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Cackling Goose
Branta hutchinsii
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The no-neck, stub-billed, "Canada goose". This little one showed up in the same park last year and stayed over the winter. It roams about with a big-brother non-migrating resident Canada goose who protects it from the nasty territorial gang wars of the domesticated Greylag geese. Terrible light when I took the picture - 500th of a second, so head's in focus, but not the wings...
Being migration season, I've really enjoyed reading Tim Birkhead's chapter on the ornithological history of bird migration from his fabulous, fabulous book The Wisdom of Birds: A History of Ornithology
Do you believe that birds migrate? Of course you do. No cause to believe otherwise right? Well, surprise, surprise, it wasn't always a generally accepted belief that birds migrate.
Before Aristotle most european cultures believed birds migrate. Aristotle, in his usual funky fashion, got it wrong in 300 BC - and scuttled migration science for over a 1000 years. It wasn't until the late 1700s and early 1800s that migration became an accepted fact. From 300 BC to about 1600 AD people didn't believe in migration at all. The longest held fallacy was that swallows didn't migrate, but instead hibernated underwater. Really! The philosopher's quoted God a lot. "God wouldn't have birds migrate because it would be a waste of energy." "God wouldn't subject birds to such stresses as migration", etc. One experiment in the 1700s included holding a swallow underwater for minutes (the swallow soon died) to show that this was unlikely. Another experiment involved banding with water-soluble dyed thread - if the birds really hibernated under water, in the spring their bands would have lost their color. Never happened. Confronted with the first swallow experiment - one philosopher [a lawyer by training] claimed the experiment wasn't valid because it wasn't done in winter. The ludicrousness went on and on. Eventually science won. It was again the triumph of reason (i.e. field observation and experiment) over belief (i.e. religious and philosophical tracts such as Aristotle, etc.). It took over half a millennia for migration to be accepted by westerners.
Given the history of migration science, the lack of science understanding in America seems understandable. We only have to wait 500 years before we don't have school boards telling teachers to teach "Creationism" as well as evolution.
Go get a copy of the book and read it. I highly recommend it :-)
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Focal length: 500 mm
fStop: 4
ISO: 800
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec.
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Redwood City, CA - Marlin Park
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Oct 22, 2009
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