Where’s Aldo?

unidentified snail on grape vines at sunrise
I should probably let the cutesy titles slide on occasion, especially when I’m reaching…

I mentioned the posts being thin, and this reason for this was that I was traveling – I mean, not the reason for mentioning it, but the reason for the thin posts… let’s leave my poor sentence structure behind and move on. Actually, we’re probably not going to leave it behind at all. Anyway, I had to do a trip to central New York, and was gone for just over a week. I don’t have a laptop, actually detesting the damn things, and the tablet is simply not the interface to even attempt something like posting, even if I had access to my images and a decent editor. I lined up two quick posts ahead of time and let them appear on schedule.

wild turkey Meleagris gallopavo under rhododendronsThis was family-related stuff, so there was little opportunity to chase photos – I would have liked to have gotten back to Watkins Glen and done a better job, but it was not to be. So I just grabbed a few wherever I had the opportunity, like the semi-domesticated wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) seen at right walking through yards where my dad lives, or the unidentified snail on the grapevines outside the motel room, visible at top. The snails were out in force, and I don’t remember anything of the sort when I used to live in the area, so I suspect they are a new arrival.

I must take a moment to give a shout-out to the desk clerk at our motel; I cannot remember whether it was her or I who started the good-natured ribbing war, but I’m more than willing to put the blame on her. She (purposefully, I’m sure) wasn’t wearing a name tag so I can’t really call her out here, but it might have been Theresa. Or Karen. Something feminine, anyway. Stay on top of the orange juice, whoever you are…

I took the opportunity to slip in a side-trip to visit some friends as well, enjoying some homemade roasted red-pepper pasta during my stay (which helped make up for some of the ridiculous time spent in airports.) And root beer floats – let’s not forget them. We also got out to see Mad Max: Fury Road, because, well, we had to. My knowledge about the film had remained at an absolute minimum, purposefully because of the project at that link, and I admit to having some misgivings about The Road Warrior being reimagined. Much of that vanished when I found out that the same director was in charge, and the rest dissipated not twenty minutes into Fury Road. I’m not going to spoil anything, and I’m not much for offering movie reviews, since so much of it is personal taste – I’ll do it for books with the assumption that, in being here, you have some vestige of the same interests, but the movie is pretty far removed from all of the topics I’ve dealt with herein. Suffice to say that it is not The Road Warrior, and it is not the CGI-laden superherofest that defines too many movies anymore, while still being heavy on the action – some of it, indeed, over-the-top. There are many subtle references to the previous films, more than I imagine either my friend or I have caught so far.

I am peripherally aware of some hullabaloo regarding feminist agendas and all that, and I suppose, if you’re stupid enough to find strong female characters to be unrealistic, the film might be interpreted this way. Can’t see it myself, nor am I very impressed with what many people claim lies under the surface of fictional works. But the internet is the official meeting hall for righteous indignation and teapot tempests, and it keeps our street corners less crowded. Jonathan Rosenberg at Scenes From a Multiverse has (as of this writing) a three-part take on that aspect.

More will be along shortly, as I get things a bit better organized, but I wanted to get this out before the date changes, because that’s important. Somehow. Keep watching this space, anyway.

Monday color 15

sunset over small lake in Weedsport, NY
Taken years ago while visiting the area where I grew up, this was a grab shot, seeing the sunset colors and hastening out to a spot where I could take advantage of them; a small lake just down the road from where my dad used to live fit the bill perfectly. Had I gone much farther in my quest, I might have missed out – when the colors come up in the sky like this, they don’t last, and ten minutes is usually too long to spend trying to find the right foreground.

For some reason, we don’t get many sunsets like this in North Carolina. I’m guessing it’s the humidity. The result is that my sunrise/sunset image folder is the weakest one in my stock, often only added to when we take trips elsewhere.

There’s a reason for this particular shot right now, which I’ll explain a little later on, perhaps in next Monday’s color post. Stay tuned.

On the negative side 3

teeth on unknown extinct ungulate
So, this is one of those regrets from my past – admittedly minor, and when examined it becomes more a matter of perspective than anything. Let me explain.

In 1993 I think, when visiting a friend who lived on the edge of a bog in Georgia, I had been wandering the bog in pursuit of the little crabs there when I stumbled across an odd object, and soon afterward another. They were lying right on the surface, having been exposed by the flood-and-subside action of the area, and I spent some time examining them to determine what they were – obviously, perhaps, because that’s what you’re seeing above. Notably, there were ‘cores’ within those rippled sections that almost resembled insulated wire, but no metal to be found. The interesting part was, they resembled bone in texture and coloration, but fairly dense stuff, not the porous and light femurs that I’ve found before. I puzzled over these for a long time, well aware that my impressions and guesswork were only that.

My cousin eventually took them into the college where he worked and found someone in one of the departments that was familiar with fossils, who recognized them as teeth – I had never seen the prodigious molars of either a cow or an elephant, so the resemblance to those was out of my experience. Moreover, this gentleman pronounced them as being between ten thousand and five million years old, which was the timeframe that the species, some cloven-hoofed ungulate, had been pushed that far south by the North American glaciation. He provided a family or order name, which I remember was close to an existing species in word structure – and that’s all I can remember.

Worse, I lost them several years later, and this is the only photograph I have of them. So I’m not likely to have them identified again, and of course don’t have them to fiddle with while deep in thought. This is very annoying.

And because I’m that way, I ask myself why I’m annoyed. They are items of interest primarily because of their age, and if I didn’t know that I would find them a curious shape and nothing else. They were in a location that virtually guaranteed no other remains being found, either of the owner or even of other examples of the teeth. I find it cool that I stumbled across something so old, but really, that’s about it. Minor conversation pieces. Nevertheless, I still wish I had them.

I was using an Olympus OM-10 for this photo, if I remember right, and didn’t even have a flash for it at the time, much less a decent macro lens, so this is likely taken with a 50mm f1.4 – I distinctly recall positioning a desk lamp to try and illuminate them adequately. I’m pretty sure you’re looking at the top of the teeth, the occluding surfaces that did all the grinding – they stood on edge in the creature’s jaw. If you recognize them, feel free to enlighten me, and at least alleviate that aspect of my frustration.

Three frog night

Copes Grey Gray treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis perched on pond iris
This next week is promising to be a little thin on posts, though I’m going to try and finish a few currently in drafts. But here’s a quickie.

So, on stepping outside Tuesday night, I heard the treefrogs calling not far away, and I decided I needed to try and record their calls. I grabbed my little digital voice recorder and the camera and began following the sounds, confirming my suspicions that they were in the ditch alongside the nearby main road – or at least one was, others being across the street. The recorder certainly isn’t even close to professional equipment, but it served its purpose here. You see, there are two species of grey treefrog in this area, and they’re pretty much identical; the only good way for a non-biologist to tell them apart is by their call. There is the common grey treefrog, Hyla versicolor, and then there’s the Cope’s grey treefrog, Hyla chrysoscelis – the latter has a higher-pitched call. I’ve heard the calls and suspected we had the Cope’s in this area, but it required recording the call for comparison, and I was finally successful at this. My amplified recording is below, which you can compare against this YouTube video.


The photo at top is from the ditch, and that one knew I was mucking about and wasn’t going to do any calling for me – it had already hopped to a slightly less exposed position, thus the curious pose. The recording was made after I crossed the street, so it’s possible the guy above is the one you hear in the background. One of the foreground ones is seen below, since I pinned down its position by the call. Helpfully, this one was just below eye level in a cedar tree.

Cope's grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis perched in tree
By the way, I should say that both of these were typical size for the species, which is to say, 4-5cm in body length – fairly small as frogs go, and slightly smaller than the green treefrogs I showed off last year. But since I was now getting close to the nearby pond, I kept going, seeking the massive bullfrogs that I’d seen there a few times. By day, they’re extremely spooky and won’t allow close approaches, but at night, revealed by a flashlight, they’re less aware of the danger. Thus, I could get nice and close.

American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus posing along pond at night
American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) can get pretty big, quite a few times the mass of the treefrogs. This one is about 10-12cm in body length, about the size of your fist – unless you have a small fist, in which case you should use mine as a guide. You won’t see any of these climbing reeds, that’s for sure.

And while I was there, I snagged one of their calls too, but this one was more distant and had to be amplified significantly, enough to register the sounds of the interstate in the background.


After doing images of a few individuals, some of which realizing I was close and subsequently launching themselves back into the water, I headed back, spotting a green frog along the way, the same species that had been removed from our pond just a few days ago by the opportunistic red-shouldered hawk. This one wasn’t calling, and as yet I’m not sure I could identify the call if I heard it, but here’s a pic anyway.

green frog Lithobates clamitans
If you want to distinguish green frogs (Lithobates clamitans) from bullfrogs, look for the dorsolateral ridge, that veinlike wrinkle extending from the eye along each edge of the back – the bullfrog doesn’t have them. Plus, if it looks big enough to eat a chihuahua (we can always hope,) it’s a bullfrog.

Anyway, that wasn’t too bad for less than an hour’s casual shooting. And I did some wolf spiders too, which makes me recall that we haven’t had an arthropod post for a bit, and you must be wondering what’s wrong with me. Be patient – I’ll get something creepy up eventually.

Monday color 14

Amercian sycamore Platanus occidentalis bark with autumn leafIt took me a while to determine what this tree is, even though it resides in our backyard (the former owners didn’t provide a tree legend, if you can imagine that.) It’s an American sycamore, Platanus occidentalis. Though the background doesn’t really give that impression, this was taken on a rainy day in the fall, when the rain had brought out the curious coloration of the bark sharply – I won’t swear that’s one of its own leaves hanging off the flaking bark, but it looks about right.

I’ve suggested to The Girlfriend that she use the copious bark flakes from this tree in some artistic project – they’re almost like thin cardboard in nature, with a wide variety of colors, and are easily gathered from the ground beneath the tree.

The interesting thing about the color of this image is, it’s only the small bright patches on the trunk and the leaf, contrasting against the immediate surroundings, that make it seem ‘vivid’ – take them out and the impression of color drops off.

Good habits and bad

American toad Anaxyrus americanus camouflaged behind black ant on leaf
So for today’s topic, let’s talk about good nature photography habits – and bad ones too.

American five-lined skink Plestiodon fasciatus male with red head on tree trunkFirst off, let me just say that in the time I’ve been doing this blog, both of the species seen here have had their scientific names changed, because I guess taxonomists get bored. Actually, I know it’s because new information regarding relation and genetics and all that is discovered and the changes are made for accuracy, but for those of us who strive to include the scientific names, it does get rather taxing (Ha! Did you catch that? Taxing. Taxonomy. Why am I withering away here when there are all these comedy clubs begging for such talent?) The fellow at top (the one out of focus – I’m being fartsy again) is still an American toad, but now known as an Anaxyrus americanus rather than a Bufo americanus, while the embarrassed dude at right, an Amercian five-lined skink, went from being an Eumeces fasciatus to a Plestiodon fasciatus. Yes, a dude – the red head denotes a male. But notice, they’re both specifically ‘American’ species. What do you wanna bet it’s those Europeans who are provoking these changes?

All of that has nothing to do with habits, however, so let’s get back on track, people. Nearly everyone knows that nature photography takes sharp eyes, but hearing is also important too, especially being alert to the sounds that aren’t typical. Both of these critters were photographed on a recent outing not because I spotted them, but because I heard them as they darted for cover. Neither was particularly loud either – both times the sounds were the faint rustle of leaves as I approached. By looking immediately down at the sounds as they occurred, I caught the flash of movement which pinpointed their position even as they stopped moving to count on their camouflage.

The other example of this came up several times today, once even as I was writing this post. The windows are open, and scatterings of birdsong can be heard at just about any time, including the mad demands of fledglings from the nest box just outside the window. But at times, the bird calls would get frantic and quite close, with several different species taking part, most noticeably the sharp chirp of the robin’s alarm call. This prompted me to go out armed with the long lens. After this failed to be of any use, I attached a camera to it.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus perching and irritating the local songbirds
I got several glimpses without enough to identify it, but the protective songbirds kept pinpointing its location, and I finally got a good enough view to peg it as a red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus.) This was no surprise, since I’ve seen them countless times in the area and hear their territorial calls often, a repeating cry that sounds rather forlorn. But the way it was staying down low and cutting between houses, I was suspecting a bird-hunting accipiter, like a Cooper’s or sharpshinned hawk. It’s also a good habit to know what the local species are like, where they live, how they behave, and so on – this can (sometimes, anyway) help establish what you might be seeing.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus profile in greenNow, I may be partially to blame for the hawk’s behavior here, though wholly without intention. I have been working on a small pond in the backyard, partially ornamental, partially to attract photo subjects. It’s far from done, but I’ve placed the pond liner and filled it with water to get it settled in place, adding a filter to help control its use as a mosquito breeding ground. A few days back, I was made aware that it was already serving its purpose when I heard a loud plop as I approached, quickly determining that we now had a resident frog – I took it to be a leopard frog at first, but the markings indicate that it’s a green frog instead. I think it’s going to be one of those days – green frogs used to be Rana clamitans, but are now Lithobates clamitans

Within a day or so, I determined that we had two, one of which was exceedingly mellow and would often sit at the pond’s edge without moving, even as I did yard work very close by, or when I moved in for a tight portrait. Such habits can be very helpful to nature photographers, but aren’t exactly the kind of trait that any wildlife should develop. You see, one of the dietary staples of a red-shouldered hawk is frogs…

green frog Lithobates clamitans being far too mellow
In fact, I first heard the frenetic alarm calls of the local birds yesterday, and went out onto the back porch to see the hawk take off from the ground right near the pond, clutching something. It looked bigger than this frog, but then again, I haven’t seen it since. But now the hawk has been doing a lot of flying around at low level within the tree canopy of the immediate area, so I think that, in a rather indirect way, I fostered this behavior of the hawk. We have three occupied nest boxes on this property alone, two titmouse and one chickadee nest, and who knows how many robin’s nests up higher; none of them are happy with this development themselves, since red-shouldered hawks will also eat baby birds.

So now, on to my bad habits.

Al Bugg and black rat snake Pantherophis obsoletaOn an excursion to the river the other day with the unimpeachable Al Bugg, one of the things I was keeping an eye out for, again, were the snakes. Surprisingly, we’d been out for a couple of hours before I spotted a 1.5 meter black rat snake (Elaphe obsoletano, goddammit, it’s now a Pantherophis obsoleta. I mean, come on!) Now, I know wildlife should be left alone and not disturbed, but I’m rather bad about snakes; if I can capture them, I often will, just to examine them, and will take any given opportunity to demonstrate to anyone who should be around that few species present the faintest danger. If they appear to have eaten recently, or are engaged in amorous pursuits or things of that nature, I’ll leave them be, but if there seems little chance of interrupting them during crucial times I often won’t hesitate. The rat snake was quite mellow, as they often are, and made no attempt to bite, so we did a quick photo opportunity. And yes, I’m working on getting Mr. Bugg to dress more appropriately for stalking wildlife – he’s a UNC fan and often wishes to make this unmistakable.

It wasn’t the rat snakes that I was expecting to find, especially not swimming along the rocks even though they’re perfectly comfortable with this, but the water snakes instead. We’d spotted a small queen snake (Regina septemvittata) early on, but I was after the more impressive species. Eventually, I came across one sprawled among the rocks in a rather obtrusive way. Once again, not a good habit here – too far from protective water and a very inviting target for hawks and herons.

northern water snake Nerodia sipedon being obvious
Once again, this is a northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon – still,) not quite a meter long; not huge but certainly noticeable. I was able to lean in pretty close without it getting spooked, which was a bit curious given how fast the ones at the closest pond will hurtle away before I can even see their heads.

northern water snake Nerodia sipedon portrait under shade leaf
This one didn’t quite let me get close enough to do a self-portrait in the reflection within the eye, but not far from it either, and it was certainly aware of my presence. Eventually it decided discretion might be a good thing after all, and it made quickly for the water – as quickly as it could, being four meters or so away among the rocks, anyway. We watched, and it swam straight out completely across the river, probably about eight or nine meters at that point. We moved on.

same northern water snake Nerodia sipedon in almost the same locationOn the return leg a half-hour later, I pointed out the spot as we passed it, and was asked if we would see the same snake. My answer was negative, because we’d spooked it enough to make it think the area was hazardous, and besides it had crossed over. So much for my behavioral predictions. This was waiting about three meters from where we’d had the first encounter.

I’ve compared several of the markings in the photographs and am quite sure it was the exact same one, not to mention that it still had that brightness from being damp. This time around, I was able to block it off from escaping, and picked it up, not quite getting the grip right behind the head that I’d wanted to, at least at first.

Author holding northern water snake Nerodia sipedonMy grip is not half as fierce as this photo makes it seem – basically, firm enough to prevent it from escaping but not even enough to prevent it from squirming. I mentioned before that this species is aggressive, and because I didn’t initially grab it where I should’ve, it was able to demonstrate this trait nicely, biting me three times as well as smearing my forearm with feces (a very common defensive act of snakes, as well as a few other species.) Snake teeth are sharp but ridiculously short, only used for gripping in the non-venomous species, so there was blood as proof, but that’s about all. Snake shit, on the other hand, has a very distinctive odor and does not go away easily, so I received the benefit of that until I got home.

People always ask, “Are you sure it’s not poisonous?” Yes, I’m sure. The markings are not even close to a copperhead, and those stripes along the lower jaw (seen very well above) distinguish it from a cottonmouth – which aren’t found much in this area at all (like, only once confirmed.) Those are the only two venomous (not poisonous) snakes in this region. Moreover, the habitat is what water snakes prefer, which includes the cottonmouth, but not at all what copperheads prefer; another aspect is simply knowing what is likely to be found in any given terrain. I think everyone should see examples of the local species early on, especially side-by-side if possible, so they feel comfortable telling them apart. There are far too many overboard reactions to snakes around here, especially considering the trivial risk – dicking around with your toy phone in the car is hundreds of times more dangerous.

trivial bite injury from northern water snake Nerodion sipedonUnfortunately, the autofocus wandered to the background on Mr. Bugg for this shot, and he didn’t get any others for security, so the detail is lacking here, but you’re seeing the horrendous damage to my hands from the bites. Actually, you can only see one, the slow-oozing blood on the middle finger of the right hand; there’s another bite on the base of the left thumb, which is why I’m holding my hands close together like that, but with the focus off you can’t even make out the tiny red spots. I did more damage to myself working in the yard earlier. In other words, big fat hairy deal, and this was with a provoked bite. Had I not grabbed it, it might have happened only if I’d stepped on it instead.

As for my interruption of its ‘natural’ behavior or whatever? First of all, humans are as natural as hawks, so any distinctions in such a topic are arbitrary, period. Second, considering the large number of people that would kill it, throw rocks at it, let their fucking unleashed dogs at it, and so on, we’re not talking serious impact from handling. And then there’s getting eaten by hawks, which is frequent and typical. If I convinced this one to be a little less blasé about where it sits and how close an approach it permits, that could very well be all for the better. Judge me as you wish.

All out of ifs

The legend of Amelia Earhart is now, as legends tend to be, more speculation and rumor than supportable fact, and still quite popular in the American consciousness at least. I don’t need to tell anyone that she and navigator Fred Noonan (okay, some people didn’t know that bit) disappeared on July 2, 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe by air, but the details of this deserve a healthy dose of critical thinking and skepticism, largely because numerous proposals – few deserve to be called, “theories” – have been forwarded regarding this disappearance, most of them quite frivolous. While this is going to be an inordinately long post, even for me, debunking all of the wild ideas would take a book – and indeed, has, several times over. For my part, I’m going to concentrate on one particular proposal which has gained serious media attention in the past few years, solely due to the efforts of one organization: that Earhart and Noonan actually made it to an island now called Nikumaroro, but at the time called Gardner. I intend to examine this idea in detail, based on reviewing several books and articles written by a few of the more conscientious and fact-driven researchers.

To begin with, let’s go over the status of flight and navigation at the time. In 1937, airline travel was still quite young, and most of the advances in determining location and course had not been developed yet. Most flights were done with visual cues, actually looking down at the ground for landmarks, and there were no regular cross-Pacific flights, by anyone. It had been done, as a proof-of-concept thing, and companies like Pan American were making semi-routine flights from California to Hawaii, and examining the feasibility of extending this to Australia. The only aircraft were piston-driven propeller models, not exactly speed demons, so the idea of doing a Pacific crossing in one go was ludicrous, from the standpoint of time involved, fuel, and navigation; the routes would have to hopscotch across various stops, of which the Pacific has few options. Thus, part of the feasibility studies were to determine where another airfield, on top of Hawaii, could be built as a stopover.

More importantly, telling where one was while over open ocean was challenging in itself. While aloft, a plane is riding in the air masses, whichever direction they may be going – while you could point the plane north and maintain this heading by compass, if the winds are blowing from the west, the plane will be carried eastward even while flying north, and end up to the northeast of its origin. There were of course no satellites at this time, and the only weather reports of any accuracy had to come from ships that were in the area; the Pacific is a vast place with the opportunity for countless different weather conditions along any crossing route. So while a course could be plotted with known wind direction and speed, most of the route would have unknown weather conditions which could skew a plot in any direction.

Par two of this equation is celestial navigation. Because the Earth rotates, the sun, moon, and stars all rise and set; moreover, they have specific positions in the sky when viewed at a given time from a given position on Earth. Using a sextant, a precise compass, and with accurate time-keeping, one’s position can be determined to a fair degree of accuracy, and this is how ship navigation took place for centuries. The sun is the second weakest link in this, since its glare prevents it from being used with precision except right at sunrise, and then it can only provide a line perpendicular to its path ‘across the sky,’ a line where sunrise occurs at the same time throughout. But with the moon and stars, a much more precise location can be determined – within a few dozen kilometers, at least. The weakest link in this, though, is that you have to be able to see any of these, so overcast skies will completely disable this method.

Part three is radio navigation, which in 1937 was still quite new, and few pilots knew it in detail – most of the experience with this had come from the military. With a direction-finding radio, a loop antenna could be turned until a radio signal emitted from a known location became the strongest, the loop producing a variable signal strength depending on which way it was facing. Obtain the strongest signal, know the orientation of the loop, and the originating station will lie in that direction – actually, in one of two opposing directions, since the loop will receive from both sides, so knowing which side it was receiving the signal from could not be determined by radio alone, but given any other clues, usually it wasn’t hard to pin down the correct one.

What was missing from this method was any manner of determining distance, and the peculiar properties of different wavelengths that could produce dead areas, called ‘skip zones.’ Radio waves work fine in a line-of-sight manner, but once over the horizon, it is possible to lose the signal, depending on wavelength. It could also depend on daylight, since the sun’s energy would charge the atmosphere and interfere with the radio signal. And then there’s the reflection of the signal off of the ionosphere, which could provide a much more distant carrier wave, well over the horizon, but this reflection wouldn’t usually pick up until much further away than the loss of direct signal from passing over the horizon. So there would be a circle of direct signal that could be received from a sender, and then a dead skip zone, and then the signal could be reobtained outside of this. Due to atmospheric conditions, the strength of signal is too variable to count on as a rough indication of distance.

Earhart herself was largely a visual and instrument flyer, able to navigate with known wind conditions and airspeed, compass and visual clues. Fred Noonan was brought along because of his navigational experience with Pan American, often bringing their passenger clippers across the Pacific to Hawaii. He had some experience with radio navigation, but his strength was in celestial navigation, and by all accounts he was very dependable in this regard. Earhart had little experience with either radio or celestial navigation, and for the bulk of her flying experience, including the preceding hops in this round-the-world flight, this was sufficient.

Without going into too much detail, this was where the flight failed. Leaving Lae, New Guinea for the longest over-water stretch yet, Earhart and Noonan set out for a minuscule speck of land called Howland Island, deep in the Pacific and very isolated from just about everything else, roughly halfway between New Guinea and Hawaii. Flight time was expected to be roughly 21 hours in the air, most of this over open water far from landfall, visual contacts, and even radio stations. Howland was, and still is, an undeveloped, unremarkable, absolute nothing of an island about 1/4 the size of New York City’s Central Park – the military, upon urging from DC, had bulldozed a rough runway, dropped off sufficient fuel for the next leg to Hawaii, and manned a basic direction-finding receiver on the island, while nearby sat the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, there to guide Earhart and Noonan’s Lockheed Electra in by radio when it got close enough to communicate with.

Long story short: Earhart could make out almost no communication attempts from the Itasca. The direction-finding station on Howland could not lock onto her signal. She was unable to obtain a visual lock onto the Itasca, even with it producing a thick column of signal smoke. The Itasca could hear her various reports, including that she was low on fuel and that she was running north and south on “line 157-337.” When no further signals were received and they were well past the time of arrival, the search began.

Earhart’s and Noonan’s successful navigation to Howland depended on accurate timekeeping, accurate wind conditions, and both the ability to check position celestially and to lock onto the radio signal from the Itasca once they got close. It was, by far, the most dangerous leg of the journey to that point, to be exceeded only by the leg from Howland to Hawaii immediately after. Radio reports from Earhart indicated that at least a portion of their journey was taken in overcast conditions, so no celestial confirmation of position was possible at those times. Noonan was acting on a weather report that had winds listed ten knots slower than those measured by ships in the area (not, however, communicated to any weather service) – thus, determining position by airspeed, compass heading, and wind strength and heading were likely off by ten nautical miles every hour. And when finally in range, Earhart was unable to lock onto a signal to home in to Howland. It is unclear why this might have been, though there’s plenty of speculation, but the consensus is that the Electra ran out of fuel and ditched into the ocean well short of Howland Island, and even if it was brought in smoothly onto the water and managed to float for a while, it sank before any rescue attempts located it. Given the huge expanse of open water where it might have gone down, and no indication of direction or distance obtained from radio signals, this is hardly surprising.

Now we get to the recent claims of where the Electra ended up. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has claimed that Earhart, when unable to locate Howland, piloted the Electra southeast of Howland to Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro. There, they successfully landed and lived for a period of time on the island before dying of exposure or starvation.

Let’s pause here to examine the area, and this would be a good time to bring up the mapping service of your choice. Earhart and Noonan departed from Lae, New Guinea (6°44’15.97″S 147° 0’3.98″E) to fly a straight-line, direct route to Howland Island (0°48’39.06″N 176°36’57.35″W – if those coordinates seem odd, yes, the flight crossed both the equator and the international dateline, pretty much simultaneously.) This was a distance of over 4,100 kilometers, or 2,500 miles. TIGHAR, however, claims they made it to Gardner/Nikumaroro instead (4°40’4.05″S 174°31’41.73″W,) about 650 kilometers (400 miles) to the south-southeast, and a solid 10° off of the track towards Howland – this might not seem like much, but to a pilot it’s a huge difference, especially over such a long flight (obviously, since it would result in being 650 kilometers out of position.) As a comparison, it’s close to leaving Los Angeles for a flight to New York City, but ending up in North Carolina.

So, how does TIGHAR explain the Electra getting so far away, so far off course?

To begin with, they say that Nikumaroro lies on that same line of position reported in the last message, 157-337. This is a compass bearing in degrees, counting 0 (or 360) as true north, 180 as south, so it indicates a line running north-northwest and south-southeast. This corresponds with the position line that Noonan could have obtained at sunrise, since it runs at right-angles to the sun’s compass bearing, and would be the only position able to be obtained from that celestial body. Thus, unable to locate Howland on that track, Earhart followed it to Gardner/Nikumaroro instead.

There are three serious flaws to this idea. The first is that, if they were unable to find Howland on that line, why the hell would they think they could find Nikumaroro, much further off, on the same line? And if the line was wrong, it wouldn’t help them find Nikumaroro any more than it would have helped them find Howland.

Second, this is a flight of between three and four hours, straight line, depending on power settings/velocity. Undertaken when the Electra was reported as already being low on fuel. To an island with unknown landing properties, quite possibly not even charted on the maps that were carried in the aircraft, and far away from the one source of rescue that was in the area, the cutter Itasca waiting at Howland. Nor did Earhart give the faintest radio intention of performing this little stunt. Right.

And finally, when navigation has failed to bring a pilot to their destination, obviously something is wrong, but perhaps not too wrong. Searching within a widening pattern – the line Earhart admitted to flying along, or a circle, or a grid – is what any reasonable, experienced person would do. Failing that, they would backtrack to the last known position, which was likely quite far away on the return path to Lae. But setting off on a new journey when one doesn’t even know where one is is sheer idiocy. Earhart, despite many opinions otherwise, was a highly-experienced and highly-accomplished pilot, on the final leg of a world-circling flight. While fatigue or mistaken impressions might possibly contribute to bad decisions, this seems beyond ludicrous, and hardly a convincing explanation of how they could have ended up on Nikumaroro.

But, could they have been off track, far south of Howland when they thought they were north, and more-or-less found Nikumaroro when doing the search pattern for Howland?

This is only fractionally less unlikely than setting off in search of the island directly. First off, Earhart had working compasses in the aircraft and knew how to maintain a heading. Noonan was checking their position periodically by celestial means. They even radioed a report about spotting a ship while roughly halfway to their destination, giving strong indications that they were directly on course at that point. But during the night, they entered overcast conditions, as indicated by hourly broadcasts of their progress – this would have prevented Noonan from confirming their position, though it would have had no effect on Earhart’s compass bearing. Thus, to get so far off position, they would have had to have encountered strong winds that carried them off course, of a strength and direction that they were unaware of (in a plane, turbulence can be felt, but prevailing winds give no indication of their presence since the plane rides within them, unless the pilot can closely spot their drift off course by watching landmarks – something that is not going to happen over open ocean.) Had these winds been constant for the entire flight, they would have had to have been over six knots directly along that position line, thus originating from the north-northwest at a bearing of 337. Had they sprung up any time later in the flight, they would have had to have been commensurately stronger. If they weren’t on or close to that specific bearing, they would also have affected the Electra’s forward progress, either advancing or retarding it, and thus putting it off of the position line anyway. In fact, this is supposed to have been one of the key factors in the loss of the plane, since the wind was ten knots stronger than what Noonan believed – only, the prevailing winds were from the south-southeast. This would have pushed the Electra further from Nikumaroro, not closer. And since the Itasca reported overcast cloud conditions in that direction, this has further support, also preventing Noonan from taking a sun reading and Earhart from spotting Howland, the Itasca, or the signal smoke.

These cloud conditions also throw some further questions into the reconstruction of what went wrong. Had they remained overcast, Noonan could not have obtained a line of position, and could only have produced one by dead reckoning – compass bearing and speed against prevailing winds, which he believed were different. This could easily have put them well off course. However, later in the flight Earhart reported the conditions as partly cloudy, and the Itasca reported clear skies in their vicinity, the overcast being some distance to the north and west. Even with overcast, if the cloud cover does not extend well over the horizon, a sun bearing might be taken at sunrise as the light comes from beneath the cloud deck, even if it rises into it soon afterward. And the Electra was due to be closing in on Howland right at sunrise. So it remains unclear whether they had a firm line of position (and were perhaps well north of Howland even while on that line,) or only supposed they were on that line by estimation, being well short because of the winds. The likelihood of being well south and within easy reach of Nikumaroro is not backed by any evidence, however, and contradicted by several points.

And one further as well. As Earhart’s messages were received by the Itasca during her approach and search for the island or cutter, the signal strength grew commensurately, the last transmission recorded being at maximum strength, something unlikely to happen had they been 650 klicks or so south of that position. While atmospheric reflection might contribute to this, producing an anomalous signal strength out of proportion to distance, it should be noted that this did not occur at any other point, even though Earhart was transmitting hourly updates routinely. We are faced with what could have happened, as a bare possibility, but that remains the only evidence in support of the proposed scenario of the Electra reaching Nikumaroro, while both real evidence and likely actions argue directly against it.

Now we come to TIGHAR’s physical evidence, which comprise the primary reasoning behind the idea that the Electra reached Nikumaroro. There are several artifacts discovered on the island itself, but the ones usually paraded through the press are the shoe, the jar, and the sheet of aircraft aluminum. Let’s take a look at these individually.

The shoe. In 1991, fragments of an old shoe were found on Nimumaroro, later identified as being a woman’s shoe of a certain type. While not definitively matched to anything Amelia is documented as wearing or having owned, the type of shoe has not been specifically ruled out, either (by being a size far from what she’d wear, or a man’s shoe, etc.) There’s not a lot else to say about this item, except for what’s covered in the details of the island below.

The jar. Fragments of a glass jar were found on the island as well, of a type matching a jar used for freckle cream on or around 1937 – and Earhart had freckles. Could this be Earhart’s jar of freckle cream lost from the wreckage of the plane?

Well, there are more than a few things wrong with this idea. Notably, when the fragments were matched against an antique jar known to have been used for freckle cream, the most obvious difference was that the found artifact was clear glass, while the freckle cream one was opaque white. And there’s a distinct reason for this, the same reason why so many glass receptacles today are opaque: the contents were sensitive to degradation by UV radiation, i.e., sunlight. The practice of making uniquely-shaped jars and bottles for a specific product is relatively recent, having come about with mass-production and a market big enough to justify cosmetic and food manufacturers commissioning their own run (or maintaining their own glass manufacturing.) Before this, however, glass manufacturers simply offered types of jars, and companies would purchase a size and shape appropriate to their uses and slap their own label onto it, which still continues to this day.

TIGHAR, it must be noted, had some tests run on the jar for mercury residue, mercury being a known ingredient of the freckle cream and capable of remaining behind in trace amounts through the weathering that the jar would have gone through in the intervening decades. These tests did come back positive, ostensibly a sign of support – if we ignore the sign of contradiction from the color of the glass, as well as the bare fact that plenty of cosmetic substances contained mercury back then (the long-term retention and adverse affect of mercury on health also being a relatively recent discovery,) and that the source of the traces could have come at any time since 1937.

It also should be noted that, given all of the items left off or specifically removed from the plane to save weight, including an emergency, battery-operated transmitter (more on this in a moment,) and a trailing-wire antenna which would have greatly increased their radio reception, the idea of Earhart finding it necessary to bring along her face cream is, to be kind, rather farfetched. We even have this line directly from Earhart during the flight itself, taken from a press release from her husband:

Fred Noonan and I have worked very hard in the last two days repacking the plane and eliminating every unessential. We have discarded as much personal property as we can decently get along without, and henceforth propose to travel lighter than before. I have retained only one briefcase in which are my papers as well as my extra clothing and tooth-brush. (Author’s italics.)

Source: Extract from Washington Star, Saturday, July 3, 1937, by Amelia Earhart, wireless to the Star from Lae, New Guinea, July 1, as quoted in Exhibition No. 4, Earhart’s Flight Into Yesterday: The Facts without the Fiction, by Laurance Safford [see bottom]

Given all of that, it’s pretty hard to tie the jar to the flight in any manner.

The piece of aircraft. This is one of the most compelling traits in support of the theory, or so it is presented repeatedly in the media, anyway. On one of several expeditions to the island, TIGHAR discovered a 19×23 inch piece of sheet aluminum, aircraft grade, and possessing the rivet holes where it had been attached to a frame. TIGHAR has been repeatedly and enthusiastically pointing out that it’s possible it was a sheet used to close a window in the Electra for a modification made by Earhart and Noonan for the flight.

Now, the reasoning behind this deserves a lot of examination. First off, the piece has been ruled out as being from the factory-built body of the Electra itself, by reasons of metallurgical tests and the rivet pattern not matching that of Lockheed’s. But the closing of the window is another matter. The Electra originally possessed a starboard (right) side window at the rear of the cabin, opposite the entry door, back by Noonan’s navigation station, but this was closed off before the flight for unknown reasons (curiously, because it would have been another option for Noonan to use for celestial navigation.) This was not a factory option, and no records or drawings exist to show how the modification was achieved – what kind of bracing, how it was affixed, and so on. But since it was made after the production of the Electra, it would not necessarily have matched the other metal used in the fuselage.

Which starts to bring up how far we have to reach to tie this in with the Electra at all. The metallurgical tests showed that not only did the found artifact (labeled “2-2-V-1” by TIGHAR) fail to match the type of metal used in the Electra, it failed to match any other aircraft manufactured in the US from that timeframe. Aircraft manufacturers did not tinker with their alloys willy-nilly, since this could affect the integrity and performance of the aircraft, so most were made of the same grade of aluminum throughout, for years. The notable difference in composition tells us that two scenarios are the most likely explanation: 1) that the piece found by TIGHAR came from a later period (and the change in available metals post-war makes this quite likely); or 2) that the aluminum was not of US origin. Both, of course, completely rule out the sheet belonging to the Electra in any form.

Also worth noting is how many times TIGHAR has attempted to place this piece of aluminum someplace on the Electra. In other words, they did not find a piece of evidence that pointed towards Earhart’s flight; they found a sheet of aluminum that they have been trying to make fit their scenario. That’s not how decent investigations are run, and nothing at all approaching objectivity. Moreover, the amount of times that this approach has failed, for this single piece of metal alone, is telling all by itself. Now, TIGHAR has apparently settled on the idea (paraded repeatedly through their press reports) that their artifact is an object that cannot be proven or disproven as being from the Electra. Well, that’s certainly useful.

There are a few other items that have been brought forth as evidence at different times, among them some bones discovered on the island – which have subsequently disappeared before definitive tests could be performed, but were alternately attributed by various physicians as being a woman of European descent, or impossible to distinguish between human or sea turtle. The initial find which prompted the consideration of Nikumaroro as a landing spot for Earhart and Noonan was a sextant box, which has since proven unlikely to be anything Noonan would have used.

But, given these various items on such a remote island, aren’t they, together, rather compelling to say that the Electra made it to Nikumaroro? And this all depends on what one’s impression of the island truly is, because it’s not at all how it’s usually presented in the media.

So let’s look at Nikumaroro Island. It’s a coral atoll, little more than outline around an extensive lagoon, and the only place where an Electra could land would be the beach edge. But the idea that this was a remote, uninhabited island with no trace of humans to be found is not at all the reality. At the time of Earhart’s disappearance, far-reaching search planes actually overflew the island, finding the remains of a settlement thereon, which they buzzed to try and provoke any activity from (being unable to land) but seeing no activity. On the southwest shore, however, lay the remains of a tramp steamer that had run aground on the coral reef. So, pristine and untouched it was not, and any artifacts on the island easily had a source other than Earhart’s flight.

Worse, from 1938 to 1941, there was a British colonial supervisor living on the island, as well an excess of 600 settlers at times, in the efforts to foster greater colonization of it and several other of the Phoenix Island group. It is not known whether he was self-conscious about his freckles, however…

And then, we have a seaplane base that operated on Canton (now Kanton) Island from 1941-1965. Nikumaroro is 378 Km (235 Mi) southwest of Canton, slightly over half the distance from Howland but, more notably, almost directly in line with the path of the regular seaplane traffic from Sydney and New Zealand that utilized it during that period. Not to mention that this is the central Pacific, which saw extensive air battle activity throughout World War II and is liberally dotted with the detritus of these engagements. TIGHAR itself notes 38 different aircraft documented as lost in the area, with an untold number (for instance, from the Japanese Imperial Navy) that might never have been documented.

Thus, Nikumaroro has numerous sources of artifacts at its disposal, and so the question becomes not how anything found on the island could have gotten there, but how to determine the provenance of the countless items that are found there. Bear in mind that if, for instance, the shoe could be definitively proven to be a type Earhart was photographed wearing, or the jar proven to be something that was carried on the plane, neither one were the sole (a ha ha) examples manufactured, so they would certainly strengthen the idea, but again, given all of the possible sources over a period of 50-some years, they could not constitute proof. However, we’re quite far short of that point.

TIGHAR has taken a further interesting stance on this. They have quite often maintained the standpoint that the Electra successfully landed on Nikumaroro, despite the lack of a finished surface of any kind, even though there remains the consideration that the plane ditched someplace offshore, perhaps an unknown distance away, and such artifacts were washed ashore in storms. As near as I have been able to determine, this is because they are claiming two of the many radio messages received long after the disappearance of the flight could have been sent by Earhart. Notably, the Electra only had a factory-installed transmitter, meaning that it ran only on the power from the engines in operation, and not on batteries – without a running engine (which would certainly be the case of any plane ditched at sea, even if it remained intact and floating,) there would be no radio transmissions. This is the contingency that the emergency transmitter would have served in, had it not been left behind in the interests of saving weight.

Any transmissions from long after the last signal received by the Itasca have been largely ignored by most researchers, with good reason: most of them were in morse, which Earhart wasn’t very proficient in, and the morse key had been removed from the aircraft as well, leaving them with only voice communications. This may seem odd to us now, but a morse signal was stronger, needing no modulation to carry intonations, and could carry much farther with more clarity – it remained a requirement of amateur radio operators even well into the 1970s when I myself had studied to obtain a license. These transmissions are openly considered hoaxes, and of course the voice of a well-known celebrity is much harder to mimic than just morse transmissions. It is unfortunate that, during the initial search period, the Itasca was kept busy chasing down several of these because almost no one knew that the morse key was missing from the aircraft (one of many examples of the bad communications and planning for this leg of the trip.) It should be noted that keying the transmitter (opening the microphone to transmit) can be used as a stand-in for a morse key, but weakly, since it only opens the channel to background noise and static, far less distinct than a morse key.

TIGHAR has a curious take on this. In evaluating the various transmissions received after the plane was assumed to have gone down, they managed to rule out numerous signals as spurious through various methods, establishing how easy it was to be mistaken about signals (and thus demonstrating a very high likelihood of hoax transmissions from other radio operators in a very large area of the Pacific,) but allowed how two signals could have come from Nikumaroro:

But this analysis also has shown that the signal heard at Nauru Island on July 3rd and the signals heard by Navy Radio Tutuila on July 5th, could have originated from NR16020 at Gardner Island.

Therefore, the possibility that Earhart successfully landed on Gardner Island cannot be ruled out by these results.

[Source]

Note that the July 3rd signal intercepted at Nauru was unintelligible, though possibly a female’s voice, and the July 5th intercept by Tutuila was only a series of dashes. Thus, also quite easy to hoax.

This is where the skeptical perspective comes in – and, in some opinions, ruins everything. Decent investigations do not settle on a hypothesis and then see what can be made to fit. Instead, they take all of the evidence and see where it leads. Given a large number of spurious transmissions, the inability to rule out two of them as spurious does not actually lend weight to the hypothesis – it just fails to deny it. We can just as easily claim a hypothesis that those two signals were hoaxes, and are unable to rule that out either. If it can be used both ways, it’s not evidence of either.

Here’s another quote from the TIGHAR site, the same radio details page as the previous quote:

7). It can be concluded from steps 1 through 6 above that the Itasca heard no signals from Earhart after 2013 GMT because: (a) she did not transmit on 6210 kHz following her 2013 GMT signal; (b) she was too far away at 2115 GMT for her signal to be heard on 3105 kHz; and (c) she was too far from Itasca at 2215 GMT for her signal to be heard on either frequency. It also can be concluded that Earhart could have reached Gardner between 2134 GMT and 2211 GMT at 115 knots ground speed. So the possibility of safe arrival at Gardner cannot be ruled out on the basis of these findings. On the other hand, these findings do not rule out the possibility that Earhart simply stopped transmitting after 2013 GMT, or that she encountered a sudden catastrophic event causing loss of the aircraft before she could send another signal.

[Source]

Notably, they have worked very hard to try and establish how the lack of signals could point to a safe landing on a tiny island, and then add in the admission that no signals being received might have been because none were sent – the Electra wasn’t transmitting due to a ditched landing or a crash, anywhere in the thousands of square kilometers of ocean that fail to support their theory in the slightest.

In fact, the entire theory of Earhart and Noonan reaching Nikumaroro is riddled with what’s possible, but nothing whatsoever of either what’s likely or what’s indicative. Let’s take a tally:

If the winds were completely in the opposite direction and if they were much stronger than recorded by any ship in the area and if Noonan obtained a successful sighting at sunrise for a bearing and if the Electra had enough fuel and if a successful landing was made on Nikumaroro and if the patch on the window was of a specific grade of aluminum not used by any known manufacturer and if the Electra was swept from the beach in the week before the search plane buzzed the island and if Earhart and/or Noonan failed to respond to the same plane and if the evidence of this whole landing and subsequent survival vanished completely before the British supervisor took residence and if Earhart had brought along her freckle cream and if the shoes matched and if the portions of the plane were returned by subsequent storms, then TIGHAR may not be chasing ghosts.

As the post title implies, the case relies entirely on these ifs, because there’s no solid evidence at all. There’s a secondary meaning too, in that, if there’s a limited supply of “ifs” available, we’ve probably used them all up. But the old trick of claiming that anything is possible is a rather crude attempt to weigh the odds in a distinctly inaccurate manner. Should you ask your doctor about your chance of having HIV, and he knows it’s a .001% chance but tells you only, “It’s possible,” he’s correct, but not exactly giving you useful information, is he? In fact, you’d probably have pretty good grounds for a lawsuit over unnecessary stress and suffering. Moreover, in many circumstances the admission of something being ‘possible’ doesn’t actually make it so at all – we simply don’t know enough to rule it as impossible. ‘Possible,’ in such cases, is a default state of our ignorance – not actually positive, just not negative.

If we, however, try to assign probability to all of those ifs above, we arrive at a likelihood so abysmally low that favoring it is, to be blunt, wildly irrational. People are prompted by their hopes and rationalizations into buying lottery tickets all the time, but this is much worse: it’s akin to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase just one ticket. Notably, it is not exactly a privately-funded endeavor, since TIGHAR is actively soliciting donations to fund every expedition it takes out to this lovely little south Pacific island – as I sit here looking at TIGHAR’s home page with several prominent links to allow one to contribute, there is a photo of the elaborate sailing yacht they will be taking on the upcoming expedition…

And that’s another part of critical thinking. Why would TIGHAR be promoting so much effort for such a long shot at finding out where the Electra wound up? Why, indeed…

I will be fair: a significant amount of information regarding their artifacts and reasoning and how poorly it can be tied to Earhart can actually be found right on their site. But there’s two significant parts of this. The first is, you have to read through their site, hundreds of pages of stuff, to generate your own overview of the points they use as evidence. The second is, you have to realize that the unbridled optimism that is found throughout, and throughout just about every mention of their efforts that occurs in the press, does not in any way reflect the improbabilities of their proposed sequence of events for the loss of the flight. This proposed flight plan, the very first link on their section regarding Earhart, shows how it could have happened, supposedly. I have yet to find any mention of why they think the flight deflected south into the prevailing winds, nor why Earhart and Noonan would then follow this line ridiculously farther south to reach Nikumaroro, or what those plotted direction-finding radio signals were taken from; bear in mind that DF was still in its infancy and couldn’t be that accurate, most of those plots were taken across damn near half of the Pacific Ocean, and that even if accurate the signals could have come from anywhere along those lines plotted, as well as in the opposite direction from the receiving station. I have only found mention of two signals on their site, quoted above, neither of which obtained any bearing at all. Meanwhile, the countless ships and aircraft that mounted the search around Howland, much closer than any of those radio plots, received nothing at all. But this didn’t stop TIGHAR from labeling their plot as “probable,” curiously enough.

This also gives some indication why paying attention to current media isn’t very useful. While caveats can be found on TIGHAR’s site, usually well behind their proposed ideas of what happened, somehow none of them ever make it into what the press reports about them – I’ll leave you to speculate on whose fault that might be. It is quite safe to say, however, that the hype that’s been appearing in no way represents any reasonable assumptions.

We also come back to the inordinately large number of ideas about what happened – not to give them any attention at all, but to point out that they can only exist because there are far too many variables in what we know about the flight. Selecting any one set without establishing a firm probability for it is only wishful thinking – we’re back to that lottery idea again.

Here’s what’s amusing about all of it: this isn’t exactly a mystery. The flight was a tricky and dangerous thing, and if anything at all went wrong throughout most of it, the Electra would go down far from any possibility of being found. The preparations, communication, fallback options, and radio navigation experience all could have been better. Winds aloft and actual ground speed remained indeterminable without landmarks or celestial navigation. It was a big risk, and it failed. It’s not exactly surprising.

Amelia Earhart gained a significant reputation, largely from press attention; the women’s rights movement was active, and she was accomplishing a lot in a male-dominated field. She was an experienced pilot by most accounts, but experienced in the type of flying necessary for this excursion? No. Such distinctions are crucial. Yet with the emphasis on being this remarkable person, and perhaps the protective idea we retain over women doing difficult things, the idea of her loss, and especially her failure, becomes a difficult thing to accept – fed by the fact that she remains newsworthy to this day, so if we keep hearing about her, there must be something to it all, right? And thus group-think creates a big mystery from what was a hazardous undertaking with inadequate preparation – the same kind of thing that happens all of the time. Judge Crater was in a safe environment among plenty of witnesses, by extension being exponentially more mysterious, but we don’t hear about him every couple of years in the media, and so it’s not that big a deal, apparently.

And so, with all that, I’m done – while it’s been interesting to see how badly the facts of the missing flight can be reinterpreted and mangled, there really is no new information to be had, and until someone actually pulls up a part of an Electra with an ID plaque on it, it’s not worth any more of my time.

Sources and other links

Earhart’s Flight Into Yesterday: The Facts without the Fiction, by Captain Laurance Safford with Cameron A. Warren and Robert R. Payne.

Amelia Earhart: the myth and the reality, by Dick Strippel

Researching Amelia: A detailed summary for the serious researcher into the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, an article in the November 1995 issue of Air Classics magazine, by Richard G. Strippel (same author as above)(PDF download link)

TIGHAR’s site (specific links included in text.)

A reconstruction of the Electra’s potential crash – you think I’ve put a lot of effort into this?

Various photos and details about the Electra

A Skeptoid episode covering TIGHAR’s ideas, not found until most of this post was completed. Also, the followup.

Roight

So, in previous posts I’ve made mention of several projects, and this is to announce that one of them, at least, has come to completion. If you think some of my topics don’t seem to fit with the nature of the website, this one’s going to be even worse.

I have just finished off my novelization of The Road Warrior, the 1982 film with Mel Gibson, and it is available as a free download. “Wait, what? 1982? Were you etching it in stone?” you say disparagingly. No, actually, the writing went fairly well, all things considered. I’ve had the project in the back of my head for years, because I’ve always liked the film and wanted to write up my treatment of it, including several of the nuances that I perceived therein, but never got a start – until the news of Mad Max: Fury Road came along. It was clear from the first available trailer that it was a reworking of the same film, and so I was prodded to write the book before the new version butchered it overwhelmed it offered a different take. My deadline was the first of May for everything, which I didn’t quite make, but my first fine draft was completed by then at least. In the interim, I’ve done the second (as it is now, final) draft and converted it to downloadable formats. So, since you’re here and have, at least, some interest in what I’m writing, go here to find a copy for yourself.

There wasn’t an overriding purpose to this, except to see if I could do a novel-length piece and make it coherent – like a lot of the blog, it’s a writing exercise among other things. Since I do not own the rights and have not obtained permission, I cannot charge for it, not like I would have made anything off of it anyway. But it also serves as an example of my long-form writing, and I’m pleased with it myself. Later on, I might be less so, so read it now while it’s still good.

If you have never seen the film, all the better – I’d be delighted to hear how the story works for anyone who is not able to judge it against the movie. It’s a tender, touching love story, lighthearted and full of cheer. Okay, that’s probably not going to help at all…

We return to more typical blog content shortly.

Monday color 13

wild violet closeup down throatAnother purple for Monday color, because I have a lot of it. The wild violets are early spring flowers around here, usually appearing up through the leaves singularly or in small patches, and often enough before the last frost of the winter has occurred. They’re not the first color I find in my desperation after the dull winter months – those are usually the speedwells, chickweed, or heconia – but they’re the first of any appreciable size, and quite vivid. I have a vague suspicion that they would do better in this area if they did not beat the pollinators awake each spring.

Time mismanagement

I have been trying to get to a few posts for several days now, intending to catch up a bit – you might have noticed that I’ve produced almost no philosophically turgid or religion-abusing posts recently. There’s also the two web pages I’ve been trying to finish, and some other odd projects. I just haven’t been finding the time. It’s very early morning Sunday right now, and I’d intended to do a post several hours ago on images I’d taken Saturday, but my lower gastro-intestinal tract had other suggestions which couldn’t really be ignored. So here’s one post, with perhaps another to follow later on today. That’s if I can cut down the number of typos I’ve produced so far…

hummingbird clearwing moth Hemaris thysbe approaching flower
I arrived early at the botanical garden to meet with a student, and poked around a bit. Above and below, a hummingbird clearwing moth (Hemaris thysbe) visited some flowers while I was standing nearby, and I chased a few images since it was convenient. The various Hemaris moths are hyperactive and can be hard to nail focus on, but above I at least caught it while it was extending its proboscis. I’m not sure if the image below truly counts as hovering, even though the moths don’t actually land on the flowers they drink from; this one appears to be braced, at least, and those wings might look stationary but they’re not – 1/2000 second shutter speed at f4 can do that.

hummingbird clearwing moth Hemaris thysbe in repose
[By the way, I did get to the month-end blog maintenance duties, and note that I set a new record for image uploads in April, 65 in total. That’s actually pretty good for a slow month, and not one of them was from anyone else – the previous two record-holders that tied at 62 both featured several images that were not my own. So, yeah. I also noted that on the last day of both March and April I posted surreal shots, so now I’m feeling obligated to do this every month. Don’t know if that’s gonna happen or not.]

common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentina basking with minnows
Above, a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) basks in the sunlight, with numerous minnows (Fishus insignificus – actually I have no idea what they are) taking advantage of the warmer water produced by sunlight reflecting/radiating off of its shell. I suspect they give a pretty good idea of the size, but if not, I’ll say that its shell length was about 30 cm. Snappers do get big.

unidentified wasp full frame
This one is just to show what the entire frame that I captured looks like, as an unidentified small wasp visited these flowers. The next one is the detail crop from the same image.

unidentified wasp detail crop
The conscientious side of me says that I should have uploaded the image to BugGuide.net to get a positive identification, but I don’t feel like waiting right now and I already skimmed the site trying to pin it down. So you just have to enjoy looking at the image in ignorance (unless, naturally, you’re more educated than I am, in which case you can roll your eyes or scoff or smirk condescendingly – whatever works.) As might be obvious, it’s quite small.

felled tree
leaves sprouting from cut treeOn my return from meeting with the student, I took a quick walk around the nearby pond, and I’ve been looking at this for weeks now and had to comment. Back during the bad winter storm that we had, a massive tree near the pond came down, bringing electrical wires with it, and a smaller tree had to be cut away because it was entangled in the wires. The trunk was left there, but somehow it has sprouted new leaves with the warmer weather. In a couple of weeks they haven’t really progressed beyond the point seen here, five cm across or less, but they also haven’t died. I’m guessing this is just the residual moisture/sap leaching out of the trunk and eventually, without further nutrients, these will die off, but it seems weird – the tree was dropped, like, nine weeks ago. I’ve seen uprooted trees that simply started growing while horizontal, and cut trees sprout new branches from the stump all the time, but never a tree completely severed from its root system still kicking. This may be how the zombie apocalypse starts – I’m guessing this one won’t really make for exciting television.

northern water snake Nerodia sipedon very close to sheddingI’ve been seeing water snakes at various places around this pond for weeks, but have never gotten a decent image of any until now. And this one was only because, with those eyes, it couldn’t make me out very well and I was careful not to alert it in other ways. Snakes don’t exactly have ears (according to new research, they have the ability to hear, but only through the vibrations of their skeletal system it seems,) but they’ll still pick up on incautious movements nearby, so I stepped very gently. This snake is not old or anything, simply about to shed any time now – if I go out today when it’s light I’ll probably be able to find the skin, since it’s been many hours after getting this image. The skin gets cloudy and dark right before a shed, including the eyes, and it means they can only see blobs. When you spot a snake with blue eyes, leave it be, since it will be very defensive in its vulnerable state, and you will likely get bitten. Northern water snakes (Nerodia sipedon) are notoriously defensive anyway, likely to bite with any handling, and much more so in this condition. I managed to get quite close, though probably not close enough to be bitten, but as I finished my photo session I rose too quickly; the snake was able to make out that movement, and shot into the water instantly.

By the way, the undergrowth to the right of the frame prevented me from getting any shots from that side, which meant I didn’t have a decent view of what appears to be some injuries to its head on that side, vaguely visible in the image here. It’s not surprising – water snakes often bask during the day because the water can sap their body heat, but this makes them vulnerable to more predators than the snakes which are primarily nocturnal. Obviously it survived – see above about the defensiveness.

And I close with an image taken right outside our front door, an orchard orbweaver (Leucauge Venusta) opportunistically perched on the phlox. I’m pleased that so much of the orb web came out this visibly – I really didn’t think that it would. And yes, I did position myself so that the spider was placed against the bright leaf, for contrast.

orchard orbweaver Leucauge Venusta in web over phlox leaves

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