Carny Deadlines: Jan 6, 2009

Blog deadlines and more.  First the deadlines…

Carnival of Evolution #8 - Postponed for a week, but you can still get submissions in to Biochemicalsoul ASAP!

I and the Bird #91 - to From the Faraway, Nearby by the end of the day today!

Tangled Bank #121 - to Reconciliation Ecology by the end of the day today!

Linnaeus’ Legacy #15 - to Greg Laden’s Blog by January 7. UPDATE: Sorry folks, I got the week wrong on this one.  However, Greg is hosting Oekologie #19 so get those posts over to him.

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Then the more, a message from NBN guru Mike Bergin with a mission, should you choose to accept it..

As some of you know, I have the singular honor of moderating the discussion on blog carnivals at the upcoming ScienceOnline’09 sciblogging conference. In the interest of being as thorough as possible, I want to know which blog carnivals YOU favor, especially from the perspective of someone interested in nature and science. Which do you read and which do you participate in. While you’re at it, do you have any particular questions about any aspect of blog carnivals? If so, lay them on me!

So? What are you waiting for?  Lay them on him in the comments…

Nature Blog Networking: Not birds. Anything but birds

I admit it.  I’m a birder.  I love ‘em, can’t get enough of ‘em. Close friends may say I even obsess over ‘em.  There’s not much I’d rather do than spend a day watching them, or traveling to a far-flung locale to get new ones.  Sure I love nature in general, but birds are the primary way that I interact with the natural world and the central theme of my blog, as well as the blogs of my colleagues here at the NBN.

And we’re not alone.  Browsing through the birds category on the toplist will take you to page after page of blogs by people with similar avian attitudes.  In fact, the bird category is second only to the general “ecosystem” tag when it comes to sheer numbers, and it’s easy to forget the other, perhaps less flashy, certainly less blogged, groups of living things that have sites exclusively devoted to them too.  That’s my goal here today.  To introduce some other blogs about other things.  This isn’t a birds only party, after all.  You’re all invited, but for today, we’ll make it exclusive to those with backbones…

We’ll start with mammals.

- Return to regular work got you grizzled?  Even bi-polar?  Bear-ly holding on?  Check out Il blog dell’Oso Bruno for your Ursine fix.  It’s originally in Italian, but translatable so it panda-rs to english speakers.  Tired of bad bear puns? You’d better move on, I’ve got a few more bruin…

- Primates are up there with bears when it comes to appeal, and the primates of the Indonesian archipelago are both varied and less well known than the African or South American varieties.  Monyet Daun Indonesia hopes to close that gap, written in both Indonesian and English.

- Speaking of African primates, fInd out what’s going on with efforts to monitor and protect Mountain Gorillas at SOS Gorilla, managed through the Barcelona Zoo.

-Staying in Africa, the land of impressive and abundant mammals, is the Mara Triangle blog, focusing on a part of the extensive and famous Masai Mara game reserve.  This blog has the sort of impressive photography you’d expect from one based in an African game reserve,

- Australia has some of the weirdest and most interesting mammals in the world, led by the marsupial clan.  Read up on them, as well as more general science topics at It’s Alive!

- Never let it be said that North America doesn’t have it’s share of impressive mammal populations.  Fortunately both A “focus” on the wild, a photography blog from Wyoming and Colorado Wildlife from, well, Colorado, are more than up to the task of documenting them.

- If you’ve clicked along with me so far, you’ll no doubt note that some charismatic mammals are subject to stories surrounding them.  Further screw with your ability to tell truth from fiction at The Writer’s Heart, where Chaz weaves tales with just that little bit of license afforded to the fine storyteller.

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And now, a change of direction, from the furry to the scaly…

- Keeping with the theme of starting with non-english blogs, here’s Amfibios & Repteis from Portugal.  I trust you all can figure out what the title means.  I can’t read a lick of it, but the photos are pretty cool.

- The Ethical Paleotologist looks at mostly extinct reptilians, but if I had dinosaurs in my past, I’d have trouble keeping my mind in the present too.  The eight year old in me isn’t that far below the surface, I’m afraid.

- Listed as a herp blog, but in actuality about much much more, Stewed Thoughts hails from Australia.  if you thought Aussie mammals were weird, wait until you hear about the reptiles and amphibians.  I don’t know how any amateur naturalist gets anything done down there with so much cool stuff.

- In the fine tradition of Singaporean nature blogs comes SLOG, the Singapore Snake Blog.  For such a small and highly developed country, Singapore sure has a great natural tradition.

- It’s  not all about reptiles, amphibians deserve their due as well.  Frog Blog covers that beat with a really excellent site that covers amphibian related civic issues.  Frogs are a bellwether group, and especially sensitive to changes in their environment.  As go the frogs, so goes us?  Who knows, but it can’t hurt to get informed.

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Vertebrate blogs are alive and well on the NBN, even if bird blogs overshadow many.  Grow a spine and check some of these out.

Best Food Blog also a Nature Blog?

…it could be if we of the Nature Blog Network come out in force for the delectable Coffee and Conservation. Julie Craves is both a bird ecologist and coffee lover as well as a major force in making the connection between coffee bean cultivation and biodiversity. Show your support for a true naturalist by voting for her site as the Best Food Blog of 2008!

It should come as no surprise that we have a nominee for Best Science Blog in our ranks. Actually, I’m surprised we have only one! The upside is that we can all get behind our buddy Greg Laden as the Best Science Blog of 2008.

Are any other NBN members up for a possible 2008 Weblog Award? And am I alone in feeling marginalized by the lack of a Best Nature Blog category? With a pool of talent as deep as we have, this honor should be a mandatory addition next year.

Interview with Julie Zickefoose

It’s my pleasure to talk with Julie Zickefoose this week. In addition to being a popular blogger, Julie is a naturalist, artist and writer. She began field work and natural history illustration as a freshman in college in 1976, worked as a field biologist for The Nature Conservancy for ten years, and went freelance in 1991. She started blogging in December of 2005. She’s married to popular bird blogger Bill of the Birds, whom she elbows for the exalted rank of #13 on the Nature Blog Network. They have two children, and live on an 80-acre sanctuary in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio.

Liam (in front), Phoebe, Julie, and Bill at Magdalena, New Mexico

Liam (in front), Phoebe, Julie, and Bill near Magdalena, New Mexico

Julie, why do you blog?

I blog because I write, and I write because I need to. I blog because I enjoy publishing my photos, and because for me, it’s like having my own little magazine. I’m the reporter, the editor, the art director, and I can connect directly with thousands of readers without spending anything other than my time and some brain cells. (Bill bought me the new camera). The best thing about blogging is the constant exercise it gives my writing muscles, and its function as a cooker for ideas for my other writing–books and NPR commentaries.

What are your favorite posts from your blog?

Dogie Stogie,” sums up the appeal of Chet Baker, the Boston terrier who I shamelessly exploit, angling for the affection of Cute Overload cohort.

I’m particularly fond of “Manatee Love,” because it helped me surge past Mike Bergin and the 10,000 Birds people on the NBN for one glittering week. Then the bubble popped. Those Cute Overload animal fans are so FICKLE.

I like to salt my posts with a dash of humor, and like my father’s humor, it’s often pretty earthy. “How Do You Spell ‘Shitepoke?’” makes me laugh.

Because it pertains to the Nature Blog Network and gets at the whole question of why someone would blog, I’d like to share “Baker at the Beech“.

home at the sanctuary

home at the sanctuary

How does blogging relate to and integrate with other aspects of your life and work - birding, obviously, but also writing and painting?

Blogging makes me live larger and seek out things that I find interesting. Blogging puts me in the mind to share what I find wonderful about the natural world. It moves me to try to document what I see with photos, and it also makes me learn more about the natural world so I can write about it with some authority. I think it motivates me to be a better, more curious and thoughtful naturalist, writer and photographer. I’m not sure it’s all that good for my drawing and painting, though! It’s so much more fun and fast to “take” a picture than to make one. I do enjoy sharing the step-by-step development of paintings, though.

Yours is among the most read blogs on NBN. To what do you attribute your popularity?

Manatees, NPR, and the dog. I also have to credit Birdchick for asking me to guest-blog for her for a couple of weeks while she hunted ivory-billed woodpeckers in Arkansas in November of 2005. By doing so, she alerted a very nice cohort of readers to my stuff. When she asked me to guest blog, I asked her what a blog was. Of course, she knew I’d get hooked. I think that got me started with a distinct advantage, which was a readership. As to what makes people come back, I’d have to guess that they like my googly-eyed dog, the earthy humor, and they like learning surprising things about the natural world.

Julie and Chet

Julie and Chet

Has blogging changed how you think about nature?

No, but it has changed the way I write about nature. Blogging encourages me to phrase things in a way that people without extensive biological backgrounds can understand–a good thing to do, because not many people have a large background in biology. They like nature, but they may not have studied its underpinnings.

Rufous-tailed hummingbird in Guatemala

Rufous-tailed hummingbird in Guatemala

Any comments on being part of the nature blogger community?

I love having all these friends, seen and unseen, who let me know what they’re thinking and of similar life experiences via the comments section. It’s very cool to meet them at nature and birding festivals, and to know that we might never have crossed paths but for this unique mode of communication and friendship.

Any words of wisdom for new nature bloggers?

I can only say what works for me, and that’s to stay positive. I make it a point to celebrate what’s cool and wonderful and beautiful about nature and life, to pass along something interesting, informative or uplifting. Sometimes the smallest tiny thing is what’s important or cool. Sometimes the most reviled creature can be the most beautiful or stirring to me (like when Bill found a brown-hooded cockroach squirming on our bedroom floor, and found out that they’re rare, local, and social, and they care for their young and live a really long time, and I had a place and some friends with whom to share that Science Chimp geek-out moment).

I trust, in keeping this focus, that people would rather hear the life history of a strange roach we’ve found than to hear me whine about having a bad day or a deathly case of ennui or something. There’s gobs of stuff that nobody needs to know about, and staying positive helps keep a blog worth reading. Your personality can creep through without telling people the nitty details of your day. Which leads me to my next bit of advice.

I find that preparing posts ahead of time, and having a theme for groups of posts (such as a trip you’ve taken, or a place you love, or the birds in your yard, or how you’ve created a painting, or whatever organizing element you wish) can strengthen a blog. I’m rotten at “grasshopper” blogging, where you have to come up with something new and different every day. I find it leads to a totally unfounded feeling of being victimized by my blog (Do I HAVE to post today?? I just posted yesterday!) I like to plan ahead and cook ahead for my readers, storing up posts like the blog ant I am. I write them when I’m in the mood, and coast on them for a week or two until I feel like writing more. At least that’s what works for me.

Would you like to say a word or two about Chet Baker’s role as your muse?

It is a very good thing, as a largely solitary writer, to have a warm dog who smells like popcorn, who freely dispenses kisses, always wants to go for a hike, loves mugging for the camera, and makes me laugh at least ten times a day. He has taught me so much about animal communication and perception, and he just turned four. We have so much yet to discover. If I could just control his gaseous emissions…

What would you like to see the NBN and the community of nature bloggers accomplish?

I’d like to see blogging go somewhere that can benefit bloggers. I haven’t figured out yet how to parlay this thing I love to do into something that can help support me. It’s crazy, really, to be doing something that a lot of people appreciate, that I love doing, that I and many other bloggers have attained a certain amount of skill at, and yet we’re all just pumping it out for free. I don’t know. Maybe it would ruin us to turn blogging into something we do for at least part of our living. No. It wouldn’t. In my mind, there’s got to be a way to make it work for us in a real, pay-the-mortgage way. Right now, it feels kind of like standing on a busy street corner, playing the violin for all I’m worth, and watching everyone else hurry by to their real jobs. How can we link in to corporate entities that would like to be associated with us, who would appreciate our (subtle, natural) endorsement of their products? How can we make it work for us as well as it works for our readers? Is subscription a realistic thought for something that’s currently being given for free? It didn’t work for The New York Times. They were forced to reel back their online subscription setup and give it away. As a full-time provider of content, that scares me. Making a living by blogging would be a dream job, and I say that as someone who already makes a modest living doing what I love–writing and painting. Why can’t that dream come true? (grabs Mike Bergin and John Riutta by the lapels, sobbing…Why? Why?…fade to black)

Seriously, though, NBN’s hitcounter and toplist are a huge step in the right direction for getting nature bloggers the recognition and data set they need to show that people are reading nature blogs; that this is a growing pursuit that is only going to get bigger and better. And I am very grateful to you all.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have some photos of Chet Baker bottle-feeding a baby manatee to upload. I have GOT to get back to #7 on the NBN.

Anything else you’d like me to ask you, or that you’d like to volunteer without being asked?

No. I’d just like to thank you for being interested, and for giving me a chance to formulate some half-baked thoughts. I appreciate the readers you undoubtedly send my way, and I really enjoy hitting links on the NBN to see who’s up to what. This is an amazing resource you’ve created. Thank you.

Thank you, Julie.

Julie’s blog is found at http://www.juliezickefoose.com/blog/index.php. You can read more about her art and writing at her main web site, also called Julie Zickefoose. Julie is a popular commentator on National Public Radio, and her book Letters from Eden, a collection of her essays and paintings, is available on her web site and in bookstores everywhere.

Coming up in future weeks: Interviews with Florida Cracker and GrrrlScientist.

Nature News in Review (week ending 2 January, 2009)

Well, even though Twelfth Night has not yet arrived, the holidays are more or less over and the work of a new year has begun. As regular readers of the Nature News in Review may have noticed, there was no post last week in order to allow the Nature Blog Network team (or at least me) to spend a little more time with family and friends. However that’s all in the past now and it’s everyone’s respective shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone, and any other appendage to whatever other piece of machinery might be applicable.

Flora

Corpse flower’s steamy film scenes are quite revealing.

Director of Kew Garden’s proclaims that at no other point in history have plants been so important to people.

Fauna

Coral reef growth is slowest ever; global warming and the increasing acidity of seawater are to blame.

A controversial idea that space impacts may have wiped out Woolly Mammoths and early human settlers in North America has received new support.

Natural Resources and Public Policy

Kerala is recreating Salim Ali’s famous bird survey.

The call to restore the prohibition of concealed, loaded firearms in America’s national parks echoes throughout editorial columns nationwide.

Podcasts

BirdNote –Big Year, Honeyguides, wrens, chickadees, hawks, and more

(IMPORTANT NOTE: due to the present economic mess throughout the world, BirdNote, a non-profit, has lost the support of a major donor. If you enjoy BirdNote and want it to continue, please consider making a small donation to them through their website.)

Birdwatch Radio – the Audubon Christmas Bird Count

Ecological Society of America Podcast – plant defense mechanisms, inside the EPA

Green Week in Review

Nature Stories – iceberg wrangling

Ray Brown’s Talkin’ Birds – “keeping your tabby away from your troglodytes”

Sierra Club Radio - “best of” retrospective

World on the Move (BBC) – World on the Move concluded their year-long series of podcasts with their final episode on 16 December, 2008. However their site is still active and remains a great resource to use in order to locate older BBC stories pertaining to natural history topics.

Friday Roundup: Jan 2, 2008

The odometer may have ticked over to 2009, but before you get started on those resolutions check out the last two nature carnivals of 2008..

Berry Go Round #12 - It may be winter here in the northern hemisphere, but greenery is on the menu at Foothills Fancies.

Festival of the Trees #31 - My family has a fake Christmas tree, I always thought it was a real travesty.   Celebrate the real thing at Rock Paper Lizard.

And fresh out of the gate for 2009…

Friday Ark #224 - at The Modulator

First Post of the New Year

I hope your year is off to a good start.

The “blogging on holidays” poll is still open in case you’d like to share your thoughts.

Do you blog on major holidays? As always, feel free to expand your answer in the comments.

View Results

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Oh, and be sure to check back Monday for our first interviewee of 2009: Julie Zickefoose!

Newest Blogs in the Network 12-31-2008

So it looks like we’ll be ending the year with 606 members of the Nature Blog Network, which is a heck of an improvement over the 0 we started 2008 with! Start your new year off right by acquainting yourself with these 10 fine blogs…

BIRDS
A Birding Blog from Peru - Gunnar Engblom, the gifted guide and owner of Kolibri Expeditions shares his fascinating take on supporting community based conservation and ecotourism in Peru.

Birds From Behind - Miscellaneous ramblings about trying to photograph the proper side of a bird. An original!

At The Water - Richard lives on a lake in central Minnesota enjoying all the wonders of nature and is always looking for that perfect bird or nature picture. Nice!

Quantum Tiger - The trials and tribulations of wildlife photography make for fine blog content.

ECOSYSTEM
bogbumper - I don’t know why Katie made me wait so long to add her wonderful site to the network but I’ve been a fan of her nature photography and observations from England and further afield for years. If you haven’t visited this site, go on… we’ll wait.

A Bug’s Eye View - A powerful photo blog focusing on the seen and unseen beauty of the Earth at our feet. If you delight in seeing the hidden world of Nature up close, you’ll enjoy this site.

Florida Beach Basics… The Space Coast - A rich blog about the sea turtles, sea-beans, seashells, etc. of Florida’s Space Coast and the organizations and events that support their preservation and education.

FLORA
!!! - What a terrific name! This brand new blog serves up sweet macro photos with identification and facts.

HIKING & OUTDOORS
Soundbounder - This engaging Long Island Sound coastal access and explorers blog reminds me of home.

Natural Awareness - This interesting U.K. blog explores nature as a therapy and nature as the wonders it brings.

Carny Deadlines: Dec 30, 2008

Celebrate the new year by submitting a post to one of these fine carnivals…

Friday Ark #224 - to the Modulator by January 1

I and the Bird #91 - to From the Faraway, Nearby by January 6

Tangled Bank #121 - to Reconciliation Ecology by January 6

Linnaeus’ Legacy #15 - to Greg Laden’s Blog by January 7

Reminder: welcome suggestions for interviewees

I hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday.

We’re taking a little break here at the NBN, but are still open to comments about NBN members you’d like us to interview. Also, if you can think of any questions you’d like to ask nature bloggers in general or one blogger in particular, leave those comments as well.

We’ve already had agreement to interviews from GrrrlScientist (or Living the Scientific Life) and Florida Cracker (of Pure Florida). But I’m sure y’all know a lot more interesting bloggers you’d like to hear from.

Happy New Year!