Feathered Raptors Forever

The new Indiana Raptor Center website is open for business.

I've written about Indiana Raptor Center several times over the years. They are a local (to me) hospital that rescues and rehabilitates orphaned and injured birds of prey, as well as performing educational programs to teach the public about the importance of raptors in the environment and conservation in general. Since last summer, I have been working on their new website along with my wife Jennie, who was instrumental in rethinking the site architecture and researching other sites in the wildlife rescue world. Now it's complete, and I'd like to invite you to check it out.

The center was in dire need of a new site, for many reasons. The new design is focused on two prime objectives: 1) make the site work well on mobile devices; and 2) make it really easy and obvious how to donate. InRC does work that is clearly in the public interest, but they receive no public money. On their old site, fundraising was almost an afterthought. I won't go on too long about the process of creating the site, since I talk about it a bit at the InRC blog.

The amount of work InRC does astounds me - as does their ability to weather the almost daily heartbreak that comes with the job. They're a totally volunteer organization. Since I know for a fact there's a considerable overlap between LITC readers and lovers of living dinosaurs, I hope you'll visit the site, share a link with our fellow bird lovers, and pitch a few dollars to them if you are able and inclined.

Taiga, a recently departed peregrine falcon who served as an education ambassador for years.

Raptor Rendezvous 2013

My local rescue and rehab center for birds of prey, Indiana Raptor Center in Nashville, Indiana, is preparing for its big annual fundraiser, Raptor Rendezvous. If you're a resident of Indiana or surrounding states, I can't recommend it highly enough. Raptor rehabbers from around the Midwest come out, bringing a wide variety of birds. This year, I've also designed a 2014 calendar for InRC, which will be available at the event. The July illustration features, appropriately enough, the Bald Eagles above. They're Piper and Ben, two of InRC's residents.

I recently shared this preview image along with another one at my Tumblr. I also have all of the information about the Raptor Rendezvous there. In brief: it's on September 7, in the beautiful confines of Brown County State Park in Nashville, IN. The event will begin with a dinner, followed by an evening program starring a variety of birds. Did I mention the birds? It will be packed with birds, with special front-row seating area for photographers. The rehabbers are pretty cool, as far as humans go. They tell some good tales. Mostly about birds. If you're on Facebook, check out the event page, as well.

If you're unable to attend but would like to purchase a calendar, I can make that happen if you shoot me an email. If you can't afford to do either, I'd greatly appreciate tweets, Facebook shares, and reblogs of my Tumblr post.

Previous posts about Indiana Raptor Center:
Raptor Sunday
Great Horned Owls in Flight
Indiana Raptor Center Update
Raptor Rendezvous 2012

To see my photos of the birds of Indiana Raptor Center, check out my flickr collection. My Natural Indiana collection features a few sets of Brown County State Park photos.

Raptor Rendezvous 2012

That there is Shawnee, a young example of the extant theropod species Haliaeetus leucocephalus, the bald eagle. I met him recently at Indiana Raptor Center, a group I've been working with for a year now (and have written about a few times). This weekend is their big fundraising event, the Raptor Rendezvous. If you're a local-to-me reader (as in, if you live in southern Indiana or thereabouts, it would be well worth your time to drive to Nashville, Indiana for one or both days of the event. I'll also have some artwork in the auction and photographs for sale, and you can say "hello" if you recognize me. I'll be the exhausted grad student.

Shawnee is not ready for primetime yet, but you will get to see a ton of great birds up close, including this charmer, a Tyto alba named Oberon.



Here's the raptor center's press release, which has all of the pertinent information.

Indiana Raptor Center (InRC), located in Nashville IN, is presenting the second annual Raptor Rendezvous Festival in Brown County on October 27 and 28. Events include a rendezvous tent on Saturday, Oct. 27, 9 am – 5 pm, located in the Nashville Village Green at Main and Jefferson Streets, complete with re-enactment falconers and live birds, an education display about InRC, and a trading post full of handmade goods, InRC merchandise, small collectible antiques and vintage curiosities, the sale of which supports InRC.

On October 28 the cap-off event of the weekend is a 4 hour extravaganza at the Brown County State Park Abe Martin Lodge, 1 pm – 5 pm. Included will be a silent auction, beverages and concessions and a bird of prey display including approximately 20 bird of prey species from FIVE Indiana and Illinois rehabilitation and education centers.

Special guest from Illinois Raptor Center will be Jack Nuzzo presenting a golden eagle, and a few others seldom seen in Brown County. Charly Taylor from WildCare in Bloomington, Kathy Hershey from Utopia Wildlife in Columbus, Brittany Davis of Eagle Creek in Indianapolis, and the crew from InRC will present area favorites like the bald eagle, barn owl, and some exotic raptor species from other parts of the world.

Admission to all events is free, donations are accepted, and cameras are welcome. This true Raptor Rendezvous will be the largest bird of prey program ever offered in the state of Indiana, larger even than our event last year! All proceeds from the weekend will be used to support the birds of the Indiana Raptor Center, including the provision of food, veterinary care, and shelter maintenance for both full-time residents and our rehabilitation patients.

Truly a wonderful, family event full of fun and information, and a few new surprises!

Read more about my adventures with InRC here, here, here, here, and here. And feel free to join their facebook group, too.

More Campus Fossil Hunting at Indiana University

Today is National Fossil Day in the US, and I prepared for it with a recent visit to the geosciences building on the Indiana University campus. Students walking to the nearby schools of business or informatics may not realize that just through the building's doors, a treasure trove of fossils are available for viewing. So, I once again snapped some photos of some of the fossils available for the IU community to enjoy. Though there aren't any dinosaurs, I'm sure this blog's audience will appreciate these collections. These are all phone shots, taken through glass in suboptimal lighting conditions, but they cleaned up reasonably well in Camera Raw, so I'm not ashamed to share them.

First up, the collection of the late Dr. Bruce Masters, a micropaleontologist who bequeathed his wide-ranging fossil collection to the university a little over a decade ago. Here are a couple of teeth from a mastodon and mammoth, respectively.





A nice specimen of the tabilate coral Halysites...



A eurypteryid from New York...



A beautiful Hoplocrioceras ammonite...



Some nice Crawfordsville, IN crinoids...





A delicious Diacalymene trilobite...



The Eocene perch Priscacara...



Near the Masters collection was a display featuring a "Rock of the Month," in this case a delta slope siltstone from the Mississippian featuring ichnofossils: burrows attributed to the ichnotaxon Zoophycos.



A prominent local trilobite, and Ohio's state fossil to boot, is Isotelus, and another display case featured a mess of specimens of Isotelus iowaensis of varying sizes and states of preservation. They were all collected by Indiana's first state geologist, David Dale Owen, in Missouri in the mid-19th century. Not the flashiest trilobite, but a good, workmanlike build. It's nice to sit and gaze at such a nice assemblage of them.











If you ever find yourself in Bloomington with some time to spare, I highly recommend strolling over to the geosciences building and enjoying their collections. They've all been nicely labeled, and as with this Isotelus display, feature interpretive diagrams and historical information. We really deserve a small natural history museum, but in the meantime it's good to know that the workers in our geosciences department remain dedicated to sharing their collections.

Raptor Conservation

Indiana is currently experiencing a growing trend in shootings of raptors. This is a serious federal offense, carrying huge fines, but nonetheless my friends at Indiana Raptor Center are admitting more and more birds of prey suffering from gunshot wounds. They're usually fatal. Updates on the Facebook group for the center invariably gain many hopeful comments, only to be dashed with news that euthanization was necessary.

I'm hard at work on a poster which will be part of a multi-organizational public push to stop this awful trend. There's one telling bit of copy that haunts me as I work. I can't get it out of my head:

"70% of all raptors die withing the first year of their life. Rehabilitation centers report collisions, shootings, electrocution, and pesticide exposure as common causes for admissions."

Today on Twitter, I had a brief conversation with Sharon Wegner-Larson about conservation efforts, and the cynicism of appealing to peoples' self-interest in these matters. It is cold and calculating, but it's also necessary. In fact, it's been a strong through-line in much of my work over the last few months. This poster, inspired by a similar one used a few years ago in the State of Wisconsin, has that strategy in mind, making the point that while raptors may claim a few chickens, they more than pay their way by keeping potentially costly rodent populations down. If you can't hit the heart, aim for the wallet. It's often a larger target.


Illustration of Microraptor and Sinornithosaurus by Emily Willoughby, used with her permission. Click to big it up.

So, when I look at evocative pieces of paleontography like the above Liaoning scene by Emily Willoughby [blog], I have to wonder: even if the asteroid hadn't done the trick, who's to say that previous generations wouldn't have wiped out surviving non-avian dinosaurs by the time our current generations arrived on the planet? Our endless appetite for fictional dinosaur carnage doesn't speak well of their chances, certainly. Maybe it's for the best that so many are gone: it allows us to keep them alive in idealized worlds of our own choosing, safe from our baser instincts. Perhaps these fantasies of lost worlds can help us appreciate our own, and protect the avian dinosaurs with whom we still share the planet.

Bittersweet news on two injured raptors

On Tuesday, I shared the story of a male turkey vulture with a broken wing whose retrieval I took part in. I talked to Laura from Indiana Raptor Center yesterday, and I'm sorry to say that he had to be euthanized. Unfortunately, the amount of dead tissue in the bone was too great. However, he will have a worthy second life, as he is to be mounted and presented to a local nature center for use in their interpretive programs. He lives in my memory, too. After years of watching these birds as they soared on thermals or congregated around a carcass, I was able to see one up close, to touch it, to watch as it greedily accepted a meal of raw beef. I hope I'm not too sentimental in supposing that I saw some avian form of joy in him as he ripped off pieces of meat, flinging it back and forth and spraying us with the gatorade it had been dipped in. Birdspeed, momentary friend!


Patti cradling the turkey vulture as she places him in a box for a nap.

But I save a bit of news that, while not entirely happy, has a little more sweet than bitter, I think. On Monday, I also got to see a Bald Eagle in the center's flight barn. I had previously been in the barn with Great Horned Owls. This was a totally different experience. Eagles are a LOT louder than owls, and this bird watched me more intently than the owls did. When the center received the eagle, he was in terrible shape, emaciated, with an enlarged heart and liver. Patti and Laura's skills have brought him back to flight-readiness, and though he doesn't have many days ahead of him because of the condition of his liver, he will get to live them in the sunlight, on the shore of whatever nearby lake he chooses. You can't ask for much more than that.


A soon-to-be-released bald eagle in the flight barn.

To have an eagle fly less than four feet away from me and feel the wind off of his wings was a thrill.

Indiana Raptor Center update

I've written here before about my occasional work with the Indiana Raptor Center, helping spread the word about conservation and rehabbing injured birds of prey so we can keep this proud branch of the dinosaur family going strong. There's been a bit of activity lately, so I figured I'd round it all up in this post.

Vulture Rescue Squad!

There's a vulture in there, honest!


This week, I visited the center to talk shop and hammer out some details about a couple of design projects, detailed below. As soon as I pulled in the driveway, they had a surprise for me: my first rescue trip. A nearby landowner had reported a turkey vulture with a broken wing. Center founders Patti Reynolds and Laura Edmonds weren't sure if it was a good ID; wild turkeys are sometimes confused for vultures. But we had to go check it out.

We bounced up and down the hills and dales of Brown County, and after several minutes were at the location. We found that the ID was good: it was a small Turkey Vulture, with an obvious wing injury. Volunteer and master taxidermist Marcus donned some heavy gloves, Patti grabbed a towel, and I took a large net, with my camera hanging from my neck. Forming one point of an enclosing triangle, it was my job to keep the vulture out of the road. Patti and Marcus approached from their points, and within five minutes of us pulling up, Marcus lunged, pinned the bird, and scooped him up. Patti wrapped him in her towel.



Luckily for the bird, he had managed to scrounge some nutrition. Luckily for us, it hadn't been too recently. The vulture tried to defensively vomit, but since he had an empty tank, we kept clean. After a chat with the homeowner about the bird's possibilities for rehab, we delivered him to the Raptor Center's facilities where Laura was ready to do an evaluation.





He had a pretty bad break right at his wrist joint (seeing vulture pus is marked off my bucket list), which Laura cleaned and wrapped. After hydrating him and feeding him raw beef dipped in gatorade, she gave gave him a shot of painkiller and returned him to his box for a much-needed nap. Next, he'll visit their veterinarian who will determine the chances for recovery, and his ultimate fate will be decided. If the wing can be healed, he'll eventually be released. If not, he'll have to be euthanized. Fingers crossed for a good prognosis.



UPDATE: Sadly, the bone was too far gone and the bird had to be euthanized. He is going to be mounted for a local nature center's educational programs. But I'll always remember him like so: a creature joyful to be fed fresh meat, whipping it back and forth in his beak and spraying us with gatorade. To a second life as a teacher of curious minds.

Conserving a Jurassic Legacy
I'm always excited to work in a new production medium, and when Laura recently asked me to think about a design for a patch depicting a Mesozoic dinosaur with an extant bird of prey, I was stoked to work on it. I recently submitted this design of Velociraptor and a Red-tailed Hawk, which everyone at the Raptor Center gave the thumbs up to... next step is production. I'll be talking to a manufacturer to find out if I need to tweak anything to make sure the small detail is preserved once it jumps from screen to thread. I cannot wait to get the embroidered final product. I'll snap some photos for sure.



Red-Tailed Hawk Conservation
We've had a rash of protected bird shootings in Indiana over the last several months. Luckily for our birds, Patti and Laura know that a method to combat this has been tried and proven in other states: simply, put birds in front of school children and get the population of outdoorsmen to pay attention. I'll be helping with both efforts, but first up I'll be doing a poster aimed at the latter group. I'm really excited that we've received permission to use one of William Zimmerman's Red-Tailed Hawk paintings! My task: to drive home the point that while a hawk will occasionally nab a chicken or two, your friendly neighborhood raptors save you thousands of dollars in the long run by eating up the rodents that covet your grain stores. I'll share this here as well.

Birds are dinosaurs, blah blah blah...

Campus Fossil Hunting

Situated as it is smack-dab in the middle of Indiana's stone belt, Indiana University is naturally a limestone-rich campus. Today on a short walk, I snapped several photos of fossils sitting right out in the daylight, in the stones comprising walls along our lovely arboretum. They're probably unnoticed by the vast majority of passersby with their eyeballs glued to the little glowing screens in their hands. Though I must concede that these photos are thanks to my recent upgrading to a new phone: I now have a great camera on me at all times.









This is all Mississippian limestone, therefore composed mostly of fragments of corals, crinoids, blastoids, and brachiopods. Glorious.

#HoosierScientist

Gee whiz, for a state without a sliver of Mesozoic strata, Indiana sure has settled in here. Hope you all are not tired of my use of this space to improve my home state's science communication culture yet. Time permitting, I plan on moving my Indiana content to its own page here; that way it's accessible and updateable, but not intruding so rudely in the main flow of dinosaur content. Thanks to those of you who have offered a word of support in comments as well as on Twitter, Google Plus, and Facebook.

I'll keep this quick. In yesterday's post, I bemoaned an apparent lack of a motivated science communication community in Indiana. I asked Tony Martin, he of Great Cretaceous Walk and Life Traces of the Georgia Coast fame and a fellow Hoosier, if he knew of any other Indiana natives communicating science on Twitter. He didn't, which led to him inventing the hashtag #IndianaScientist. I thought it was a good idea, so I cooked up a little graphic.



I really have no clue how to get a hashtag off the ground (in fact, urgently wanting to raise awareness about something I care about this deeply has laid bare just how tiny a reach I actually have). But for now, I'm posting this in hopes that more science boosters, communicators, educators in Indiana get involved on Twitter and other social media networks. Maybe even represent the state in numbers at ScienceOnline 2013! How novel!

I've also started a public list on twitter called Hoosierscientist. I've got four folks on there, including Indiana natives and those who came to Indiana and are contributing to science. I hope to see it swell.



Once again: my Indiana Anti-Creationism graphics are available on flickr in a variety of sizes, and I will make print-ready files available to anyone who wants them! Please distribute widely. Hell, I've even got a banner for the new Facebook timeline in there.

An update from Indiana

Yes, more about my home state's current flirtation with muddying its science classrooms with creationist teaching. This post will serve as an update about the SB 89's progress as well as a clarification on an amendment which has been somewhat misinterpreted in the blogosphere.



SB 89 passed, with 28 of 50 state senators agreeing with sponsor Dennis Kruse that our school districts should have the option to require the teaching of competing theories of the origin of life to counterbalance those offered by science (video of the short proceedings available here). I especially appreciated the impassioned arguments of Sen. Karen Tallian, who kicked royal ass. It was personal to her, and it was affecting to hear her stand up for the constitution. "I can't even believe we're even considering this," she said. "We made this decision more than 200 years ago. I speak for the Constitution, and the Constitution sheds a tear today that we're even talking about this."

This does not constitute a law, not yet. As the NCSE reports in the above-linked story, "The bill now proceeds to the Indiana House of Representatives, where its sponsors are Jeff Thompson (R-District 28) and Eric Turner (R-District 32), who is also the house speaker pro tem."

This is idiotic, wasteful legislation. It's depressing that it was proposed, considered, and passed.

Before the bill came up for vote, it was amended by my own state senator, Vi Simpson. It states that the "curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology." This is indeed part of the bill now moving to the House. Various folks around the web, uninformed of the amendment's intention, have interpreted it as another example of the bill's stupidity. At Pharyngula, PZ Myers aims his scorn at Simpson's language in particular, writing that "They really don’t get it. None of them are science, and they shouldn’t be taught as if they were." PZ (and the creator of the cartoon included) is missing the point; this wasn't meant to improve the bill, make it more legally palatable, or soothe offended parties. It was intended to torpedo the bill. I have yet to hear back from Simpson regarding her intention, so this is nothing more than an educated guess based on her track record.

Here's the rub: even if PZ and others are missing the intention of the amendment, they're not missing its ultimate effect. Though I was tickled by the effort - and hearing Kruse include Scientology in the array of creation stories that may be taught was pretty funny - the fundies called Simpson's bluff. They know too well that there is only one creation story any school district in Indiana is going to favor in its curriculum. As Kruse himself admitted in regards to the amendment, "It wasn't something I initiated and I wanted, but it does open the door I think for the potential of allowing all religious views to be taught. To make it so it might stand up even better in a court challenge". Mr. Kruse: RELIGIOUS VIEWS DO NOT BELONG IN SCIENCE CLASSROOMS. Also, a middle finger held aloft to you for taking for granted the work of generations of scientists who make your comfortable American life possible.

Imagine being an upright science teacher put in such a position. What's next? Shall we dispense with the germ theory of disease? I mean, it's but one possible explanation for sickness, and perhaps our young children should have the choice to believe that their sniffles and coughs are actually the work of gremlins in Tudor gowns (that's what believe, and I'm highly put off that my views are not represented in our science curricula).

Better yet, imagine a young science teacher looking for a place to teach. What incentive would she have to come to Indiana? The vicious irony of it is that rural districts that would benefit greatly by giving their children a well-rounded science education would be the ones most likely to undermine it by watering down their science classes with lessons in the supernatural.

I also continue to be disappointed by the lack of a truly motivated science communication community in Indiana. Bloomington, in particular. For a research institution, Indiana University seems to have a remarkably passive community of scientists. The single post about SB 89 on the Facebook page of the Hoosier Association of Science Teachers garnered a single comment. One. Maybe I'm wrong about science teachers in these districts. Maybe it's not a big deal. Or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places or tuning to the right channels. If so - and I truly hope so - correct me. If you're an Indiana scientist or science communicator who is active on the web, let me know and I'll follow you (as well as the legion of others like you who must be hiding somewhere).

Indiana's new state flag

UPDATED! Tweaked my first design, added a second.

UPDATED AGAIN! Using this as a landing page for my efforts to spread the word, so added context.

I've designed two posters to help fight creationism in Indiana schools, after our state senate's "Committee on Education and Career Development" voted to let Senate Bill 89 through (Marc and I have already posted twice about the issue). Forgive the intrusion of this issue here. It's much broader in scope than our usual subject matter here, but I think I speak for both Marc and myself when I say that the reason we write about dinosaurs is that we're passionate about science, reason, and the educated appreciation of nature. So not to use this platform would be wrong. If this doesn't interest you, feel free to disregard it; we'll not be turning this into an Evolution Vs. Creationism blog, and all things saurian will continue to rule here. Anyhow.

The first poster is a play on our state flag - in case you're not familiar with it, there's supposed to be a flame on that torch.



The second is a cheeky travel poster. I flipped the state upside down. How clever!


These are web versions, but I've got them ready to go at 300dpi, 11" x 17" in TIF or PSD. Available at request. Please share to your heart's content.

I feel really crummy that this has gotten this far. I've been so swamped with school, work, and family life that I haven't really stayed abreast of the issue, except to read NCSE's updates and RT them. I doubt I have the eloquence or poise to make a convincing argument to any elected official. Or a fellow citizen, for that matter. But luckily it's not all in my hands. NCSE reports that these fine people have spoken up for our childrens' education:

John Staver, professor of chemistry and science education at Purdue University; Chuck Little, executive director of the Indiana Urban Schools Association; David Sklar, the Director of Government Relations for the Jewish Community Relations Council; the Reverend Charles Allen, a chaplain for Grace Unlimited, a campus ministry in the Indianapolis area; and Reba Boyd Wooden, executive director of the Indiana Center for Inquiry.

I admit to a feeling of despair that their words didn't persuade the seven Republicans and one Democrat who voted this through the so-called "Committee on Education and Career Development" in the State Senate.

But that's as far as it's going. SCIENCE THROWDOWN. For more, please do keep up with the National Center for Science Education, who does excellent work to protect our intellectual future.

Indiana's new state motto

I've got a new state motto for the good ol' Hoosier state, which I've called home since I was born.

Seems about right. Seriously.

I am an Indiana citizen, and Creationism is bullshit.