LIVES, MOVING PICTURES

Humpback Whale Shows AMAZING Appreciation After Being Freed From Nets

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Michael Fishbach and his friends were in the Sea of Cortez on Valentine’s Day this year when they found a humpback whale floating in the water. It appeared to be dead, having been trapped in a fishing net for a long time. Fishbach discovered that she was still alive — but only barely. The worked hard for an hour with only one knife to cut the net away and free her. They were ultimately successful.  (Skip ahead to 6:20 to see the whale’s joyful reaction.)

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A MASTER OF INTELLIGENT RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

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 The Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker is a master of natural resource management, conservation, symbiosis, and being a good neighbor!summer-sapsuckerOn a walk through the forest you might spot rows of shallow holes in tree bark. In the East, this is the work of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, an enterprising woodpecker that laps up the leaking sap and any trapped insects with its specialized, brush-tipped tongue.

The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker makes two kinds of holes in trees to harvest sap. Round holes extend deep in the tree and are not enlarged. The sapsucker inserts its bill into the hole to probe for sap. Rectangular holes are shallower, and must be maintained continually for the sap to flow. The sapsucker licks the sap from these holes, and eats the cambium of the tree too. New holes usually are made in a line with old holes, or in a new line above the old.

  • The sapwells made by Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers attract hummingbirds, which also feed off the sap flowing from the tree. In some parts of Canada, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds rely so much on sapwells that they time their spring migration with the arrival of sapsuckers. Other birds as well as bats and porcupines also visit sapsucker sapwells.
  • Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers have been found drilling sapwells in more than 1,000 species of trees and woody plants, though they have a strong preference for birches and maples.
  • Sapsuckers tend to choose sick or wounded trees for drilling their wells, and they choose tree species with high sugar concentrations in their sap, such as paper birch, yellow birch, sugar maple, red maple, and hickory. They drill wells for sap throughout the year, on both their breeding and wintering grounds. In addition to sap, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers also eat insects (mostly ants) and spiders, gleaning them from beneath a tree’s bark like other woodpeckers. And at times they perch at the edge of a tree branch and launch after flying insects to capture them in midair, like a flycatcher.

LEARN MORE: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Yellow-bellied_sapsucker/lifehistory/ac

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MISERY’S THE RIVER OF THE WORLD

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Video by Richard Borge

Lyrics and Music by Tom Waits:

Misery’s the River of the World.
Misery’s the River of the World.

The higher the monkey can climb the more he shows his tail.
Call no man happy ’til he dies.
There’s no milk at the bottom of the pail.

God builds a church.
The Devil builds a chapel like the thistles that are growing ’round the trunk of a tree.

All the good in the world you can put inside a thimble and still have room for you and me.

If there’s one thing you can say about Mankind: there’s nothing kind about Man.

You can drive out Nature with a pitch fork but it always comes roaring back again.

Misery’s the River of the World.
Misery’s the River of the World.
Misery’s the River of the World.

For want of a bird the sky was lost.
For want of a nail  a shoe was lost.
For want of a life the knife was lost.
For want of a toy a child was lost.

Misery’s the River of the World.
Misery’s the River of the World.
Everybody Row! Everybody Row!
Misery’s the River of the World.
Misery’s the River of the World.
Everybody Row! Everybody Row!