Visitor Submit by means of Dr. Roberta L. Bondar, Creator of “House for Birds”


Dr. Roberta L. Bondar is globally identified for her pioneering contributions to area drugs analysis, superb artwork images, and schooling at the atmosphere. Aboard the House Go back and forth Discovery venture STS-42 in 1992, she carried out experiments within the first World Microgravity Laboratory, a precursor to the World House Station. Educated by means of NASA’s Earth Observations crew, she additionally photographed the Earth whilst circling it 129 occasions. Dr. Bondar later turned into an honors scholar in skilled nature images. For her Passionate Imaginative and prescient mission, she photographed, with medium- and large-format movie cameras, every of Canada’s nationwide parks; for The Arid Fringe of Earth, she photographed international arid landscapes and their Global Heritage Websites. Non-public, company, and institutional collections in Canada, america, and the United Kingdom hang Dr. Bondar’s superb artwork photographic prints. She is the writer of a number of best-selling books that includes her writing and images.

Above Lake Awesome, the fathomless, starry skies that shift into sunlight hours canopies of unending oceans of blue and crusing clouds, lifted my youth creativeness into adventures of flight. Early on, I noticed that birds now not most effective sounded and appeared stunning, they may just additionally fly. I wanted an plane. Later, as an astronaut, I flew in area like a chook, with no passport throughout global obstacles. Fact be informed, it’s now not rather the similar factor. Chook flight is gracious, versatile, reactive, dedicated, balanced, and useful to call a couple of qualities of the various. An astronaut floating within a spacecraft would possibly transfer purposefully, and even if dedicated, isn’t just about as talented with flight, particularly given a chook’s nice talent to defy gravity on Earth, with surprising path adjustments, and extended flight with no foothold.

House flight on the other hand, deepened the relationship of my astronaut self to birds of Earth in surprising tactics. When in area in low earth orbit, now not seeing birds or different lifestyles with the unaided eye (except for for the Nice Barrier Reef) contributes to the thriller of what lies past a spacecraft at the floor of a close-by planet. Now not listening to chook sound or music is a chilling glimpse right into a long run the place human affect and adjustments in local weather will impact habitats, and survival of biodiversity—the place birds would possibly now not be a part of the herbal life-support gadget of planet Earth. The aim of this e book is to proportion a visible tale of 2 odd avian species, one from every facet of the globe, in the course of the 3 views of area, from the air, and from the skin. The idea is that for those who love one thing, you’ll want to offer protection to it. House for Birds is a technique of sharing an emotional expose, of birds whose nice flights to safe their long run, train us about appreciate for habitats and population of planet Earth.

As an astronaut, biologist, doctor and photographer, my view of Earth is a mix of my non-public view, and the prescriptive, skilled astronaut’s view. I consider that we proportion a need, on the other hand, that spaceflight will deliver us extra humanity, deeper perception into questions on lifestyles itself, and the universe–to peer the arena with larger readability and compassion.

And that’s the place chook migration comes into this tale, for what birds see, contact and wish, parallel our personal lives. Birds pull us into puts and patterns unexplored, habitat wishes, superhuman feats, fragility, and resilience. Birds give us path this is dynamic and now not static, around the planet, from pole to pole and hemisphere to hemisphere. The huge distances coated by means of migratory birds traverse flyways which can be clear on earth ’s floor, skies and maps. With more potent working out of distances, obstacles and edges of the habitat required by means of migratory birds, we will be able to be offering higher coverage to scale back biodiversity loss.

Killeen, Texas, south to Aransas NWR at the Gulf of Mexico, 2017.08.18, GMT 16:06:11. Picture credit score: ESRS, NASA Johnson House Heart, ISS052-E-63066

The level of those pathways within the air is emphasised by means of the gap view as we’re not able to seize a complete migratory hall in a single symbol. Whilst area perspectives are past the area of maximum human stories, the chance to peer Earth from area is rewarded by means of visuals of distinctive and novel patterns of land and water. The digicam attitude and lens selection body the viewpoint. A large attitude lens as an example, permits scanning, and appreciation of distance. My bias is to invite that pictures from the World House Station come with ones at an indirect attitude, with the threshold of the Earth or limb, to remind us that we and all Earth’s lifeforms survive a planet.

West Asian/East African Flyway, taking a look northward from South Africa, 2016.04.03, GMT 11:51:33. Picture credit score: ESRS, NASA Johnson House Heart, ISS047-E-44560

Aerial pictures grant us a unique view of the relationships of water-land obstacles, which from the skin of Earth considered around the panorama, are flat and nearly two dimensional. Even if avian imaginative and prescient isn’t similar to human imaginative and prescient, dissimilarities and discontinuities within the panorama can be recognizable by means of each chook and human being.

 A solo Whooping Crane approaches a far off level, Picket Buffalo Nationwide Park, Northwest Territories/Alberta, Canada. Copyright Roberta L Bondar 2018

House for Birds transports the reader alongside a trail of discovery thru pictures, supported by means of dialog, present medical working out, and dialogue of creative components. It options the endangered Whooping Crane (Grus americana) of the Western hemisphere and the near-threatened Lesser Flamingo (Phoeniconaias minor) of the Japanese hemisphere. Those two avian species are worlds aside in maximum behaviours but proportion the similar globe and vulnerability of habitat demanding situations.

An grownup Lesser Flamingo preens, Lake Bogoria Nationwide Reserve, Lake Bogoria, Kenya. Copyright Roberta L Bondar 2018

A banded Whooping Crane presentations its black flight feathers along its colt, Aransas Nationwide Flora and fauna Safe haven, Texas, USA. Copyright Roberta L Bondar 2019

While the white Whooping Crane has a tendency to be solitary in pairs with its newly hatched younger, the crimson Lesser Flamingo is an instance of flock habits, the place assembly, nesting, feeding, and flying are carried out in teams that may be neatly into the hundreds of people. Nesting Whooping Crane pairs could also be separated by means of 20 to 50 km. Lesser Flamingos are colony breeders, desirous about one and one for all. Even if each Whooping Cranes and Lesser Flamingos lay one to 2 eggs every, Whooping Cranes optimally lay eggs annually after adulthood, whilst for Lesser Flamingos, it’s each 5 to seven years.

Lesser Flamingos in flight. Lake Bogoria Nationwide Reserve, Lake Bogoria, Kenya. Copyright Roberta L Bondar 2018

Means earlier than I used to be born, Leonardo da Vinci created works that included components of what now are separated into cultures of both artwork or science. Educated as a neuro-ophthalmologist, I outline my subspecialty as “find out how to see and think about the arena round us”, implying each artwork and science that my images and writing mirror. For instance, my purpose is to proportion an emotional connection to the flora and fauna of Earth, by means of stimulating access right into a body this is artistically composed to intrigue the human mind. As soon as within, interest to invite questions, regardless of the intensity of inquiry, will in finding solutions in science. The larger the relationship, the extra extended the engagement and not more fleeting its affect. House for Birds makes use of unfashionable perspectives or canvasses of landscapes of sunshine and texture onto which birds input and depart on a timescale this is other from their backdrop, or certainly, from the planet itself as observed from area.

House for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Good looks and Flight by means of Dr. Roberta L. Bondar (Determine 1 Publishing) To be had September seventeenth at bookstores in every single place

 

 

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