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The Feather Thief, by Kirk Wallace Johnson

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In 2009, a thief broke into England’s Tring Museum and stole hundreds of curated bird skins. The thief was a talented American musician attending school in London. He broke apart specimens collected by Alfred Russel Wallace and Lionel Walter Rothschild and sold the feathers to men who tie salmon flies (originally for fishing, but now an art form in its own right). The story of this crime is well documented by an author who became obsessed with solving the case of the missing birds.

Spying on Whales, by Nick Pyenson

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A book by Nick Pyenson (of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History) details the past, present, and future of whales. Combining paleontology, oceanography, environmental awareness, evolution, and history with personal stories of field work and insight, it’s a compelling tale of modern science on charismatic, mysterious creatures.

Friday fold: Plunging Purisima

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AGU’s Centennial year is also the 35th anniversary of the publication of Clyde Wahrhaftig’s unique field guide to the geology of San Francisco. A team of geologists is updating “A Streetcar to Subduction” for a modern digital audience, and recently did some California field work to visit key sites. Check out one of them here with the Friday fold, as we visit a plunging syncline in the Purisima Formation on the coast near San Mateo.

Friday fauxld: concentric weathering rinds

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Here’s a deceptive Friday “faux”ld I saw last week on the South Page Valley Road whilst learning about the Martinsburg Formation outcrops there: Looks like an isoclinal fold in this slab of siltstone, but the curvy lines are just concentric weathering rinds. Not a real fold at all! I hope everything you see this weekend … Read more

2018 Yard List

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New year’s day is the time I tally up and report the bird species seen in my yard on the forested slope of Massanutten Mountain in Shenandoah County, Virginia. This is my seventh such annual list. Here are the previous iterations: 2012 (39 species) 2013 (51 species) 2014 (58 species) 2015 (65 species) 2016 (59 … Read more