Cin-Ty Lee

One of the most bizarre conversations I had today. A gentleman came up to me tell me he had a stuffed passenger pigeon and wanted to know what to do with it. And indeed he has a stuffed passenger pigeon

First year students at @riceuniversity.bsky.social have to take a writing class. With AI, teaching these writing classes has become challenging but we focus on nature journaling and relearning how to observe and then communicating our observations thru words and sketches. We beat AI everyday.

I don’t know why this bird in the middle never changes its position n

Sub-zero

My local rufous hummingbird before sunrise, sitting in the freezing cold. These little guys somehow produce enough heat to make it through the sun-zero temperatures. Even the bill is warm! Thermal imaging scope.

Myiarchus flycatchers ordered by size and intensity of yellow underparts. When it comes to flycatchers, differences between species tend to be very subtle. Impressions of size and color in the field can be quite subjective, but the differences are real.

Jan and Feb are typically when we get the strongest cold fronts along the Gulf of Mexico. These fronts push their way down and bring odd birds. This California Gull showed up today just outside of Houston, TX.

Benitoite on natrolite with neptunite. Benitoite is a barium titanium cyclosilicate. Formed when Ba-bearing hydrothermal fluids pass through Ti-bearing blueschists during retrograde metamorphism associated with serpentinite mélanges.

Nutting’s Flycatcher from a ranch in Marathon, Texas. We had two birds out there. They are probably more regular here than we think. So much of west Texas is on private lands that have been under-explored.

Out in west Texas where there are no city lights, the skies are filled with stars. The night is perfectly quiet except for the screech owls calling beneath Jupiter and its moons rising.

Ripples in the Cretaceous Aguja Formation in Big Bend National Park. These formation is mostly composed of marine shales and mudstones but there are occasional sandstone layers that mark brief changes in depositional environment.

I think sometimes it is harder to ID flycatchers in the hand (at least for me) because many of these proportions are distorted on an agitated bird. Also, there is a lot of overlap in absolute metrics between different species, making it often impossible to ID. Ratios are far less variable.

These are the relevant morphometrics to measure on a flycatcher. Although absolute measurements are very helpful, relative metrics, essentially proportions, are just as useful. These are the features that can be measured from photos or what you see, with some training, in the field.

All of this was made possible by the ever-growing photo archives on ebird and inaturalist, which allowed us to go back and evaluate how good old sight records are. Advances of community science.

Down thru Florida, across Cuba and south to Central America, minimizing the amount of water they have to cross. Acadian has the longest wings of all the Empidonax, so it can take the eastern, island-hopping route. The other Empidonax are too weak. They go back essentially the same way they came up.

In the fall, these southerlies still continue and are even stronger. They only die out in late October. The same southerlies that were tailwinds in spring become headwinds in fall, so most songbirds, even those that took a trans-gulf route in spring, really can't fly across the gulf. They head east.

Empidonax flycatchers, however, are not really strong enough to fly across water, even with these tail winds. A small fraction fly across the Gulf, but most take the long, safer land route through eastern Mexico and coastal Texas. Acadian is no exception.

Many songbirds in spring take a trans-gulf route. From late April on, the baseline circulation patterns of the Gulf of Mexico are southerlies that flow north. These southerlies form because Mexico and Texas force the tradewinds to turn north. The birds going north use this as a tailwind.

Acadian Flycatcher thus takes a clockwise migration path. This is very unlike other flycatchers but very similar to many warblers, thrushes, and tanagers. In spring, many of these birds go up Texas or cut north across the Gulf from the Yucatan, and then return through Florida.

Acadian Flycatcher migratory routes rewritten. In spring, most of the migration takes a largely land-based western circum-Gulf path. In fall, they take an easterly route through Florida and across the western Caribbean, bypassing most of Texas. Most fall Acadians in Texas are misidentified.

Immature Rufous Hummingbird @riceuniversity.bsky.social. These guys are getting ready to fly north for the summer, perhaps as far as Alaska. Before doing so, they need to replace some of their worn juvenile feathers. This one is still growing in its central tail feathers and inner primaries.

Next Monday @riceuniversity.bsky.social we have a panel discussion on the geopolitics of critical minerals for the energy transition. Geology does not distribute natural resources fairly. This leads to a complex web of trade and geopolitical tensions.

events.rice.edu/event/415347...

Basaltic dike crosscutting Precambrian granites and arc cumulates. Arabian Shield on the flank of the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia.

A Western Willet flying over me. In the fall, the Eastern Willets along the coast fly south to their wintering grounds and are replaced by Western Willets returning from the north. Willets are here year round, but the two species trade places every season. And yes, they are different species.

We r having a panel discussion on critical minerals Dec 8 @riceuniversity.bsky.social in conjunction with the French Consulate of Houston.

indeed, one needs a whole team of people to correct AI outputs! maybe that's how AI will create jobs. LOL

AI, whether we like it or not, is here to stay. And that scares me. How do we ensure that the next generation actually learns how to think if AI is too easy to access? It's already happening at the universities...

agree 100%... I am seeing so many scientists using it, so I got curious. AI is a great way to become an idiot.

AI is great for speeding certain processes up. It's a good tool for those who already have decades of domain expertise. But the race to bring AI into our world is sure to produce the most uncreative and unimaginative generation in the history of human evolution.

After seemingly disappearing for 5 days, our Allen's Hummingbird @riceuniversity in Houston, TX has returned. Where did to go to all this time?