Bluebird bloopers

There may not be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, but there are bluebirds here in Massachusetts all year round.  This male Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) (photo courtesy of Wikipedia) is posing in a way that reminds us that these are, to some extent, the "Robins" of the Eastern United States.

I'm going to have to explain that.  The Robin (Erithacus rubecula) – below (courtesy of Wikipedia) – is a small European member of the thrush family: the well-known Robin Redbreast.  When the settlers arrived in this part of the world in the 17th century, they found another type of large thrush with a bright orange breast: the American Robin (Turdus migratorius).  They decided to call it a Robin.  Unfortunately, its behavior and ecological role is nothing like that of its European namesake.  In fact, it behaves much more like the Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos).

I should point out that there's another candidate over here to be the ecological equivalent of the European Robin.  That's the Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus) which is a similar size to the Robin although slightly larger (and slightly smaller than the bluebird).  This similarity between the Hermit Thrush and the Robin is entirely my own observation and based on just a few sightings of the Hermit Thrush.

Getting back to the Bluebird!  Here I have to make an admission of total ignorance.  I didn't realize that the Bluebird was a thrush – I thought it was a flycatcher.  Duh!  This makes quite a difference because there aren't too many flies around during the month of February here in Carlisle.  So I was a little worried about what I thought were early (and hungry) migrants.  Here is what I sent to MASSBIRD:


Yesterday I saw a bluebird (possibly two) in my back yard. It seems
ridiculously early to see bluebirds around here, although I note that
five were seen at Turner's Falls on Feb 6th. Should I be concerned for
the health of these individual birds? I'm reminded of back in November
(17th) during an unusually warm spell when a phoebe was in our yard.
And, even more unexpected was a ruby-throated hummingbird I saw a few
years ago at Waterville Valley during October when there was snow on the
ground!

Are these early (or late) migrants doomed? Nature is generally not kind
to these sorts of mistakes. And while I know that it's healthier for
the species to have only the smart birds survive, I do find myself
anxious for the sake of these wayward individuals.
Almost immediately, I received 15 responses from other readers of the MASSBIRD list.  They all pointed out that bluebirds are regularly (and normally) seen during the winter around here.  One person was kind enough to point out that they are thrushes and eat fruits and insects [not flies]!

So, today I posted another comment:


Many thanks to all those (fifteen of you!) who took the trouble to set
me straight about wintering bluebirds in this part of the world. What
particularly impressed me was the obvious love of these birds shown by
so many. And there was not one response that even remotely resembled a
"flame", as I would expect if made some obviously ill-informed comment
on a sports, or political forum, etc.

We do have (or rather did until quite recently) a few berries still in
our yard. We don't have a feeder of any sort.

I'm quite appalled at my lack of knowledge about this bird, especially
as it shares so much with my namesake, the (European) Robin (Erithacus
Rubecula). But I'm remedying the situation. And it turns out that my
memory isn't so great either. I reported on a bluebird last year on 2/27.

One final note. In the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas
(http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/BreedingBirdAtlas/viewer.htm), the
bluebird is shown as a "possible" nester in our square (covers most of
Carlisle except the Western and Northern slices). But from behavioral
observations, I'm fairly sure they are breeding close by. And surely on
the Towle field too?
Now that I've discovered this potentially close relationship between Bluebirds and Robins, there's just one snag.  Ornithologists have discovered that the European Robin isn't really a thrush at all, it belongs to the old world flycatchers!  OMG :)

Britten and Durufle

One of the side benefits of playing in orchestras is that I often discover music (or in some cases, an entire composer) that I didn't really know before.  Even something that I thought I knew well yields much more when examined under the microscope of seven or eight rehearsals.

The Sounds of Stow is a little different, though.  Generally, speaking, though by no means always, we play something I already know and we do it on only two rehearsals.  That's usually sufficient when, as in the past, we would typically play a Mozart piano concerto and a "standard" choral piece.  But this year's winter concert is going to be a very enjoyable challenge.

There are three works: a lovely short choral piece by Fauré (Cantique de Racine), the Requiem by Maurice Duruflé and the Violin Concerto by Benjamin Britten.  Until last week, I didn't know any of these pieces.  But they are examples, each very different, of great music.  Britten and Duruflé were more or less contemporaries (in fact the Frenchman outlived the Brit by about 10 years at either end).  While I had heard of Duruflé, I knew nothing of his and really had no idea that he lived so recently (he died in 1986).

The Britten, as is usual for this composer, is quite technically challenging for the orchestra.  One would expect a professional orchestra to get it down in two rehearsals.  But for us, it will take a lot of hard work and concentration.

The Requiem borrows from the genre of Gregorian Chant in which Duruflé was immersed as a student at Rouen, and which Kim and I experienced first-hand last year in the wonderful setting of the Abbey of Fontgombault in central France.  The composer's own program notes mention in particular the Benedictines of Solesmes, of which house, currently, is Fontgombault.  But you will be surprised to read the history of the Abbey in the Wikipedia article already linked – it wasn't always so!

I'm looking forward to the concert!

Mojito power

Another good game of bridge, this time with my favorite partner, Kim :)  In the Friday evening game at the Watertown sectional we were 2nd overall (of 80 pairs).  You can imagine our joyful feelings when we discovered that our score after 7 rounds was 66%, having had a very good last round!  Unfortunately, we discovered that Bob and Lew were also at 66% in another section and, by coincidence, played the same last three boards as we did.  While we might have had 70% on the last round, they had three incontrovertible tops (100%).  The final results were that we ended up 2nd with 67% while Lew and Bob moved up to 71% overall.  Not bad!

Kim says I hadn't really stopped being happy after last week.  Now I'm happy again!

Dinner beforehand was at Casa de Pedro in Watertown, Venezuelan fare.  We've been several times before -- the food is always good.  Kim broke the golden rule and had a mojito!  But it didn't seem to do her any harm.  I guess we'll have to go there everytime we play in Watertown now :)

Winter wonderland

Winter continues unabated.  Although we escaped the big storms that hit the mid-Atlantic areas last week, we have been getting some snow.

Kim took advantage of the fresh snow earlier this week to go cross-country skiing in Estabrook Woods and of course the dogs were happy to follow along (here they think they're getting a treat).

Meanwhile, my digital camera is operational again since I bought a card reader for it (it's so old that when my computer got cleaned up six months ago, the old driver disappeared and several hours of research and working with Nikon didn't result in a solution).  The card reader works just fine though and cost only a few dollars.

A few minutes ago, a sharp-shinned hawk raced by the window and through our porch in pursuit of something.  The "sharpie" is one of the accipiter tribe (woodland hawks) along with the goshawk, Cooper's hawk and, across the pond, its soul-mate the sparrowhawk. They're such wonderful fliers able to slalom their way between the tree branches.

(photo from Wikipedia)

Bunburying

I'm sure you recall that in The Importance of being Earnest, Jack Worthing, so named because the gentleman who found him as a baby happened to have a first-class railway ticket to that "seaside resort" in his pocket at the time, likes to lead a double life.  When he wishes to escape from his social obligations in London, he goes by train to visit his fictional invalid cousin called Bunbury.  Hence Bunburying.

One of my favorite types of Bunburying is looking for abandoned railroad lines.  During the bridge tournament in Cromwell, I was able to spend a little time investigating the lines that formerly crossed in Cromwell, or rather just over the river in Middletown.  While I was working on that, I happened to be close to the extant line, the so-called Valley Branch of the NY, NH and Hartford R/R.  Quite fortuitously, a train came through just then and I was able to get a photograph using my handy iPhone (see above).

The time I spent must have been good for my brain because later that day, playing with Peter Matthews for the first time, we ended up 3rd overall and 1st in X in the two-session A/X pairs.  The field was quite strong although many of the top players were still in the knockouts.  Due to a technicality which occurred at another table, we were given 3rd place rather than 2nd equal.  This doesn't seem quite fair (it made a significant difference in masterpoints) but that's the way it's done.  If you're curious about this, you can read Den of Iniquity?

In any case, it was the best result I've ever achieved in a two-session open regional event.  Kim says I've been in a really good mood ever since.

Meanwhile, I've made my Western Connecticut railroad map almost completely accurate for the area around Cromwell.

Internet authenticity

Ever feel frustrated when reading a page on the internet and not knowing if it's authentic?  I certainly do.  Google's "Page rank" (named after Larry rather than the more obvious web page) helps somewhat with this because the more other sites that connect to your site, the higher your rank, but in and of itself that proves nothing.  For example, a creationist web might have a relatively high page rank because it is referenced by many other sites (there are lots of them, by the way).  But that's not the same thing as being peer reviewed.  Even Wikipedia can be in error, especially in the short term.  I could go in right now and change the date of William the Conqueror's invasion of England to be 1067.  It would be reverted, and if I was silly enough to do it using my Wikipedia account, I'd earn a black mark in some electronic book somewhere.  But some number of visitors might actually believe the 1067 date while it was up.

Indeed, this very ploy was famously perpetrated a year ago today regarding Titian (see article in the Daily Telegraph).

Yet, this problem could be remedied so simply.  Here's how it would work.

An author called Archie publishes a web page about some topic, let's say the Soca (Isonzo) front of World War I.  Archie calls Bert and asks him to peer-review it.  Bert reads it and publishes on his own web site a review of the article, with a link to the article.  Archie adds a link to the review on his web site.  But here's the neat part: the link from Bert's site to the article is qualified by a long string of characters: the message digest of the article as it was when Bert read it.  If Archie goes in and updates his article, the link is no longer valid.  Thus anyone, say Charlie, reading the (original) article can visit Bert's site and read the review with confidence that it was the same written about the same article.  Of course, the authenticity of the review is now based on Bert's reputation.  Charlie may want to see if respected people (especially if they are not Archie) have written favorable reviews of Bert's works.  That's the essence of the peer review system.  The authenticity of an article rests on the reputation of not only the author, but also those of the reviewers.

All we need is a browser which (or browser plug-in) which will inform us whether or not the link is was intended for the current version of the article.  Simple!  I think I'd better write one.

What Superbowl? The Who?

For the first time in, well, decades I missed seeing the superbowl.  I didn't even record it on TiVo.  I didn't see any of the pre-game hoopla.  But I wish I had been watching at the moment when Peyton "the choker" Manning scored an own goal by passing the ball to one of the players in white instead of the royal blue, thus sealing another big game loss.

I'm not exactly a Manning hater but I just find all of the idolization of the brothers Peyton and Eli a little bit much.  Especially when the latter robbed the Patriots of the perfect season a few years ago by escaping from a sack only to float the ball down to his receiver within easy scoring range.  To my mind there's only one kind of great quarterback: a winning quarterback.  It doesn't matter how many touchdown passes you make if your team doesn't win!  Joe Montana knew that.  So did plenty of other great quarterbacks.  Manning isn't one of them.  Brady is.  End of story!

A propos of the Brady-Manning controversy, I just finished reading Dan Shaughnessy's column this morning and I can't remember the last time I enjoyed something in the paper so much.  BTW, here is the column that he had written on the even of the superbowl.

And could someone, preferably from "The Who" organization, explain to me how we old guys should go about getting well paid employment when the rest of the world seems to think that we've "rounded third"?  I'd love to know.

So what were we doing on Sunday evening?  Actually, we were returning from a "Wicked" weekend in New York.  As part of Kim's birthday celebrations, we went to see Wicked, the hit musical that is the "back story" (or "prequel") behind the Wizard of Oz.  It was great!  Let's all defy gravity!

A couple of apologies

Time to catch up on a few things.  First, Mr. Bruckner, I gave your Romantic Symphony some fairly poor grades earlier (Happy Birthday, Frederic Chopin).  Having completed our Winter concert, I can now say that the piece is quite a bit better than I initially thought.  Continuity is still poor, and the amount of repetition is still high.  The answering phrases are generally rather trite.  Nevertheless, the melody, orchestration and harmony are really quite good.  There are many spots that sound distinctly Mahleresque (those would be the passages inspired by Austrian nature, I believe).

And, to the saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrow (A good day for the Hudsonian Godwit), I offer a profound apology.  I made no mention of the fact that you are the sexiest bird on the planet!  Or at least the most promiscuous hen bird. Who knew?  See this BBC article for more details.

And a mild apology to my teammates for Wednesday's Swiss teams at Arlington.  Kim and I had been out to dinner (part of her birthday celebration).  We abstained from drinking any alcohol but eating a lot is never good for my bridge game.  When we got to the club we found it was a team game and we got teammates, who had also shown up not knowing.  I pretty much played on autopilot.  The team as a whole was fairly dreadful.  We didn't win a single match, and lost to two teams that we should have beaten handily.  Ugh!

But, we still had a good time!