i (heart) odd-toed ungulates

I Heart the MCZ Week (day 2): Ungulates

I can't very well devote a whole week to loving a natural history museum and not give a special shout out to the ungulates... my heart and soul. The mammal halls will always be my default location upon any visit, but there's just something about hooves... from 20ft tall giraffes, to dainty duikers and gazelles - the grazers and the gallopers have me rapt from the tips of their pricked ears to the soles of their even or odd-toed feet (horns and antlers are cause for additional delight). Today's visit had me parked in front of the bovids, where a young Mountain Anoa stood dwarfed by specimens of Guar, Yak, and American Bison (see drawing at bottom of post). The Hartebeest above was sketched this past Sunday... I will do my best tomorrow to explore a different corner of the exhibits, though I'll tell you right now, it won't be easy. Ever and always, I heart ungulates...

I Heart the MCZ Week (day 1): My Valentine

I've spent so many heaps of Valentine's Days expressing affinity, affection, and honest adoration for so many much-loved humans. I've celebrated sweet Oscar-dog. I've baked and I've crafted, I've dined and I've gifted... But this year I'm going to do something different - this year I'm going to give good St. Valentine a whole week's worth of lovin, and rather than direct it all at one heart, I'm starting with my own extravagance and inviting anyone who cares to follow. The twist - my crush this year is actually a place, and in an effort to honor it (and indulge in it's most inspiring effect on me) I will devote a little time out of every day this week (through Sunday) to pop in... and love the stuffing out of it. I'll share a taste of each delicious visit right here. It's going to be great... you see - I heart Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, and from what I can tell, it hearts me right back. Let the natural history love-fest begin!

Another Year Gone, to the Dogs

With not 48 hours left in the great upheaval that was our 2011, Oscar and I joined some very special friends (of the 2 and 4-legged variety) for one final walk through Vermont woods before we returned to MA to ring in a bright, shiny new year. There was just enough thin, splotchy snow to declare winter, but the light, and the leaves, and the smell of streamwater made it feel more like November than the near start of January. Just cold enough for flurries, Oscar and packmates Theo and Fern were in obvious agreement about the necessity of outerwear, though the Christmas-colored coordination between the 3 was completely unplanned. Hiking eventually gave way to hot cocoa and warm conversation, and for the dogs - heaven in the form of a nap...

And just like that, an entire year was put to rest.

Here's to a very Happy New Year, for every and all. And going forward - a little reminder that optimism, joy, and an open heart will always be the best guides... 

All I Want for Christmas This Year

... Is an awful lot like what I wanted last year. This morning - 365 days later - was not at all the same as last year, in some very, very big ways... but just like last year, this sweetest holiday pulled through for me. Life continues to be spectacularly lovely, despite ugliness and unpleasant realities. Christmastime will always fill me with a special brand of glittering, evergreen peace and tinsel-draped joy - in my mind, there is no other way. And of the things under my control, once again, I am not, in any way, for want. So much gratefulness for that...

Dear friends, family, and followers, old and new:
Many thanks for being some of the most influential sources behind the brightness that has carried me through this wild, intense, forever course-altering year. May you each enjoy a thoroughly happy, healthy, and hopeful holiday ~ my love to you all.

Celebrate: National Day of the Horse

That's right - it's probably not on your calendar, but as of 2004, there is an official "National Day of the Horse", and that day is today, December 13th. Having grown up utterly horse-crazy (like 90% of adolescent girls) I find such a day of remembrance and appreciation very much well-deserved, and no doubt centuries overdue - human-kind simply wouldn't be where it is without the strength, speed, willingness, and impeccable grace of the horse.

The illustrations above I created in 2003 for a website devoted to the history of Frank T. Hopkins: fabled cowboy, endurance rider, and champion of the Spanish Mustang breed. While history rightly credits Spanish explorers with introducing the horse to the New World (and simultaneously forever changing Native American culture), a more accurate term for this action would be re-introduction. The evolution of the horse actually happened largely throughout the North American continent, just after the massive extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period (the one credited with wiping out our dear dinosaurian friends).

Roughly 54 million years ago, mere dog-sized Mesohippus slowly emerged from the forest and began sizing-up it's petit frame, lengthening it's limbs, eliminating most of it's toes (from 5 down to 1 per foot), and remodeling the structure of it's teeth, to handle the tough, fibrous new grasses of the expanding Great Plains. Eventually, the little woods-browser became what we know as Equus (a genus that would continue to evolve for many more millions of years) and the first horses made their way to Asia (along with various other American megafauna) via long-since-dissolved land bridges. Then, about 12,000 years ago (the end of the Pleistocene), for reasons still debated, Equus disappeared from North and South America, leaving it's Asian transplants to continue their development, and eventually intersect with the ancestors of modern humans. It would take those Spanish Conquistadores back in the late 1400s, crossing the oceans with domesticated animals in their ship's holds, to finally reintroduce the horse to it's indiginous continent of the New World.

The chart above is a visual comparison of today's Spanish Mustang next to two classic breed types: the Arabian Horse and the Quarter Horse. Compact, a touch coarse, and exhibiting a proportionately larger, more primitive head than his cousins, the Spanish Mustang reflects the same balanced but rugged anatomy that carried his ancestors through ice ages, extinctions, and much of human civilization - with strength, speed, and impeccable grace.

Here's to the one and only: the Horse.

NZed Sketchbook: the Kakapo

In the words of writer Douglas Adams, the kakapo (Strigops habroptilus) is "a bird out of time". The following most appropo description of kakapos comes from his 1990 book, Last Chance to See, cowritten by Mark Carwardine:

The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, though you know that it probably will not be.

It is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it's about to trip over something - but flying is completely out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has also forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.

By and large, though, the kakapo has never learnt to worry. It's never had anything much to worry about.

Most birds, faced with a predator, will at least realise that something's up and make a bolt for safety, even if it means abandoning any eggs or chicks in its nest - but not the kakapo. Its reaction when confronted with a predator is that it simply doesn't know what the form is. It has no conception of the idea that anything could possibly want to hurt it, so it tends just to sit on its nest in a state of complete confusion and leaves the other animal to make the next move - which is usually a fairly swift and final one.

A most remarkable parrot, and yet, due to the same unfortunate series of human-perpetuated historical events that has left all of New Zealand's endemic birds at critical risk of extinction (hunting, introduction of invasive species, habitat loss, etc.) as of July 2011, the kakapo population stands at just 131 individuals... There are more bones in the human body than there are kakapos on the planet. A heart-sinking tally, but when you consider just how vulnerable the poor little fellows are in the face of modern threats, it's no wonder they nearly vanished. In 1899, the Westland explorer, Charlie Douglas, had the following to say about the ridiculous ease of catching a kakapo:

They could be caught in the moonlight, when on the low scrub, by simply shaking the tree or bush until they tumbled on the ground, something like shaking down apples. I have seen as many as half a dozen kakapos shaken off one tutu bush this way.

Vulnerable as it sounds, 131 is actually an accomplished number, since as recently as the 70s, the species was thought to have dissappeared completely. Only through scouring the most remote habitats remaining in the fjordlands of the South Island did conservationists begin to discover and collect lone survivors. Those rare specimens were carefully relocated to offshore sanctuaries, where there was no threat of them becoming stoat or weasel snacks, and where they could resume their very specialized lifestyle. The current 131 birds are known, by number and in most cases by name, and monitored non-stop by a team of biologists with the newly formed Kakapo Recovery Programme -members rotate lonely shifts on the remote sanctuary islands, patrolling, watching, recording.


Every successful campaign needs a mascot, and for the Kakapo Recovery Programme, a young male named Sirocco rose to the ocassion. In a stroke of uncoached brilliance, Sirocco single-handedly brought the plight of his kind to world-wide attention when he took an intense shine to a BBC zoologist/photographer in 2009, during the filming of a televised version of Last Chance to See. The resulting video footage went viral immediately - the title should say it all: "Shagged by a rare parrot". 

For context, dear Sirocco suffered a serious respiratory illness when he was a chick, requiring him to be hand-reared. The process caused him to imprint on humans, and sadly, he now has no interest in other kakapos - an unfortunate circumstance in terms of propagating his species, but it does make him a stellar spokesbird for the Recovery Programme, since he delights in human interaction. Since 2006, Sirocco has been visited by school children, put on special exhibit at multiple sanctuaries and Zoos around New Zealand, and world-wide fans can follow him on facebook. In the name of 131 kakapos, Godspeed, Sirocco, Godspeed.

For more kakapo goodness, here's a fun kakapo podcast; and for more detail about the kakapo's "booming and chinging" (including video of the vocalization), check out this site, and the Kakapo Recovery Programme's "breeding" information page.
 

Above: 1. a diagram of the male kakapo during "booming"; 2. a kakapo walking a "track" through it's luscious terrestrial environment, photo by Shane McInnes; 3. a Nicaraguan stamp featuring a kakapo; 4. a close-up of the kakapo's mottled, earthy-green plumage, shot by Dr. Paddy Ryan; 5. a vintage illustration of a Kakapo by Walter Lawry Buller, Birds of New Zealand, 1873; 6. a head-on portrait, making the kakapo's owly likeness evident, copyright NZPA; and 7. a gorgeous shot of a kakapo peeking through the underbrush, shot by Dr. Paddy Ryan.

NZed Sketchbook: Harrier Hawk, Tahr & Shelducks

A few more pages from this summer's (ever so slowly revealed) New Zealand sketchbook. Above: a harrier hawk (aka Kahu, marsh harrier, or Australasian harrier) - a common sight gliding above open spaces (where the small mammal-getting is good, and roadkill can be spied from miles away); and a sketch of a tahr trophy mount from designer home goods boutique, Vesta, in Queenstown. Tahr are a Himalayan species of wild mountain goat. Around the turn of the century, they joined the company of red deer and chamois as imported large mammal nostalgia for European settlers on New Zealand's South Island - and just like the red deer and chamois (and virtually every other ungulate, rodent, and reptile that was "liberated" into NZ by the Europeans) they made themselves more than comfortable and eventually became extraordinary pests. Government culling programs have reduced their numbers, and they are hunted for sport, but apparently tahr steaks are of questionable quality, so these sure-footed freeloaders have little economic value.

Below: at the icey trail head of one Mt. Cook hike we spent a good 10 minutes bothering a pair of Paradise Shelducks for a decent photo in the rapidly setting sunlight. Positively striking flowl, and even more striking as seen waddling around the snow of the frozen moonscape that is Mt. Cook in winter, Shelducks are endemic to NZ and were a favored game bird for Maoris prior to European settlement. The female is the one with the bright white head, rusty red body, and avocado green highlights... *The fat, happy tabby at page bottom is Basil - world's most patient kitteh. 

NZed Sketchbook: the Kea

Everyone assured us it would be very easy; the mountains around, they said, were full of Keas, every vally bulged with them. You could not park your car for fear that several dozen would descend on it and take it to pieces with the enthusiasm of mad motor mechanics. All you had to do was to go anywhere up into the surrounding mountains - but simply anywhere - and shout 'Kea... kea... kea...' in imitation of their cries, and before you knew where you were, Keas were swooping down on you from all directions. Well, we tried. The day of our arrival we drove round and round Mount Cook, stopping at every conceivable crevasse and crag to should 'Kea... kea... kea...' in the prescribed manner, but the barren terrain remained Kea-less.
 

The above passage is from a marvelous book titled Two in the Bush, by the beloved naturalist, conservationist, and writer, Gerald Durrell. It documents a journey that Durrell, along with his wife and a small team from the BBC, made in the 60s to Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia. The group's goal was to film as many endangered endemic species as they could track down, and like any good travel narrative, it's rich with adventure, humor, and discovery. When in NZ, Durrell's encounters included visits with many of the country's most fascinating and exotic birds, including Wetas, Takahes, Kakas, Kakapos, and finally the cheeky - and frustratingly elusive - Kea. Keas are gregarious enough that they readily explore human settlement - they are also tenacious enough in their curiosity that they are regarded by locals as troublesome vandals. Strangely, to those who make a dedicated effort to travel the South Island specifically in search of them, they have a crafty habit of making themselves scarce. Suffice to say, Durrell's experience 50 years ago was very similar to ours in 2011.


Keas are the world's only alpine parrot - they inhabit the craggly mountainsides of New Zealand's Southern Alps, including grand Mt. Cook, and the steep, olive-colored forests of Fjordland. In response to the challenging nature of survival in such an extreme environment, the Kea has evolved into one of the most intelligent and adaptive of birds. Using play behavior as a vehicle for quick learning, the name of this bird's game is "investigate everything" - and since the only tools at the Kea's disposal are a talon-like beak and a handful of actual talons, the results of most Keaxperiments are, by human standards, frightfully destructive (unless of course you study animal cognition, in which case shredded hiking packs, tortured garbage bins, and gnarled spare tires are most fascinating bits of evidence).

Such an incessant fascination with novelty, in conjunction with a generalist diet, has allowed the Kea to succeed on an island where so many other, much more specialized (and perhaps more daft), endemic birds have nearly disappeared under the threats and pressures associated with human sprawl. Rather than retreat flapping and squawking from an advancing tide of civilization, the Kea met change with the mind of an entrepreneur and figured out how to make the most out of living amidst people (and all their assorted bright, shiny, soft, sharp, colorful, tasty things). Lo, insatiable opportunism can also be dangerous, and this "Clown of the Mountains" became the "Feathered Wolf" when the Kea set it's investigative prowess on sheep... 


During the summer, a Kea's diet consists of plant shoots, seeds, nectar, and the roots of sturdy alpine flowers, supplemented with beetles and grubs. During the winter, the Kea's grazing habits abruptly shift to carnivorous scavenging, and even hunting... found animal carcasses are readily nibbled at, and at least one colony of Keas has developed a taste for the fattened chicks of sea birds that nest on the coastal cliffs of Fjordland. In the 1850s and 60s, when sheep farming expanded into the highlands of the South Island, the Kea was suddenly able to capitalize on a bountiful new source of food. Animals downed by starvation during merciless winters were an easy meal, but when farmer's began noticing open wounds on their live sheep, they quickly claimed that Keas were to blame.

It would have been an extreme accusation - that in almost parasitic fashion, the parrots would alight on and rake into the backs of grazing sheep to feed on the fat beneath the wool - but the farmers were adamant. Naturally, in the long tradition of stockmen reacting to the threat of wild predators, NZ shepherds demonized the Kea and worked with local councils to establish a bounty - as many as 150,000 Keas were killed before the government lifted the bounty in 1970, and a census revealed only about 5,000 remained. Not until 1986 was the Kea given full protection by law.

Remarkably, it has since been documented that the shepherd's charges of sheep predation were in fact spot on (if you're dying to see this phenomenon, it has been caught on video - and it's a touch... creepy... *and mildly graphic*). Despite this macabre tendency and resulting persecution, the Kea fortunately survived into the present era of conservation, and even though it's numbers continue to decline due to new threats from invasive species like possums, awareness and efforts to safeguard the species are thankfully strong.

Eventually the determined Mr. Durrell did have an opportunity to film Keas at Mt. Cook - some of the results can be found in this charming short film clip (how thoroughly entrancing is the Kea's squeaky little nicker of a call??). Of note, the view from Durrell's Mt. Cook lodging looked precisely like ours, only ours, through the magic of modern photography, was in color. 


Above: 1. A Nicaraguan stamp featuring a Kea; 2. Kea portrait; 3. a kea amid the moonscape of Mt. Cook, by photographer Pete McGregor; 4. a vintage clipping of the great shepherd's nighmare - a Kea attacking the back of a sheep; 5. a more contemporary, and way more trippy-looking illustration of a Kea attempting to take off with a lamb; 6. a beautiful old natural history print of a Kea; 7. and another stunning photo, this one clearly showing the blaze of scarlet feathers that are only exposed when a Kea outstretches it's wings.

NZed Sketchbook: the Pukeko

Pukeko is the native New Zealand (Maori) name for the purple swamp hen, or purple coot (it's genus name, Porphyrio, means "purple" in Greek). Common marsh birds, pukekos can be found delicately stalking through wetlands on their long, bright red gams. Keeping them neatly buoyed above soggy marsh environments are somewhat ridiculously long toes - not an unusual trait among birds that make their living at water's edge - they're a bit like snowshoes for summer sinking conditions - but the pukeko's particular proportions make such elongated digits a bit of a contradiction to an otherwise blunt, chicken-like body. They are quite beautiful birds, renowned for a lack of street sense - visitors are likely to catch their first glimpse of a pukeko in mostly 2-dimensional form by the roadside - but the regularity of collisions isn't all due to stupidity. Like any animal intent on thriving, swamp hens are drawn to the richest feeding areas they can find, and for the contemporary pukeko, this often means drainage ditches beside road shoulders (where insects, spiders, frogs and the like can be abundant)... apparently being flattened under a tire while nosing about for extra tasty noms is a worthwhile risk.
 

Purple swamp hens belong to the rail family (Rallidae) and can be found plentifully in numerous subspecies throughout Australasia, Indonesia, Asia, Africa, as well as Europe - France's variant is known as the Sultana Bird. Representing North America is the Purple Gallinule, which shares pukeko form factor but is distinctly smaller, and with slightly different colored "makeup" (see Audubon painting below). Having been blessed by mother nature with such a vibrant cherry red beak, purple swamp hens were favored by numerous ancient cultures - the color red has long been a symbol of nobility, and ages before they became popular pets of the Maori they were distinguished groundskeepers of Roman villas. One would think a bird as substantial in size and with such relatively poor flight (their landing gear is a pip "challenging" to tuck up...) would have made excellent eating, but the purple swamp hen is one of those rare examples of lucky phenotype that just so happened to coincide with the rosy side of human aesthetic.

Despite the car strikes that plague it today, that attractive ultramarine plumage, unmistakable thick, red beak, and ungainly legs continue to provide pukekos with a soft spot in the hearts of modern Kiwis - their graphic silhouette has become the mascot of many a New Zealand business; cartoonish sculptural likenesses populate gardens, tchotchke shelves, and plush toy collections; and their amusing behavior makes them a popular subject for children's books. I guess being known as the avian village idiot is a small price to pay for otherwise good looks, good fortune, and commercial success... well played, pukeko, well played.


Above, clockwise: 1. pukeko photo by Dr. Kerry Rodgers; 2. an ornamental metal pukeko; 3. a "gumboot" featuring a pukeko scene; 4. a dizzying pukeko pattern; and 5. an 1840 painting of an American Purple Gallinule - the US equivalent of the pukeko, by the great John James Audubon (notice the light blue forehead shield, yellow tipped beak, and yellow legs).

Return, from the Land of Merino

After an incredible 2 weeks on the other side of the world, I am finally back on the East Coast again - a little worn out, but thoroughly inspired. New Zealand. Is. Amazing. Travels began in the North Island's metropolis of Auckland, rippled out to a number of destinations within a half day's drive of the city, and then hopped to Queenstown on the South Island, where more road-tripping brought me to epic Milford Sound, the grand Mt Cook, and some curious little towns in between. While it's winter in the southern hemisphere, New Zealand is experiencing a sadly snowless start to the season this year - a mighty bummer to all who flocked to the South Island to ski last month, but an unexpected benefit for me, since taking the place of snow-laden storm clouds were brilliant clear skies, warmer than usual temps, and open (or at least much more easily traversed) hiking trails in areas that would normally be snowbound.

Best of all, I was able this trip to do what I couldn't really manage on my last trip to NZ - closely explore the country's animals: from the now symbolic domestic sheep, to the astonishingly unique endemic birds (most of them poster species for the wonders of island biogeography), to the invasive introduced mammals that are threatening so many irreplaceable native species... I was fortunate to be traveling with a like-minded naturalist, so, in addition to stopping freely for roadside bird and critter ID, we enthusiastically made time for an agriculture show, the Auckland zoo, a wildlife sanctuary, and a number of dumpsters at the base of Mt Cook - a favorite hangout for the world's only alpine parrot (and New Zealand's most famous wild pest) - the charmingly devious Kea. Naturally, my sketchbook followed suit.
 

I'm going to be posting a series of entries from my trip in the next week or two - to start things off, the photo and drawing above come from the Rotorua Agrodome (North Island) - it's like a county fair set on repeat, with daily sheep shearing and herding demos, cow-milking, lambs and goat kids to snuggle, and an impressive breed pageant featuring New Zealand's 19 most popularly farmed sheep types. The main attraction/performance culminates with two wildly excited and barking sheep dogs running laps over the backs of the aforementioned 19 sheep, each canine finally settling - loudly - onto the wooly haunches of one poor beast (who is so obviously bored with the whole spectacle at this point in his career that his expression looks more like that of an animal with an annoyingly ill fitting collar than the anticipated fright of a defenseless prey animal literally wearing it's worst natural enemy). I would imagine this kind of attraction may not delight every tourist, but as anyone who knows me well can imagine... I was seriously riveted.