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mica (the mineral)

@micathemineral.bsky.social

natural science illustrator, museum exhibit designer, naturalist, outdoorswoman, rock climber, birder, polar enthusiast, she/her 🏳️‍🌈 https://linktr.ee/micalow

326 Posts735 Follower58 Folgt
mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Life pie today! I went for a hike, not intending to bird, and stumbled upon a tree full of red crossbills (finally!). I didn’t have my camera, so you’ll just have to trust me that they’re in that tree…about 1 pixel tall.

A slice of peach-raspberry pie on a plateView of bare granite, white pines, and hemlocks with distant hills and fog in the background. An arrow drawn on the photo points at one tree.
mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Why are you like this? -allowed to roam the woods unsupervised as a child -read too much Gerald Durrell and James Herriot -raised by an environmental educator -NPR household -once got a pocket knife in my 'easter basket' -hippie parents too supportive, didn't talk me out of art school

Get To Know Nature@gettoknownature.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Why are you like this? - the Jersey shore - books (fantasy & mystery & romance) - Family of photographers - The Muppet Show - Searching for shark’s teeth in the local creek - My sister - Did I mention books? - Botanist, bird loving mom

mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I got some very pleasant birding done last week. I ran away to the cape and saw a TON of spring migrants, lugged too many optics all the way to race point, watched the gannets diving, spotted a lifer iceland gull, flipped over a trapped horseshoe crab, and helped a painted turtle cross the road.

The author taking a selfie on a cold looking beach, squinting into the sun while barely holding onto a camera, binoculars, and a spotting scope on a tripod.a very large horseshoe crab at the edge of the surfthe author’s hand holding a somewhat indignant painted turtle Small pitch pine trees around the edge of a pond with cranberry plants in it
mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Something that really frustrates me about a certain type of new birder is the terminally engineer-brained "I have encountered something I do not understand. Clearly this is a tech problem external to me, how do I apply a tech solution?" mindset. 🪶

Comments on a post on r/birding: u/tkohhhhhhhhh . 3d ago Could you perhaps tell us what are the painful parts you're referring to? There may be existing methods that address your pain points without the need for additional development. u/wazawoo OP . 3d ago Specifically, creating checklists after the fact, by going through your photos, is really annoying. If you take too long doing it in the eBird ui and refresh the page, you can lose all your counts. So then, I looked at the process of creating these files as csv first, but that process is very error prone, and you don't know of issues until you try uploading the csv. Another part of that process is the photo ID process after the fact. That is, you're going through a bunch of pictures and ID-ing each of them so you can fill out your checklist. On mobile, this process (for me) involves checking the photos one by one in Merlin, which does work, but takes a long time. I'm normally looking at the photos on desktop and they're not always on my phone yet, which further complicates things. I'd love a way to bulk ID from pictures on desktop. I'm sure it exists, but I would love to use the same ID method that merlin is using under the hood. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available publicly, but I may have missed it. Another one, maybe personal to me, is the ability to easily list the birds I've seen but don't have media of. I have a goal of having a photo of each species, like completing a compendium. Right now, even in the eBird UI, I can't seem to find this info without manually comparing my life list to the unique species I see in my media the media tab.
Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D.@sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Realizing I should include the main things you should do to support native bees/other insects 1) Plant native plants 2) Don't use pesticides, and tell your friends and neighbors to stop using pesticides 3) Leave fallen leaves in the winter 4) Leave dead stems over winter for overwintering critters

mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 6mo ago

It’s been in the teens or below for weeks now, and the birds have been mostly puffed up and miserably huddled (when I’ve braved a -15 windchill to try to find them), but tomorrow we are going to AZ for a week of birding. I’m more hype for above freezing temps than I am for lifers.

snowy field with cattails in the foreground and the sun rising behind distant trees
mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Five classes I took in University: Color Theory Advanced Rendering For Scientific Illustration Anatomy for the Artist Medieval Art & Architecture British Portraiture also a perspective class I no longer remember the name of but that had us doing crazy geometry to perfectly place shadows.

Dr. Heather Hinam 🍁 🇨🇦@secondnaturemb.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Five classes I took in University: Behavioural Ecology Quantitative and Theoretical Ecology Physical Geography Mammalogy (which included a winter field component in the middle of nowhere) Invertebrate biology

mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I’m so glad the pandemic brought more&younger people to birding but I do sometimes detect a twinge of hipster ‘liked it before it was cool’ in myself when people talk about when they started it’s not a GOOD impulse but it’s also hard not to feel when you’ve been birding longer than you can remember

mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Addendum to my previous post: also don’t do this shit: “Hey, I choose to leave food outdoors for wildlife but I don’t like which animals are eating it. How do I exercise control over the natural world so that I only get the cute animals instead of the species I find personally annoying.” 🪶

Screenshot of a reddit post complaining about getting carolina wrens at their new birdfeeder and asking if it would be unethical to “shoo them away”.
mica (the mineral)@micathemineral.bsky.social · 8mo ago

my hot take is that if you are in a community devoted to ecology (such as birding), you don't demand images or descriptions of natural predation are censored, you don't whine about big mean meanie hawks eating your pwecious widdle spawwows, and you don't villainize parasitic reproductive strategies