Dr. Roberta L. Bondar is globally acknowledged for her pioneering contributions to area medication analysis, wonderful artwork images, and training on the setting. Aboard the House Shuttle Discovery mission STS-42 in 1992, she carried out experiments within the first Worldwide Microgravity Laboratory, a precursor to the Worldwide House Station. Skilled by NASA’s Earth Observations crew, she additionally photographed the Earth whereas circling it 129 instances. Dr. Bondar later grew to become an honors pupil in skilled nature images. For her Passionate Imaginative and prescient undertaking, she photographed, with medium- and large-format movie cameras, every of Canada’s nationwide parks; for The Arid Fringe of Earth, she photographed world arid landscapes and their World Heritage Websites. Personal, company, and institutional collections in Canada, the USA, and the UK maintain Dr. Bondar’s wonderful artwork photographic prints. She is the writer of a number of best-selling books that includes her writing and images.
Above Lake Superior, the fathomless, starry skies that shift into daytime canopies of limitless oceans of blue and crusing clouds, lifted my childhood creativeness into adventures of flight. Early on, I noticed that birds not solely sounded and seemed lovely, they may additionally fly. I wanted an airplane. Later, as an astronaut, I flew in area like a chicken, and not using a passport throughout worldwide boundaries. Reality be advised, it’s not fairly the identical factor. Chook flight is gracious, versatile, reactive, dedicated, balanced, and purposeful to call a number of qualities of the various. An astronaut floating inside a spacecraft might transfer purposefully, and though dedicated, just isn’t practically as gifted with flight, particularly given a chicken’s nice potential to defy gravity on Earth, with sudden course modifications, and extended flight and not using a foothold.
House flight nevertheless, deepened the connection of my astronaut self to birds of Earth in surprising methods. When in area in low earth orbit, not seeing birds or different life with the unaided eye (apart from the Nice Barrier Reef) contributes to the thriller of what lies past a spacecraft on the floor of a close-by planet. Not listening to chicken sound or music is a chilling glimpse right into a future the place human affect and modifications in local weather will have an effect on habitats, and survival of biodiversity—the place birds would possibly not be a part of the pure life-support system of planet Earth. The aim of this ebook is to share a visible story of two extraordinary avian species, one from both sides of the globe, via the three views of area, from the air, and from the floor. The premise is that should you love one thing, it would be best to defend it. House for Birds is a method of sharing an emotional reveal, of birds whose nice flights to safe their future, educate us about respect for habitats and inhabitants of planet Earth.
As an astronaut, biologist, doctor and photographer, my view of Earth is a mix of my private view, and the prescriptive, skilled astronaut’s view. I imagine that we share a want, nevertheless, that spaceflight will carry us extra humanity, deeper perception into questions on life itself, and the universe–to see the world with larger readability and compassion.
And that’s the place chicken migration comes into this story, for what birds see, contact and wish, parallel our personal lives. Birds pull us into locations and patterns unexplored, habitat wants, superhuman feats, fragility, and resilience. Birds give us route that’s dynamic and never static, throughout the planet, from pole to pole and hemisphere to hemisphere. The huge distances coated by migratory birds traverse flyways which might be clear on earth ’s floor, skies and maps. With stronger understanding of distances, boundaries and edges of the habitat required by migratory birds, we are able to provide higher safety to cut back biodiversity loss.
Killeen, Texas, south to Aransas NWR on the Gulf of Mexico, 2017.08.18, GMT 16:06:11. Photograph credit score: ESRS, NASA Johnson House Middle, ISS052-E-63066
The extent of those pathways within the air is emphasised by the area view as we’re unable to seize a whole migratory hall in a single picture. Whereas area views are past the realm of most human experiences, the chance to see Earth from area is rewarded by visuals of distinctive and novel patterns of land and water. The digicam angle and lens alternative body the angle. A large angle lens for instance, permits scanning, and appreciation of distance. My bias is to ask that pictures from the Worldwide House Station embody ones at an indirect angle, with the sting of the Earth or limb, to remind us that we and all Earth’s lifeforms reside on a planet.
West Asian/East African Flyway, trying northward from South Africa, 2016.04.03, GMT 11:51:33. Photograph credit score: ESRS, NASA Johnson House Middle, ISS047-E-44560
Aerial pictures grant us a unique view of the relationships of water-land boundaries, which from the floor of Earth seen throughout the panorama, are flat and virtually two dimensional. Though avian imaginative and prescient just isn’t similar to human imaginative and prescient, dissimilarities and discontinuities within the panorama can be recognizable by each chicken and human being.
A solo Whooping Crane approaches a distant level, Wooden Buffalo Nationwide Park, Northwest Territories/Alberta, Canada. Copyright Roberta L Bondar 2018
House for Birds transports the reader alongside a path of discovery via pictures, supported by dialog, present scientific understanding, 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 Jap hemisphere. These two avian species are worlds aside in most behaviours but share the identical globe and vulnerability of habitat challenges.
An grownup Lesser Flamingo preens, Lake Bogoria Nationwide Reserve, Lake Bogoria, Kenya. Copyright Roberta L Bondar 2018
A banded Whooping Crane shows its black flight feathers alongside its colt, Aransas Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, Texas, USA. Copyright Roberta L Bondar 2019
Whereas the white Whooping Crane tends to be solitary in pairs with its newly hatched younger, the pink Lesser Flamingo is an instance of flock habits, the place assembly, nesting, feeding, and flying are carried out in teams that may be nicely into the 1000’s of people. Nesting Whooping Crane pairs could also be separated by 20 to 50 km. Lesser Flamingos are colony breeders, all for one and one for all. Though each Whooping Cranes and Lesser Flamingos lay one to 2 eggs every, Whooping Cranes optimally lay eggs yearly after maturity, whereas 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
Method 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. Skilled as a neuro-ophthalmologist, I outline my subspecialty as “tips on how to see and think about the world round us”, implying each artwork and science that my images and writing replicate. For instance, my aim is to share an emotional connection to the pure world of Earth, by stimulating entry right into a body that’s artistically composed to intrigue the human mind. As soon as inside, curiosity to ask questions, regardless of the depth of inquiry, will discover solutions in science. The larger the connection, the extra extended the engagement and fewer fleeting its affect. House for Birds makes use of retro views or canvasses of landscapes of sunshine and texture onto which birds enter and go away on a timescale that’s totally different from their backdrop, or certainly, from the planet itself as seen from area.
House for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Magnificence and Flight by Dr. Roberta L. Bondar (Determine 1 Publishing) Accessible September seventeenth at bookstores in every single place
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