new (?) or new to me website:
you can pick restaurant, groceries or organization from the drop down menu, then pick a town in
NJ and then things happen and it spits out a list for you! how nice. for my town i saw one error or out of date bit of info but still its pretty cool. until this i used http://www.happycow.net/ for NJ and for anywhere i traveled to, they have listings for all over the globe.
speaking of round the globe: in the 24 hours james has been in usa, italy and portugal.
sigh.
hand carved lino-cut stamp by stephanie tichenor. 2008.
super tomato! thats what i think when i look at this print that i made today. but james said it looks like a communist propaganda poster.
that made me laugh a lot.
to see other stuff i have made lately go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephiblu/sets/376320/
and here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephiblu/sets/368658/
hand carved lino-cut stamp by stephanie tichenor.
whats up with steph? making stuff as usual. today i made this stamp and a few prints from it. today i also made: a loaf of bread, tomato stamp, lots of prints, homemade onion rings (as part of a balanced dinner of lemon-pepper tofu, with salad of sprouts, pea greens, and beets. ) and i printed some tomatoes on fabric too. fun.
do you see it? i am getting excited! i better learn how to can -and quick.
an ipod and portable speakers are being used by an ornithologist to attract and identify bird species.
By Alex MacLennanScientist Uses iPod to Find BirdsCall it the iBird.David Ascanio, ornithologist, birder and tour leader, has been listening for, identifying, and “fishing” for birds for over 20 years. In 1984, he ascended Mount Roraima with a hiking group, and helped produce the first contemporary record of a roraiman nightjar (Caprimulgus whitelyi).He has guided treks and tours in Guyana, Suriname, Panama and across Perú, Colombia and Brazil. In 1999, he was on the team that rediscovered another poorly-known species, the plain-flanked rail (Rallus wetmorei), considered highly threatened by IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species.
So when he discovered an advertisement for the first iPod in a magazine, he was hooked.
“My field is bioacoustics and the goal is to [record] the largest number of species,” says Ascanio, one of three Venezuelan ornithologists on Conservation International’s (CI) recent Cuyuni River Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) survey to Venezuela. Bioacoustics is the study of animal sounds, and over the years, Ascanio has collected and identified recordings of more than 500 hours of bird vocalizations.
“That’s basically my job on this team,” he says of his work with the RAP. “Collecting data for two hours [in the morning], and the rest of the day I am walking trails, going along the edge of the river, and identifying birds by voice.” He calls this “fishing,” and he uses an iPod to do it.
Ascanio describes it this way: “There are many birds that won’t be singing at [a particular] time of year, so we bring recordings of their songs and trawl for birds that we think are in the area by playing back the song regularly, testing the waters looking for those songs. It’s a way to find out if the species is in the area even if they aren’t singing at dawn.”
Strapped to his arm, a classic white iPod (connected to speakers) projects the bird calls as Ascanio moves through three areas that exhibit different levels of human impact.
The iPod is compact, easy to use, and can hold thousands of calls – a great combination for field work. By playing back pre-recorded calls of species he hopes to identify, Ascanio is able to determine “what birds are there, what birds should be there, what’s missing, and sometimes, entirely new species of birds. It’s a great complement to the standard methods commonly used in field surveys.
“We found birds that had been reported only once or twice in the country,” he adds.
Unfortunately, human activities like mining and deforestation are causing many species – particularly in the tree-top canopy – to disappear. Says Ascanio, “we haven’t found any solid evidence of canopy species, which probably means that those species have been wiped out” in the areas of the forest being heavily mined.
Of the three main study sites, Ascanio says that birds are recolonizing a former miners’ trail where the trees have grown tall in the absence of heavy human activity, and that the upper Cuyuni river remains relatively untouched and a healthy habitat for birds.
The study site below the mouth of the river, however, has been severely impacted. “Mining is affecting birds, especially species with a rich and complex foraging dynamic.”
But Ascanio sees hope. “The mining trail tells us that if we don’t touch this forest, it may be back the way it was before the miners wiped out the trees. The good news is that … the capacity of bird species to recolonize these areas is high, and that’s not what we thought. It is difficult, but there is hope now.”
video of Asciano in action: http://www.conservation.org/FMG/Pages/videoplayer.aspx?videoid=40
photos of Asciano in Venezuela: http://www.conservation.org/FMG/Pages/galleryplayer.aspx?galleryid=50
🙂 i was on the phone, james was at home, he said he was gonna try one of the purple peppers and that he just couldnt wait any longer. we wondered when to pick them: they are already purple, but so small, we didnt know if they would get bigger or what, so we were trying to wait a little while. james picked a purple pepper and chomped a bite, they are really small, it was enough for him to scream into the phone, “its hot, its hotttt, its really freakin’ hot!” after some cold soy milk, then some dairy ice cream james felt a little bit better. we think he maybe ate the seeds too, and they are hotter than the pepper itself. it was labeled as “black pearl” but we havent found that much info on them. the ones that we found that look similiar are hot too. so maybe i will make some olio picante????
here is my plan for the pumpkin blossoms: http://www.cbc.ca/nb/features/organic-agriculture/r3-blueberry.html
pretty amazing. i have read you can also stuff the blossoms and fry or bake until crispy. fill, batter dip, then fry. or eat them filled and raw. sounds like a dinner party waiting to happen 🙂
so the cucumbers are taking over. i knew they sent out shoots, or as i call them: tentacles, but i didnt know that they send them out and grab on for dear life. we left some arugula to go to seed and the cucumbers sent out their shoots and wrapped around the arugula and pulled it down to the ground. we planted them by the fence thinking they would grow up the fence but they went looking for other things…..if they werent so yumm it would be a bit freaky.
i ate that cucumber last night. i couldnt wait. it was really really delicious 🙂
no worries, there are lots more where it came from.
What's Up With Steph 