Subaru flip book

Okay, the giant mechanical spider is a bit cheesy, but the film technique in this Subaru Canada advertisement (by ad agency DDB Canada and Starz Animation) is creative, eh?



This was shot at Cayuga Speedway near Toronto, with the camera car zooming past 760 frames of animation to generate the kineographic effect. The image floats around a bit as the car accelerates, but then holds steady and in-focus as the driver maintains a precise speed and distance from the wall. Here's the making-of-the-video video:



Special bonus: This film, also by DDB for Subaru, will bring back memories for a few people who have been with me without a hawk in the car. Right, Ev?

Demotivation

From the good folks folks at Despair, Inc.

"Off the Trail" interviews

Boise State Radio's Jyl Hoyt has recorded several interviews at The Peregrine Fund and its Archives of Falconry for her "Off the Trail" segment. Hopefully these brief (4-5 minute) audio files will themselves end up in the Archives, but meanwhile I will link to them here.

• Ken Hooke on falconry
• Jim Willmarth on gyrfalcons
• Steve Duffy, Ken Hooke, and John Moran on falcon hoods
• Kent Carnie on falconry terminology in the works of Shakespeare

Another piece not recorded at P-Fund, on ospreys and baling twine, includes speculation that nesting ospreys use the bright orange polypropylene as a substitute for the brightly-colored lichens they often put in their bulky stick nests. Maybe so, but I think it's more likely collected for its own sake, as ospreys are well-known packrats. Other items documented in osprey nests include mops and brooms (those might have been picked up as sticks), plastic bags, Styrofoam cups, beer cans, fishnets, boots, doormats, bicycle tires, and Barbie dolls. As David Gessner writes in Return of the Osprey, "I've noticed that our local [Cape Cod] birds have a particular fondness for the shiny and artificial." Small wonder eyasses and even the occasional adult get ensnared... One can hope that radio pieces such as Jyl Hoyt's, along with articles in the popular and academic press, will eventually reduce the amount of litter available to the fish hawks, but it's a slender hope. (See previous review of the movie WALL-E.)

Enjoy the interviews; if any more appear, I'll try to update this post.

Kodachrome: End of an era

As most of you have probably heard by now, Eastman Kodak has discontinued production of Kodachrome film. Although my childhood snapshots employed Kodak film (I can still remember the yellow labels on the 110 cartridges), I'm not sure I ever used Kodachrome—and now, like almost everyone else, I shoot digital. But according to this Associated Press article, approximately 70% of Kodak's revenue is now from digital photography. Apparently they could also read the writing on the wall...

[Paul Simon's "Kodachrome"]

Online voyeurism

If you're stuck indoors, logged onto the computer for hours at a time, you can lighten up by checking in on these streaming video sites:

• American kestrel nestbox at the Nebraska Game & Parks Commission headquarters in Lincoln, courtesy of Game & Parks.
• Peregrine falcon nestbox on the Nebraska state capitol building, courtesy once again Nebraska Game & Parks.
• Bald eagle nest in Sidney, British Columbia, courtesy of Hancock House Publishing. This one has sound!

If you're not careful, though, this could ensure that you get stuck indoors, logged onto the computer for hours at a time. Use in moderation.

In the city

Journal Star outdoors writer Joe Duggan had a nice column in yesterday's paper (link here) about a sharp-shinned hawk at his house. Coincidentally, just a few hours after I read the article, Julie T. called to tell me about a hawk (it turned out to be a Cooper's hawk) she had seen perched in a bush in her front yard. "The sparrows were in a state of panic," she said, as indeed they would be with an accipiter in the neighborhood.

All of which got me thinking (again) how fortunate we are to have such a plethora of urban wildlife here in Lincoln. The last few mornings, in between irritated slaps at the snooze button, I've been hearing a pair of great-horned owls in the trees behind the house. Karl Linderholm recently sent me this picture, probably taken by Mitchell, of a screech-owl at their back deck.


Then, of course, there are the redtails (one of whom I occasionally find perched on the fence just outside Stekoa's mews, prompting me to wonder what sort of communication might be transpiring between these normally asocial birds), merlins (easier to find in town, where they enjoy a concentration of European starlings, than out in the boonies), and the Capitol peregrines (previous posts here and here). City living definitely has its ups and downs, but seeing all these raptors on at least a semi-regular basis certainly helps to make it tolerable for me.

"I Love the World" (a.k.a. "Boom De Ah Dah")

Susie's been playing this when she's at the computer, and singing it around the house when she's not, and now it's stuck in my head. So here you go...may as well get stuck in yours.

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Keep an eye on that Pomeranian

From WXII, Channel 12 in Winston-Salem, comes this story about a small dog being carried off (and then dropped) by a raptor. As usual when the non-specialist media venture off the pavement, some skepticism is called for. For example: "[Veterinarian Mitchell] Spindell says that large birds like this red-shouldered hawk can do a lot of damage in the blink of an eye." Okay, so he just happens to have a red-shouldered hawk handy, which I suppose made the camera crew's day, but the implication that a redshoulder could have carried off even a toy Pomeranian is a bit of a stretch. A redtail, maybe, or a great horned owl (even in the daytime), but a redshoulder?

Reminds me, of course, of one of Gary Larson's best:

HT remchick, my best source for strange news out of North Carolina.

Journalism is dead...Long live journalism

This may be the single most gullible piece of "reporting" I've ever seen*, and I'm reluctant to boost MSNBC's page views, but this has to be seen to be disbelieved. Headline: "Did eaten songbird claw its way through hawk?" Answer: Most assuredly not.

A sharp-shinned hawk was found—alongside a highway, which would suggest cause and manner of death to most thinking people—with a passerine leg protruding from its ruptured crop. Julia Di Sieno of the Animal Rescue Team, who supposedly has worked with wildlife for more than 20 years, led some (including, apparently, reporters with the IQ of broccoli) to believe that the sharpie's prey had fought its way out of the hawk after being swallowed.

This from the MSNBC report: "Birds of prey, like sharp-shinned hawks, typically leave behind the legs and head of their avian meals, Di Sieno said." Really? This is news. I flew a passage sharpie at small birds for three seasons, and she typically ate the head first. In small bites. Then she ate the rest of the bird, again in small bites, before (usually) gulping the tarsi down whole.

The original report from Noozhawk (headline: "Last Supper: Eaten Bird Kills Diner") quotes Di Sieno as saying, "In order to move forward with the Animal Rescue Team mission we have two immediate needs. A dedicated animal ambulance for rescues ($30,000), and construction of a new fawn facility ($20,000)." I would suggest that a better use of funds might be remedial education in biology for staffers and volunteers. Maybe Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience.com, who wrote the piece on MSNBC, can sit in. Or maybe she should look for other work.

[*Incidentally, my previous favorite was from the first Persian Gulf War, when a large segment of the Iraqi Air Force fled to Iran. A CNN reporter asked an Iraqi official (it might have been Tariq Aziz, but I won't swear to that): "Mr. Ambassador, does Iraq have a secret deal with Iran?" Apart from the fact that the two states had recently fought a bitter war and were generally not on speaking terms, what did she expect? "Well, yes, we did have a secret deal to save our air force, but...wait, is that camera on?!? Oh, this will go badly for my family..."]

The good, the bad and the ugly

A study in contrasts:

Exhibit A, the good: This wonderful eagle-owl post at Fretmarks, with video from Finnish television of a football/soccer match delayed for about ten minutes by, yes, an eagle-owl. It seems that a pair of these giant birds nest on or very near the stadium, and have become very acclimated to human activity. The owl in the video displays no fear, no aggression—just curiosity about the goings-on at field level. Much to their credit, the players, officials, and fans mirror the owl's behaviour perfectly. No one panics, no one tries to chase the owl off the field; in fact, the fans start chanting and cheering for the owl. The prevailing attitude is one of patience and mutual respect.

Exhibit B, which is both the bad and the ugly: Professional golfer Tripp Isenhour faces charges of killing a red-shouldered hawk by hitting it with a golf ball. Apparently he was irked that the noisy hawk (Buteo lineatus can be quite vocal) forced a re-take while he was shooting video for a television program. He reportedly hit not one but several golf balls toward the hawk, finally landing a fatal shot.

I have no idea when the eagle-owl video was taken. The killing of the hawk occurred this past December. But both came to my attention today. Synchronicity?

This may call for the revision of some stereotypes. Obviously, not all European soccer fans are hooligans. And clearly, golf is not necessarily a sport for gentlemen.