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What Do You See From Your Window?
Topic Started: Feb 23 2013, 05:29 PM (5,771 Views)
Bionika
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Inanna
May 15 2014, 02:08 AM
What do they look like, Bionika? I've seen cliff swallows from a ways off when my MIL and I took a little detour through Lake Havasu City on a road trip. They had nests plastered all along the underside of the old London bridge. From that distance, they sort of looked like a cross between a sparrow and a swift. I know they are more colorful than either of those birds, but I was too far away to be able to really see any particular bright color on them.
Hello Inanna

They are more swifts than sparrows.
I'll try to find a picture and post it.

Bionika
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Bionika
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This is the picture
http://senior.manche.fr/iso_upload/3458096/t_300_0.jpg
The three birds with white parts are swallows, the last one on the right bottom corner is a swift

I think that I called them swallows but I had seen swifts.
One or the other, I don't really know ?>< . What I know, it's that it had made me really very happy to see them because it means that spring is there and summer will coming soon!

Bionika

Edited by Bionika, May 17 2014, 03:22 PM.
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Bionika
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I just had a glance to chat explaining how to make the difference between swallows and swifts and now, I'm sure that I saw swifts (thier shouts are differents too and I heard swifts).

Bionika
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Bionika
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Bionika
May 17 2014, 03:26 PM
I just had a glance to chat explaining how to make the difference between swallows and swifts and now, I'm sure that I saw swifts (thier shouts are differents too and I heard swifts).

Bionika
This site is just incredible : I learn lot's of things with you, even if, sometimes, like today they aren't directly related to the bionic universe. (USA geography or weather for instance...).

Bionika
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Inanna
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Bionika
May 17 2014, 03:28 PM
Bionika
May 17 2014, 03:26 PM
I just had a glance to chat explaining how to make the difference between swallows and swifts and now, I'm sure that I saw swifts (thier shouts are differents too and I heard swifts).

Bionika
This site is just incredible : I learn lot's of things with you, even if, sometimes, like today they aren't directly related to the bionic universe. (USA geography or weather for instance...).

Bionika
I'm rather disappointed that the what bird site is really only for North America. It would be nice to have a search engine like they do for the other continents as well. I really like the fact that you can plug in certain descriptions and be able to find out what bird you are looking at. I think I was doing a search for a type of hawk (turned out to be a Cooper's Hawk) and I happened to stumble across the website from a Google search.

I will admit I'm a science geek and that I have my parents to that for that. They instilled an appreciation for anything and everything scientific in me at a very young age. I remember my dad going on business trips and bringing home introduction to astronomy books for me and answering any science questions I had in a very scientific way. (Which usually meant any explanation longer than a few sentences would go right over my head, but I kept coming back to try to figure out why I wasn't understanding and asking lots of questions. Like how could the sun be so hot it can't have water, not even steam? :D Took me a while but my dad was always very patient with his explanations.) My mom was more partcipatory. We would race out at sunset and challenge one another on who could find Venus in the evening sky first. I usually one, but I think more than a few times she let me. She also told me about going through the hurricane of 1938 growing up in Boston and no one in her family really knowing what it was until later.

I would say it was because of them that we watched so much of SMDM and Bionic Woman ( and Star Trek, Star Wars, Tron, etc). If my dad had been a more diehard sports fan or my mom more of a soap opera watcher, I probably have more of a reaction of "bionic say what now"?

Anyway, I'm glad you learned some new things. I like giving my knowledge to others because then they get to learn about interesting science information also. Eh, does that make sense? In other words, I'm very happy to know that you are happy with the information and find it useful. :D

BTW, swifts... Haven't seen them in the part of town that I'm living in now. Apparently there's a whole colony living down by the university's football stadium. IIRC, I read an article where they are considered invasive here. The ones here are suppose to be native to areas around the Colorado river, they somehow got brought to the eastern side of the state and are now creating problems for the native bird species, basically diminishing their numbers. Can't remember what the people were doing, if anything, to try to resolve the situation, though.
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Bionika
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Inanna
May 18 2014, 03:07 AM
I'm rather disappointed that the what bird site is really only for North America.
Does it mean that you can't open the link or can open it bit have ablank page then?

Bionika
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Bionika
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Inanna, do you work in science field now?

Bionika
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Inanna
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Bionika
May 18 2014, 06:17 AM
Inanna, do you work in science field now?

Bionika
Regarding what bird, I meant that the search is limited to birds you would find in North America, as opposed to if you were in Europe, Asia, or South America, etc and saw a bird there that you were curious about what it was. That being said, there are some birds that are indigenous to other continents that you can find in the search engine because there are groups of them that have been brought to the US and through one way or another have grown and thrived in the area. For example, there are several groups of parrots in the northern Orange County area because back in the 1970's, there was an accident on Interstate 5, a main freeway through the region, and an entire truckload of parrots escaped. When I go to visit my parents, you can hear entire treefuls of them squawking in the park a couple of blocks away from my parents' house.

Nope, sadly no science degree, my first semester of calculus pretty much killed those dreams. I was spending about 6 to 8 hours a night just doing calculus homework and still doing poorly in class, so I threw in the towel half way through the semester because my other classes were suffering. People have told me that I would probably make a really good docent at a science museum if I ever wanted to do that, but I had to get my bills paid, so I ended up having a lot of jobs in retail and customer service instead. Though, honestly, I think I'd be much happier with a docent job if I were to ever find one that is a paying job, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
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Bionika
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Thank Inanna.

Could you explain me what is a "docent"? I don't know and haven't found him in dictionnary.

Bionika
Edited by Bionika, May 19 2014, 03:57 PM.
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Inanna
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Bionika
May 19 2014, 03:56 PM
Thank Inanna.

Could you explain me what is a "docent"? I don't know and haven't found him in dictionnary.

Bionika
A docent is a volunteer/unpaid job that works as a type of tourguide for a museum or other facility that offers tours to the public. The majority of the time, the docents I have had on tours have been very knowledgeable about the place I was touring and very personable. The only times I had a bad experience was when I was at Kitt Peak and the lady leading the group didn't seem to have any training because because for almost every question she was asked, her answer was "That's a great question. I'll have to ask one of the astronomers about that." Even for questions like "Are they currently observing any sun spot activity on the sun telescope?" That was kind of a disappointing tour. The worst was touring the Very Large Array in New Mexico. The gentleman who conducted ours was overtly condescending and rude, by the time we were two thirds of the way through the tour, half the group, including my husband and myself, fell back into the other tour that was behind ours. The docent in that tour was fantastic, spent a good five to ten minutes with my husband and I discussing the Array and studies of gamma ray bursts.

A couple of the more interesting ones was when I was in a tour in France. I was in a group of twenty teenagers and between all of us, we couldn't speak enough French to save our lives. We had French docents at Lascaux and Padirac that did the tours in French. I remember the gentleman at Lascaux being so animated on the tour. Looking back, it must have been kind of amusing and fun for him because we watch him and be looking at the paintings that he highlighted with his flashlight and hear our tour guide say "Oooohhh!" "Aaaahhh!" and occasionally that would be followed by a laugh and then our tour guide would turn to us and translate and then the little cave would be filled with another 20 "Ooohs" and "Aaahhhs" and laughter. I still smile when I think about it.

Eh, sorry I am so talkative for such a simple question. I spend most of my days with my toddler, who babbles but doesn't actually talk yet. So when I get into a conversation with someone who actually talks, I can't seem to shut up. Sorry about that. :unsure:
Edited by Inanna, May 20 2014, 12:09 AM.
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bionic4ever
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I TALK TOO MUCH! LOL!
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Outside my back door:


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Bionika
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Very nice.

Bionika
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Bionika
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Sorry to plague atmosphere after this nice picture of flowers but exactly 24h ago : hail (from marble size to ping-pong's ball size).
I took some in my garden after the hailstorm, took a picture and then put them in freezer .

Even if these hailstones were disatrous (they let some "memories" on the roof of my car and made a hole in a gutter), they are at the same time beautiful because you can see how they are constructed (like onions).

Bionika
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Inanna
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Bionika
Jun 10 2014, 04:11 PM
Sorry to plague atmosphere after this nice picture of flowers but exactly 24h ago : hail (from marble size to ping-pong's ball size).
I took some in my garden after the hailstorm, took a picture and then put them in freezer .

Even if these hailstones were disatrous (they let some "memories" on the roof of my car and made a hole in a gutter), they are at the same time beautiful because you can see how they are constructed (like onions).

Bionika
Sorry to hear that about your car, Bionika. Have you checked with your car insurance agent about it because they maybe able to pay for repairs, that this kind of damage might be covered by them. Here in the US, if a person has comprehensive (full) insurance on their car, hail damage is usually covered. How did your garden fare?

I'm curious if the clouds looked green when this was happening. Reports of clouds having a green hue is common during hail storms. From what you described and what I was able to look up on NOAA, the updrafts in the storm were between 59kph and 90kph. I'm guessing that golf balls and ping pong balls are roughly the same size for the 90kph. If you're able to count the layers in the hailstone, that will tell you how many times the storm blew the stone upward before the stone became too heavy and fell out of the cloud.
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Bionika
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Thank Inanna for caring.

Bionika
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