Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

Adelie Penguins: Cool birds, but they're not in a biodiversity hotspot From Birding Central, Kenn writes: If you follow news of the natural world online, you’ve probably seen the stories within the last week: "Antarctic islands surpass Galapagos for biodiversity." The headline has been repeated on dozens of websites and blogs. Everyone is marveling at this news because the Galapagos Islands lie on the Equator, and the generally accepted wisdom has been that biodiversity is greatest in the tropics and decreases toward the poles. That the South Orkney Islands, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, should support more species than the Galapagos Islands is an idea that seems totally amazing. It would be amazing, if it were true. But it isn’t true. We live in an era when information can be flashed around the globe in an instant, perpetuated and multiplied a millionfold, whether it’s accurate or not. If it’s a remarkable piece of information and it seems to come from a rel...

From somewhere out in cyberspace, Kenn writes: Just looking at the calendar (and at the falling thermometer) and realizing that a year ago today, we were on the Equator, in the Galapagos Islands. I was one of the leaders on a tour organized by Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. Although I'd been there before, this was Kim's first visit to those famous and enchanted islands. The bird on the Galapagos that everyone has heard about is the Blue-footed Booby. And, admittedly, it's hard to ignore. Sailors in centuries past called these birds "boobies" because they seemed too dumb to be afraid of humans. Actually, they (like the other birds on the Galapagos) evolved in a setting where there weren't any large predators on land, so they have no natural instinct to fear us. What they do have is really impressive blue feet. Birders who come here are interested to see the Blue-footed Boobies, of course, but we also want to see everything else, and there are a lot of other sp...