Alex the grey parrot has died

Alex, the parrot who taught the world how much language a ‘mere’ bird can learn, has died unexpectedly at the comparatively young age of 31. This is devastating for his researcher, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, who has spent thirty years working with him.

“As early as 2002, Alex had a vocabulary of more than 100 words and in 1999, he could “identify 50 different objects and understand quantities up to 6; he could distinguish 7 colors and 5 shapes, and understand the concepts of ‘bigger’, ’smaller’, ’same’, and ‘different’, and he was learning ‘over’ and ‘under’,” according to the New York Times.”

Dr. Pepperberg will continue her work with his young avian colleagues, Wart and Griffin.

To read about Alex and his accomplishments, please read “Alex… dead at 31” at Scientist, Interrupted.

I mentioned Alex and friends in August of last year in “African Grey Parrots.”

Whooping crane!

I didn’t see this in the wild but at the International Crane Federation in Baraboo, Wisconsin. I decided of all the sights I could see around Madison, the crane refuge was the rarest. So I drove the fifty miles to the outskirts of Baraboo, where the ICF has 250 acres to conduct research and find new ways to protect cranes and increase their number. The foundation has about a dozen species of cranes on display and a large area closed to the public where their cranes can breed unmolested.

Whooping cranes are one of the great success stories of our conservation. At one time, in the 1930s or 1940s, the population was down to about 22 birds. Their place is not yet secure but now there are about 250 of the big birds.

I took this photograph of a whooping crane wading in its one-acre enclosure this afternoon. It was a thrill for me to spend half an hour watching the whooping cranes.

Here’s the approximate route from Madison to Bariboo. It’s hard to get Mapquest to go to an intesection.

Here’s the aerial view of the route, showing Wisconsin as the deep green, fractally folded land I knew it must be:

Amazing boomerang photo

This photo shows the course of a foam boomerang with three light-emitting diodes (LEDs) attached. It’s from an article in Popular Mechanics.

Ironman nutrition in Madison

For the past few days, I’ve been trying to stick to a Weight Watchers plan and LotStreetWiz has been trying to eat healthily for an athlete’s training plan. He gets to eat about 4,200 Calories a day. It’s hard to eat healthily while travelling.

The Chicago Grill Uno Pizzeria was delicious, but the individual pizzas were almost 2,000 Calories each with 4 ounces (130 grams) of fat. My meal there blew away my whole diet budget for the week. No wonder half the patrons were blimps. They should rename it Fat City:

The star is the Panera Bread restaurant. The food is delicious, with sandwiches made with fresh bread, salads, robust mixing of flavours, and home-made soups. There’s a bakery with home-made desserts and good coffee. And there’s free wireless Internet access. So we’re here.