In Which I Appear on the Bamberger Ranch Blog

I've just learned that I'm putting in an appearance on the Bamberger Ranch Journal this week. Thanks, David, for the kind words, and for plugging the owl cam’. (BTW, that blog post was delayed not by David, but by me, because I haven't been checking my email often enough while I've been out of the office letting my knee heal.)

Anyone viewing that blog entry should be warned that there’s no such thing as a good picture of me. I can’t produce a smile on command that doesn’t scare children. (Well, probably. I haven’t actually tested; there are, after all, ethical issues relating to human testing, especially on children.) I don’t even seem to be able to reliably arrange my features in a neutral, but moderately photogenic pattern. This has produced more than a few problems over the years, including the occasion when I had to supply a head shot to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center when a show of my panoramas was taking place there a few years back. I took about eighty shots of my head, until the futility of the exercise wore me out, and I settled for something neutral and, at least, not obviously frightening. (That's the photo on my home page at the moment; one of my favorite panoramas—taken on the Bamberger Ranch, BTW—is hanging in the background.)

By the way, folks in the Austin-area can still see that and four other of my panoramas on display over at the New World Deli, where they seem to be on semi-permanent display (17 months and counting), and the owner is threatening to buy the lot, if I’ll set him up with a payment plan.

Folks out in Johnson City can still see (and buy) one of my other panoramas that is on display in the Johnson City Public library. I believe it’s in the new Natural History section endowed by David & Margaret Bamberger. Appropriately, that pano was shot on the Bamberger Ranch one day when Margaret and I were making the photographic rounds of the place. I’d been trying to shoot a good pano in that meadow for three years, and that day everything finally came together.

Another Showing

I’ve been offered the chance to show my work as part of a monthly, one-night show here in Austin late next month. If I can get my act together in time, I’ll print replacements for the items that’ve sold during the extended Deli show, and will also show two panoramas that haven’t been printed before. I’ll post more details when I’m more certain that I’ll be up to participating.

Three Eggs Confirmed

My guess yesterday was that the third egg had been laid, and that that was what had shifted Mme. Owl into serious brooding mode. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture an overhead view yesterday to confirm that guess. This evening, however, I was able to capture such a view, and, as you’ve undoubtedly already noticed, there is a third egg. Whether it was laid yesterday or today will likely remain a matter of guesswork, but there it is.

As always, if this sort of thing interests you, you can watch the nesting proceed in real-time from my nest box cam’ site.

Two Eggs and Counting

Here’s this evening’s shot from the nest box attic cam’. (You can see this morning’s image, too.) As expected, egg no. 2 was laid today.

Gehlbach’s research says an eastern screech owl, Megascops asio, clutch will average 3.75 eggs, if memory serves, so I’m expecting two more eggs, although clutches of up to six eggs are possible.

Note that the eggs are almost spherical, unlike the eggs of (almost?) all other birds. A sphere is a more efficient shape than that of a conventional egg in terms of providing the greatest interior volume for the least surface area. It has been suggested that other birds produce “egg shaped” eggs because, if such eggs start rolling, their shapes will tend to cause them to roll back to their starting-points, all things being equal. Thus in a nest where an egg could do some rolling, the conventional egg shape is the safest. The fact that (most/all?) owl eggs are almost spherical suggests that owls have been cavity nesters longer than any extant bird species, and that evolution has been optimizing the shape of their eggs for efficiency, rather than safety, because rolling out of any proper nest cavity is a non-issue, and therefore there is no survival advantage associated with retaining the conventional “egg shape.”

The RF Scale

I’ve automated another one of the surveys from Bob Altemeyer’s book The Authoritarians. (My first effort, the “RWA Scale” is discussed in a previous entry on this blog.) This time, it's the “RF Scale.” What it’s measuring will be pretty obvious, pretty quickly. Just in case there’s any doubt, I’ve included Altemeyer’s description of the purpose of the survey at the end of the page.

Because this survey works in the same way as the previous one, I’ll quote myself to save time:

Note that your score is computed entirely on your own computer – none of the data is transmitted or recorded anywhere, so nobody will ever see it but you. On the one hand, this seems like a bit of a shortcoming, because it’d be interesting to know how other people score, but, on the other hand, surveys whose participants are self-selecting are meaningless. Add to that the fact that an anonymous Internet survey has no reliable way of excluding trolls, or preventing people from submitting their preferred answers repeatedly to try to shift the results in whatever direction they like, and Internet surveys go past “meaningless” to end-up somewhere around “outright misleading.” So, let’s not even play that damn fool game.

If you’re curious, I score a 12 on this survey.

Once again, it’s food for thought. Happy thinking.

This survey, like the last one I created, is fully standards-compliant and therefore works correctly in modern web browsers like Safari, Firefox and Chrome. It might work with the latest versions of Internet Explorer (if not version 8, then 9), but as to other versions, previous experience says: probably not. The old joke about the phone company applies to Microsoft’s stance on standards compliance: “We don’t care. We don’t have to.” Microsoft’s stance has improved very recently, but having ignored web standards for around ten years, they have a lot of catching-up to do.

One Egg and Counting

Pat asked if I’d ever share the overhead views from the attic camera that I use for egg counting. Here’s just such a view that was captured early this morning. It shows the egg that was laid on the 22nd. (I expect to see that another egg was laid today, but won’t be able to confirm that expectation until Mme. Owl exits the nest box this evening.)

In previous years, I’d’ve included images like this one in the daily updates on the owl cam’ site, but I haven’t had the energy to put together daily image collections so far this year. Also, in my archive of images from the box (each season produces about 346,000 images, and I keep them all), there should be a slightly higher quality (less compressed) version of this image, and, all things being equal, that’s the version I’d want to share on the owl cam’ site.

Soon. I’ll get around to it soon.

Screech Owl Cam' Operational

Some video capture hardware turned-out to have stopped working in the two years since the last nesting, but after some pulling of hair, swapping of hardware, and editing of web pages, Chris’ Eastern Screech Owl Nest Box Cam’ is live again.

What with surgery and an unknown recovery period starting tomorrow, I can’t say there’ll be regular status reports, or daily image round-ups, but the video will be live. (If one frame per minute counts as “live”.)

Enjoy.

Mme. Owl is Spending the Day in the Nest Box

Mme. Owl is currently sitting on the floor of the nest box in a brooding posture. If nesting hasn't strictly begun yet, it looks as though it will do so in next the day or two at the most.

I'm not sure when I'll have the Owl Cam' up and running again. If I can get it running tonight, I will. But, if that doesn't work out, things immediately become very unpredictable, as I'll be undergoing surgery on Friday, and nobody can tell me what the recovery period will be, or just how limited I'll be during that time.