The Noises of Nature - Bernie Krause

Interesting article about Bernie Krause in the New York Times. He has been on a "40-year quest to record the Earth’s rapidly disappearing 'biophony' — a term he coined to describe that portion of the soundscape contributed by nonhuman creatures."

If you saw Bernie Krause, a sotto voce man with heavy, nearsighted eyes, seated amid the baffling array of high-tech sound-engineering gear in his Glen Ellen, Calif., studio, you might never guess that he was once flung down a Rwandan mountainside by a mountain gorilla. Or that he forced himself to sit coolly still in the stultifying blackness of an Amazon jungle night while a prowling jaguar mouthed a microphone he had set up only 30 feet down the trail.

Much of Bernie's work is available on CD. Amazon.com has many samples to enjoy.


**UPDATE**
Thanks to the Jesse Evans at www.wildsanctuary.com for popping up in the comments to tell us about their site and work with Bernie Krause. They have an extensive store of CDs, books and more, and also have streaming radio and a podcast too.

Komodo Dragons: Shedd Aquarium exhibit extended

Great news for residents of the Chicago area. The Shedd Aquarium's Komodo Dragon exhibit has been extended through the summer of 2008. WQAD.com has the news, plus here's the link to the Shedd Aquarium website.

The exhibit features Faust the Komodo dragon and dozens of other reptiles including a snakelike glass lizard to tiny geckos.

The aquarium drew two-point-one (M) million people last year.

The Shedd Aquarium's president Ted Beattie says the exhibit featuring Faust has been one of the most popular with visitors.

In other Komodo Dragon news, viewers of Children's BBC Newsround have named two of the baby Komodo Dragons at Chester Zoo which were born through parthenogenesis.

A second baby Komodo dragon has been named by Newsround Online users - and you chose to call it Indie.

Thousands of people took part in the online vote to pick names for the rare baby, which was born at Chester Zoo.

The first dragon was called Irwin, which was suggested by six kids. The winner picked at random was 11-year-old Matthew from Nottinghamshire.

Baiji Dolphins: Vanishing Point

A good article at China's Standard newspaper website last week. Three wildlife experts tell Steven Ribet of their experiences on the trail of two of China's most endangered animals, the Baiji Dolphin and finless porpoise. It includes a graphic description of the capture of QiQi, the only Baiji in captivity who died in 2002.

"The last confirmed sighting of a baiji in the wild was in May 2002. But we know there was at least one left alive after that because he died with us in captivity at our dolphinarium here in Wuhan," says Professor Wang.

"His name was Qiqi and we found him in 1980 when he was only two years old, 200 kilometers up the Yangtze from here in Chenglingji. He was stranded on the bank of the river. A fisherman had mistaken him for a fish and tried to catch him with a big hook, so there were two gaping holes in his neck. He was very close to death. None of us thought he was going to make it.

Mountain Gorillas: Dian Fossey Field News

February's edition of the Dian Fossey field news is now available at Watching Bishushwe: From One Group to Another. It includes a couple of great photographs. I love the contemplative picture of Shinda.

Bishushwe, a 21-year-old adult female mountain gorilla, recently left Pablo’s group, one of the mountain gorilla groups we monitor from the Karisoke Research Center. After almost two months of traveling with other groups and silverbacks she finally joined her current group, led by silverback Shinda, where it looks like she may stay.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Kakapo Parrots

After Another Chance To See was made a "Blog of Note" by Blogger, I was very kindly offered a membership to the Encyclopedia Britannica website. As part of the membership I can offer links to individual pages for everyone to enjoy. Once a week I'll put up a new link to an appropriate EB page. I'll also Label each EB post so that we can build a library of pages to refer to.

This week it is our old friend, the flightless giant parrots of New Zealand - The Kakapo.

Includes links to: parrot, rhizome, lek, and Stewart Island.

Douglas Adams: Hyperland video

I recently discovered that the Douglas Adams fantasy documentary "Hyperland" is posted on Google Video. Enjoy.

From the Wikipedia Hyperland article....

Hyperland is a 50 minute long documentary film about hypertext and surrounding technologies written by Douglas Adams and produced by BBC Two in 1990. It stars Douglas Adams as a computer user and Tom Baker, with whom Adams already had worked on Doctor Who, as a software agent.

The self proclaimed "fantasy documentary" begins with a shot of Douglas Adams asleep by the fire side with his television still running. In a dream Adams, fed up by game shows, commercial and generally non-interactive linear content, takes his TV to a garbage dump, where he meets Tom, played by Tom Baker, a software agent that shows him the future of TV: Interactive Multimedia.

Blue-Footed Boobies: Borat Boobs

The UK's Mirror newspaper reports that Sacha Baron Cohen (of Borat and Ali-G fame) adopted a Blue-Footed Booby for his fiancee as an unusual Valentine's Day gift.

SACHA Baron Cohen has bought fiancee Isla Fisher an unusual gift for Valentine's - it's a booby.

In fact, it's a blue-footed booby, a type of bird from the Galapagos Islands with bright blue feet.

Our wildlife source says: "Sacha has, of course, got a wacky sense of humour and he wanted to get Isla something a little different.