Good morning, Newdists.
It is Caturday!
This has been one of those weeks and I’m running on empty. How was your week?
Diary Bird — Crimson Rosella — Platycercus elegans.
Crimson rosellas are brightly-coloured medium-sized parrots native to eastern and south-eastern Australia. Adults are instantly recognisable with their intense bright crimson and violet colouring.
Identification
Crimson rosellas are similar in shape to eastern rosellas, with the same long tail common to all rosellas. They are slightly larger, however, and have very different plumage. Most of the body is rich crimson, including the head and chest. They have striking violet–blue cheek patches. The upper back is mottled with black, and the shoulders are light blue. The flight feathers are dark blue to black, and the tail is dark blue, lighter blue underneath, with small white tips on the outer feathers. Females are slightly duller than males, and may have a white under-wing bar. Juveniles are mainly bright olive-green, with a red forehead, breast and undertail, and blue cheek patches. Their flight is like that of the eastern rosella, direct and undulating.
Voice: frequent calls include the harsh brassy “klee klee klee” made when flying, “kwik-kweeek-kwik” piping notes often made when perched, and a soft chatter. These calls are are similar to those of eastern rosella, but differ in pitch.
Similar species: adults are unmistakable. Juveniles have some resemblance to eastern rosella and red-crowned parakeet, but note the blue cheek patches (white in eastern rosella, absent in red-crowned parakeet), and red on chest and under-tail (absent in red-crowned parakeet). LINK
Juvenile Crimson Rosella.
The Crimson Rosella's nest is a tree hollow, located high in a tree, and lined with wood shavings and dust. The female alone incubates the white eggs, but both sexes care for the young. The chicks remain dependent on their parents for a further 35 days after leaving the nest. LINK
By now, you probably know that if pics are available of the feathers on the back of a bird, I’m saving it. So here’s an image of the feathers on the back of a Crimson Rosella.
So, Newdists, please grab a cuppa and a treat and join us in the thread.
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More extensive recipe here.
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.
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We post Mon-Sun at 10:30 a.m. Eastern.
Pie fights will be met with outrageous ridicule and insults. Trolls will be incinerated and served at the next group BBQ. As briquettes.
Eye-to-eye Epiphanies
Most likely, you have looked at your domestic non-human family’s eyes and felt that you were being communicated with? This is probably most evident with dog family members. I’ve had that experience many times with birds and cats. I’ve even had a similar moment of shared comprehension with the wild fox that lives in the area at the back of my house. I’ve looked into the eyes of a captive elephant and have felt overwhelmed by their dignity and felt that my species was something less than theirs. Eyes, whether belonging to a furry or a feathered being or an insect kind instigate in us a recognition, and call up our empathy.
"They’re moments of inter-species empathy and recognition that go beyond words," Taylor writes in his book.
Some have had a lasting impact. Wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold’s encounter with the "fierce green fire" in the eyes of a dying wolf is a foundational story in the science of ecology — the story he used to frame his "land ethic," which in turn reshaped American wildlife management.
Such direct visual contact shakes us out of our deep seated, unconscious even, sense of human exceptionalism. It shifts our perspective from a narrow primacy towards a larger perceptual field pertaining to life. People who study animals closely, such as Jane Goodall, have had these transformative experiences:
"He looked directly in my eyes, took the fruit, dropped it (he really didn’t want it) and gently squeezed my hand," she said, speaking to Steve Paulson of "To the Best of Our Knowledge" in 2011. "In that moment, we communicated in a way that seems to predate words, perhaps in a way that was used by our own common ancestor millions of years ago. It was an extraordinary feeling, bridging these two worlds." And also, she said, "very close to a mystical experience.
Such transformations can shift entire life trajectories:
It was June 1975. Watson was working with Greenpeace when they discovered a Russian whaling fleet chasing a pod of sperm whales off the coast of California. He and another activist tried to block the Soviet harpoon vessel by putting themselves between it and the whales. The harpooner fired anyway. Watson recalls sitting in a small Zodiac inflatable, looking up into the eye of a dying whale.
"What I saw there changed my life forever," Watson said. "I decided then and there, I work for whales, I work for seals, I work for sea turtles and fish and seabirds. I don’t work for people."
That is Paul Watson who is being quoted. The same Paul Watson who was the subject of the documentary directed by Lesley Chilcott, titled eponymously as Watson :
Captain Paul Watson has traversed the seas in his trusty Sea Shepherd, dedicated his life to keeping poachers and whalers at bay, and put his own body between animals and harpoons. And as depicted in the excellent and urgent documentary “Watson,” directed by Lesley Chilcott, the fierce eco-warrior and founding member of Greenpeace remains one of the most vital voices in the conservation movement. Though he has been condemned, arrested and placed on Interpol watch lists for his interventionist style, in the current climate crisis, his approach feels appropriate to the level of emergency.
Chilcott’s biographical film blends breathtakingly beautiful underwater photography with Watson’s recollections about his own life and personal mission to protect the seas. Known for the Animal Planet TV series “Whale Wars,” Watson started as a young child in a Canadian fishing village, freeing beavers from traps, and he’s never stopped, cuffing himself to sealing vessels, placing himself in harm’s way to stop whalers and ramming vessels poaching sharks. As beautiful as the undersea photography is, it’s matched with equal intensity by harrowing footage of Watson’s missions, and the unbearably cruel hunting and fishing practices perpetuated against marine animals.
Here’s a trailer.
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Lets admire some eyes.
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