Five Years Ago Today: 2012 highlights of Moristotle & Co.

When the United States had a President we could honor

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 31, 2012, but with a different subtitle. It’s still my daughter’s birthday, but she’s more likely at home than on a boat.]

Yesterday I went through the blog's 2012 archive [accessible through the bottom section of the sidebar]. The blog began the year as "Moristotle: A sometimes ironic celebration of life on Earth" – or was it still "An ironic celebration of life, love, laughter, and learning" or "...of evolving life and learning on Earth"? However exactly it started out the year, you can see by the masthead how we think of it now.

Five Years Ago Today

The hawk was about 250 feet away
[Click to enlarge]

Hawk calls

By Moristotle

[Originally published on June 16, 2012, not one word different.]

I had some excitement yesterday clicking the shutter continually as fast as my Coolpix would allow (approximately every two seconds). At any moment I knew the hawk (it might have been a Cooper’s Hawk, or Chicken Hawk) might spot prey and swoop off the limb...and the camera might record it!

Ayard in springtime

By Moristotle

“We can go abroad, or aloft, why not ayard?” –An old book of adverbs

The eyes, the eyes!

Ever watchful

By Morris Dean

The joy of the birds on our thistle feeder last Sunday compelled me to set up my digiscoping equipment for the first time in many weeks. These photos have not been cropped.

2012 highlights of Moristotle & Co.

Looking back at my year

By Morris Dean

Yesterday I went through the blog's 2012 archive [accessible through the bottom section of the sidebar]. The blog began the year as "Moristotle: A sometimes ironic celebration of life on Earth"—or was it still "An ironic celebration of life, love, laughter, and learning" or "...of evolving life and learning on Earth"? However exactly it started out the year, you can see by the masthead how we think of it now.

What if Judeo-Christian ethics had been all-life affirming?

Photo taken a year ago by holding
a Nikon D60 by hand to the narrow
eyepiece of a Nikon ED-50 fieldscope
[It's not the moon as I thought
when I found the photo, but the
vignetting of the image, which is
the daytime sky behind a dead tree.]

Apparently scholars agree that the Israelites only meant the Sixth Commandment to restrain their members from killing other Israelites. The Old Testament is chock full of incidents of murder, rape, and enslavement of other people, most of the mayhem being portrayed as not only condoned but as explicitly commanded by their deity.
    I don't know what I'd eaten, but the other day I found myself wondering whether, if the Judeo-Christian ethic could have grown up protecting not only one's own group but all mankind—and not only just all mankind, but even all mammalian life on Earth—and not only just all mammalian life on Earth, but even all animal life on our planet—and not only all animal life, but even our living, breathing Earth...what a different world this might be.

We might not put other animals in confined, dark spaces and shoot them full of growth hormones to speed their fattening to slaughter.
    We might not slaughter animals at all, we might not eat them.
    We might not invade countries to control the oil beneath their ground.
    We might not tear down mountains to extricate coal.
    We might not use fuel-inefficient means of transportation.
    We might not waste wildernesses to build pipelines.
    We might not level rain forests to raise beef.
    We might not have overpopulated the planet.
    ...

If we stepped abruptly from the world we know into that might-have-been world, we would not recognize it.
    I stepped abruptly into wondering, and I can hardly think coherently of the things we might not do if the Judeo-Christian ethic hadn't been geared to protecting the in-group but to protecting life collectively, and its mother, Earth.
    I was just wondering.
    Maybe tomorrow I'll come back to reality.
_______________
[follow-up]

Hawk calls

The hawk was about 250 feet away
[Click to enlarge]

I had some excitement yesterday clicking the shutter continually as fast as my Coolpix would allow (approximately every two seconds). At any moment I knew the hawk (it might have been a Cooper's Hawk, or Chicken Hawk) might spot prey and swoop off the limb...and the camera might record it!
    Unfortunately, about a half-second after the sixtieth click or so, the hawk flew off—and so was a good way toward its prey by the time I could have clicked again. Actually, I did click again...but the camera recorded an empty limb. My disappointment was heightened by the treasured mental image of the hawk's coming toward me in the first split second after take-off

Oh, all right, I'll ruffle mine too

I dearly love the gentle Carolina Pigeons (Mourning Doves) who visit our yard. Yesterday, shortly after noon, this pair sat together on the top edge of a fence plank for about ten minutes, while I pressed and pressed and pressed the shutter cable release.

I even made a movie (although I need to practice the wobble out of my technique).

Two's company, three's a crowd?

Uncropped (click to enlarge)

My third subjects on Wednesday were these three crows (I think they're crows). The sun was beyond them relative to the camera, but the resulting silhouette effect is interesting. With my modest Nikon ED50 fieldscope, lighting would have to be "perfect" for me to get a stunning result at the distance (about 500 feet).

_____________
"Two is company, three's a crowd."

First digiscopes of retirement

Uncropped (click to enlarge)

Ironically, having learned from Sam Harris that my free will is only an illusion, I was finally able within a few days of reading his book (Free Will) to get my act together and set up my digiscoping equipment for some bird photographs. My first subject was an obliging Mockingbird, who sat on a bird-feeder pole for as long as I needed for several dozen photos, from which I selected these eleven.

I'm grateful to Mr. Harris for providing ideas that, when added to the potpourri of ideas already ensconced in my synapses, led to my finally doing the first digiscoping of my retirement from UNC. However bereft we may be of actual free will, our lives can continue to provide the illusion that we have it so long as we continue to let new ideas into our heads.

Alive morning

My wife and I stood on the patio
beyond the window yesterday  to
view a Green Heron in a distant tree

Thoughts of various pleasing projects ran through my mind as I prepared our breakfast this morning, accompanied by the sort of "meta-thought" that the more immediate thoughts were enlivening me and I appreciated them.
    The pleasing projects weren't earth-shaking, just little, ordinary things that make up my life. Write to someone. Tinker with some wording on a recent post. Ideas for further reflections on the illusion of free will (such as the potential effects of the idea on people, and on people collectively). Set up my digiscoping equipment this week (maybe get a photo of that Green Heron my wife spotted yesterday, or of the Red-headed Wookpecker I thought I saw on a feeder while we were messing with the fieldscope). Deposit that check.
    Thoughts of these ordinary activities enlivened me by distracting me from bodily aches and pains, by engaging me and giving me something to look forward to, by assuring me that the day and the week (and the rest of my life if I am fortunate to have such thoughts every morning) need not be a drag but can ever be adventurous. (Do I hear some of you laughing at the revelation that such activities constitute "adventure" for me?)

And the meta-thought was a bonus—it provided the theme for today's post. Get it done this morning, and then on to, say, digiscoping, which has been neglected so far for thirty-six days of retirement. Not acceptable.
    Get it done this morning, not partially done in the evening then finished the next day, as I confess has been the case with several posts lately. Not acceptable. (But so far a dependable fall-back when needed.)
    Do it now. Be alive now.

Finches and a Wren ahopping

Whose heart doesn't dance at the sight of a feisty crowd of frolicking, feeding birds! I was taking a break yesterday from writing a community-watch newsletter when I happened to look out into the back yard. I had to set up my digiscoping equipment right then and there (even if I don't get the best results taking photographs through two panes of glass).

Click to enlarge photos, none of which has been retouched

Then Carolyn thought she saw "our Woodpecker" on a tree directly behind the feeders. I took many but none was focused. Either the double-paned glass really played havoc at 200+ feet or my camera was focusing on the wrong thing amongst all the branches.

Thursday morning's backyard birds

My wife thought she had spotted a Downy Woodpecker on our woodpecker feeder (later she allowed that it might have been a Hairy), so I set up my digiscoping equipment and waited.

When I saw a bird alight on the woodpecker feeder, I managed to repositioin and get two shots before it flew off. My wife looked at them and didn't think it was the Downy (or the Hairy) Woodpecker she'd spotted earlier:

Here's our array of feeders: