Painting Science and Nature Without a Brush (And a Super-Slo-Mo Eagle Owl)

In my few spare moments lately I've been playing with images. I'm not a digital expert—other than being able to count my fingers and toes—but I've been taking photographs and using digital tools to change their look. It's all rudimentary stuff. My colleagues who work in the art department at Sports Illustrated would no doubt liken my efforts to finger-painting. No matter. It's fun. If I had a finger-painting tool on the computer, I'd try that too.

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This is a hoopoe specimen that Pamelia photographed at the Natural History Museum in London and I photo-doctored with a colored-pencil tool.

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This is a watercolor twist on an iris Pamelia photographed at the Asticou Azalea Gardens on Mount Desert Island.

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A paint-daubing tool enabled me to alter my photo of a fox in the snow at our house.

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This is supposed to have a plastic feel—very unlike The Naturalist's Notebook, of course, but an interesting effect.

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I gave a wave treatment to this photo of a juvenile bald eagle (taken, I think, in 2009 by young ornithologist Pat Johnson, part of the Notebook's founding team).

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A photo I shot of a water drop on lupine, made more abstract with a cutout-paper technique.

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Pamelia's moonrise photo, tweaked with a smudge tool.

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Guess what? This isn't computer-doctored at all, even though (at least to me) it looks awfully painterly. I took this sunrise photo at our house a year or two ago.

A Planetary Follow-Up

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In a recent blog post I showed a mussel shell that resembled a globe with the continents merged. I said that the continents looked that way hundreds of millions of years ago. Well, here's a map of the Earth from 200 million years ago, when continents were connected in a supercontinent called Pangaea. Note that what's now Maine was connected to Africa and was below the equator. The continental plates are still constantly shifting beneath our feet. Right now Maine and the rest of North America are moving away from Europe, toward Asia, at the same rate your fingernails grow.

The Eagle Owl in Super Slow Motion Thanks to LJ for sending along this remarkable video of a large Eurasian owl called the eagle owl, shot at 1,000 frames per second. Watch it and be mesmerized...

Good News Remember that abandoned Lowe's big-box store I wrote about a couple of months ago? This week the globally respected Jackson Laboratory of Bar Harbor said that it plans to buy the Ellsworth, Maine, store and use it to expand the lab's mouse-breeding operations. In addition to its extensive research work in genetics and other fields, the Jackson Lab breeds mice for scientific use around the world. The lab said that the Lowe's operation could employ 300 people within a few years.

Answer to the Last Puzzler

a) It's TRUE that President Martin Van Buren had two tiger cubs as White House pets. b) It's TRUE that President Andrew Johnson had white mice as White House pets. c) It's TRUE that President William Taft had a cow as a White House pet. d) It's TRUE that President Calvin Coolidge had a raccoon as a White House pet. e) It's NOT TRUE that President Harry Truman had a donkey as a White House pet. In case you're wondering, some of the animals above were gifts from state or foreign leaders. The presidents didn't want to insult those leaders by getting rid of the animals.

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Calvin Coolidge's wife, Grace, with their pet raccoon. Among the other animals the Coolidges kept in the White House were a pair of collies, a donkey, a bobcat, canaries, a goose and a mockingbird.

Today's Puzzler

I mentioned above that the North American continental plate is moving away from Europe and toward Asia at the speed your fingernails grow. Roughly how fast do an adult's fingernails grow?

a) about an inch a year
b) about two-and-a-half inches a year
c) about three-and-a-half inches a year

Inside the MDI Biological Lab

While roaming the frontier of science, you might be lucky enough to come upon a scenic 200-acre coastal campus in Salisbury Cove, Maine. The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory is a 114-year-old institution that traces an arc from the scientific era of Thomas Edison and taxidermied animal specimens to the age of nanotechnology and decoding the human genome.

The story begins at Tufts. That respected university in Boston set up a summer science operation on the southern Maine coast, in South Harpswell, in 1898. This so-called Tufts Summer School of Biology focused on studies of marine animals and plants. It soon relocated, changed its name and shifted its focus. It moved up the coast to Mount Desert Island in 1921 when George Dorr—the wealthy gentleman scholar and nature lover who was a driving force behind the founding of Acadia National Park—donated an old farm property that would be transformed into today's larger, world-respected lab complex.

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The lab's 200-acre campus on Salisbury Cove has a relaxed, woodsy feel.

Pamelia and I visited the MDIBL on a recent sunny afternoon. We strolled the piney campus with the lab's delightful Shannara Gilman. The lab now conducts research year-round, with permanent and visiting scientists, but the grounds were a little quieter than usual on this day because no classes or symposia were underway, and no college biology groups from Bates or other Northeastern colleges were in residence in the dormitories or guest cottages.

The campus bursts to life in summer. As we walked past the dorms we could imagine the grounds in July and August, filled with promising high school and college students as well as visiting scientists and their families, some of whom have come here every summer for decades. The empty outdoor glass tanks would be filled with sea life specimens. The lodge-like dining hall would be abuzz, its Ping-Pong table alive with the happy tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap of an all-comers tournament. The new three-story, LEED-Gold Certified (for energy conservation and environmental-friendly design) lab building would be lit up with all manner of brain power.

If you're envisioning the most intelligent summer camp on the planet, a hands-on, working laboratory where internationally prominent science researchers extend that frontier of knowledge by day and in the evening play volleyball on the lawn with teenage biologists-in-the-making, well, you're on the right track. The friendly, family atmosphere blends with a serious level of experimentation, observation and analysis. That atmosphere fills the MDIBL all year, of course, not just in summer.

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One of the labs in the new green-designed complex. In addition to the high-level reseach done here by top scientists, high school and college students learn to do things like clone genes and synthesize DNA.

Back in the 1920s, the lab began focusing on kidney research. The lab's symbol is the dogfish shark because for decades that animal was a favorite study subject. If you're trying to understand human kidneys and the blood-pressure problems caused by high sodium levels, what better creature to examine than one that can regulate its salt levels even while living in salt water? Marine toxins were among the many other areas of study on which the lab left its mark in the decades that followed. Today MDIBL researchers are making breakthroughs in regenerative medicine, environmental science, cellular and molecular biology and other realms. The lab also is home to geneticist, biologist and educator Jane Disney, a dynamo who helps develop young scientists and environmentalists and has spearheaded efforts to restore eel grass and a healthy overall ecology to adjacent Frenchman's Bay.

Perhaps you'd like to look around the place? Come on...

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The dogfish shark symbol in a mosaic in the dining hall. That 16-inch-long shark's ability to regulate salt in its body has provided clues to help address kidney disease. Lab researchers have also studied the dogfish shark in search of a cure for cystic fibrosis.

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There's a natural-stone arch by the water at Laboratory Point. That's Frenchman's Bay in the distance.

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Zebrafish now are used for a lot of MDIBL studies. Among their research-friendly traits, they develop quickly, their genome has been sequenced and their bodies are virtually transparent, allowing a clear view of what's happening inside them. Perhaps most important, given the MDIBL's work on regenerative medicine, zebrafish can regenerate their own fins, spinal column, retinas and even heart muscle.

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Scientist Jane Disney has expanded her eelgrass-restoration efforts into local schools, where she runs a program she calls Sea Grasses In Classes.

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From left: Yours truly, Shannara Gilman and Jane Disney in Jane's lab. As one scientist at the lab told me, if you're ever having a bad day at the MDIBL, just look out the window at the gorgeous view and everything will seem better.

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On Wednesday night we went to another in the MDI Bio Lab's Science Cafe series. Jackson Laboratory scientist Kyuson Yun explained the work she and others are doing on a hugely important discovery: cancer stem cells, which appear to be the cells that drive the spread of tumors. Until the last few years, no one knew that these cancer supercells (that's my term, not the scientific one) existed. Finding a way to attack those cells (which aren't always easy to identify) is a new challenge for researchers and pharmaceutical companies.

An Amazing Artist and His Kinetic Sculpture Thanks to ornithologist Pat Johnson, who was a member of the original Notebook team in 2009 and continues to inspire us, for passing along this link to this must-see video: 

Global Blog Note of the Week According to the latest statistics, The Naturalist's Notebook blog has been read over the last 30 days by people in 81—yes, 81—countries, from Mongolia to Macedonia to Malayasia. That makes me happy.

Answer to the Last Puzzler

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The bird was named the cardinal because Catholic cardinals wore bright red robes. How did Catholic cardinals get their name? It is derived from Latin word cardo, meaning "that on what something turns or depends," or, literally, a "door hinge." The church cardinals were so powerful that major issues hinged on their decisions.

Whether you decide to paint your door hinges cardinal red in order to remember this is entirely up to you.

Today's Puzzler

Which one of these statements is NOT true?

a) President Martin Van Buren had two tiger cubs as White House pets
b) President Andrew Johnson had white mice as White House pets
c) President William Taft had a cow as a White House pet
d) President Calvin Coolidge had a raccoon as a White House pet
e) President Harry Truman had a donkey as a White House pet

Who Was That Masked Naturalist?

Bowdoin College and McKay's Public House in Bar Harbor are three hours apart by car.

This week they were linked by science and nature, by Darwin and ravens, by two gifted biologists, by intelligent audiences and, in my case, by a couple of good burgers. I'm not much of a carnivore, but on these two winter nights, I was somehow drawn to the combination of meaty ideas and grilled beef. (Thumbs up, I might add, to the smoked gouda atop my burger at the Tavern at Brunswick Station, a short walk from the Bowdoin auditorium.)

Some people who haven't been up here in Maine at this time of year seem to harbor the misconception that not much goes on between November and April in the state that calls itself Vacationland. Summer folks have departed, seasonal businesses have closed, black bears have gone into hibernation and so, they assume, have organizers of the many recreational, cultural and intellectual events that fill the July and August calendar. I wish those non-Mainers could have hopped into the back seat for the short drive to McKay's with Pamelia and me to hear the lecture on evolution by Karen James, a visiting staff scientist (and Darwin expert) at the Mount Desert Island Biological Lab. Or joined us for the longer trip to Bowdoin to hear—and meet—Bernd Heinrich, the esteemed scientist, naturalist and author, discussing the behavior of ravens, on which he is probably the world's foremost expert.

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The Science Cafe lecture upstairs at McKay's drew such a crowd that we had to squeeze in almost behind Karen James's video screen. There's a packed room to the left.

Karen's talk was one in a series of "Science Cafe" events organized by the MDI Biological Lab, a globally-linked research center that enriches our area with a variety of science programs. The combination of the MDIBL, the world-famous Jackson Laboratory (which focuses on genetics), Acadia National Park (site of biological and environmental research) and the College of the Atlantic (which is particularly strong in marine studies) make this lovely island of 10,000 people a scientific powerhouse.

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A series of factual observations by Darwin led him to his theory of natural selection, a term he used to contrast it with artificial selection, the process by which humans, through methods of breeding and hybridization, had significantly altered and domesticated cattle, sheep, dogs, corn and other living things. Darwin did not coin the phrase survival of the fittest, by the way, nor did he promote eugenics, racism or any of the other offensive concepts to which some anti-evolution propogandists have tried to link him.

It may seem odd, in the 21st century, that a scientist in a country that deems itself the most advanced in the world would need to entitle a lecture, as Karen did, "Why Evolution Is True." Unfortunately, even though evolution is taught in U.S. public schools and explained scientifically at respected institutions such as the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History, and even though 150 years of painstaking research by millions of biologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, geologists, geneticists and other experts in all corners of the planet has found overwhelming physical proof that natural selection has been at work for billions of years—"The world is literally teeming with evidence of evolution," as Karen put it in her lecture—and even though the decoding of genes over the last decade has provided what Karen calls "an astonishing verification" of evolution and the biological connection among all living species, a lot of Americans simply don't believe in it. (Then again, according to a 2006 study reported in the journal Science, nearly half of Americans couldn't give even a basic description of what DNA is.)

Karen handled the whole subject with reason, humor and intellectual passion. In dealing with a topic that so often generates heat, she instead filled the evening with light—that is, illumination. And that's why taking a couple of hours to go to a science or nature talk is so worthwhile. You leave feeling energized, with a deeper understanding of the world around you. If you're in the Bar Harbor area, I should add, you might want to drop by McKay's for the next Science Cafe, on March 21, a talk by Kyuson Yun of the Jackson Laboratory on the lastest in cancer stem-cell research.

A Night With Bernd Heinrich

First impressions linger. I'll always remember walking through the fragrant, pine-filled Bowdoin campus in the dark, trying not to slip on the icy walkway as I searched for the lecture hall. I'd never before visited the alma mater of such luminaries as writers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne, President Franklin Pierce, adventurer Robert Peary (whose discovery of the North Pole led the college to choose white as its school color and call its sports teams the Polar Bears), former Maine Senator George Mitchell and marathon great Joan Benoit. I felt excited but also somewhat guilty. Because our aging dog, Wooster, was having hind leg problems after being cooped up in the car for too long, Pamelia—who was as eager as I to see Bowdoin and hear Bernd Heinrich's talk—had volunteered to stay back in the hotel room with her. An act of love.

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Here's Bernd, minus the wolf costume, filling us in on the habits, intelligence and individual personalities of corvus corax, the common raven.

I won't give you Bernd's whole bio here. You'll be reading more about him on the blog (and at The Naturalist's Notebook) later this year. Suffice it to say that besides being a world-class scientist, author and ultramarathoner (and an awfully good artist who does the illustrations for his books), he is, as one of his friends puts it, "smart as a whip, with a sly sense of humor, self-effacing, confident, fun and optimistic...one of the most authentically himself sort of animals one could meet." Bernd, a professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, spends countless hours conducting field research in the woods near his cabin in rural western Maine. His writings are detailed and rich. If you read his books Ravens in Winter and Mind of the Raven—and you should—you'll feel as though you've spent many days with him in those woods, sometimes dragging animal carcasses through hip-deep snow to a spot where ravens might feed on them, other times hiding in a homemade blind to sit for hours and wait for a sighting.

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But since I'm talking more about ravens than about Bernd in this blog post, let me do what Bernd did: Turn on the slide projector and let you see some of what he has observed.

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Is it a raven or a crow? That's a raven on the right. Among other differences, ravens are much larger and have a patch of shaggy throat feathers. The illustration below shows the difference in tail shape.

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Among their vast range of vocalizations—at least 33 CATEGORIES of sounds, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology—ravens make joyful, gurgling noises that help explain why Bernd calls these corvids one of the cheeriest birds in the world.

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Here's an older shot of Bernd releasing a tagged raven at his cabin in western Maine.

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The mouths of young ravens are pinkish; they later turn black, but, inexplicably, the timing of that transformation can depend on the circumstances and the number of other juveniles with whom they are reared. Ravens can live for 50 years, and they mate for life.

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Bernd added one hen's egg (the large one) to a nest of raven eggs; the raven didn't notice the difference. Ravens sometimes eat other birds' eggs. Once, a mother raven regurgitated a whole, unbroken robin's egg to feed to its fledglings. Bernd, ever curious, removed the robin's egg from the nest and tried to hatch it, without luck.

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In one experiment, the ravens figured out how to lift a string to which food was attached; this bird held the excess string under its foot as it pulled up the food. Bernd has joked about his violating the rule in biology of never trying to study animals that are smarter than you are.

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Ravens love to play. The one on the right is rolling around like a dog or cat. Bernd says they do crazy things like that. Each individual is different, he says, and much of the time he's not quite sure what they're doing or why they're doing it.

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Ravens can't tear through animals' hides to get at the meat, so sometimes they have to peel the whole skin off. These are inside-out squirrel skins left behind by ravens.

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Can't end on that gory note, so here is a raven snow angel that Bernd came across.

These photos only hint at the fascinating world of ravens that Bernd described to us. If you're lucky enough to be able to study one of these remarkable birds in the wild, remember that it will surely be studying you at the same time. As Bernd put it, "Ravens are pretty good at figuring everyone out."

The Tick-Proof Shirt?

Because Bowdoin is just a few minutes from Freeport, we stopped briefly at L.L. Bean on the way home and bought a few pieces of clothing. Later, to my surprise (I'm not a very attentive clothing shopper) I found a tag on one of my new shirts that informed me that the garment had been treated with something called Insect Shield. According to the tag, Insect Shield "repels mosquitoes, ticks, ants, flies, chiggers and midges (no-see-ums)" and "the active ingredient is a man-made version of a natural insect repellent found in certain types of chrysanthemum plants."

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The tag on my shirt.

That active ingredient turns out to be permethrin, an insecticide that is widely used in agriculture. It's not without controversy—it's a neurotoxin that can kill bees along with other insects. Having had two bouts with Lyme Disease over the last 15 years, I'm happy to be able to fend off deer ticks, though I'm not sure whether I actually feel good about wearing a pesticide shirt. Have any of you tried one? Do they work?

Answers to the Last Puzzlers

1) Here are the unscrambled words from nature, science and art:

a) whoads = shadow
b) yenger = energy
c) verna = raven
d) ponteale = antelope

2) The U.S. Secretary of the Interior (who oversees the National Park System) is Ken Salazar. Of the other possible answers I gave you, Gale Ann Norton was Interior Secretary under George W. Bush, Arne Duncan is the current Education Secretary and Kathleen Sebelius is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Today's Puzzlers

1) More words to unscramble. Again, these come from the worlds of nature, science and art:

a) hewrs
b) knimpuch
c) gnipune
d) crepestivep

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A dragonfly I photographed at our house a couple of summers ago.

2) How did the dragonfly get its name?

a) From a Chinese legend in which an insect kills a dragon that is attacking a town.
b) From a Polynesian dance in which performers wore costumes with large wings.
c) From a Romanian folktale about a horse that the devil turned into a giant fly known as the Devil's Fly. The Romanian word for devil is drac, which also means dragon, and the second meaning eventually was applied to the insect.