Wildlife Is Now Thriving Again in Chernobyl–Even If Humans Won’t for Another 24,000 Years

in Life, Nature | May 17th, 2021

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 sci-fi film Stalk­er, a mys­te­ri­ous arti­fact ren­ders a land­scape called the Zone inhos­pitable for humans. As crit­ics have often point­ed out, a trag­ic irony may have killed the direc­tor and some of the crew a few years lat­er. Shoot­ing for months on end in a dis­used refin­ery in Esto­nia exposed them to high lev­els of tox­ic chem­i­cals. Tarkovsky died of can­cer in 1986, just a few months after the dis­as­ter at Cher­nobyl. “It is sure­ly part of Stalk­er’s mys­tique,” Mark Le Fanu writes for Cri­te­ri­on, “that in some strange way, Tarkovsky’s explo­rations … were to ‘proph­esy’ the destruc­tion… of the nuclear pow­er plant.”

Tarkovsky did not see the future. He adapt­ed a dystopi­an sto­ry writ­ten by broth­ers Arkady and Boris Stru­gatsky. “Cer­tain­ly,” writes Le Fanu, “there were many things in the Sovi­et Union at that time to be dystopi­an about.” But the film inspired a video game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shad­ow of Cher­nobyl, which in turn inspired tourists to start “flock­ing to Cher­nobyl,” writes Katie Met­ti­er in The Wash­ing­ton Post: “fans of the video game… want­ed to see first­hand the nuclear waste­land they’d vis­it­ed in vir­tu­al real­i­ty.”

Ukraine may have suc­ceed­ed, thanks to these asso­ci­a­tions, in rebrand­ing Cher­nobyl for the so-called “dark tourism” set, but the area will not become hab­it­able again for some 24,000 years. Hab­it­able, that is, for humans. “Flo­ra and fau­na have bounced back” in Cher­nobyl, writes Ellen Gutoskey at Men­tal Floss, “and from what researchers can see, they appear to be thriv­ing.” They include “hun­dreds of plant and ani­mal species in the zone,” says Nick Beres­ford, a researcher at the UK Cen­tre for Ecol­o­gy and Hydrol­o­gy. “Includ­ing more than 60 [rare] species.”

Among the many ani­mals to return to the area are “Eureasian lynx, brown bear, black storks, and Euro­pean bison,” as well as elk, deer, boars, and wolves. Near­by crops are still show­ing high lev­els of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Accord­ing to the lat­est research, noth­ing that grows there should be eat­en by humans. And as one might expect, “muta­tions are more com­mon in Chernobyl’s plants and ani­mals than in those from oth­er regions,” Gutosky notes. But the harm caused by radi­a­tion pales by com­par­i­son with that posed by a con­stant human pres­ence.

Among the many species mak­ing their home in Cher­nobyl are the endan­gered Przewalski’s hors­es who num­bered around 30 when they were “released into the Cher­nobyl Exclu­sion Zone and left to their own devices…. Now it’s esti­mat­ed that at least 150 Przewalski’s hors­es roam the region.” The hor­rif­ic, human-caused acci­dent of Cher­nobyl has had the effect of clear­ing space for nature again. The area has become an unin­tend­ed exper­i­ment in what jour­nal­ist George Mon­biot calls “rewil­d­ing,” which he defines as “[tak­ing] down the fences, block­ing up the drainage ditch­es, enabling wildlife to spread.”

In order for the plan­et to “rewild,” to recov­er its bio­di­ver­si­ty and rebuild its ecosys­tems, humans need to step away, stop see­ing our­selves “as the guardians or the stew­ards of the plan­et,” says Mon­biot, “where­as I think it does best when we have as lit­tle influ­ence as we can get away with.” Tourists may come and go, but there may be no humans set­tling and build­ing  in Cher­nobyl for a few thou­sand years. For the species cur­rent­ly thriv­ing there, that’s appar­ent­ly for the best.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Scenes from HBO’s Cher­nobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Com­par­i­son

The Ruins of Cher­nobyl Cap­tured in Three Haunt­ing, Drone-Shot Videos

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #4 – HBO’s “Cher­nobyl”: Why Do We Enjoy Watch­ing Suf­fer­ing?

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Cicadas Return After 17 Years: Stunning Footage of the Brood X Cicadas

in Biology, Environment, Nature, Science | May 17th, 2021

Sing, fly, mate, die.

The peri­od­i­cal cicadas in Brood X are emerg­ing from under­ground, where they have spent the last 17 years as nymphs. They are mak­ing the final climb of their lives, intent on escap­ing their cara­paces in order to make more cicadas. And as always they are doing it en masse.

Once free, they must quick­ly get the hang of their brand new wings, and make for the trees, where the males will sing (some say scream) in a bid for females with whom to mate.

The preg­nant females drill cav­i­ties into nar­row branch­es to receive their eggs.

By the time the lar­va emerge, some six weeks lat­er, their moth­ers and fathers are long dead.

Instinct pro­pels these babies to drop to the ground and bur­row in, thus begin­ning anoth­er 17 year cycle, a process Samuel Orr, a time lapse pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er spe­cial­iz­ing in nature doc­u­men­tary, doc­u­ments in macro close up in Return of the Cicadas, above.

His adven­tures with Brood X date to their last emer­gence in 2004, when he was a stu­dent at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty, work­ing in a lab with a pro­fes­sor whose area of exper­tise was cicadas.

While wait­ing around for Brood X’s next appear­ance, he trav­eled around the coun­try and as far as Aus­tralia, gath­er­ing over 200 hours of footage of oth­er peri­od­i­cal cicadas for an hour long, Kick­starter-fund­ed film that aired on PBS in 2012.

Brood X has a way of ensur­ing that we humans will also observe a 17 year cycle, at least those of us who live in the states the Great East­ern Brood calls home.

Some cel­e­brate with com­mem­o­ra­tive merch. This year, that means face masks as well as an ever bur­geon­ing assort­ment of t‑shirts, mugs, and oth­er para­pher­na­lia.

Also new this year, Cica­da Safari, ento­mol­o­gist Dr. Gene Kritsky’s smart­phone app for cit­i­zen sci­en­tists eager to help map the 2021 emer­gence with pho­tos and loca­tion.

There are some among us who com­plain about the males’ lusty cho­rus, which can rival garbage dis­pos­als, lawn mow­ers, and jack­ham­mers in terms of deci­bels.

Those con­cerned with the planet’s health can use the data from this and past emer­gences to dis­cuss the impact of cli­mate change and defor­esta­tion. Brood X is list­ed as “Near Threat­ened” on the Inter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature’s Red List.

Some of us are moved to write poet­ry and songs, though we don’t always get the species right — wit­ness Ogden Nash’s Locust-Lovers, Atten­tion! (1936) and Bob Dylan’s Day of the Locusts (1970).

Inevitably, there will be arti­cles about eat­ing them. It’s true that they’re a hyper­local source of sus­tain­able pro­tein, albeit one that’s rarely on the menu. (The Ononda­ga Nation cel­e­brates — and cer­e­mo­ni­al­ly sam­ples — Brood VII every 17 years, cred­it­ing the insects with sav­ing their ances­tors from star­va­tion after the Con­ti­nen­tal Army destroyed their vil­lages and food sources in 1779.)

Human nature is such that we can’t help but reflect on the twists and turns our lives have tak­en over the last 17 years.

A woman in Mary­land planned a cica­da themed wed­ding to coin­cide with Brood X’s 1987 emer­gence, hav­ing been born two emer­gences before, and grad­u­at­ed from Bryn Mawr dur­ing the 1970 emer­gence, as 50 miles away, Bob Dylan was hav­ing his fate­ful encounter on the cam­pus of Prince­ton.

Most of us will find that our mile­stones have been a bit more acci­den­tal in nature.

Brood X’s emer­gence also serves as a lens through which to view 17 years in the life of our coun­try. The Onion took this to the edge sev­er­al years ago with an arti­cle from the point of view of Brood II, but it’ll be hard to top the 17-year chunk of recent his­to­ry Brood X and the humans who have been liv­ing atop them since 2004 will have to digest.

Speak­ing of his­to­ry, Brood X Mania has been around much longer than any of us have been alive, and prob­a­bly pre­dates a Philadel­phia pastor’s descrip­tion of the 1715 emer­gence in his jour­nal (though we’ll give him FIRST!!! since no ear­li­er accounts have sur­faced).

Pri­or to the Inter­net, ento­mol­o­gist Charles L. Marlatt’s The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da: An Account of Cica­da Sep­ten­dec­im, Its Nat­ur­al Ene­mies and the Means of Pre­vent­ing Its Injury (1907) was the go to source for all things cica­da relat­ed, and it remains a fas­ci­nat­ing read.

In addi­tion to lots of nit­ty grit­ty on the insects’ anato­my, habits, diet, and habi­tat, he quotes lib­er­al­ly from oth­er cica­da experts, from both his own era and before. The anec­do­tal evi­dence sug­gests our obses­sion is far from new.

These days, any­one armed with a smart­phone can make a record­ing of Brood X’s cacoph­o­ny, but back then, experts in the field were tasked with try­ing to cap­ture it in print.

Pro­fes­sor Charles Valen­tine Riley com­pared the sound ear­ly in the sea­son, when the first males were emerg­ing to the “whistling of a train pass­ing through a short tun­nel” and also, “the croak­ing of cer­tain frogs.” (For those need­ing help with pro­nun­ci­a­tion, he ren­dered it pho­net­i­cal­ly as “Pha-r-r-r-aoh.”)

Pro­fes­sor Asa Fitch’s described high sea­son in New York state, when a max­i­mum of males sing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly:

tsh-e-e-E-E-E-E-e-ou, uttered con­tin­u­ous­ly and pro­longed to a quar­ter or half minute in length, the mid­dle note deaf­en­ing­ly shrill, loud and pierc­ing to the ear

Mar­latt him­self wor­ried, pre­ma­ture­ly but not with­out rea­son, that the march of civ­i­liza­tion would bring about extinc­tion by over-clear­ing the dense­ly wood­ed areas that are essen­tial to the cicadas’ repro­duc­tive rit­u­als while offer­ing a bit of pro­tec­tion from preda­tors.

Dr. Samuel P. Hil­dreth of Mari­et­ta, Ohio not­ed in 1830 that “hogs eat them in pref­er­ence to any oth­er food” and that birds were such fans “that very few birds were seen around our gar­dens dur­ing their con­tin­u­ance and our cher­ries, etc, remained unmo­lest­ed.”

Dr. Leland Oss­ian Howard was erro­neous­ly cred­it­ed with con­duct­ing “the first exper­i­ments of cica­da as an arti­cle of human food” in ear­ly sum­mer 1885. Mar­latt repro­duces the account of an eye­wit­ness who seemed to fan­cy them­selves a bit of a restau­rant crit­ic:

With the aid of the Doctor’s cook, he had pre­pared a plain stew, a milk stew, and a broil. The Cicadae were col­lect­ed just as they emerged from pupae and were thrown into cold water, in which they remained overnight. They were cooked the next morn­ing, and served at break­fast time. They impart­ed a dis­tinct and not unpleas­ant fla­vor to the stew, but they were not at all palat­able them­selves, as they were reduced to noth­ing but bits of flab­by skin. The broil lacked sub­stance. The most palat­able method of cook­ing is to fry in bat­ter, when they remind one of shrimps. They will nev­er prove a del­i­ca­cy.

We leave you with the thoughts of Dr Gideon B. Smith of Bal­ti­more, whose attempt to cap­ture a mer­cu­r­ial month turns bit­ter­sweet, and all too relat­able:

The music or song pro­duced by the myr­i­ads of these insects in a warm day from about the 25th of May to the mid­dle of June is won­der­ful. It is not deaf­en­ing, as many describe it; even at its height it does not inter­rupt con­ver­sa­tion. It seems like an atmos­phere of wild, monot­o­nous sound, in which all oth­er sounds float with per­fect dis­tinct­ness. After a day or two this music becomes tire­some and dole­ful, and to many very dis­agree­able. To me, it was oth­er­wise, and when I heard the last note on the 25th of June the melan­choly reflec­tion occurred. Shall I live to hear it yet again?

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Sta­tion That Streams the Sooth­ing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

How Sounds Are Faked For Nature Doc­u­men­taries: Meet the Artists Who Cre­ate the Sounds of Fish, Spi­ders, Orang­utans, Mush­rooms & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Wel­come back, Brood X Over­lords! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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BirdCast: You Can Now Forecast the Migration of Birds Across the U.S. Just Like the Weather

in Maps, Nature | March 26th, 2021

We talk about the weath­er more often than we talk about most things, oth­er nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na includ­ed. We cer­tain­ly talk about the weath­er more often than we talk about birds, much to the dis­ap­point­ment of ornitho­log­i­cal enthu­si­asts. This could be down to the com­par­a­tive robust­ness of weath­er pre­dic­tion, both as a tra­di­tion and as a dai­ly tech­no­log­i­cal pres­ence in our lives. We can hard­ly avoid see­ing the weath­er fore­cast, but when was the last time you checked the bird fore­cast? Such a thing does, in fact, exist, though it’s only come into exis­tence recent­ly, in the form of Bird­cast, which pro­vides “real-time pre­dic­tions of bird migra­tions: when they migrate, where they migrate, and how far they will be fly­ing.”

Devel­oped by Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty and the Cor­nell Lab of Ornithol­o­gy, Bird­Cast offers both live bird migra­tion maps and bird fore­cast migra­tion maps for the Unit­ed States. “These fore­casts come from mod­els trained on the last 23 years of bird move­ments in the atmos­phere as detect­ed by the US NEXRAD weath­er sur­veil­lance radar net­work,” says Bird­Cast’s web site.

Unprece­dent­ed in both the kind of infor­ma­tion they pro­vide and the detail in which they pro­vide it, “these bird migra­tion maps rep­re­sent­ed the cul­mi­na­tion of a 20-year long vision, so too the begin­nings of new inspi­ra­tion for the next gen­er­a­tion of bird migra­tion research, out­reach and edu­ca­tion, and appli­ca­tion.”

You can learn more about the devel­op­ment and work­ings of Bird­Cast in the record­ed webi­nar below, fea­tur­ing research asso­ciate Adri­aan Dok­ter and Julia Wang, leader of the Lights Out project, which aims to get Amer­i­cans spend­ing more time in just such a state. “Every spring and fall, bil­lions of birds migrate through the US, most­ly under the cov­er of dark­ness,” says its sec­tion of Bird­Cast’s site. “This mass move­ment of birds must con­tend with a dra­mat­i­cal­ly increas­ing but still large­ly unrec­og­nized threat: light pol­lu­tion.” The goal is “turn­ing off unnec­es­sary light­ing dur­ing crit­i­cal migra­tion peri­ods,” and with spring hav­ing begun last week­end, we now find our­selves in just such a peri­od. Luck­i­ly, our fine feath­ered friends should­n’t be dis­turbed by the glow of the Bird­Cast map on your screen. View live Bird­Cast maps here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Watch “The “Art of Fly­ing,” a Short Film Cap­tur­ing the Won­drous Mur­mu­ra­tions of the Com­mon Star­ling

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Sounds Are Faked For Nature Documentaries: Meet the Artists Who Create the Sounds of Fish, Spiders, Orangutans, Mushrooms & More

in Film, Nature, Television | March 25th, 2021

We think of nature doc­u­men­taries as pri­mar­i­ly visu­al works. As well we prob­a­bly should, giv­en the count­less, most­ly dull and uncom­fort­able hours spent in the field they demand of their pho­tog­ra­phy crews. But what comes to mind when we imag­ine the sound of nature doc­u­men­taries — apart, of course, from the voice of David Atten­bor­ough? Lis­ten close­ly dur­ing the breaks in his nar­ra­tion of such hit nature series as Plan­et Earth or Our Plan­et, and you’ll hear all man­ner of sounds: the sound of sharks swim­ming, of orang­utans chew­ing, of spi­ders shoot­ing their webs, of mush­rooms sprout­ing. Hang on — mush­rooms sprout­ing?

Nature doc­u­men­taries, as nar­ra­tor Abby Tang says in the Insid­er video above, are full of “sounds that would either be impos­si­ble to cap­ture, or ones that are straight-up made up.” In this they dif­fer lit­tle from script­ed films, whose actu­al shoots usu­al­ly man­age to record only the actors’ dia­logue, if that.

Work­ing in the wild, far indeed from any stu­dio, nature doc­u­men­tar­i­ans “might actu­al­ly be shoot­ing a sub­ject mat­ter that’s across a val­ley, or they’ll cap­ture objects nor­mal­ly too small to have a reg­is­tered noise to it.” Hence the need for a cat­e­go­ry of pro­fes­sion­als pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: foley artists, those inven­tive cre­ators of foot­steps, door-knocks, punch­es, sword-unsheath­ings, and all the oth­er sounds view­ers expect to hear.

Here foley artist Richard Hin­ton demon­strates his meth­ods for breath­ing son­ic life into a range of nature scenes. A shoal of mack­er­el? Old mag­net­ic audio tape sloshed around in a tub of water. The vibra­tions of a spi­der­web? A slinky, held per­ilous­ly close to the micro­phone. The north­ern lights? A pair of cym­bals and a set of wind chimes. Often, just the right sound emerges from those of two dis­tinct objects lay­ered togeth­er, a prin­ci­ple known to foley artists since the ear­ly days of radio dra­ma. In fact, though foley sounds today go through a fair bit of dig­i­tal edit­ing and pro­cess­ing to make them more con­vinc­ing, the tools and tech­niques used to pro­duce them have changed lit­tle since those days. The next time you watch a bear onscreen open its eyes after months-long hiber­na­tion, con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you’re hear­ing an Eng­lish­man mak­ing nois­es with scraps of fur and his mouth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

Chill Out to 70 Hours of Ocean­scape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

Watch­ing Nature Doc­u­men­taries Can Pro­duce “Real Hap­pi­ness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berke­ley

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Real­ly Made: Dis­cov­er the Mag­ic of “Foley Artists”

How the Sound Effects on 1930s Radio Shows Were Made: An Inside Look

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Explore a New Archive of 2,200 Historical Wildlife Illustrations (1916–1965): Courtesy of The Wildlife Conservation Society

in Art, Nature, Science | March 24th, 2021

Between the 1910s and the 1960s, a nature-lover with a sure artis­tic hand and a yen to see the world could have done much worse than sign­ing on with the Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety. Dur­ing those decades, when the WCS was known as the New York Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety, its “Depart­ment of Trop­i­cal Research (DTR), led by William Beebe, con­duct­ed dozens of eco­log­i­cal expe­di­tions across trop­i­cal ter­res­tri­al and marine locales,” says the orga­ni­za­tion’s web site. This long-term project brought togeth­er both sci­en­tists and artists, who “par­tic­i­pat­ed in field work and col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with DTR sci­en­tists to cre­ate their illus­tra­tions.”

Now the fruits of those artis­tic-sci­en­tif­ic labors have come avail­able in a free online archive con­tain­ing “just over 2,200 dig­i­tized col­or and black-and-white illus­tra­tions of liv­ing and non-liv­ing spec­i­mens cre­at­ed by DTR field artists between 1916 and 1953.”

Their sub­jects include “mam­mals, birds, rep­tiles, amphib­ians, fish, insects, marine inver­te­brates, plants, and fun­gi,” all orig­i­nal­ly found in places like “British Guiana (now Guyana), the Galá­pa­gos Islands, the Hud­son Canyon, Bermu­da, the Gulf of Mex­i­co and the East­ern Pacif­ic Ocean, Venezuela, and Trinidad.”

It was in Trinidad and Toba­go that Beebe estab­lished his first eco­log­i­cal research sta­tion in 1916 — and where his long life and career came to an end more than 45 years lat­er. “Although Beebe’s name is unfa­mil­iar to most today, he was a celebri­ty sci­en­tist in his time,” says the WCS’ about page. “The DTR’s expe­di­tions were cov­ered by the pop­u­lar press, Beebe’s accounts were best­sellers, and he and the DTR staff pub­lished hun­dreds of arti­cles for both sci­en­tists and the gen­er­al pub­lic.” Pub­lished in not just spe­cial­ist media but Nation­al Geo­graph­ic and The New York Times, their illus­tra­tions cap­tured the col­or and move­ment of the nat­ur­al realm with a detail and vivid­ness that pho­tog­ra­phy could­n’t.

“Rang­ing from depic­tions of sin­gle spec­i­mens to com­plex nar­ra­tive images that show where and how ani­mals lived,” these images are avail­able in geo­graph­i­cal­ly and chrono­log­i­cal­ly orga­nized col­lec­tions at the WCS’ online archive. As many as pos­si­ble are cred­it­ed to their artists — Isabel Coop­er, Toshio Asae­da, George Alan Swan­son, Frances Waite Gib­son, and oth­ers — which ensures that this wealth of nature illus­tra­tions will do its part to not just renew inter­est in Bee­be’s life and work but gen­er­ate inter­est in those who entered into this adven­tur­ous col­lab­o­ra­tion with him. But then, Beebe him­self artic­u­lat­ed best what we can learn from appre­ci­at­ing these works of sci­en­tif­ic art: “All about us, nature puts on the most thrilling adven­ture sto­ries ever cre­at­ed, but we have to use our eyes.”

Enter the WCS archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Metic­u­lous, Ele­gant Illus­tra­tions of the Nature Observed in England’s Coun­try­side

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

A Beau­ti­ful 1897 Illus­trat­ed Book Shows How Flow­ers Become Art Nou­veau Designs

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Starling Murmuration Magically Makes the Shape of a Bird

in Nature | March 9th, 2021

“After months of chas­ing these birds around Lough Ennell, Co. West­meath [a lake in Ire­land], James Crom­bie and I cap­tured a unique dis­play, writes Col­in Hogg on YouTube. He’s refer­ring to the video above, which–for one ever-brief moment–captures a mur­mu­ra­tion of star­lings form­ing the shape of a giant bird. It’s a pret­ty meta con­cept.

Crom­bie also cap­tured the moment with a pho­to­graph that graced the cov­er of The Irish Times. View it here. The news­pa­per pro­vides some inter­est­ing back­sto­ry on the video and pho­to­graph here.

Find more mur­mu­ra­tion moments in the Relat­eds below.

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via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

A Stun­ning, Chance Encounter With Nature

Watch “The “Art of Fly­ing,” a Short Film Cap­tur­ing the Won­drous Mur­mu­ra­tions of the Com­mon Star­ling

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De-Stress with 30 Minutes of Relaxing Visuals from Director Hayao Miyazaki

in Animation, Nature, Psychology | February 22nd, 2021

What does it mean to describe some­thing as relax­ing?

Most of us would agree that a relax­ing thing is one that qui­ets both mind and body.

There’s sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to sup­port the stress-reliev­ing, restora­tive effects of spend­ing time in nature.

Even go-go-go city slick­ers with a han­ker­ing for excite­ment and adven­ture tend to under­stand the con­cept of “relax­ing” as some­thing slow-paced and sur­prise-free.

HBO Max is tout­ing its col­lec­tion of ani­ma­tion mas­ter Hayao Miyaza­ki’s films with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, above.

Will all of us expe­ri­ence those 30 min­utes as “relax­ing”?

Maybe not.

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li fans may find them­selves gripped by a sort of triv­ia con­test com­pet­i­tive­ness, shout­ing the names of the films that sup­ply these pas­toral visions—Ponyo! Grave of the Fire­flies!! Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle!!! 

Fledg­ling ani­ma­tors may feel as if they’ve swal­lowed a stone—no mat­ter how hard I try, noth­ing I make will approach the beau­ty on dis­play here.

Sticklers—and there are plen­ty leav­ing com­ments on YouTube—may be irri­tat­ed to real­ize that it’s actu­al­ly not 30 but 6 min­utes of visu­als, looped 5 times.

Insom­ni­acs (such as this reporter) may wish there was more loop­ing and less con­tent. The select­ed scenery is tran­quil enough, but the clips them­selves are brief, lead­ing to some jar­ring tran­si­tions.

(One pos­si­ble workaround for those hop­ing to lull them­selves to sleep: fid­dle with the speed set­tings. Played at .25 and mut­ed, this com­pi­la­tion becomes very relax­ing, much like artist Dou­glas Gordon’s video instal­la­tion, 24 Hour Psy­cho. Leave the sound up and the lap­ping waves, gen­tle winds, and chuff­ing trains turn into some­thing wor­thy of a slash­er flick.

Final­ly, with so much atten­tion focussed on Mars these days, we can’t help imag­in­ing what alien life forms might make of these earth­ly visions—ahh, this green, sheep-dot­ted pas­ture does low­er my stress lev­el… wait, WTF was THAT!? Noth­ing on my home plan­et pre­pared me for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a mon­strous winged house com­prised of over­grown bag­pipes and chick­en legs lum­ber­ing through the coun­try­side!

We con­cede that 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li is a pleas­ant thing to have play­ing in the back­ground as we wait for COVID restric­tions to be lift­ed… but ulti­mate­ly, you may find these 36 min­utes of music from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li films more gen­uine­ly relax­ing.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

A Mag­i­cal Look Inside the Paint­ing Process of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Artist Kazuo Oga

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Puts Online 400 Images from Eight Clas­sic Films, and Lets You Down­load Them for Free

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Deadliest Garden in the World: Visit Alnwick’s Poison Garden in Northumberland, England

in Nature, Travel | January 19th, 2021

The mind reels to think of all the ear­ly humans who sac­ri­ficed them­selves, unwit­ting­ly, in the pre­his­toric quest to learn which plants were safe to eat, which were suit­able for heal­ing, and which would maim or kill who­ev­er who touched them. Even now, of course, the great major­i­ty of us rely on experts to make these dis­tinc­tions for us. Unless we’re steeped in field train­ing and/or folk knowl­edge, it’s safe to say most of us wouldn’t have a clue how to avoid poi­son­ing our­selves in the wild.

This need not over­ly con­cern us on a vis­it to The Poi­son Gar­den, how­ev­er. Nes­tled in man­i­cured lanes at Alnwick Gar­den, “one of north England’s most beau­ti­ful attrac­tions,” Natasha Geil­ing writes at Smith­son­ian, the Poi­son Gar­den includes such infa­mous killers as hem­lock, Atropa bel­ladon­na (a.k.a. Dead­ly Night­shade), and Strych­nos nux-vom­i­ca, the source of strych­nine, in its col­lec­tions. Just don’t touch the plants and you should be fine. Oh, and also, guides tell vis­i­tors, “don’t even smell them.” It should go with­out say­ing that tast­ing is out.

The Poi­son Gar­den is hard­ly the main attrac­tion at Alnwick, in Northum­ber­land. The cas­tle itself was used as the set­ting for Hog­warts in the first two Har­ry Pot­ter films. The 14 acres of con­tro­ver­sial mod­ern land­scape gardens–designed by the flam­boy­ant Jane Per­cy, Duchess of Northum­ber­land–have become famous in their own right, in part for vio­lat­ing “England’s archi­tec­tur­al pat­ri­mo­ny,” a scan­dal you can read about here. (One gar­den design­er and crit­ic called it a “pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment, the dream of a girl who looks like Posh and lives at Hog­warts.”)

The duchess responds to crit­i­cism of her extrav­a­gant designs with a shrug. “A lot of my ideas come from Las Vegas and Euro Dis­ney,” she admits. The Poi­son Gar­den has a much more ven­er­a­ble source, the Orto Botan­i­co in Pad­ua, the old­est extant aca­d­e­m­ic botan­i­cal gar­den, found­ed in 1545, with its own poi­son gar­den that dates to the time of the Medicis. After a vis­it, Per­cy “became enthralled with the idea of cre­at­ing a gar­den of plants that could kill instead of heal,” writes Geil­ing. She thought of it, specif­i­cal­ly, as “a way to inter­est chil­dren.” As the duchess says:

Chil­dren don’t care that aspirin comes from the bark of a tree. What’s real­ly inter­est­ing is to know how a plant kills you, and how the patient dies, and what you feel like before you die.

What child doesn’t won­der about such things? And if we teach kids how to avoid poi­so­nous plants, they can keep the rest of us alive should we have to retreat into the woods and become for­agers again. The Poi­son Gar­den also grows plants from which com­mon recre­ation­al drugs derive, like cannabis and cocaine, “as a jump­ing-off point for drug edu­ca­tion,” Geil­ing points out.

Pro­vid­ed vis­i­tors fol­low the rules, the gar­den is safe, “although some peo­ple still occa­sion­al­ly faint from inhal­ing tox­ic fumes,” Alnwick Garden’s web­site warns. And while it’s designed to attract and edu­cate kids, there’s a lit­tle some­thing for every­one. Percy’s favorite poi­so­nous plant, for exam­ple, Brug­man­sia, or angel’s trum­pet, acts as a pow­er­ful aphro­disi­ac before it kills. She explains with glee that “Vic­to­ri­an ladies would often keep a flower from the plant on their card tables and add small amounts of its pollen to their tea to incite an LSD-like trip.” You can learn many oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing facts about plants that kill, and do oth­er things, at Alnwick’s Poi­son Gar­den when the world opens up again.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Oliv­er Sacks Pro­motes the Heal­ing Pow­er of Gar­dens: They’re “More Pow­er­ful Than Any Med­ica­tion”

Denmark’s Utopi­an Gar­den City Built Entire­ly in Cir­cles: See Astound­ing Aer­i­al Views of Brønd­by Have­by

What Voltaire Meant When He Said That “We Must Cul­ti­vate Our Gar­den”: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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