Dr. Martin Summerkorn, Senior Climate Change Advisor for the World Wildlife Fund Arctic Program, talks about the Arctic as the “canary in the coal mine” for climate change.

Do you know about the Climate Security Act? It is a bipartisan bill introduced to the Senate in 2007 by Senator Lieberman (I-CT) and Senator John Warner (R-VA). It is the most comprehensive global warming bill to make it out of committee. Read more about it and send a letter to your Senators from National Wildlife Federation’s Climate Action Center.

Surf around on the NWF page to learn more about topics like the Arctic Refuge and the Everglades.

On June 9, Mary and I went to a benefit barbecue for the Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center (WERC)in San Martin, CA. The center is located in Morgan Hill and it’s primary goal is the rehabilitation of injured and orphaned animals. Most of the animals that go to WERC are eventually released back into the wild. In some cases the animal’s injuries are too severe to make a complete recovery. In these cases these animals are used for education programs. Some of the educational animals were present at the BBQ, including:

Ariel - a Merlin, which is a type of small falcon. Merlins hunt other birds by catching them in flight. Ariel came to WERC with a damaged wing which never healed completely. As such, she is not able to fly well enough to hunt on her own, so she has become on of WERCs educational animals.

Horus - a Peregrine Falcon, considered the fastest animal on earth. In it’s hunting dive, called a stoop, it can streamline it’s body and reach over 200 MPH. Horus also has a defective wing and can not survive in the wild. It is quite a treat to see such a spectacular animal.

Loki - a Great Horned Owl, one of the larger of the owl species. Loki was found abandoned at a young age by a well meaning person. However, by raising the owl by hand, the person inadvertently caused to Loki to imprint on humans. He does not really know that he’s an owl.

Oscar - a Western Screech Owl, one of the smaller species of owl. Oscar was found near the side of a road, apparently having collided with a car. The people at WERC were able to rehabilitate him, but his right eye was damaged to the point of blindness. The eye is still there, but it appears black now.

WERC has helped a lot of animals over the years, not just birds. On a couple of occasions they have successfully raised and reintroduced orphaned bobcat kittens. Check out their website to read about some of their success stories. They accept donations via PayPal if you’re so inclined. You can see more pictures of the birds above on my gallery, just click on the pictures or their names.

Technorati Profile

I ended up going to the California Clean Tech Open (CCTO) Technology and Entrepreneur Matching Event on Monday. It was pretty interesting, but as I feared, most of the research technologies being presented were way outside my areas of expertise. Most of them were related to alternative fuels and large scale energy production.

There were a bunch of guys running around with CalCars t-shirts. CalCars is a non-profit initiative promoting plug-in hybrid cars. They have a plug-in modified Toyota Prius (left) that is getting over 100 MPG. Basically they added additional rechargeable batteries with the ability to charge them by plugging in to a standard residential power plug (right - the plug receptacle is on the left of the bumper just above the word “THIS”). The added battery allows this Prius to run much longer on the electric motor without needing to use the gas engine. Apparently this group is looking to spin off a for-profit company, which I guess is why they were at the event.

I did make one interesting contact at the event. I met a researcher at UC Berkeley working on a project which utilizes wireless sensor networks for energy management applications. Since this is similar to some ideas I have been considering, I will be meeting up with him later in the week to see if we can pool our ideas and resources.

On the nature front, the San Jose Peregrines are getting bigger every day. Actually, they’re pretty much full grown now, and should start flying any day now. The picture on the left shows one of the chicks that has made it on to the top of the 2 foot high parapet next to their next box. They look quite similar to the adults now, except for the coloration. Apparently it will be a year or so until they develop their final adult plumage. In the mean time, I’m hoping to be able to spot them flying around the downtown San Jose area soon.

I mentioned on my main blog that while doing some pruning in my back yard, I accidentally cut down a branch containing a bushtit nest (picture on right). When I realized what I had done, I check the nest to find there were eggs inside. So I used some wire to string the branch containing the nest back into the tree. It seemed like the bushtit parents had gone back to the nest, but as I’ve been monitoring it over the past week, I have not seen any signs of them. I’m now afraid they abandoned the nest all together. It’s possible that they’re around and I just have not seen them, so I’ll leave things as they are for a while. Hopefully they really are incubating the eggs which will hopefully hatch soon.

I still have a problem with squirrels in my attic. There are at least three of them living there. From what I can tell, I think it is a mother and some babies, probably from a litter earlier this year. I’ve been trying to get rid of them, but I haven’t been sure what to do. I don’t really want to harm them, but I can’t have them living in the attic either. I can hear them chewing on the beams, and I’m pretty sure they have already chewed through a wire for a ceiling fan (which was thankfully turned off at the time). They appear to be gaining access to the attic through a junction of two different sections of roof (picture right). I was going to try to trap them, but I’m not sure what I would do with them. For now I have decided to try to block the opening with a one way door from Tomahawk Live Trap. I ordered the One Way Door Excluder with Rear Sliding Door, Model E40D (picture left). Once I get it I’ll need to cover up the access point with mesh hardware cloth leaving a small opening where I will install the E40D. If all goes well, they will leave through the one way door during the day and not be able to get back in. If they continue to be problematic, I can also use the rear sliding door of the E40D to trap them, though I don’t know what I would do with them.

Earlier today I was at the gym with Mary. On the way in we noticed a baby bird sitting on the sidewalk. It didn’t look very safe there. When we left the gym, it was still in nearly the same spot, though it had managed to find a tiny bit of shade. We saw a mama bird come by to feed it, but it was really close to the main aisle of the parking lot. Mary ended up picking up the bird and moving it to some bushes where is should be safer and cooler. We stayed for a while to make sure the mama bird found the baby in its new location. It did, and we saw some feeding, so hopefully the little bird will be ok.

I went to the Gumbo Limbo Environmental Complex in Boca Raton, FL. It’s located in Red Reef Park on the barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway. The main purpose of the complex is to protect a stand of forest known as the tropical hammock. The small park includes coastal dunes, sable palm hammock and mangrove wetlands. There are also a lot of the park’s name sake, the Gumbo Limbo tree (picture left).

There’s a nice boardwalk through the hammock and along the Intracoastal. There are a lot of different trees in the hammock, though some of it was damaged by Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. The damage has allowed some different plant species to emerge. For example there are a lot of papaya trees growing which haven’t been seen in the area for some 60 years. A 40′ tower provides a nice view from above the canopy. There’s supposed to be a family of gray foxes living under the boardwalk, but I didn’t see them.

There’s a research center at the complex including 4 outdoor aquariums. One of the aquariums contained small nurse and lemon sharks. They are being used for perception research by the Florida Atlantic University. Another tank contains various reef fish and crustaceans. The final two tanks contain fish and turtles. One tank has a Kemp’s Ridleys Turtle and the other contains 3 Loggerhead Turtles (left). There are also some tortoise there. The staff leads turtle walks during the nesting season to see egg laying and later hatching. Unfortunately I was there a couple weeks before the first walks start. There are apparently some Leatherback Turtles laying eggs along the SE Florida coast, but they are very protected and the nests are not publicized.

It’s a nice complex preserving a small glimpse of the natural Florida coast. There are more pictures in the Gumbo Limbo section of my Gallery.

I am continuing my investigation into green technologies and potential related careers. There are many different technologies in areas such as monitoring and conservation, alternative fuels, power generation, power storage, transportation, etc. Many of these areas require completely different experience from my career in semiconductors and consumer electronics. Most of my hardware experience in ASIC and logic design falls short of the device level physics and materials knowledge required in some of these areas. A lot of the fuel and transportation technologies center more around chemical and mechanical engineering. There are a few opportunities with embedded control systems and more general project management. This is my current focus for now.

There are more and more venture capital funds focusing on green technology, clean energy, etc. There are even some non-profit entities such as the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) receiving funds from the likes of PG&E. One of the biggest hurdles seems to be the federal governments close ties to the fossil fuel and transportation industries. Without a strong commitment from the US government, I’m afraid the industry will not move as quickly as it could. In the mean time countries like Germany have enacted Renewable Energies Laws which have stimulated huge growth in their solar industry. At least some states are starting to take action such as California’s Green California program. How do we get the federal government to follow suit?

In the mean time, the San Jose peregrine falcons are doing well. It is fun to watch Jose and Clara feeding and protecting their three chicks on the webcam. They seem to be doing a pretty good job. The chicks are getting bigger each day. They are starting to look like baby birds rather than boneless lumps of white fluff. I haven’t had a chance to spot the falcons during my visits to downtown, but I hope to do so. I’ll be especially interested watching them when the chicks start to fledge.

During the night last night something wonderful happened: the pair of peregrine falcons nesting at the San Jose City Hall brought 3 new bundles of white fluff into the world. Thanks to a webcam supplied by the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, many people, myself included, were able to witness the event. Though it was difficult to see what was going on in the dim light, it was obvious that some of the eggs had hatched. By morning there were 3 eyasses (baby falcons) in the nest. Congratulations Jose and Clara. I look forward to watching these young birds grow over the next months.

It’s Earth Day here in the US.
I hadn’t realized it was coming up until a couple days ago, so by the time I started looking for some place to volunteer my time, it was too late. So for my little part I decided not to drive today. Mary and I walked to lunch and we plan to walk to my friends house for dinner tonight. We also did some much needed yard work including mowing the lawn, trimming the hedge and whacking some weeds, all with electric or manual tools. I was planing to go to Home Depot to get a free CFL light bulb (they are giving away 1 million on Earth Day), but I have not gotten around to it so far.

On Friday I went to the San Jose Library to see a presentation on raptor conservation. It was given by Glenn Stewart of the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group (SCPBRG). The main attraction was Curtis (picture on right), a 6 year old male Peregrine falcon Glenn raised by hand. Curtis was raised specifically for educational purposed like this presentation. He lives in an indoor/outdoor bird facility at Glenn’s house and is taken out to fly regularly. I have more pictures of Curtis on my Gallery Peregrine falcon page.

Peregrine falcon’s had dwindled down to only 2 know mating pairs in California in th 1970’s, primarily due to DDT. With the banning of DDT and reintroduction programs of groups like the SCPBRG there are estimated to be around 200 nesting pairs in California today. In fact, there’s even a pair nesting on San Jose City Hall.

The San Jose falcons are named Clara and Jose. There have been falcons living in San Jose for a few years now, but this is the first know nesting pair. When it became obvious that they were planning to nest, SCPBRG installed a nesting box and web camera on the City Hall, a fairly lofty location which should be good for Peregrine nests. It worked! The pair moved into the nest and produced three eggs in late March. Progress can be monitored on SCPBRG’s San Jose Falcon Camera site. The Peregrines in San Jose also prompted the formation of the San Jose Peregrine Falcon Association, a non-profit group dedicated to witnessing, educating and sharing their falcon experiences with others. I, for one, an looking forward to seeing those eggs hatch!