All Is Right With The World -- Yesterday's Daily Activity Report Is Picture-Perfect -- May 7, 2020

Another huge shout-out to the great folks at the NDIC. Thank you for everything you do.

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On A Completely Different Note

Click here and on the video. Skip ahead to about 24 minutes into the briefing and to the end. Talk about a picture-perfect 30-second campaign ad on coronavirus.

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As Long As We've Gotten This Far Off-Track

Can anyone remember when the US Supreme Court ever voted unanimously on any high-visibility case? I can't. But then my memory is fading as fast as Sleepy Joe's. Whatever.

The US Supreme Court apparently voted unanimously to overturn "bridgegate" convictions. Links everywhere, here's one.

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Back to the Books

Warning: some references suitable for adults only.

The Wisdom of the Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology, Tim Birkhead, c. 2008.

I find it absolutely amazing how little we knew about bird, or should we say, fowl, reproduction prior to 1970.

Digression: 1970. That's an interesting snapshot in time. In 1970 we may have known more about human reproduction that avian reproduction. In 1961 the first oral contraceptive pill was approved by the FDA and became (somewhat) widely available.

Back to The Wisdom of The Birds, page 87:

It is now known that that the females of all birds released their ova [eggs] sequentially from the ovary, each one twenty-four to forty-eight hours before it is laid. 

Since an ovum [an egg] can be fertilized only during the 15-minute period while it is in the infundibulum [located between the ovary and the vagina in the bird], sperm storage - which ensures a constant supply of sperm delivered to the infundibulum -- avoids the inconvenience (or impracticality) of having to copulate at a very specific time each day to fertilize each egg in turn.

Sperm storage is a ubiquitous feature of birds, but varies in duration from around a week in pigeons and doves to over a month in fulmars and other species where male and female spend long periods apart. A convenient arrangement.

As noted, the FDA approved the birth control pill in 1961.

The existence of sperm storage tubules in wild songbirds (passerines) was discovered only in the 1970s when the American biologist Olin Bray and colleagues were checking whether vasectomy could be used to control the number of red-winged blackbirds, an agricultural pest. To Bray's surprise (and disappointment), many of the female blackbirds paired to vasectomized males continued to produce fertile eggs -- not because the vasectomy failed, but contrary to all expectations, female red-winged blackbirds turned out to be highly promiscuous and appeared to copulate with males other than their partner.

Shocked! I'm shocked! Tell me that's not true. One of my favorite birds while growing up in North Dakota was the red-winged blackbird. Not only is it an agricultural pest (I would love to hear back from ND farmers whether this is true) but the R-WB is promiscuous. Oh, the horrors of it all.

And to think a researcher was looking to extinct this species. [Yeah, I know: I don't think "extinct" can be used as a verb, but it's been a very, very strange year so far.]

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North American Jays

Members of the crow family, known as corvids, are considered the most "intelligent" of birds. Four North Amercan jays, members of the crow family, are the blue jay (the one we most commonly see here in Texas0; the Teller's jay; the Florida scrub jay, and the Canada jay.

Being members of the crow family explains their aggressiveness and bullying behaviors noted on Sophia's patio where we put out seed for the birds.

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Migration: Storks On The Wing

Yeah, this is fun. 

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Summer