FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Mark Ost]

Thank You Gail for your thread Perot Museum Golds
That was very nice documenting and sharing this work. (Forgive me but I lack all discipline) Even if this looks slightly for the birds.

[Gail]

[Mark Ost]

Yes; but let us not cry fowl. (out of control)

[Peter Megaw]

Too bad they don't have as many golds as dead birds. What is the story with drawers of stuffed sparrows...presumably a manifestation of an avian squirrel gene run amok?

[Gail]

[Mark Ost]

Gail, you might take some comfort (not much) in knowing that Audubon shot most of his subjects prior to illustrating them. Of course we must realize the limitations of optics, photography, and attitudes of his time. So we cannot be too hard on him. Many museums have "skins" for study. I don't know but often these animals had been killed in natural accidents and were in good enough condition to preserve. I doubt this is a standard practice today in most institutions. Domestic cats account for far more birds than the museum could ever collect. As a geologist who once helped out in collecting/sampling river invertebrates and fish for ecological analysis, I found out that you have to be "hard" to be a biologist. As a geologist my samples typically did not move prior to preservation unlike biological samples. The best I could do was insist that we limit the catch to what was really necessary and not send the lab more than I thought they needed.

[Gail]

Thanks! I just always have a pang in my heart when seeing birds laying like that. I have four "rescue" parrots that I adore. No worries, just the way it is with me. Call me a softie....

[Gail]

You might note that neither Jim, nor I, are wearing glasses. We had cataract surgery and have excellent vision now. I do, however, have to wear reading glasses as my eyes have astigmatism and I had to choose whether to see close up or far away.
My one eye has a contact lens, and will have surgery when that eye starts to have problems. ( I do have a slight cataract there. )
Anyhow, it is funny to see both of us sans glasses.

[Mark Ost]

All my cats are rescue cats. Naw, you are not a softie; you just have good sense.

[Peter Megaw]

We know folks in Scotland who live near a windfarm and they take daily walks with their dogs and pick up the birds that get killed by the turbines and have them preserved.

A bit of kharmic payback for what domestic cats do to birds might be in order...

[Mark Ost]

Pete you might be right. My cat escaped outside, got in a fight the other night and cost me 200.00 in Vet bills again. I wonder what my Karma is? There is also a problem with bats and wind farms as the blades generate a low pressure zone that ruptures their lungs.

[Peter Megaw]

Mark...I have the perfect solution to your kharmic inbalance....send me all your best Mexican specimens and I'm sure you'll be rectified!

I had not heard that bit about bats...one of my favorite critters, I will check it out!

[Mark Ost]

As an ex caver, I have had many pleasant lunches with bats; so they are high on my list also. The wing tips on the blades, due to length, achieve very high velocities and low pressures, even if the blades appear to be to be turning slowly to the eye as a whole. I believe it was Bat Conservation International that found that many dead bats had not had physical contact with the spinning blade but had all the symptoms of an embolism by coming close to the blades in flight.
As to Karma If that is all that happens I will settle for it! You might need more than the Mexican specimens to make up for all my previous life. Do you pay shipping??

[Gail]

It is always funny to me how threads of one subject morph off into their own new subjects, I am loving this!

[Mark Ost]

As I said; Lack of discipline!

[Peter Megaw]

Mark...sounds like you have a lot to make up for ...am I looking at Air or Ground Freight to clear your kharma? If you don't have enough Mexican stuff to cover your past lives, I also like secondary base metal oxides, sulfosalts and skarn silicates.

Checked out the bat mortality stats with respect to wind farms. Huge range of numbers for deaths...from "thousands" to "hundreds of thousands" to a max of 6 million. Seems there is disagreement on the pressure issue...still sounds like getting whacked by the blades still takes out a lot more than the pressure drop/emoblism mechanism. Interesting that teh USGS seems to have taken this subject up pretty avidly...glad to see the work being done...not sure how happy I am to see what ought to be a geologically oriented agency doing biology though.

Even taking the highest wind farm mortality numbers (for which a mitigation is actively being sought) though..bats are much more imperiled by White Nose Syndrome for which solutions do not seeem to be forthcoming.

For some reason birds get killed by windfarms at only 1/3rd the rate of bats. This is good because they have much greater foes: Cats get over 100 million birds per year! 130 million a year get zapped by powerlines and a staggering 100-1000 million (yep, a billion) die from flying into plate glass windows.

Bats seem to be smart enough to avoid all of those...smile!

NSS 9363

[Gail]

We installed a 60 foot tall, 16 foot bladed, wind turbine 10 kw, in September.
Not a single dead anything!

[Mark Ost]

Love the flying fox picture. I think it is the huge turbines that contribute the most to the problem. I have seen quite a few biologists in the survey. I have always wondered about that. Compared to some of your magnificent collections, I may be stuck in day care for two year olds in pugatory for quite some time, if I rely on my collection to get me out of hot water. This is a very common problem that many geologists have.

[Peter Megaw]

I am geologist too...but got lucky early on collecting while working in and around mines in Mexico

[Mark Ost]

Yes! I saw your presentation at Dallas on DVD. Very fine. I am a groundwater field geologist (read too dumb to be a project manager) so consider myself an all rounder having done everything from wells, direct push, catching critters in rivers, teaching at a community college, last week conducting side scan sonar surveys of a pier with two sunken ships. I was good at mineralogy but am not a specialist as so many of you are. Would like to retire in 2.5678345 years to attend to important things like mineral collecting and penance. Love the rig!

Ps. Where are the safety vests and hard hats??? Too much time with large corporations!