Doss has some serious, boring inventions and then a side-line in goofy stuff like the face feeder, which he came up with after a hummingbird hovered in front of his red bird.  “A hummingbird came out of nowhere and just hung there, two inches from my nose,” he says. “My immediate response was, I froze. I never forgot the experience. It was such a magical type of thing.”

Decades later, Doss took a professional welding face shield and covered it in a red pattern that hummers love. Then he put a rubber tube between the eyes to be filled with sugar water. The birds came. This isn’t the first attempt at a hummingbird helmet. This adorable video shows a little girl watching hummingbirds in the more popular variety–and initially flinching and scaring them away.

The face shield serves to draw hummers in (they love red) and to make humans confident they won’t get their eyes poked out. Hummingbirds are so agile, they’re not going to go bumbling into your face.

Doss says the tube was the hardest part to figure out. During the northern California spring, when three or four hummingbirds may be buzzing the helmet, he may refill it more than once a day. In winter he can skip a day.

The reason people are both fascinated with hummingbirds and frustrated in seeing them is their speed. They may only be there 15 seconds, but if they’re an inch from your eye, you can really drink up the details. “You can actually look into their eyes. You can appreciate their tiny little feet. They have the smallest feet because they never walk. You see markings, so you can see this one’s not that one. You see them feed, then back up and look left and look right.” While the person wearing the hummingbird helmet can distinguish between individual hummingbirds, the birds are oblivious to which person is behind the mask. That means, once the birds in your yard get used to eating from a red helmet, they’ll feel at home when your visiting friend wears it or they see some other guy wearing a helmet 100 miles away.

As he nears 700 of the $80 feeders sold–mostly in the US and Canada, although most hummers are in Latin America–there’s getting to be a chance that hummingbirds will start to recognize the feeders, which will make them even more fun to own.

Check out the “face to face” feeder

California ground squirrel / Courtesy of Alan Vernon

I was looking forward to seeing the mottled little California ground squirrel (Spermophilus beecheyi), but I may have found a squirrel I don’t really like. Or at least one that doesn’t like me.

These little spectacled rodents are all over California. You can see their little den holes in the dusty chapparel. Wikipedia says they are “common and easily observed ground squirrel of the western United States.” Easily observed, my ass.

You won’t see one if they see you first. There are other squirrels who aren’t shy. A few fox squirrels flagged their tails at me, then went back to eating the black walnuts of Franklin Canyon.

Finkel notes that other blind people have done it and scholars have known about it since at least 1749. In the 1940s Karl Dallenbach proved humans could ecolocate at Cornell. Yet remarkably little practical work has been done on human ecololation for the vast improvement it could make in the quality of life of the blind–not to mention enhanced perception for sighted humans. (You’d think, if nothing else, the military would do some research.)

Kish teaches Finkel a simple use of ecolocation. Kish posted on Men’s Journal that it could be widely adapted: “It is true that perhaps 10% take it to an extreme level, like bike riding through obstacles and such, but most are able to use it to increase their navigation abilities notably.”

What set Finkel apart was that he was set free to explore and develop the skill while other blind people are socially discouraged.

He came to it on his own, intuitively, at age two, about a year after his second eye was removed. Many blind children make noises in order to get feedback — foot stomping, finger snapping, hand clapping, tongue clicking. These behaviors are the beginnings of echolocation, but they’re almost invariably deemed asocial by parents or caretakers and swiftly extinguished.

A few scientists are working on the potential. New Zealand sonar expert Leslie Kay developed a device called Bat K-Sonar, that makes sounds from an attachment to a blind person’s cane and special headphones to hear the echoes. It uses bat-like, directional pulses that can distinguish distance and the kind of object.

But Kish, formed a group World Access for the Blind that methodically teaches the blind to ecolocate and is the most serious effort to date to put this long-forgotten human skill to use.

Finkel helpfully explains that you already use some form of ecolocation every time you hear the direction of a sound. Our hearing is much better than our sight, Finkel explains: “We can see less than one octave of frequency. We hear a range of 10 octaves.”

Now he’d like to experiment with bringing human ecolocation capabilities up to the bat level. Making bat clicking sounds is pretty easy with a machine. But the catch is getting the human ear to hear them. Kish thinks it could be done with an implant, but tragically doesn’t have the $16 million to try.

Actually, two boosts. We need a way to create batlike sound waves, and we need to be able to hear those waves. In pursuit of these goals, Kish has spent time in

“It becomes as ridiculous for blind people to run into a wall as it is for sighted people,” he once wrote in his FlashSonar manual.

Read about Boston University’s research on ecolocation

Check out World Access for the Blind

Look at Bat K Sonar

In this case they backed off focusing on the guy who watched over the sea otter family. Instead Jim Capwell was seen as just a guy with a docked boat who took an interest in them. I think he’s a bit more. He runs a diving boat and is part of Bay Area Underwater Explorers, a group of conservationists. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, who stepped in after a big injury, could also be heroes. But I’m grateful there isn’t too big of a focus on human characters; the narrator is invisible and unobtrusive.

The real stars were the otter and her pup and once again Wild Kingdom got impossibly cute and informative footage. They show how the otters, who normally live out in the kelp forests and crack open crabs on natural objects, adapted to living in the harbor and cracking crabs an clams on boats’ bows, which they’ve figured out is the hardest part. Though, if there used to be 20,000 California sea otters and there’s now 3,000, I’d say there’s a good chance they used to live in harbors–and that more will.

I do wish they were shorter on the foreboding, schlocky cable TV narrative–not that it didn’t totally have me worried about the family–and longer on marine mammal talk. Could Capwell have supplemented their food if he wanted to? If the population recovers more, where might they turn up next?

The music choices are a lot more fun–and conspicuous.  But Wild Kingdom still is the best wildlife show on American TV and it avoids almost all of the cable TV trappings.

See a clip from Wild Kingdom

Where to SEE WEIRD ANIMALS Coait, Prairie Dog, Otter, kangaroo, skunk, porcupine, salamander, snake, squid, pretty much anything rare

SEE ANIMALS IN CALIFORNIA

Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes)

National Geographic asks if foxes could be good pets

National Geographic‘s fantastic cover story on the science of domesticating animals gets into how humans domesticated just 13 species over millions of years–and whether we can replicate that in other species now. Evan Ratliff goes to the famous Russian fox fur farm experiment, which breeds foxes for submissiveness has yielded foxes with odd coats and some of the physical features of domestic dogs. The story says they have to sell off foxes that aren’t bred to fur farms or pet owners. I reached out to the center to ask about how that might work for Americans. No answer yet. I also wonder if they might try it with squirrels, which have been kept on and off as pets for centuries.

Germans mull not killing half a million fox a year

Germans are questioning the wisdom of killing half a million foxes each year in January and February. Hunters claim these Fox Weeks or Fuchswochen are vaguely good for the environment. They reason fox could eat endangered species (which?) into extinction and then still survive on garbage. Biologists in Deutche Welle not buying it.

UK hunters battle wildlife rehab center over fox hunting

UK hunters successfully bullied a grocery store into not giving money to a wildlife rehabiliation center, Little Foxes (which treats all kinds of birds an animals), because its founder doesn’t like fox hunts.

Teeny foxes may push Navy off its training island

The San Clemente Island fox may get put on the endangered species list, a move that would force the Navy to curtail its training on this tiny island off San Diego, the LATimes reports. The Island fox (Urocyon littoralis) is already called critically endangered by the IUCN Red List; each of the six islands it lives on has its own subspecies. The fox’s problem is that it is so tiny and friendly. Drivers don’t see the 3-4 pound fox and the foxes don’t run from people or cars. Somehow I think the Navy, which has no problem ignoring warnings on sonar and whales, will find a work-around.

Cryptid Fox in DC

In the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Tacoma a strange creature has been haunting backyards. On a Yahoo! group one resident described it as “a mottled grey and brown, very skinny, short haired animal…[with] a long bare tail with white hair at the very end. Looked like a cross between a chihuahua and a whippet. Was very skittish and ran away as soon as I came out the door. About 18″ tall and longer.” As with so many cryptozoology reports, this one turned out to be just a wild canid with mange. This time the hoped-for Chupacabra turned out to be a fox.

Giant Fox in UK

Meanwhile in England, someone trapped a fox that measures four feet from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail. Apparently, that’s some kind of record. At 26.5 pounds, he’s said to weigh twice the normal weight and been terrorizing local pet owners. (He ate a 19-year-old cat.)

	Where to SEE WHALES
	Where to SEE WOLVES (plus coyote, coywolf, fox and any wild canid)
SEE ANIMALS IN EUROPE

Belarus prosecutors and media mock the story. Photo courtesy of ctv.by

Fox shoots hunter–or so hunter claims. Belarus prosecutors not so sure.

A fox shot a hunter in the thigh in Belarus–at least that’s the story the 40-year-old is telling. Shchuchyn prosecutors seem skeptical and are checking if it’s even physically possible. He says he shot the fox, then tried to finish her off with the butt of her gun. She fought back and her paw cleverly pulled the trigger of his dvuhstvolnogo gun.  Blog Grodno and Belarus Communications

Rare white possum found in LeRoy Oakes Forest Preserve, near  St. Charles, IL. Wildlife Extra

South African rangers kill 5 rhino poachers in Kruger

This month Kruger National Park rangers shot and killed five rhino poachers in two incidents; three escaped over the border to Tanzania. Rangers are pushing back against poachers, who killed 333 rhinos in South Africa last year, 146 in Kruger alone. Coastweek

Shark found with fins hacked off on Delaware coast. Wildlife Extra

Big cat thought extinct re-found in Borneo

The Borneo Bay Cat was photographed on a motion-sensor camera. It hadn’t been seen since 2003 and was presumed extinct. Free Malaysia

Uh-Oh: mad cow-like disease could be spread by air

Biologists discovered that prions–the weird0 protein lifeforms that spread Mad Cow, Scrapie and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, could be spread by air. So, humans and animals wouldn’t necessarily have to eat an infected animal to get sick. Slaughterhouse rules might have to be reconsidered. WIRED

Florida bobcat rescued by passing cat lover, wrangled by construction worker husband

The injured cat was hit by a car, so Nici Haerter called her husband, who’s had experience handling big cats. He approached the cat with a spread blanket, then got it into a dog cage and eventually to Big Cat Rescue, where “Skip” is an internet star. Chicago Tribune

California’s Cabrillo National Monument has Whale Watch and Intertidal Life Festival this weekend to enjoy passing gray whales. LA Times

Smartass Rehabber

A while back I wrote about ME Pearl and her totally charming possum videos. I posited that ME Pearl was somehow tied to SquirrelMender, a site run by a Thousand Oaks, CA, wildlife rehabilitator Sharon Baird and designed by companyv.com, the very same company that does the ME Pearl site.

Wrong, says Pearl. She wrote in to say that she’s not connected to the rehabber at all. “This has nothing to do with Sharron Baird and no crab has ever sidled across our paths.”

Pearl, it seems, is the name of a squirrel that touched the heart of the woman in the video. But now Pearl is dead. So the woman in the video channels the squirrel spirit. Sorta. Here’s what ME Pearl had to say when I asked by email about her handling the possum so skillfully:

“ME Pearl am a dead squirrel and, as such, I do not handle that disgusting varmint. That’s all done by my Pink Mama, ‘Georgette’ (not her real name). But I oversee EVERYTHING. I spend most of my time in her head, directing. Everything was normal until we saw  Maryjean Ballner giving her cat a massage. Sparks flew. All we had on hand was an old possum so we made ‘Proper Opossum Massage’. Discovered there was was a hunger for this type of information so, wheeeee, off to the races.”

I was also thrilled to read: “We very much like your site.” ME Pearl suggests that I add  Animal Acres in Acton, CA. Done! ME Pearl still didn’t explain to me how she came by her co-starring possums and squirrels or her ability to charm them, but we’ll leave that a mystery.

Check out the Animal Acres listing among Farm Animal Sanctuaries You Can Visit

Where to Go See Animals in California

Check out ME Pearl’s Proper Opossum Pedicure

Great blue heron

For a seemingly desolate wasteland that is backed by oil fields, a couple busy roads and suburban sprawl, the Bolsa Chica Wetland has surprisingly a lot of wildlife.

That’s mainly thanks to the state of  California, which started buying land here in 1973, and Amigos de Bolsa, which sued them to better manage it.  The amigos say the coastal area near Huntington Beach has been misused since about 1900, when duck hunters closed off the inlet. Then a parade of ranchers, oil drillers and finally developers, who dreamed of a snazzy marina, messed it up. Since an out of court settlement in 1989, the state has been buying and restoring land at Bolsa Chica, which translates to something like little pocket. The wetlands now have 1,200 acres. A lot of it looks more like a strip mine, but surprisingly many critters live there.

Another group, the non-political Bolsa Chica Conservancy, works to restore the wetland and teach people about it. The day I was there, tons of volunteers were working as part of California’s annual coastal clean-up day. Still another group, the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, wants to get all 1,700 acres.

Just walking through the chapparal in the recent heatwave, my husband David and I saw rabbits, furtive Beechley ground squirrels, hundreds of wading birds, including two great blue herons, peregrines hunting, a dozen or so godwits, a cormorant nest (apparently there are more in the haunted-looking trees in spring). Since there’s so little shade cover, I expected all critters to be napping. Up north we saw black skimmers that birders said are usually found here.

Check out Bolsa Chica

Where to See Wildlife in California

Swell Shark Eggs

The freakiest sharks you may ever see isn’t jumping out of South African waters or devouring surfers. They’re in the small Santa Monica Pier Aquarium and themselves are smaller than a carnival beta fish. The aquarium, at the base of the famous pier, has shark eggs or pods, illuminated from behind. So, you get to see little shark embryos squirming around in their pods, which are normally attached to the sea floor or rocks.

The embryonic swell sharks (Cephaloscyllium ventriosum) are extremely popular with visitors to the aquarium, says director Vicki Wawerchak. People come by again and again to track the development of the sharks, then get to see the juvenile sharks swim in a nearby tank.

The sharks live right off the coast down to Mexico, where they’re called Pejegato Hinchado. But you’re probably not going to see them on your own–and you’re certainly not going to see their embryonic development. (Though, you might see a mermaid’s purse, the casing, when if it washes ashore. Shell shark egg shells have strings; the more common (at least on the east coast) skate casings are smaller.)

They’ve got all kinds of starfish and sea urchins, which clasp your finger when you stick it in the tank. One aquarium has jellyfish, illustrating how much they look like plastic bags. The idea, of course, is to show why you shouldn’t throw plastic bags around.

With exhibits like this, you can see why the aquarium, which is a project of Heal the Bay, isn’t just for field trips. The vast majority of their 77,000 visitors last year just walked in. That’s pretty amazing for any venue that displays local fauna. Growing up in Illinois, I’d get excited for such field trips, then crushed when all we got to see was another prairie. Yeah, it’s important, it’s native, I get it; it’s just not that much fun. I imagine California kids have the same dread of chaparral. The Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is giving local species a good name. The species here are gorgeous and interesting. And you could spend a summer on the beach and still not see half of what’s here in the aquarium.

Where to Go to See Sharks

Where to  See Wildlife in California

Hummingbird, up close but not doing anything

Back in the 30s, 6,000 hummingbirds at a time buzzed the Dorothy  May Tucker Bird Sanctuary in Orange, County, CA. Dorothy and her husband Ben perfected the hummingbird feeder and created a national spectacle in what they called the Hummingbird Cafeteria. When I went recently I got to see just a handful of hummingbirds, but the sanctuary has branched out to include other birds, too.

In 1946 Popular Mechanics did a story on the incredible invention of the hummingbird feeder. For the first feeders, Ben took a cactus flower–preferably red–and cut off the back. Then he impaled the flower on a straw, which he stuck in a beaker of sugar water. The magazine gleefully reports that “once he’s sampled the syrup, he’s yours. After a few days he’ll drink from the test tube without a flower.” I guess that explains those clumsy yellow flowers on all red hummingbird feeders–and why they work so poorly.

The sanctuary doesn’t just get hummingbirds. They set out seed for scrub jays, titmice, sparrows and spotted towee.

Popular Mechanics, 1948

Now you can visit the sanctuary named after him in Orange County, CA, and since it’s totally full of hummingbird and other feeders, you’ll almost certainly see at least one. And you get to sit in the coolest bird blind–a big porch smothered in vines that hide the bleachers. After Dorothy died, Ben donated the special place to California Audubon, which eventually gave it to Cal State Fullerton. During WWII they got special permission to keep using sugar, then scarce, to feed the birds.

They’re best known as a field trip destination, but they’ve got all kinds of events and festivals for hummingbirds, bats and butterflies. Bat night is coming up Oct. 23.