[ExI] four seasons tree

Sat Dec 17 20:10:03 UTC 2016

If I had the right observation equipment, I could determine if
robins harass and bother cats when no one is watching.  Any theories?  spike

I have four cats, so I don't feed birds and try to keep them away.
 (Oddity; I went to two nature talks and won the only two things I've ever
won in my life - two birdhouses!)  I tear down the starts of nests birds
build in my bushes.  One thing I do know:  birds go crazy when cats get
near a nest, and some birds can mate in any season, not just spring, so if
I hear a bird fussing I go out to see if a nestling has gotten loose or
just what.  I have saved a few, in one case literally pulling it out of the
cat's mouth.

I visited a guy in North Alabama who had a license to trap hummingbirds -
he tags them if untagged and records data if they are tagged.  I think
there is a big network keeping track of hummers..  He had about 200 around
his house the time I went.  Awesome.  Highly aggressive things.  Birds are
great to look at, but they are vicious creatures.  Like cats.

bill w

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 1:27 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On
> Behalf
> Of Brian Manning Delaney
> Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2016 11:00 AM
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] four seasons tree
>
>
> Spike,
>
> Very important topic!!
>
> >>... How do we data-fy birds?  Bugs?
>
> >...Well, the birds part has some cool data being gathered right now:
>
> >...http://ebird.org/content/ebird/
>
>
> >...eBird is permitting observers to quantify more than species and number
> observed as time goes on. Right now it's "breeding codes" (nest building,
> mating, territorial defense behavior, etc.), sex, approx. age, and a few
> other things. But more options will be added soon...
>
>
> Cool!  Image recognition for birds.  This is a big step in the right
> direction:
>
> http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/merlinvision201611/
>
> Overall I am hoping to press for quantization of observations, but it isn't
> clear how to it.
>
> Think of medicine and how it advanced after health metrics were quantized.
> Can we even imagine doing medicine without numbers or measurements?  I am
> hoping to create metrics for nature.
>
>
> >...Sweden has an amazing system called the Species Portal:
>
> http://www.artportalen.se/
>
> >...It enables people to record data on all life, not just birds...
>
> Coool!  Go Vikings!
>
>
>
> >...I became a crazy-avid birdwatcher a year ago, and have used both eBird
> and ArtPortalen, and have spoken with people running both projects...
>
> Birds are cool, ja?  Yesterday I saw a robin perched up on a pole cawing.
> As I came closer, I think the robin became aware of me (or it could have
> been a coincidence.)  He seemed to say "Hey human, watch me hassle this
> cat"
> and down he swooped, cat headed for cover under the car.  Of course I
> busted
> out laughing.  I don't know if the bird was aware of my reaction or if I
> imagined it.  If I had the right observation equipment, I could determine
> if
> robins harass and bother cats when no one is watching.  Any theories?
>
> Crows and ravens: they appear to me to be trying to impress their buddies
> by
> letting humans get close.  They sometimes stand in the middle of the road
> and play chicken with cars.  But they don't do that unless there is another
> one nearby to watch.  Could I be imagining that?
>
> Seagulls love to interact with humans, but I don't really see it as trying
> to impress their friends the way ravens seem to do.  They just like to hang
> around us it seems.  Three species, three behaviors: robins (possibly)
> wanting to entertain humans, ravens challenging humans to gain status with
> their own species and peaceful gulls wanting handouts perhaps.
>
> It shouldn't surprise us so much.  Different breeds of dogs have their
> collective personalities; they are all the same species.
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> There's a problem. This is just an empirical observation. The why of it I
> don't know. With ArtPortalen, people tend to report rarities only.
> "Cool butterfly! I'll log in to my ArtPortalen account and report it!"
> What's needed are systematic observations of ALL butterflies (and not just
> butterflies) in a given area in a given period.
>
> With eBird, people tend to make systematic observations, but only of birds,
> of course. Perhaps it's just because it's less overwhelming to do so about
> birds only, or perhaps the interface is easier. But if we're going to ditch
> the ArtPortalen approached, we'd need to create eBee, eButterfly, eTree,
> etc.
>
>
> > Perhaps we could get a jillion citizen scientists doing this kind of
> automated observation.
>
> The more automated, the better. We here tend to be optimists, and some
> reading this might think: "Forget the citizen! Just ask the NSA, GCHQ, FRA,
> all 7-11s, etc. to let us run some recognition algorithms on camera footage
> and the like. Surely such algorithms will be good enough by 2020 or
> something."
>
> The people at eBird think high-quality automated recognition of both images
> and sound is well over a decade away. And using images from surveillance
> cameras will be trickier than using images from an observer taking a
> high-quality picture. So we might not have a lot of automation soon.
>
> Meanwhile, check out eBird. Lots of fun.
>
> Oh, hey, wait. Maybe image-recognition isn't so far away:
>
> http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/merlinvision201611/
>
> Pardon typos
> Brian
>
>
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