Angel in Flight

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Shana Hutchins

Meet Aggieland’s “Angel,” the rare white hummingbird whose story was chronicled earlier this week, as captured by Waco photographer Dr. Spencer Moore this week at the Country Star Bed and Breakfast. Dr. Moore is one of several Brazos Valley area photographers who have visited the Country Star this week for the opportunity to see this marvelous wonder of nature who has appeared each day since Saturday, August 16. See more photos of Angel and other subjects documented by Dr. Moore at his website, Dr. Spencer Moore Photography, or read his first-person observations as shared with Houston Chronicle science writer Eric Berger.

(Credit: Dr. Spencer Moore, http://www.drspencermoorephotography.com/)

The Beauty of Rare Creatures and Social Networking

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Shana Hutchins

Science truly is all around us. The secret lies in being a Noticer — a term I’ve referenced before in this blog. And it’s collaborative by nature, too. (By the way, there’s an intended pun there. Read on to see. Oops, I did it again — ha!)

OK, enough with the cheesy humor and on with the real story. This past Saturday, Country Star Bed and Breakfast owners Cher and Doug McHan were shocked by an amazing sight at one of their property’s bird feeders — a white hummingbird. Albinism, a genetic condition that results in a lack of pigmentation in the skin, hair, scales or feathers of an animal, has been documented in many different species throughout the animal kingdom. When it comes to hummingbirds, most people have seen the more common jeweled-green and ruby-throated varieties, but this guy (or gal) — who’s more specifically a leucistic hummingbird, versus the extremely rare albino version characterized by pink eyes and feet — is novel by any standard, especially here in Aggieland.

Armed with her trusty sidekick — the Canon Rebel T4i camera she regularly uses to document the establishment’s most loyal visitors (deer) and other happenings for the B&B’s Facebook page and website — Cher snapped a few quick shots and posted them on social media. She also reported it to a white hummingbird banding website she found.

(Credit: Cher McHan.)

Saturday close-up. (Credit: Cher McHan.)

In short order, Cher’s Facebook friend David Harkins (a 1984 Texas A&M wildlife and fisheries sciences graduate) advised her to alert iNaturalist.org and the Birds of Texas Facebook group. He also put her in touch with his own friend, photographer Bill Morris, who visited the Country Star Monday to document the exceptional find. Meanwhile, Cher’s cousin, Doreen White, gave it a name: Angel.

(Credit: Bill Morris.)

Say what you will about social media’s intrusion into society, but so often it uses its powers for good. In this case, it helped put the exclamation point on that extraordinary in the everyday we talk about in our boilerplate. Good bull, er, hummingbird!

See additional images courtesy of Waco photographer Dr. Spencer Moore here.

(Credit: Cher McHan.)

Science: There’s a Magic to It

Posted on August 13, 2014 by cjarvis07

“It’s magic!”

It’s hard to hear yourself think, much less anything else, in a classroom full of sixth-graders, but that excited shriek caught my attention.

I was taking photographs of a Physics Show demonstration for the Youth Adventure Program (YAP) in the Mitchell Physics Building last month. The kids were in awe over a tiny cube-shaped magnet that was floating in midair around a circular disc. And indeed, it gave the appearance of something on the supernormal side of things.

“It’s not magic – it’s physics,” noted Dr. Tatiana Erukhimova, senior lecturer and champion of the Department of Physics and Astronomy’s premier outreach extravaganza.

Technically, that’s true. We actually were witnessing the principles of superconducting levitation at work. Superconductors expel magnetic fields, so when the disc is cooled to its point of superconductivity (with the help of some liquid nitrogen), the repulsion is so strong that the magnet appears to be suspended in air.

Science may be the fabric of what we know as “magic,” but it takes a lot of creativity (and perhaps some charisma, too) to capture an audience’s imagination using only everyday objects, especially when that audience is hyperactive pre-teens. People like Tatiana, and also Dr. James Pennington who spearheads the Department of Chemistry’s Chemistry Roadshow, are masters of this.