The Ordinary Extraordinary Junco

A fairly recent series of videos released from a multi-partner project team dedicated to studying and educating the world on the dark-eyed junco recently caught my attention. 

The series of eight videos is 88 minutes long, and can be watched piecemeal. 

http://juncoproject.org/

The subject of the project is a bird that you may be familiar with, and if not, I bet you'll notice in your surroundings after watching the videos. 

These videos provide insight into modern-day field ornithology about one particular species. As you'll see, with as much as people know about birds, each discovery in nature spawns a new series of questions. 

Below is a photo I recently took of an Oregon Junco in the Presidio. Plain, yet beautiful...ordinary, yet extraordinary. 

I have my own personal connection to the junco because I shot one for no reason when I was about 10 years old. It was winter in Wisconsin. The bird, hopping innocently on the ground, was fully entrusted to the safety of the environs of our backyard feeder. I hid around the house corner with my BB gun and fired. My aim was good, and it instantly died. I walked to pick it up, and I studied it. That one action taught me so much about the fragility of life, the consequences of a senseless action, the weight of a bird, the softness of feathers.

I don't think I talked to anyone about that act that day. In fact, I don't think I talked to anyone about it until about a year ago. I have been too ashamed. Yet, I might be learning that that one action was probably one of the formative moments that led me to a lifetime of working to help nature while teaching people what I can along the way.

Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco, Presidio, June 2012.

Fiddleneck

Trad by Barry Phillips

Note: this page has background music --  from the Barry Phillips (no relation) album Trad. To stop the loop, click the pause button (upper left) on the player above, or simply mute your speakers...

Fiddleneck. A satisfyingly fitting name for a relatively unmistakable plant with a flower cluster shaped like the scroll of a violin.

Fiddleneck, East Bay Regional Parks, April 2012.

 Although I took these photos last year near Oakland, this plant is currently in bloom in the Presidio.

Fiddleneck closeup, East Bay Regional Parks, April 2012.

But getting back to this shape. An interesting spiral array of flowers, arranged to accommodate many visiting bees at once.

The plant is named after the scroll of a violin, or cello -- but why is the neck of a fiddle shaped this way? I wondered, is there a chance that the fiddle's neck was designed after the shape of this flower?

This may be more interesting to me because I once played violin. (I probably would have gotten better had I spent more time practicing and less time studying the shape of the thing...) But anyway, I found an interesting blog post that gets into scroll design of the viols (violin, viola, cello, and string bass). Is it a tribute to the written word? Is it homage to the Fibonacci sequence? If you're up for a 4-minute video, pause the Barry Phillips and click here -- warning: you may need to watch it 2 or 3 times: Nature by Numbers.

OK. Did that change the way you see the natural world?

Getting back to the necks of fiddles, you may have read in the Fein Violins blog post above that animal heads were often carved into the necks of viols (as in the cello on the Trad album cover). You can find many examples of animal head (often renditions of lions with long tongues and slicked-back hair) scrolls online, maybe even in the string section of your local symphony. And here's something really cool: a cello with a woman's head for a scroll. Now I wonder -- do any plants resemble this?