Category Archives: nature

Mountains and Moonbows

What do aurora, noctilucent clouds, sun-dogs, and green flash have in common ?  Answer: they’re all examples of rare and interesting visual atmospheric phenomena I’ve totally failed to observe this summer.

Lunar corona and Lenticular Clouds, Jungfrau Massive (Photo: Tim Jones, Darkroommatter.com)

Conditions have often been right, even optimal.  I’ve made repeated observations with sophisticated equipment: my eyes and a camera, but no joy.  The only solace for standing in a field staring at the twilight horizon for nights on end has been the proximity of the local hostelry.  On reflection not such a bad deal.

I’ve had better luck in the past, but more so with the moon than the sun.  Take the example above of a lunar corona in the Swiss mountains.  Snapped between avalanches from an improvised snow-hole during my ascent of the Eiger from the window of the Beau Rivage Hotel in Interlaken.

Lunar coronae are in no way attached to the moon, but are an earthbound visual effect caused by moonlight passing through clouds of small particles.  As it’s a diffraction effect rather than a refraction effect, it works even with particles that don’t transmit light, like pollen grains for instance.   In this case the effect is most likely caused by water droplets in clouds.  The same thing happens with the sun sometimes, the visual ‘corona’ in that case not to be confused with the physical corona that is attached to the sun – so to speak.

Talking of confusion, lunar coronae, or moonbows, are not the same thing as Moon Rings.  I made that mistake when I started writing this piece and subsequently had to change the title.   A Moon Ring is just a name, but it’s a name specifically reserved for a ring of light caused by the refraction of moonlight through high altitude ice crystals.  Because ice crystals are hexagonal in shape, they all refract light at the same angle, which from an observer’s viewpoint produces a ring concentric with the moon at a fixed radius of 22 degrees (for fuller explanation see here).  Measured across the sky, that looks like 44 moons put next to each other (the moon takes up roughly half a degree of the 180 degrees of the sky we can see at any time).  The ring in my picture is at most ten moon diameters from the moon’s disc, or five degrees.  So it ain’t a Moon Ring.

A lunar corona can be more spectacular though, and if the conditions are right, a whole rainbow of colours can spread out from the inner ring, going from red to blue.

On a different tack now….

Apart from the moonbow, this scene includes an almost text-book perfect example of a mountain weather phenomenon known as Mountain Waves and Lenticular Cloud formation.

Lenticular clouds over the Jungfrau Massive by moonlight
Blow-up of the scene above showing moonlit lenticular clouds forming over the Jungfrau Massive (Photo:Tim Jones)

When air is forced to rise by flowing up the side of a mountain, it can cool down sufficiently, to the dewpoint temperature, where water vapour  condenses to form clouds. (That is adiabatic cooling and cloud formation as first explained by Erasmus Darwin. Just sayin’.)  When the air descends on the other side of the mountain, it warms up to above the dewpoint and the cloud disappears, the water drops vapourising again.   The isolated cap left on top of the mountain is a lenticular cloud.

That said, what I think we’re seeing in the photo here is a special circumstance for lenticular cloud formation that I first came across as a trainee private pilot.  In this case, air flowing over the mountains is trapped under a higher layer of stable air, causing standing waves to be set up, with lenticular clouds peeling off the cusps.

Reminiscent of a Katsushika Hokusai painting

The same conditions generate a series of turbulent rotating eddies lower down on the lee side of the mountain which can cause so-called ‘rotor clouds’ or ‘roll clouds’ to form.   It’s best not to fly anywhere near areas of rotating turbulence, so these clouds are good visual warnings for pilots to take special care (although as the mountain wave effect can extend 30 or forty miles downwind of a large range, you’re just as likely to feel the warning).

For a close-up view of a lenticular cloud, here is a lenticular altocumulus I snapped this summer floating off the leeward side of the San Gabriel Mountains in California.  The bulges are caused by rotating air under the cloud.

lenticular cloud formation off San Gabriel mountains in S.California
Lenticular cloud formation (Photo: Tim Jones)

That then about wraps it up for mountains and moonbows.  Just to leave you in the true spirit of transparent open-book research and a view of the laboratory where the Swiss studies were made, complete with proof of location.  And flowers.

Armchair atmospheric physics (Photo: Tim Jones)

Update November 2011 – Here’s another lunar corona; this time with Jupiter and taken from Kingston upon Thames:

Moon with lunar corona and Jupiter
Moon with lunar corona and Jupiter

Of related interest on external sites:

Rare Green Flashes Captured from the Moon (Universe Today)

http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/cloud-spotting.html

http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2011/12/17/magic-clouds-in-the-magic-city/

 

Blinking Crows

Question to any crow experts out there.  I recently spotted these two standing together, and noticed that they seemed never to blink at the same time – as if consciously taking it in turns.   It’s easy to tell when a crow blinks by the opaque whiteness of the inner eyelid.  This went on for a minute or two.

crow
Nudge, nudge...
crow
Wink, wink...

crow
Say no more...

So, is this some kind of coordinated look-out tactic crows and/or other birds follow to maximise safety?   They were long leisurely blinks, so that might make sense.  Or was this a one off behaviour –  and I’m making up my own stories?

The things that preoccupy one on these warm summer evenings…..

Update September 2010

I found this pic going through my archives; taken in Windsor, UK.  Look at the eyes.   Still a small sample of two.

Blinking crows in Windsor
Blinking crows in Windsor

The Cricket Thermometer – Fact or Fiction?

Can you tell the temperature from how fast crickets chirrup in the evening?   Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks so, according to this Tweet yesterday evening:

thermometer

Sounds like a great idea, and as I’m in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains – cricket central by my standards  – I’ve tested tested out the theory. 

Dr Tyson is not the first person to suggest you can tell the temperature with a cricket, and he’s only having a bit of fun, so in the worst case he’ll be guilty of spreading, rather than generating, misleading information ;-).

Armed with a  digital recorder and a laboratory thermometer, I quickly found a suitable subject.  The temperature read 65 degrees Fahrenheit.   This is what the chirruping sounded like:

Press the arrow key:

– Cricket at 65F, 20.40hrs

From this sample, using only my ears, I counted 67 chirps in a 15 second period (it’s tricky counting that fast, but I found I could do it by checking off groups of 8 chirps on my fingers).  According to Dr Tyson’s formula, that gives a temperature of 67 plus 40 = 107 F; a whole 42 degrees above the actual temperature.

Why the difference?

We’re doing science here, which means there’s a whole load of stuff to check out before rushing to condemn Dr Tyson for inaccurate tweeting.

  • Was it indeed a cricket I was listening to? Sounded like one, but I didn’t actually see it.
  • Was Neil referring to a specific type of cricket, but the 140 Twitter limited the detail he could provide?  If he’s missed out a division factor of 2 on the cricket count, that would put my number in the right ballpark.
  • Did I listen to the cricket long enough?  Was it in a cricket warm-up or warm-down mode?
  • Was my thermometer broken?  Ideally I’d have two or more to check, calibrated against a standard.  But I don’t think it was the problem.
  • Could the cricket be hiding under someone’s air-conditioning unit outlet?  This isn’t so far fetched actually.  We have one in the house at the moment living under our fridge because it’s warm.
  • Was my sample large enough – both in terms of number of recordings and number of crickets?  I did make four separate recordings and (for now take my word for it) they were pretty similar.  That said, I should really come back over a number of evenings at different times to be sure – right?

Well, in the longer term the sample could get large, as I’ll probably be listening out for these things obsessively for the rest of my life now.

What is a chirp?

Meantime, I wondered if the explanation was down to the definition of a ‘chirp’.  I convinced myself the chirps I had recorded might be doubling up; maybe something the cricket was doing with its legs: ‘chirp-chirp’, ‘chirp-chirp’, etc. – each ‘chirp-chirp’ counting as one ‘chirp’.  Are these double chirps that Neil counted as single chirps?  Was it an issue of resolution and my ears?   To find out, I slowed the recording to 0.19 times its normal speed and re-recorded a sample to get this:

Press the arrow key to stream live:

and a waveform looking like this:

Cricket sound slowed down to x0.19 original

Interestingly, what you hear on the playback isn’t ‘chirp-chirp’ at all; but ‘chirp-chirp-chirp’.  And it doesn’t help us, because each group of three sub-chirps only makes up a single one of our original chirps.  And there is no indication of a slower beat or modulation that would yield a lower chirp count.  My original estimate remember was 67, and if you count the groups on the expanded trace above you’ll find there are 13 in 15 seconds on the slowed down trace or, correcting for the factor of 0.19, gives us 68.4.  Virtually where I started.  The cricket still says it’s 107F when it’s only 65F.  (BTW – you can also hear another animal making an even faster noise in the background.)

Conclusion

In conclusion, accepting all the experimental limitations and caveats listed above, this test alone does not inspire confidence in the formula, and hence, the value of the tweet.

But hey, on the bright side we’ve all learned some possibly quite useless information about crickets, plus, more importantly, something of the pitfalls to watch out for in chronological cricket research (or any research for that matter).

A Bone to Pick with Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

Before heading back to LA from Santa Barbara last week, Erin and I made a final stop at the local natural history museum.  I’ve blogged before about how great this place is. Not the largest of museums, but somehow managing to cover all the traditional departments through locally themed exhibits – and all in the most beautiful location.

whale skull at santa barbara museum of natural history
Whale skull at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, June 2010 (Photo:Tim Jones)

In the 18 months since our last visit, two new exhibitions have appeared, and the bird gallery has reopened following renovation.  But to our surprise, all that is left of the museum’s flagship exhibit – a 72ft Blue Whale skeleton – is it’s head.

The complete whale skeleton in 2008 (Photo:Tim Jones)

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
Nice spot..... (Photo:Tim Jones)

For the 20 year old skeleton, one of only five on display in the USA, is in need of a major overhaul.  The skull will be completely replaced, and the remaining bones will be refurbished or replaced.

The $500,000 needed to complete the work is being raised by inviting donors to sponsor individual bones and sections of the skeleton through the ‘Buy-A-Bone’ scheme (links to the Museum’s website).

The right to name this particular Balaenoptera musculus has already gone – for a cool $100k.  But the skull and vertebral column are still up for grabs at $75k and $137k respectively; most of the ribs are available at $25k each, the left flipper at $13k, or one of twelve carpal bones can be yours for the pocket money sum of $500.

So go ahead – pick your bone!

California Anisoptera (California Dragonflies)

Just a few photos of dragonflies taken in and around the San Gabriel foothills.  There are three individuals here: the first golden-colored guy was taken in the hills; the other two were buzzing round a pond in Pasadena.  I believe the red colored one is a Flame Skimmer or Libellula saturata, the blue one is a Blue Dasher Pachydiplax longipennis, and I’m still working on the first guy.

dragonfly

dragonfly

dragonfly

dragonfly

dragonfly

dragonfly

dragonfly

Photos: copyright Tim Jones

You Scratch My Back

One of nature’s more fascinating and  charming aspects is displayed when completely  different species interact in ways that are mutually beneficial; it’s called symbiosis.

Fallow Deer with Magpies (Copyright Tim Jones)
Fallow Deer with Magpies (Copyright Tim Jones)

We’ve all seen David Attenborough describe those  little cleaner fish, that peck fungus off killer sharks; and the birds that pick fleas from gazelles in Africa.

But as I discovered one early  UK morning in November, and as these photographs of fallow deer and magpies show, you don’t need to travel beyond suburban Surrey to see similar behaviour.

Deer with magpies (Photo Tim Jones)
Deer with magpies (Copyright Tim Jones)

Deer and magpies (Photo Tim Jones)
Deer and magpies (Copyright Tim Jones)

Deer with magpies (Photo Tim Jones)
Deer with magpies (Copyright Tim Jones)

Deer with magpies (Photo Tim Jones)
Deer with magpies (Copyright Tim Jones)

Deer with magpies (Photo Tim Jones)
Deer with magpies (Copyright Tim Jones)

I’ve not had the time to go overboard researching this convenient pairing, but did find this from an edition of ‘The Condor’ published in 1998:

‘Ectoparasite removal was observed as the cause for Black-billed Magpies’ (Pica pica) pecking on fallow deer (Dama dama). It was also observed that deer that were sitting were preferred by the magpies over deer that were standing. The magpies also seemed to prefer adult males over adult females or calves. The ectoparasitic interaction may be benefiting birds because ectoparasites are one of their sources of food. However, its benefit to the fallow deer has yet to be investigated.’

So the magpies are in it for the munchy ectoparasites – can’t blame them; but what do the deer get out of the deal – I’m guessing a lot less itching?

And so much for the magpie’s preference for seated deer.   What do you think?

Reference
Genov, Peter V., Gigantesco, Paola, Massei, Giovanna; Pub: Cooper Ornithological Society, in ‘The Condor’ 1998, ISSN: 0010-5422

The Business of Conservation

Conservation, business, and the Olive Ridley Turtle.  This article was originally published at ConservationToday.Org

olive-ridley-turtle
Olive Ridley Turtle (c) itsnature.org

It’s almost exactly a year since I left my job as director for procurement strategy and development at Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel business owned by India’sTata Steel Group.  I  have happy memories of meeting Indian colleagues in Kolkota and visiting Tata’s operations at Jamshedpur.  So it’s been especially disappointing to watch over the year a progressive sickening of relations between Tata Steel, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and Greenpeace, over the issue of the Olive Ridley Turtle.

Briefly, the case concerns the potential impact on the turtles beaching behaviour of the construction, by a Tata JV company, of a deep water port at Dhamra, on India’s Bengal coast. The case is complex and unresolved to the satisfaction of all parties, particularly Greenpeace, who have criticised the nature of the IUCN’s engagement with Tata. I don’t plan to dissect the case here; starting points for that can be found at these sites: IUCN press release (2008)Dhamra Port Company StatementGreenpeace.

Rather, the case prompts reflection on  the broader relationship between business and the environment – including conservation.  My message is that a business-like and emotion-free relationship is requisite, and that negative criticisms (founded or not) of individual involvements by organisations like the IUCN should not distract from the essential wisdom of their philosophy for business engagement.

As Mohammed Valli Moosa, President of the IUCN has said:

We  are living in an era of global economic expansion.  The private sector is a major player in this period of unprecedented development.  Business has a responsibility to the global environment.  Business has to do more than just avoid prosecution.”

(source: Partnerships for the Planet)

Moosa here is not showing anti-business sentiment; indeed, he questions the way the conservation movement has traditionally engaged with business, as in this report by the New York Times on the occasion of the 2008 World Conservation Congress.

Part of the IUCN’s role is to provide a forum where traditionally divergent views and stakeholders can find solutions that don’t reject the market, but work with it, and has established the Business and Biodiversity Programme (BBP) to support its goals.

The IUCN helps businesses like Shell, Holcim, and Tata to formulate best practice standards and improved conservation policies.  The approach is consciously ‘pragmatic’ (IUCN’s term).  Dialogue does not mean an absence of criticism; the IUCN have challenged Shell on an energy  strategy that focuses on biofuels over wind and solar (link to report here).   On the Dhamra project, the IUCN have in an agreement with Tata advised on the possible impact and mitigation of environmental concerns, although not to the satisfaction, particularly, of Greenpeace.  References in the various chat forums around the case allude to ‘greenwashing’ and abandonment of the ‘precautionary principle’ – implying some kind of sell-out to big business.

Engagement with business and business management principles is far from a sell-out.  By attaching an economic value to the social cost of environmental impact, Nicolas Stern’s report on climate change caught the attention of the political and business world like never before.  Businesses are coming to realise energy efficiencies and GHG emissions reduction can be achieved profitably through technology and improved corporate housekeeping.  The motivation for these actions is becoming less a response to protest and more a simple case of delivering to shareholder approved corporate plans; manifest not only in the glossy pages of corporate social responsibility or environmental reports, but embedded in the financial plans owned by company CFOs.  It is in the conservationists interest as well that businesses make this mind-set internally sustainable, and should be encouraging businesses to include environmental expertise on their boards – maybe in a non-executive director capacity.   Governments have a critical role in removing obfuscating sudsidies and making transparent the true costs of commodities and supply chains to businesses and private individuals.

Tension between business and conservationist goals will not reduce further until a true costing of impacts is agreed and worked to.  As that develops, we must guard against the equation being muddied by subjective judgements and emotion.  In the meantime, a degree of compromise is requisite on both sides, and a recognition that more can be achieved as a team, even one working under constructive tension.

Attenborough On Darwin

Reminder –  David Attenborough on Darwin, Sunday BBC1 9pm.   Here is Nature’s trailer.

According to the Radio Times, Attenborough gets hate mail from creationists over his views.

DA says:

“They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.”

Nice guy (David A, not the other one).


Antz Meets Kung Fu Panda?

What’s all this then?  A protective alliance of anteaters and pandas?   Or are they just good mates out for a stroll?

All mixed up
All mixed up

Neither.  Take a closer look and you’ll see it’s all one animal.   What’s more, pandas come from China and anteaters are from Central and South Amercia, so there’s no way they could have fixed up a stunt like this – through evolutionary synergies or otherwise.  Unless you know different?

Just to complicate matters further, I took the photo in a North American zoo.

Zoonomian Podcast – Interview with Alan Mootnick, Director Gibbon Conservation Center, Santa Clarita, California

Alan Mootnick

(Update 4th November 2011.  We were very sorry to hear of Alan’s death earlier today.  A fantastic guy and unmatched friend of gibbons.  Rest in peace Alan.)

What better way to spend Christmas than in the company of your favourite gibbons?   That’s exactly what my wife Erin and I did on the 26th December 2008, on our second visit to the Gibbon Conservation Center at Santa Clarita, California – home to some of the world’s rarest gibbons.

As well as catching up with gibbon families first met in September and described in this earlier post, I recorded the gibbons singing, and an extended interview with the Founder and Director of the Center, Alan Mootnick.

Much of what Alan has to say about working in gibbon conservation with various institutes, authorities, and peoples around the world, and particularly in Asia, is also relevant to other species.

Pileated gibbon, young female Dec. 2008

Each recording lasts between 3 and 10 minutes, with the entire interview as one edit included at the end.

gibbon center foot wash

 

Part 1 – Arrival

An early morning tour ends in a noisy chorus.

Alan Mootnick speaking at a fundraising event

 

Part 2 – Introduction

Alan introduces the aims of the Center, the various gibbon genera and species, and gives a disturbing account of the threats facing wild gibbons.

gibbon at santa clarita gibbon center

 

Part 3 – Breeding Program

Alan describes the breeding program for the Javan gibbon – of which only 4000 remain in the wild, the Center’s collaboration with zoos – including in the UK, and the challenges of finding gibbons for study in the wild.

 

Part 4 – Taxonomy

Gibbon genomics, taxonomy, and a showcase of mistaken identity.  The challenges of moving gibbons and their DNA around the world, and the role  of faeces in working out bloodlines.

Part 5 – Behaviour

Including apparent similarities with man, and discussion around gibbon song and brachiation (swinging arm to arm).  The highlight is Alan’s empirically supported theory of hostile genital or anal presenting – ‘gibbon mooning’ in other words.

Part 6 – Volunteer Program

Including the possibility of joining the Center from the UK.

Part 7 – Threats

Discusses issues around land management and deforestation in Indonesia, the illegal trade in gibbons, and the impact that’s having on the gibbon population.  Also some tips on how to work to best effect when dealing with zoos in Asia.

And this is the entire interview as a single edit:

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60Mb. Approx. 1 hour. Copyright, all rights reserved, 2009, Tim Jones  communicatescience.com

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If you enjoyed hearing about – and hearing ! – the gibbons of Santa Clarita, and would like to make a donation, you can do so here.