Waiting for my flight to Galapagos.  Departing in a couple of hours.  Excited and slightly shocked that this is happening.

Will be in Puerto Ayora sometime tomorrow (16th April).

It has been over a year in the making, and at times I was not sure it would happen at all, but we finally got our tickets to head to Galapagos.  I am using this as an excuse perhaps to start putting some effort into this blog.

Here’s the context.  Back in 2009, I published a paper on the role of the bill of the toucan as a ‘radiator of body heat’ (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5939/468.abstract).  Meanwhile, Russ Greenberg and his student/post-doc, Ray Danner were working on Song Sparrow ecology and bill size.  After reading my paper and contacting me, we started sharing ideas and Russ began to develop questions examining how bills of his birds may be shaped by their environment (temperature, water availability).

Anyhow, long story short….this led to Russ and Ray collaborating with my lab via my student, Viviana Cadena who spent a couple of months in Ray’s lab working on heat loss parameters in song sparrows.  (see below).

This work with sparrows showed that the bill in these birds can represent up to ~9% of resting body heat loss.

Last year, along with Russ, Ray and Viviana, we submitted a grant to the National Geographic Society to go to the Galapagos to test our research questions in Darwin’s Finches.  I won’t go into those details yet, but perhaps future blogs will shed some light.

Anyhow, heading out on Monday and will be away for a month.  Let’s hope we don’t have any trouble getting there!

For a summary of this work, here is a great blog from Jack Dumbacher.

Earlier this week, I attended an ‘Interpretative reading’ competition at my nephew’s school.  Needless to say, I would not be attending the competition if my nephew were not competing. 🙂

He chose to read Farley Mowat’s opening chapter to Never Cry Wolf.  I would paste the chapter here, but likely be sued for copyright infringement, but suffice to say, Mowat’s eloquent introduction to how he became a biologist rings familiar.  Fish or frog catching in local streams and bringing these animals home to examine is a common theme in many a biologist’s background. The same can be said for my own desire to be a biologist, and what I remind myself every day is that a certain portion of my job involves simply exploring the natural world much like a child would, with fascination but far less poking with sticks.

Oh, and my nephew…he won first place for his reading.  Congratulations!!

I have decided to start a blog, and it seems fitting that the first entry would include the animal that has inspired me.  Ramphastos toco, or the Toco Toucan (shown above) will likely be the subject of future blogs, but I wanted to name the blog after this South American bird as a tribute to the country that has hosted me for so many years (Brazil) to conduct research.

Otherwise, I have nothing yet interesting to write, but since I want to have a post to start this whole blog, here it is.

– Glenn Tattersall