by far the biggest group of Waxwings I've ever seen at one time.

In fact, the size of the flocks led me to thinking on a subject I often consider when pondering large groups of animals: what are the terms of venery for these creatures? Readers of The Verb 'To Bird' may recall my longtime fascination (engendered by James Lipton's book An Exaltation of Larks) with the words used for such groupings: a pride of lions, a school of fish, a gaggle of geese, and so on. Such terms were coined in the Middle Ages for hunting purposes, allowing those permitted to hunt--landowners, that is--to display their prowess not only in killing their prey, but in using the proper jargon. Other venereal terms (and yes, that is the correct word) came about later, often referring to creatures that aren't usually hunted--a host of angels, say, or an impudence of peddlers. Lipton himself threw out a number of new terms, including favorites such as a gatling of woodpeckers, a fret of guitarists, and a consumption of yuppies, but nowhere in my copy of Exaltation was there a mention of what to call a group of Robins or Waxwings.

Left to my own creative devices, then, I append here my proposed venereal terms for Robins. Clearly, there are several major literary sources available: Shakespeare, English legend, and of course America's own Boy Wonder:

*a goodfellow of robins (literary, if a tad long)
*a hood of robins (rather basic)
*a sherwood of robins (a bit less obvious)
*a holiness of robins (best if you watched the campy 1960s Batman series)
*a sidekick of robins (my favorite)

Then again, we could always focus on dessert, rather than literature, and go with a baskin of robins.

For the Waxwings, however, only one source will do: the opening lines of the title poem from Vladimir Nabokov's masterwork Pale Fire:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure of the windowpane

I'm therefore happy to report that last weekend, Mary, Molly, and I were witnesses to an enormous shadow of waxwings.

Wow. An entire post focusing almost exclusively on birds and books--man, I must be on vacation!

5:16 PM

Only eleven shopping days are left until Xmas! Quick, pre-order copies of Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash for all your friends and family members! They'll love you for giving them PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") and Cash-inspired writings by Russell Rowland, Gayle Brandeis, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others!

Despite my initials, and despite my long familiarity with computers that use Microsoft products, I'm becoming more and more intrigued about Apple products.

I say this after a week of having a disabled desktop computer--a Dell Dimension 8300 that we've had for about three years now. If I were competent to open up the box and tinker, perhaps I wouldn't feel so surly, but it seems as though I've had a series of "upgrades" which, while they have improved some aspects of my computer use, have invariably caused massive system failures before any improvement could be made.

Earlier this year, my old school laptop (also a Dell--an Inspiron 8200) was replaced by a spanking new Dell Latitude D820. It has a bigger, better monitor screen, more memory, a faster processor, and--best of all--wireless capability. It's a groovy machine, and it's actually a good bit lighter than the old Inspiron. Alas, its rear-entry ports weren't the same as the Inspiron's, which meant that for the entire fall trimester, I couldn't actually hook the new computer up to my classroom's SmartBoard display; any of the notes, PowerPoints, or other materials I wanted to project for my students had to come off the old machine. Luckily, our tech department still HAD the old one, but I wasn't happy about having to borrow it back to run my SmartBoard materials while we waited for people in China to mine the necessary ore, refine the necessary metals, extrude the necessary wire, attach the necessary connectors, and ship us the newly-constructed cables to connect the Latitude to the SmartBoard.

This summer, we finally got broadband access--a HUGE delight, I assure you--but in order to get the wireless router working properly, our IT guys said we needed to upgrade the Dimension's OS from Windows XP Home to XP Professional. Well, I dutifully tried to run the upgrade disc--but it stalled. It reported that installation would take 35 minutes, but 35 minutes later, it was still stuck. In fact, even 35 hours later, it was still stuck. And worse, we couldn't use our old Home profile to boot up the computer anymore--we were stuck in limbo between the two.

Luckily, our IT guys are nothing if not hard-working, so Wayne dove in with both feet to try and figure out what had caused this seizure, and about 48 hours later, he got XP Pro onto the box through complicated jury-rigging involving eye of newt and tape of duct. Alas, we still couldn't connect to the internet from the desktop. The router worked fine for my laptop, but not the Dimension.

I'm now writing this following Wayne's house call, and it seems we're back on the net at last. But man, after a week of needing an IT professional just to help me fix the improvement that we got because the last improvement needed fixing, I'm really starting to wonder if I shouldn't spend a little time investigating the wide, wide world of Macs.

7:01 PM

January is just around the corner, which means Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash can't be more than a corner or two away! Pre-order now to reserve your copy, featuring PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus other Cash-inspired writings by Russell Rowland, Gayle Brandeis, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others!

LBJs

*It's official: I'll be appearing at this year's Virginia Festival of the Book along with Jonathan Alderfer and Jon L. Dunn, co-authors of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, and Grayson Chesser, author of Making Decoys the Century-Old Way. I'll be doing some major brain-picking, you betcha. We'll gather at Blue Ridge Mountain Sports in Charlottesville on Sat. March 24th, at 2:00 P.M. If you're in the area, please stop by!

*During last weekend's UNC-Kentucky game, Billy Packer said what may have been the stupidest thing I've heard an announcer say. During one second-half possession, apropos of nothing, Packer opined, "Again, the object is to win the game." It was bad enough to hear this, but was even worse to realize that he'd apparently said it once already.

*We're watching Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer again, and I'm not sure if I'm more amazed by Xander's having cheekbones, Giles's having hair, or Buffy's having actual body fat. (Of the three, I'm certainly enjoying the latter the most.)

*For no good reason that I can see, I've had Soundgarden's "Outshined" stuck in my head all afternoon. "I'm looking Califoooooornia... but feeling Minnesoooooota..."

*Kel earned big wifey points by bringing home the library's spanking-new copy of Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith. It's the third of the Tiffany Aching books, and the first 200 pages have been a treat. What's not to like? The Wee Free Men, ominous Morris dancers, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Greebo, and bunches of interesting new people to boot. I just wish the dadgum thing were a few hundred pages longer.

*A few years ago, I realized that Kirsty MacColl's voice somehow matches that of Elvis Costello. I don't mean it blends with it--it might do so perfectly well--but that there's some quality of tone, of phrasing, or maybe even lyrics, but something that makes it possible to sing a Kirsty song in Elvis's voice perfectly. If you impersonate E.C. (and I'm a pretty good Elvis impersonator, if I say so myself), you can sing Kirsty's "Innocence" or "What Do Pretty Girls Do?" and thereby reveal all the beautiful snark contained therein. I was recently surprised, however, to discover that there is yet another female vocalist whose voice has certain Elvine qualities: Sarah MacLachlan. Don't believe me? Try singing her "Adia" in Elvis's sneering tones--it works perfectly. What I'm now wondering: could Kirsty or Sarah do a creditable job of singing "Indoor Fireworks" or "Beyond Belief"? I'm betting so--Linda Ronstadt's version of "Alison" was the first EC tune I ever heard, and I still think of it fondly.

*Last fall I had a class with fourteen students. There were, however, only seven names. A Joe, a Jordan, a Jonny, two Matts, two Philips, two Teds, and the rest Wills. I'm beginning to think our parents need to expand their imaginations a bit more. Then again, I went to school with Pete Needham, Peter Strickland, Peter Mock, Peter Merten, Peter Spruyt, and Peter Rogers.

*Wow. For some reason I just thought of the Jimmy Castor Bunch's "Troglodyte." "Gotta find a woman... Gotta find a woman... Gotta find a woman..." My brain goes in scary directions sometimes.

*Oh, the greatness that is YouTube! Among the many delights we've discovered on it was a brief segment that we saw years ago on Muppets Tonight, the short-lived follow-up to The Muppet Show. In it, Kermit the Frog appeared--sometimes as a trio of himself--wearing an enormous white suit and doing a passable David Byrne impersonation in a brief performance of "Once in a Lifetime." No, really. "You may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?"

*Another Carey memory: For some reason, he and some of his colleagues in the medical imaging department at Duke developed the habit of quoting the lyrics to "Once in a Lifetime" whenever they encountered some weird tech problem. If they looked into the innards of a computer, for example, and discovered something awry, they would say to each other, "You may ask yourself, How do I work this?" The thing was, they eventually started quoting the song's other lyrics, and eventually, when one of them found something awry, he would have to say, "This is not my beautiful wife!"

*Good grief--the year's almost over, and I've ony got 110 species on my year list for 2006. I haven't seen anything new since the end of September--and that's after spending all of October and most of November hiking almost daily. I need to get out on a Christmas count...

*And sadly, I think I've got to admit it now: I've lost my Sibley guide. I took it out in August and I have a bad feeling I may have left it on top of the car after pulling over to chase what I vainly hoped might be a Bobolink in a local cornfield. That's irritating, but what's worse is that it contained the original of a limerick my Outward Bound friend Anna had written about me while we were hiking along Linville Gorge in 2005. I hope I'm wrong, and the book will turn out to be in a stack somewhere--in this house, the odds aren't bad--but I'm becoming convinced that I'll have to pick up another one soon. I mean, yeah, I've still got my Peterson, and my National Geographic guide, and even an old Audubon Society guide somewhere, but how am I supposed to bird with only some field guides? I need them all.

2:10 AM

The Advent Calendar says that the January release of Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash is only a month away! Pre-order now to reserve your copy, featuring PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus other Cash-inspired writings by Russell Rowland, Gayle Brandeis, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others!

A reliable source--okay, it's Kelly--reports that a new meme is going around the blogosphere: Six Random Things About Yourself.

The main problem I can sense here is that anyone with a blog is likely to have revealed everything random in his/her character long ago, but what the heck, I'll try to tell y'all something you don't necessarily know already:

1) My first instrument was not piano, or guitar, or dulcimer (though I own all three of these.) No, my first instrument was a small plastic organ that I had in my room on Sugarberry Road. It had a "chord" feature, allowing me not only to pick out the tunes of everything from "Cockles and Mussels" to Three Dog Night's "Family of Man," but to occasionally use my left hand to supply a D or G chord to back up the melody. To make learning easier, each key was given a number, so my early music theory lessons consisted of numbers, rather than letters; to this day, the opening phrase of "Silent Night" registers in my head as "fiiiiiiiiiiiive six five threeeeee."

2) I have almost no hair on the backs of my hands. My arms are hairy, but it all stops at the wrist, as if I'm wearing fur sleeves. Each thumb has a faint trail of hair connecting to the arm hair, and the first knuckle of each finger has twenty hairs or so, and there's a small patch--maybe two dozen hairs apiece--on the outside edge of each hand, but that's it. What hairs I have are dark and not at all downy, but they're islands in a sea of pink.

3) I have never read or seen Gone with the Wind all the way through. And frankly, my dear...

4) The comic strip I miss most is probably Conchy, which ran in the Chapel Hill Newspaper when I was about ten. It concerned a group of beachcombers and natives of a tropical island, and was a weird combination of the surreal and the social. (Yuu can learn a little about it, and James Childress, its creator, by clicking right here.) It had elements of the early days of Johnny Hart's B.C. (back before Hart lost his sense of humor and possibly his mind), and sometimes reached hilariously absurd proportions. At one point, an islander became convinced that the earth wasn't actually moving around the sun--instead, a small rock on the island was orbiting the sun, and the earth was merely attached to it. Another islander picked it up to disprove the theory, and the first islander merely responded, "If you jump up in the air, the rest of us have had it." The next day the second islander lost his patience and jumped into the air to prove his point once and for all. The final panel showed him flying toward the sun, clutching the rock, disgustedly thinking, "There are times when you get no satisfaction whatsoever out of being right." That's been one of my mottoes for years.

5. I have two degrees in English and a number of publications and I still can't spell misspell with any degree of confidence. It always looks wrong the first time I write it, no matter how I write it.

6. I keep dice in my desk drawer in case I want to call on students at random--a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20. Most of them are surprised that dice with more (or fewer) than six sides even exist. A few smile appreciatively when I pull them out, and I know they're my gamers, recognizing one of their own. (As if the map of Middle-Earth behind my desk didn't already announce that to all and sundry.)

5:31 PM