A bird with a hole straight through its bill. What was Gawd thinking when drawing up his design for these!
Oh, those are nostrils in the bill. And the local sandhill crane photographed above does its head-down digging for food in . . . sand. Meanwhile, the blue heron with its equally sizable bill feeds in the swamp lands a few miles away. It does not have such large, open nostril holes. For a feeder of things aquatic, that wouldn’t be so good.
These birds can thank not a great Gawd, but evolution for their form. And speaking of evolution, the latest Carnival of Evolution, #39, is up over at The End Of The Pier Show. For discussions of more interesting findings, many of the nostril-hole sort, check it out!
The mind of Charles Darwin was a fruitful thing. Spawning the flesh of a grand theory, and with an impressive stalk of data supporting it, that fruit would plant the seed of a virile idea in a multitude of minds.
(Umm, backyard pine cones aren’t very fleshy, but that’s that photo I had at my fingertips.)
Has the evolution “meme” taken root in your thinking? If so, it’s certainly not a bad thing. Particularly when considering the rotten alternatives.
In that spirit, I invite you to check out the latest Carnival of Evolution. Enjoy. And maybe even replicate!
Over the past weeks house sparrows and goldfinches have arrived at our feeders. Were they heralds of the cold fronts to come? The titmice, cardinals, and chickadees are year-round regulars. The gang of grackles that mobbed the soon empty feeder this morning? Almost forget about them, so long had it been.
As it had been a long time since I’d seen frost on the grass. That’s about as close to snow as we get in these parts.
In other news, allow me to be a blogging sparrow and direct your attention to the latest Scientia Pro Publica blog carnival (#47). There are some tasty morsels over there, for those with an appetite for science.
And for bird lovers, it’s almost time for the yearly Christmas Bird Count. I plan on participating. If you are interested, check out the Audubon announcement.
How can you not look at and learn about the universe and not think, Wow!?
And, likewise, why wouldn’t you want to see and learn more?
As for the learning, one opportunity is here. It’s the latest edition of the Science Pro Publica blog carnival.
As for looking, the above image is thanks to NASA. But I’m betting you have your own two eyes, with or without a lense before them.
A portrait of the “average” human male. The global male. It’s a computer-generated composite. Take a good look. That’s who we are. At least the male version. [source] (If that dude lived in Arizona, he’d probably get pulled over and asked for identification.)
How are the ethnicities different? Indeed, how do males differ from females? In ways ultimately less significant than the similarities.
How do we know? Science. And it steadily marches on, questioning everything; questioning itself. Check out one corner of the enterprise as represented by the latest Carnival of Evolution #29.
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