I spotted this big beautiful pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) a few weeks ago in Pacific Spirit Park, probing through the rotting bark for ants and other insects. How do these animals not get the worst headaches?
Why don’t woodpeckers pound themselves into brain trauma? From Ask a Biologist:
Woodpeckers are better than hoopoes at varying the path of their pecks. By moving their beaks around more, woodpeckers minimize brain damage in specific areas.
Woodpeckers’ skulls are more flexible because of the plate-like bones. That helps to minimize the damage of all that pecking.
Woodpeckers have a special bone that acts like a seat-belt for its skull. It’s called the hyoid bone, and it wraps all the way around a woodpecker’s skull. Every time the bird pecks, the hyoid acts like a seat-belt for the bird’s skull and the delicate brain it protects.
Even the woodpeckers’ beak helps. A woodpecker’s upper beak is longer than its lower beak, kind of like an overbite. The lower beak is also made of stronger bone to help absorb impact.
autumn in Pacific Spirit Park, Vancouver
Watching over English Bay on Christmas Day.
Just enjoyed Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol this evening at the Jericho Arts Centre. The familiar tale from Marley’s perspective. It was a well acted, spooky, and minimalist production. Satisfying and fit for a family that wants to get into the Spirit of the season.
Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol is at Jericho Arts Centre until Dec. 18. For tickets, call 604-224-8007 or go to brownpapertickets.com.
“Jacob Marley was dead.” In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol we know that Ebenezer Scrooge’s business partner is “most sincerely dead,” but we don’t know why he comes back on Christmas Eve to haunt Scrooge’s bedchamber. What’s in it for Jacob Marley?
That’s where playwright Tom Mula begins: Marley is in the Counting House, a sort of antechamber to the next world, where he awaits his everlasting fate. The Record Keeper (David C. Jones) offers him a deal: to avoid going to Hell, Marley must reform Scrooge, “the only man worse than I,” claims Marley.
Accompanied and guided by the Bogle — a hobgoblin or ghost — Marley visits Scrooge’s past, present and future in his efforts to redeem him. On their journey we learn about Marley’s own childhood and discover why he turned out as warped as he did.
Source: Jacob Marley retells Christmas Carol from the other side
Last Sunday I managed to get close enough, courtesy of my megazoom, to a Great Blue Heron hunting in the duck pond at Jericho Beach. Beautiful creatures.
Success!
Our Herons are a non-migratory sub-species, and you can see them nesting in Stanley Park. More here.
best Hamlet yet. Yesterday's natinee performance of Hamlet at Bard on the Beach was the best of the three versions I've seen, due mainly to Jonathon Young's interpretation of the title role. From the Strait:
It’s Young’s work in the central role that ignites the evening: in his mouth, every word of the familiar text is new. “Hold, hold my heart,” Young’s Hamlet gasps when he sees his father’s ghost, and you can feel your own heart constricting in your chest. “I have sworn it,” Hamlet says after pledging revenge, and you just know he’s surprised himself and he’s shit-scared that he may have made a pact with the devil. Young’s Hamlet is witty and painfully raw, notably when he dresses down Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, supposed friends who are spying on him for Claudius.
via www.straight.com
Indeed Young's addition of just enough wit to the weight of the role outdid previous Hamlets who have kept the anger and depression too visible and on the boil. Rachel Cairns' Ophelia was excellent as well, striking the right balance of fragility and strength. Great also to be reminded of the many many quotes from Hamlet that have entrenched themselves in modern culture (e,g, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”). I suppose i should also mention the 'modern' interpretation – guns, cell phones, ipads, etc. I expected to be annoyed and distracted and it to feel gimicky, but it worked.
2 thumbs up.
Vancouver is at risk of losing landmark communities like Granville Island and False Creek unless the city starts taking measures to defend its shoreline against rising sea levels, an urban planner warns.
Andrew Yan, a planner and researcher with Bing Thom Architects, estimates the city will have to spend upwards of $510 million to build and upgrade the dikes and seawalls – plus billions more to buy the land to put them on – over the next century.
"What's under threat in Vancouver is a lot of our identity; our beaches, our seawall … this is what makes Vancouver such a livable place," Yan said. "We just need to look at Granville Island and its exposure to sea level rise and what may be required to defend it."
Vancouver isn't the only city under threat.
Richmond's Steveston, which has experienced huge residential growth along its waterfront in recent years, will face significant pressures in the future, Yan said, while south Surrey's Crescent Beach is already being threatened by a more insidious force: increasing groundwater from rising ocean tides.
"It affects every municipality that touches the water," Yan said. "Sea level rise isn't going to separate itself from the boundaries of Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond or Surrey. We'd better be serious about this. It's important to plan now as opposed to 50 or 70 years from now."
……..
The report illustrated a number of sea level rise scenarios, from one to six metres, which could affect between three and 13 per cent of the city's land mass. For instance, sea level rise at the three-metre interval, combined with a severe storm in 2100, would affect most of the city's shoreline, including the harbour, the southern edge of the city and Granville Island.
And it gets worse: At the four-metre interval, False Creek would revert to its 19th-century boundaries, while Gastown, Chinatown and the harbour would be heavily affected. And at five-and six-metre intervals, the report warns, downtown Vancouver would become an archipelago and the city's coast-line would be "unrecognizable" compared to today's.
iBiome 