Clapper Rail

Almost as soon as we stepped off the boat onto Smith Isand, we saw our first great bird --- another life bird for me. It was a clapper rail! An elderly birder named Howard had pulled out his iPod near a patch of reeds and began playing the bird's call. It's breeding season, so the rail appeared immediately and he was hopping mad. He figured he had a rival on his territory and he was ready to kick some butt. I'm not sure what went through his mind when he found a bunch of gawking people toting monster telephoto lenses (which were of no use since the bird was within arm's reach) instead. He stayed out in the open for quite a while giving everybody great looks. He was making a loud barking/coughing sound the whole time. The picture below that was taken by Evelyn Ralston.

Look out! HAWK!

So... something you might not think about if you're new to the whole birdfeeding thing... If you feed songbirds, you can bet you're going to feed the occasional hawk as well. I've observed two species at my feeding station. One, a redtail, who's lived in our neighborhood for several years will take a bird if he can get one but he's more likely to target one of the fat gray squirrels that visit my yard for sunflower seeds, suet, peanuts, cracked corn, and the acorns from our oak trees. And we don't have to worry about wood rats. He took care of them when they showed up a couple of years ago. Once I made the mistake of watching "big red" eat one through my mom's scope. It was extremely gross.
The other hawk that frequents my yard is a Cooper's. He's long and lean with a narrow striped tail and red eyes that freaked me out a little at first. Coopers hawks are fast and agile and prey mainly on birds. Initially, it really upset me to know that I was putting the songbirds in danger, even though I get it that hawks need to eat too. I did some research and learned that subsidizing the local bird population with with food, water, and shelter does more good than harm. It's beneficial to many many birds, and hawks will prey on birds whether you're feeding or not.
Nature's not always pretty, but it's always interesting. Anyone who's ever watched a lioness take out a cute little gazelle on NatGeo knows that. Man interferes in so many negative ways: habitat destruction, car strikes, pesticide use. I'm glad I can give a little back to our feathered friends with my little bird cafe.

Pictures: http://birdsdowntown.wordpress.com/2012/12/
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-tailed_hawk/id


A Coopers Hawk remains vigilant while perched on a branch

A soaring Red Tailed Hawk fans out its red tail as it scans the ground for unsuspecting prey

House Finches

  The weather is warming up, and more birds are arriving at the feeder. This week a couple house finches got my attention, so I snapped a few shots of them and decided to make them the species for this week. These birds can be found almost everywhere in the US year round. Male house finches are handsome with a scarlet red wash on their heads and throats. Females are brownish gray with blurry streaks all over. Many finches will overlook a regular tube feeder because the seeds and berries inside are too big, but house finches will sift through the seeds as well as eat the thistle from the finch feeders. These birds are not ground feeders, so unless you have a finch feeder you most likely won't encounter one.  They're hard to spot on trails because finches are very small birds that blend in with the trees that they're perched in. If you don't have a feeder at home (yet!), visit a local nature center. They usually keep their feeders full and you can observe the birds up close and personal.
A fun fact about house finches is that in 1940 a group of illegally sold caged house finches were released near New York City, and now all of the house finches east of the great plains are descendants of these released birds! Birds rule!

A female (left) and male (right) house finch eating thistle seeds from a tube feeder

Two male house finches that were searching for the smaller seeds inside the tube feeder

A male house finch perched on a wisteria vine.

Showcasing: The White Throated Sparrow

I was sick this past weekend, which gave me a lot of time to just look at the birds at my feeder. It gave me the idea that it would be interesting to write some posts showcasing various bird species that visit my little "bird café". This week we have the white throated sparrow. It's easily recognizable by it's white throat and crown. In fact many bird names are very "creative" in this aspect, for example the white breasted nuthatch has a white breast, a purple martin is well... purple, mourning doves make mournful sounds, and so on. However some birds have names that give a false impression of how the bird looks. Take the purple sandpiper for instance; the name makes you think that it's purple obviously. But, if you're at the beach anytime next winter check the rocky jetties for a plump, brownish, long-billed bird probing the crevices, you just might be looking at a "purple" sandpiper. If you use your imagination, and the light is juuuuust right, you might see a very slight purple gloss in their plumage. Anyway, back to the white throated (WT). They are ground feeders and scratch among the fallen leaves for food. My mom and I make sure to throw some seeds and cracked corn on the ground for the WT, mourning doves, juncos, and others. The WT has two morphs. They either have a bright white eyebrow, or a tan stripped eyebrow. WT's have a distinctive yellow lore (area in front of the eye). A fun fact about the WT is that for a while it was believed that the tan striped morph of the WT was simply the juvenile plumage, but recent studies have shown that white striped adults usually mate with tan striped WT adults. Well, what can I say... opposites attract! You can search for a WT in your back yard or as you walk along Sligo's wooded paths. They're present winter, spring, and fall.

A white throated sparrow with a white eyebrow

 

The WT's blend in with the ground (left), unlike the cardinals

The Great Backyard Bird Count

I've been a birder for a long time. My mom has had me birding since I was 4 or so.  Recently my mom started telling me about this thing called the great backyard bird count (GBBC) so I decided to look into it. The GBBC is where someone can just sit at their window and count the birds they see. They record their results and send their findings to Conell University of Ornithology. It's citizens' science! This is amazing to me because I love to just kick back and watch the birds come and go. Earlier today I filled up the feeders and started recording what I saw. I saw a lot of the birds that I just love, like a flock of dark eyed juncos, a cardinal, and two varites of woodpeckers (1 red bellied woodpecker, and 2 downys). This was a great way to say goodbye to Maryland as I pack my bags to spend president's day weekend in Pennsylvania. I hope I will have time to do more of this in the future, because as I've said many times in this post, I LOVE birds!

I just spent the last 30 minutes looking at birds out my window.

I took a shot...

I've always loved acting. I did a little at Imagination Stage when I was younger. I enjoy writing skits and creating characters and doing voices and accents. But I was too intimidated last year to try out for either of Blair's plays. I went to see The Three Musketeers and Les Miserables, and they were fantastic!
This fall, my parents challenged me to audition for The Taming of the Shrew. I used to run into Ms. O'Connor in the drama room she shares with Ms. Jeral. She seemed cool and very nice. Anyway, I finally got up the nerve to put my name on the audition schedule one day. Mine was actually the last name on the list of 84 hopeful students. I figured I was "safe". By the time the O'Connors got to my presentation, they'd surely have already found all the actors they needed, or maybe if I was really lucky they'd just sleep through my tryout. Who did I think I was, anyway?! To my surprise, they were wide awake and enthusiastically watching my and my partner's every move. I even made Mr. O"Connor laugh out loud.
The rest of the story is that I won a small role in the Shakespearean comedy. It's been even more fun than I imagined it would be. I feel really lucky to have had this experience and I hope to participate in future MBHS productions. Come out and see the play this weekend. I'm the guy who gets his butt kicked, literally.

Oh, and if you've been thinking of joining a club or trying out for a sport or the play --- JUST DO IT! You'll be glad you did.

What Silver Spring is to me

I'm going to have to write this post quickly. I have had a hectic past 2 weeks, what with my Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close project, and exams. But now that I'm done with this my schedule should be free. I'm probably going to have a good next few weeks with the play and the British students. So to quote Paul Revere, "The British are coming, the British are coming!" I have always wanted a reason to say that. Anyway. the video may seem a little choppy , but that was only because of the constraint on the time. Also the fact that a few clips are missing... well that's the reason  need to type  quickly. I tried to re-upload the video, and restore the video files, but my computer came up with a blue screen of death. So as I'm writing this my computer is a ticking time bomb for another blue screen and potentially an unfixable one. Hopefully if I shut it down for the rest of the night the problem will go away, and i realy hope this problem will not persist and that  the computer isn't doomed. Well untill then I better give my computer a rest.

Religulous Review

Documentary Review

Bill Maher, a self-admitted “potty mouthed, pot smoking atheist” created the documentary Religulous in 2008. This movie was his effort to expose the largest organized religions in the world as insane, irrational and destructive. Maher inserts himself into this film in the same way he runs his late night show on Fridays on HBO, “Real Time with Bill Maher”. That show mixes round table discussions that include politicians, Hollywood celebrities and academics with a healthy dose of his monologues from his stand-up comedy routines. And just like in his TV show, Maher appears in almost every shot of Religulous. He often looks straight into the camera and rolls his eyes or feigns shock to show that he and the viewer are connected and share the same opinion. That makes Religulous an interactive documentary, a documentary that is actually more entertainment than it is an exposé of the absurdities of religion.

In Religulous (a combination of the words ‘religion’ and ‘ridiculous’), Maher travels the globe speaking to every kind of religious person, including the devout as well as the hypocritical. He asks them to explain their faith and the nature of their God. Maher claims that he would like to believe in God, but says that no one has been able to say anything intelligent or convincing enough to persuade him. In this movie he talks to shop owners selling “holy” items, small town preachers, televangelists, a man from “Jews for Jesus”, a fundamentalist Christian U.S. Senator, Vatican priests, a religious astrologist, secular Muslims, gay Muslims, Mormons and ex-Mormons in Salt Lake City, and people in Jerusalem and the Arab peninsula. He reveals what is stupid, foolish and narrow-minded in the philosophy of each of these people.  

Although most of the interviewees are pretty harmless as an individual, their total intolerance of anyone with a different view hints at what Maher thinks is the worst aspect of organized religion – black and white thinking – an inability to accept those with an opposing view. There is an apocalyptic thread throughout the movie that reaches a dramatic and terrifying conclusion at the end when a montage of terrorist bombings, mushroom clouds, starving refugees and hate-filled religious demonstrators flash furiously on the screen while Maher does a voice over arguing that religion isn’t just ridiculous, it is fatal. Millions have already suffered and died in the name of various gods he says, and religion will ultimately destroy humanity.

Even so, Religulous is an entertaining movie. At first is certainly seems to give religious people a voice, but really Bill Maher has dealt himself the better hand in these interviews. The people he interviews are easy to scoff at and aren’t capable of putting up much of a fight. Maher doesn’t interview the intellectual heavy hitters of modern religion. He interviews a man who claims to be a direct descendant of Jesus Christ, because he believes that Jesus had children. To main stream Christians this idea is preposterous and presenting a fringe character like this serves to make all Christians look ridiculous. Maher also interviews a priest at the Vatican who must have had one cocktail too many before the interview because all he can do is giggle. The list of silly interviewees goes on. Maher interviews American truckers, in their small chapel in a trailer where each person makes up his own personal brand of Christianity. Maher even went so far as to conduct an interview with the actor who plays Jesus at a Disney-esque theme park called “Holy Land”.  It seems to me that if Maher really wanted to make a point he wouldn’t have interviewed this pathetic crowd of naive people, but he would speak to someone as quick witted and intellectual as himself. Since he did not choose worthy adversaries, he lost an opportunity to spark a conversation about the real place for religion in modern society. Instead he turned the movie into a bunch of cheap shots at the absurdity of religion.

As I mentioned, this is an interactive documentary. Bill Maher is on the screen about 96% of the time. Although it was filmed at various locations around the world, it is basically a series of one-on-one interviews edited together with multiple cuts to B- Roll. Maher also uses inter titles to flash his sarcastic comments and rebuttals onto the screen even as his guests attempt to explain their points of view.

I would recommend Religulous to many of my friends; but frankly if you are religious and a faithful church goer, then do not watch this documentary. Maher goes after every single religion without holding back any punches: Mormons, Muslims, Catholics, Evangelists, Christians and Jews beware. Remember that Maher is famous for his being offensive.  Then again, even church goers confess to getting their fair share of laughs from this documentary. And even though it’s not as effective as it could be, this movie does get the viewer thinking about religion and its place in our century.  If you aren’t too sensitive to this kind of humor, Religulous is a thought provoking and enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.

Religulous, 102 minutes R (for language)

A tragic event

Tragic. Senseless. Devastating. Unimaginable. There really are no words that adequately describe what occurred in a Connecticut elementary school on Friday. The massacre that left 26 people dead, 20 of them little children, leaves a gaping hole in all our hearts. looking for a way to honor those personally affected I attended a vigil on Saturday in down town silver spring. People cried, lit candles, sang and talked about remembering and taking action. there was a discussion about organizing a march on Washington on December 22 to demand that legislation be passed regarding the accessibility of guns. Many also brought up the need for better supports for people with mental illnesses. If you want to learn more about the march, Ed Weingart at MisterDudeDC@me.com

Model Rockets

Every December, my friends and I go launch model rockets at the college my mom's friend's husband works at (if you managed to keep that straight then kudos to you sir or madam) every year I take video of the event, but I never post it on the Internet. Since I'm already posting on this blog why not make this year the year I finally put this kind of thing online. Anyway, the whole thing is very 1950's-ish in the aspect that the men go and launch things into the heavens, while the women stay home and make Christmas cookies. And before you think I'm a sexist jerk let me explain... the kitchen that is used to bake the treats is tiny and cramped enough as it is and with the 3 teen girls and 5 women there is just no room for the guys in there. In fact we are normally kicked out of the kitchen for taking up too much space. So 3 years ago today my mom's friend's husband (I'm just going to call him Tom from now on) took me, Nick, and the other boys and their dads to go launch their model rockets. And let me say that over the las two years the lost rocket count has dropped significantly. Actually a few years ago a rocket came straight down on us and no parachute deployed so it was going to drill into the ground and what did we do? We stood there like idiots filming the danged thing untill we realized that the parachute wasn't comming out and it was roughly 50 feet above the ground. But don't worry nobody was hurt. Anyways Here's the video I hope you enjoy it!

Capture the Fall

Hey, so, this is the Capture the Fall independent video assignment. For my video I decided that I would take some stills of the woods and footage of the Northwest Branch watershed near where I live--- then add some transitions and music. The end result is a sort of video/slide show that highlights the beauty of nature in autumn. I hike here all the time with my family, including my dog.
This production was also a good opportunity for me to experiment with editing video at home. Up until now, I've spent a lot of after school hours editing in the studio. Equipment's in short supply and it means getting home really late. I tried out Windows MovieMaker on my PC and got a good result even though the software is not quite as professional as Final Cut. It would be great if there was a Windows version of Final Cut. I'm going to look into it.