Good morning to all you Newdists!
It’s Caturday. Agin!
Diary Bird — Another one of my favs. Usually identified as Orange-fronted Parakeet. Also known as — Malherbe’s Parakeet — Cyanoramphus malherbi.
This bird is locally known as the kakariki karaka. Apparently, these birds are having a banner reproductive year. This population growth coincides with a mast year in NZ:
The population of kākāriki karaka (orange-fronted parakeets) is estimated at between 100 and 300.
This year at least 150 chicks were born in the wild, potentially doubling the population.
Department of Conservation (DOC) field staff have found 31 kākāriki karaka nests in the wild in Canterbury this season - more than three times the number of recent years - and the birds are expected to keep nesting for several months yet.
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage said the boom was due to an abundance of beech seeds, which the birds feed on.
"This budgie-sized native bird, a taonga species for Ngāi Tahu, eats plants and insects, and during a mast year, seeds dominate their diet. This year's beech mast is looking like the biggest in more than 40 years.
SNIP
The rarest of New Zealand's six kākāriki species, orange-fronted parakeet is found only in the Hawdon and Poulter valleys in Arthur's Pass National Park and Hurunui South Branch in Lake Sumner Forest Park. LINK
A warm Caturday welcome to all da Newdists!!
Grab a cup of coffee or tea, something to eat, and please join us.
All are welcome to join the fun, the silliness, the conversations. If you don’t know...just ask! Some things really do require a bit of explanation.
There will be a few surprises along the way, all good ones, we hope.
We are here to keep building the Daily Kos Community.
We post Mon-Sun at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. On Sunday we go to the C!U!A! posting to show support for all the work being done to promote Democratic candidates/causes. Please to join us there, as well.
Pie fights will be met with outrageous ridicule and insults. Trolls will be incinerated and served at the next group BBQ. As briquettes.
The “Cutest” War:
Usually the word ‘dispute’ between nations floats images of guns and tanks behind our closed eye lids as we ponder it. Hence the term “cute” is not something we might apply to it. Unless, of course, the dispute is between Canada and Denmark.
The dispute has been dubbed the ‘whiskey war’ as Canada and Denmark determine to which nation this chunk of rock belongs to. The Inuit likely have a history hunting on this island and using it as a landmark when navigating the waters. The island is also known as Tartupaluk.
It has been claimed by Denmark on behalf of Greenland. And Canada also has claimed it. Just so we all know what at the center of this dispute, here’s an image:
Far in the Arctic North lies the barren and desolate Hans Island.
The uninhabited half-square-mile island, possessing no apparent natural resources, is a bizarre sliver of territory for two countries to fight over.
However, since the early 1930s, this nondescript rock has been at the center of an ongoing disagreement between Canada and Denmark.
According to World Atlas, Hans Island is located in the middle of the 22-mile wide Nares Strait, which separates Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, from Canada. Due to international law, all countries have the right to claim territory within 12 miles of their shore. LINK
Hans Island is really just a large rock, but it happens to lie smack dab in the middle of the Nares Strait, a 22-mile-wide channel of very cold water separating Canada and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. The island falls within the 12-mile territorial limit of either shore, allowing both sides to claim it under international law. LINK
Evidently, in 1933, the League of Nations determined that the island belonged to Denmark. However the League fell apart as it was replaced by the UN and the League’s ruling regarding the island was not followed.
Canada and Denmark set out to establish a definitive border through the strait in 1973, but they couldn’t agree on what to do about Hans Island, so they left the issue aside to be resolved later.
The calm diplomatic waters grew choppy in 1984 when Canadian troops visited the island, planted their nation’s flag and left another symbolic marker as well: a bottle of Canadian whisky.
The Danes couldn’t let that stand. The country’s minister of Greenland affairs soon arrived on the island to replace the offending Canadian symbols with a Danish flag and a bottle of Danish schnapps, along with a note saying “Welcome to the Danish island.” LINK
It became a spirited dispute, lasting decades. What happens to the evicted liquor? No one in the know is saying anything about it.
There’s even a petition to “free” Hans Island from “the Canadian oppression.” Pretty sure it’s a joke. The petition notes that the island’s landscape “has been barren, to say the lease, since Canada first occupied it,” adding that “large quantities of dihydrogen monoxide has been observed on and around Hans Island” since the occupation began. LINK
Um… yeah — “dihydrogen monoxide”… I hope you’re laughing. It’s a chunk of rock surrounded by water. So, yeah, of course. And while we may be entertained by shenanigans wherein whiskey and schnapps are exchanged by Canadians and Danes, those waters are becoming significant politically and commercially as the Arctic thaws:
It sounds amusing, but there are serious political and territorial tensions behind the pranks. As Arctic waters become less divided by ice floes each year due to melting sea ice, shipping activity in the region is increasing. Knowing who has jurisdiction over what bits of land and sea (anything within 22km, or 13.6 miles, offshore is considered the territory of the landowner) is hugely important to avoid accusations of trespassing in territorial waters. The island, then, could help either nation solidify its sovereignty in the region. LINK
Can you spot Hans Island?
In 2018, Canada and Denmark established a joint task force on boundary issues:
In order to make further progress on the outstanding boundary issues in the waters between Canada and Greenland, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, together with the Government of Greenland, and Global Affairs Canada have decided to establish a joint task force.
The task force will explore options and provide recommendations on how to resolve outstanding boundary issues between the two nations. This includes the sovereignty of Hans Island, the maritime boundary line in Lincoln Sea and the Labrador Sea continental shelf overlap beyond 200 nautical miles
However, at last glance, in 2019, a Canadian mining geologist filed for and was granted mineral exploration claim on Hans Island. The geologist claimed that he was doing it to stir things up.
New Day Cafe Open Thread.
What do you want to talk about?