The Conventions Meet Around The Lens Podcast
Hey everyone, check out our super spectacular mega special episode, episode 35, feature the most panelists we’ve ever featured. All panelists were at either both of one of the conventions and will be answering questions and talking about their expriences. Panelists include Seth Herald, Monica Jorge, Brett Carlsen, Gabriella Demczuk, Aaron Cynic, Tash Sorensen, Tyler LaRiviere and Jeffrey Basinger. With host David J. Murphy and co-host Zach D. Roberts. Our picks this week included a story about the Turkey Coup, the crime podcast Sword and Scale, the reality of Spain’s housing crisis, unlimited cloud storage, the program Plotograph Pro, pictures of Bill…
Bird of the Week – Osprey
Osprey are comparative newcomers to Interior Alaska. Note those talons, among the longest among all birds. The Osprey feeds almost exclusively on fish – another name for them is Fishhawk – and however slippery a fish might be, it’s unlikely to escape those talons. Osprey need about 100-115 days to raise their kids: Three days from completion of the nest to lay the eggs; about 37 days to incubate the eggs to hatching; 50-55 days to fledge and 10-15 days to be ready to migrate. Longer if they have to build the nest from scratch. If you are going to eat…
Bird of the Week – Eurasian Bullfinch
There are some birds that are vagrants, birds that turn up in Alaska but have no business – or anyone to breed with – in the area. Maybe the migration instructions in their brains got wired wrong; maybe they are pioneers trying to expand the range. We’ll be looking at some vagrants intermittently the next few months. This isn’t a very good photo, but it is unique in one way: it’s the one of the first bird photos WC took. In 1996, an Eurasian Bullfinch female turned up at a feeder on Rosie Creek Road, outside of Fairbanks, in the dark…
Bird of the Week – Great Blue Heron
The Great Blue Heron is visual evidence that birds did indeed evolve from dinosaurs; when you see a Great Blue in flight, you can almost think you are seeing a pterodactyl. Great Blues are found in Alaska throughout Southeast and in Southcentral Alaska as far west as Seward. There are irregular reports from Cook Inlet. While Great Blues are equally at home in marine and freshwater environments, in Alaska they are mostly marine and estuarine. Although this is primarily a fish eater, wading (often belly deep) along the shoreline of oceans, marshes, lakes, and rivers, it also hunts upland areas for rodents…
Bird of the Week – Snow Goose
The Snow Goose is one of the most abundant waterfowl species in North America, maybe in the world. Oddly, it doesn’t occur in great abundance in Alaska. (Bonus points for identifying the four other species in this photo.) But they do range west as far as Interior Alaska during spring migration, although not every year. There are breeding birds in the northeastern corner of Alaska’s Arctic coast, but generally Snow Geese breed in far northern Canada. Snow Geese have two color morphs – thought to be different species until 1983. The white morph, shown here, is overwhelmingly the more common…
Bird of the Week – Red Phalarope
WC will say at the top these are poor-quality photos. Taken in 2002, WC’s camera then was something called an Olympus C2500L, which was a state of the art camera in its day, but the state of the art was pretty primitive compared to today’s digital cameras. WC’s skills left a lot to be desired, too. But a couple of years ago when WC was featuring Phalaropes, this species got overlooked. The Red Phalarope is the most pelagic of the three phalarope species, spending up to 11 months each year in marine habitats. Its migratory routes and winter areas are…
Photos from the Provincetown Blessing of the Fleet and Portuguese Festival
Anthony Bourdain, who got his cooking start on Cape Cod has called, “Provincetown: a wonderland of tolerance with a longtime tradition of accepting artists, writers, the badly behaved, the gay, the different. It was paradise. The joy that can only come with the absolute certainty that you were invincible; that none of the choices that you’d make would have any repercussions or any effect on your later life. We didn’t think about those things.” P-Town (as the t-shirts say) is at the very end of Cape Cod, it’s a bit like Homer, AK – just if Homer was flooded with a LGBT crowd…
Bird of the Week – Red-winged Blackbird
Interior Alaska is near the northerly limit of Red-winged Blackbirds’ range. The Red-winged Blackbird might be the most abundant (and best studied) bird in the U.S. The species breeds in marsh and upland habitats from interior Alaska and central Canada to Costa Rica, and from California to the Atlantic Coast and West Indies. Although primarily associated with large freshwater marshes and prairies, it also nests in small patches of marsh vegetation in roadside ditches, saltwater marshes, rice paddies, hay fields, pasture land, fallow fields, suburban habitats, and even urban parks. The Red-winged Blackbird is also known for its polygynous social…
Bird of the Week – Rusty Blackbird
Some years ago, Mrs. WC got a telephone call from a lady who reported there were a lot of “baby Ravens” in her yard. After careful questioning, Mrs. WC established they were Rusty Blackbirds which, after all, are nearly black, even if they don’t otherwise resemble Common Ravens very much, and “baby Ravens” not at all. Joking aside, Rusty Blackbirds are a species in trouble. Their populations have declined catastrophically. Data from long-term surveys like the North American Breeding Bird Survey and Christmas Bird Counts suggest that Rusty Blackbird numbers have plummeted a staggering 85-95% since the mid-1900’s. It’s likely some combination of…
Bird of the Week – Ruffed Grouse
We’re pretty much done with raptors. It’s time to look at birds a little lower down the food chain. And in Interior Alaska, that means the Ruffed Grouse. This is Dennis, a Ruffed Grouse who was determined to drive all humans out of his territory. Dennis isn’t with us any longer; it’s not a behavioral style that confers an evolutionary advantage; his genes have left the pool. Like every species of Galliformes that WC has encountered, the Ruffed Grouse has an elaborate courtship display, including the display shown here and very impressive “drumming.” While perched on a log, stump, boulder,…