Dyed Birds and Chicks Appear to Kids as "New Species."

Don't get fooled!

Dyed Birds and Chicks Appear to Kids as "New Species." 

Dr Abe V Rotor

 

 

Wonder what these kids are thinking, amazed at these colorful feathered pets

Ambulant bird vendors clandestinely ply their trade among unsuspecting kids. The birds, mainly the cosmopolitan house sparrow, field maya, and three-day old chicks, have been colorfully dyed to appear rare and unique, attracting parents to give in to their children's plea. Some specimens are specially dyed to make them appear as new species. San Vicente, Ilocos Sur town fiesta. (Circa April 2018)

Dyed three-day old chicks attract children, who make them pets. Dyed birds and chicks may not last long.  Dyes carry substances that are not only harmful to the birds, but also to humans and to the environment.  This practice is not in keeping with environmental laws and regulations, and therefore, should be discouraged. if not banned. ~

Black Cat Before a Waterfall

  Black Cat Before a Waterfall   

"She sits comfortably calm under the sun while the waterfall roars and the river flows." avr

                                           Wall Mural by Dr Abe V Rotor

Superstition makes Black-black a rare pet,

     her being black is bad luck,

not even when you meet her on the street,

     surely you stop and turn back.

Black is beautiful they say, but not a cat,

     like black diamond, black hair;

console one wearing black, save the cat,

     really it's not at all fair.   

She finds peace and content by a waterfall,

     its water falling free, 

purring while the waterfall roars and the river

    flows out to the sea!

 

 

Black-black is a native domestic feline, counterpart of the mongrel.  

Her lineage is traced to cats in the neighborhood, however as to 

how she got her pure black coat is unknown.  Author's pet at home, 

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur. 

Trees - Life of the Landscape

Trees - Life of the Landscape  

Dr Abe V Rotor

Fire trees and a Waterfall, acrylic on canvas AVRotor

Summer sky and fiery hill,

a shy waterfall in between,

drifting clouds its twin, 

 and a dash of breezy chill. 

  

 Forest Adventurers in acrylic showing details, AVRotor,

Young adventurers in a forest,

where the world of wildlife lies,

caress a confetti of butterflies

 as the sun breaks into prism,

and the forest laughs and cries.  

 Forest Stream, section of a wall mural by AVRotor, Greater Lagro QC

Born in the mountains high,

rivulets into stream divine;

don't hurry up in your prime,

where everything is young ,

in the stillness of time. 

Into Your Light, in acrylic by AVRotor 

Sleep, it's autumn for the trees

to shed off their crown;

save the pine and cypress,

and white doves of peace.

  

Green Parthenon, in acrylic on wood by AVRotor 

Living columns, Parthenon of the forest,

your fate in the hands of man,

what time did to a temple of the gods -

ruins of beauty gone. ~

Natural Toxins in Food Plants

Natural Toxins in Food Plants

Dr Abe V Rotor

Arusip or lato is the most popular sea vegetable in the market.  Too much intake may cause dizziness and may have sedative effect to some. This is traced to a substance called caulerpin, named after its genus Caulerpa. The species shown is Caulerpa racemosa.  It is served fresh with sliced ripe tomato and onion.  

Food contains natural chemicals that are essential for growth and health which include carbohydrates, sugars, proteins and vitamins. But some foods contain potentially harmful natural toxins. Here are some common plants that carry natural toxins.

• Number one in the list is cassava (Manihot utilissima) yields natural cyanic acid mainly in the bark.
1. Crop should be harvested in about 6 months. Over mature tubers contain more of the toxin.
2. Avoid cassava growing along fences and borders; they are likely there for a long time.
3. Choose tubers that are freshly harvested, especially when buying in the market.
4. Remove the entire bark, and wash the tuber thoroughly. Cut into pieces and boil.
5. When the pot starts to boil, remove the cover. This allows the cyanogas to escape.
6. Well cooked cassava is generally safe, but exercise moderation especially among children.
7. Note that there are varieties of cassava which have higher cyanic acid content. Your local agriculturist and the old folks know best.

• Potato (Solanum tuberosum) contains natural toxins called glycoalkaloids The levels are usually low but higher levels are found in potato sprouts, and the peels of potato. These natural toxins are produced by the plant to counteract pests and pathogens, and stress fro ultraviolet and injury. Because glycoalkaloids are not destroyed by cooking, these are the things to do.

1. Don’t eat sprouted potato.
2. Remove any damaged part of the tuber.
3. Don’t eat cooked potatoes that still taste bitter.
4. If you come across a green potato crisp, it’s best not to eat it.
5. Store potatoes in a dark, cool and dry place.
6. Note that Solanum tuberosum belongs to the same family as tobacco – Solanaceae.

• Seeds of apples and pears, and the stony pit or kernel of apricot and peaches contain a naturally occurring substance called amygdalin. Amygdalin can turn into hydrogen cyanide in the stomach causing discomfort or illnesses. It can sometimes be fatal.

Others:

Bamboo shoots (labong) contains a certain amount of cyanic acid, similar to that in cassava. Cook well with the pot open to allow the gas to escape.

• Nicotine in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is among the most poisonous substances in nature. Extract of the poison from a single stick of cigarette can instantaneously kill a person when injected into the bloodstream. Smokers die slowly of nicotine, one of the top ten causes of death in modern society, early death notwithstanding heobromin in cacao (Theobroma cacao)
• Caffeine in coffee (Coffea spp.)
• Capsicin in red pepper
• Ricinin in castor bean (Ricinus communis)
• Caulerpin in lato or ar-arusip (Caulerpa racemosa)
• Aflatoxin is a substance produced by a fungus, Aspergillus flavus, that grows on harvested crops like corn, rice and copra that are not properly dried and stored. Aflatoxin causes cirrhosis of the liver and other related ailments.
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The Two Worlds of the House Sparrow

The Two Worlds of the House Sparrow

Dr Abe V Rotor

Gordiun (or Gordion), that's how we call this bird in Ilokano, almost a password for us kids in our time with slingshots worn necklace style, our pockets bulging with carefully picked gravel stones. 

  House sparrows (Passer domesticus)  frolic in a pool left by rain.  Photo Credit: Google, Wikipedia

We were soldiers of fortune when the gordiun is fat at harvestime, and how we relished it grilled in today's term, and how we raided its nest and took its young. 

Passer birds are a product of co-evolution in rice territory - their life cycle jibes with that of rice - the traditional varieties that stay in the field for the whole monsoon season. And then comes October.  By then they number to hundreds, thousands over the horizon. What makes it worse is the gordiun is related to the maya, equally if not more destructive. raiding ricefields about to be harvested, stealing  grains from the mandala and the garung - a giant circular basket to keep threshed palay as buffer stock in today economic term. 

That's why our old folks allowed us to carry this deadly improvised weapon, traced to the history of David, with the enemy a hundred times more than a single Goliath - more elusive, more mean, more intelligent. 

Like its counterpart in the rodent world - the rat - the gordium has likewise learned to live with humans, but never, never allowing itself to be domesticated - unlike the cat and the dog.  Not the gordiun, not the rat as well - two stubborn co-inhabitants in man's dwelling. And the wonder of it all is that they can adjust to modern living, and in fact to today's postmodernism.  They live in cities among high rise and shanties, the rats on garbage, and the gordiun on food waste and pest.  

We were the Mark Twain kids of the fifties - the likes of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.  Like them we were abandoned by time - shall w say, age - and ambition and industrialization and exodus to the city. We have surrendered our weapons, so with the adventure and fun we were supposed to hand over as heritage to our children and the younger generation of today. 

Ivan Pavlov is undoubtedly correct when we talk of the resilience of instinct, its ability to cope with fear, deprivation and aggression for the sake of survival of the species as a whole. That's how the gordiun - and all animals for that matter - succeed in adapting to the changing environment. 

But there is something strange going on, not anticipated by the great psychologist, similarly Darwin did not foresee the impact of modern science and technology: the steady annihilation of species to the point of extinction. In fact hundreds of species of the estimated millions have permanently perished, and more in accelerated pace will follow suit.

I look back as my Gordiun - the one that refused domestication, the one that played the most skillful hide-and-seek game, the most challenging target of our slingshots, the one that lives  up to 20 years among humans - not in the forest though, the one that never migrates in neither habagat or amihan - unlike the migratory birds of the north coming down south and returning after winter. And the one that is the symbol of joy and being carefree, yet the epitome to bonding as family and community. 

I have long dismissed the gordiun's destructiveness , and in fact explained to farmers and housewives, they do more good in housekeeping - picking morsels, ridding the place of vermin.  They are part of the food web and therefore help in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem. They are insectivorous and predators, and they keep weeds population down that would otherwise compete with our crops, by eating their seeds during the off season. It is for this matter that their dispersal all over the world in all continents except Antarctica was assisted by man because they are excellent biological agents.  In general we have learned to accept them, as they have learned the same.  

A change of human attitude crept in when the gordiun's population has dropped from the flock we used to watch and admire, the chorus of songs though inferior to the canary, and by their very presence alone that keeps us company. This is what is happening all over the world because of pollution, global warming, loss of habitat, pesticides and the like.

I watched a gordiun lost its way and ended up in our sala trapped.  It was raining hard and I said, you can stay here.  Restless, it rammed against the wall and ceiling, then perched nervously on the curtain looking at me long and hard.

Suddenly I became a boy once more - this time without the dreaded slingshot around my neck.  I parted the curtain and out it flew to join its flock. ~  

"I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet* I could have worn." - Henry David Thoreau

*Mark of distinction worn on the shoulder to show rank in an organization; shoulder strap showing military rank or social standing.

Wonder what the stream sings all day

  Wonder what the stream sings all day   

                                                                Dr Abe V Rotor

Acrylic Painting and Verse by Dr. Abe V Rotor (32” x 48”) 2017

Wonder what the stream sings all day, season after season,

     from the mountains down to this peaceful realm;

down the valley among trees of my ancestral generation,

     reminiscent of Eden as it may seem.

Wonder the chirping of birds as they greet the morning sun,

     their nests come alive, usher a new life’s beginning;

crawlers from their abode stir, the winged up into the air;

     prayer not in words, but obedience to Nature’s calling.

Wonder if we too, find reverence in this world of green,

     rainbow above, crystalline stream below,

living pillars make a cathedral beyond glass and steel,

     epitome of worship the arts couldn't show.

Wonder how man was vanished from this beautiful home,

     in exchange of a postmodern creed;

hours of work and pleasure, searching for a meaning

     of life, amassing wealth beyond his need.

Wonder not what the stream sings all day, season after season;

     it is life well lived, a singular gift of a Giver;

here a bridge across yearns for the Prodigal Son to return

     to an Eden thought to have been lost forever. ~

UST Botanical Garden: A Pocket Tropical Rainforest in the City

Trees for Peace

A Pocket Tropical Rainforest in the City

University of Santo Tomas Botanical Garden 

Dr Abe V Rotor

What really makes a beautiful garden may draw two schools of thought - romanticism and functionalism. The University of Santo Tomas Botanical Garden does not take side on the issue; it portrays both in an integrated, harmonious design patterned after the richest and the most enviable biome on earth- the tropical rain forest. 

Author's Note: The UST Manila Botanical Garden serves as model in creating the multi-story arboretum of the San Vicente Botanical Garden in San Vicente, Ilocos Sur where the author presently resides.)

             Tropical Rainforest in acrylic by the author. Courtesy of Pasalubong Center, 

                                                 San Vicente, Ilocois Sur

The new face of the  garden is striking. Let us begin with the cascading six-foot waterfall and trace its flow on a meandering rocky stream that ducks under a footbridge before plunging into the depth of a pond, its bottom murky and cool and rich in detritus. Here clams and snails, and other bottom dwellers, mostly decomposers, reside, shy from the sun and remain ensconced in the very food source that settles down. Such in the niche of these sessile, benthic organisms.

Bryophyte Garden

Along the “river”, the water keeps the environment fresh and cool, lapping at the rock, sending spray on its banks. Through time, on the walls of the waterfall and on any rocks that lies across the path of water, grow countless kinds of algae and mosses that build layer after layer until a carpet is formed, thus giving rise to another niche- the domain of bryophytes in Lilliputian imagery, or one depicted in the movie, Honey, I shrunk the kids.

Bryophytes are among the earliest plants and are, therefore, primitive. It is as if we are turning the hands of time some two billion years ago or so, when their prototypes began to fill the atmosphere with oxygen, which later favored the growth of more, and advanced kinds of vegetation. Perhaps their most outstanding contribution is in soil building, breaking up rocks exfoliating them, virtually skinning them with their acidic foothold, and, together with their biomass, making a mass we call soil.

Micro- Climate Effect

The ultimate source of water is the sky, from the clouds that gather and grow atop the forest. Transpiration and evaporation combine to attract the clouds, which come down as a shower or a downpour at any time of the day or night. It is for this phenomenon that this biome got its name - rainforest. To simulate this condition, the waterfall and running streams, together with a large fountain and a series of ponds near by, maintain high humidity in the area that is the key to the formation of a multi-storey vegetation and myriad of resident organisms.

It will take time for the UST botanical garden to reach the status of a true typical rainforest, if at all. Years shall pass, and in the process students and visitors shall witness here, the transformation of one sere after another, until a climax community is formed. It is not only for the scientific and aesthetic aspect that count; it is for something more - that which presents itself in the realm of ethico-morals that governs man of his role in God’s creation- the transformation of man himself as a true and faithful steward.

Evolving Ecosystem

The UST botanical garden is being transformed as a deliberate expression of an evolving ecosystem. It is Nature’s laboratory and a playing field of biological diversity. As a field laboratory the garden demonstrates ecological cycles - invasion, colonization, competition, and emergence of dominant species, as well as seasonal and long term succession patterns. We may not have the four distinct seasons, but there are tropical trees that demonstrate some characteristics they carry in their ancestral genes, such as deciduousness in narra ( Ptercarpus inducus), our national tree.

The garden is a living manifestation of dynamic balance in a changing environment with the organisms constantly adjusting to the demands of the latter, but in the process slowly affecting the environment itself. Such transformational stages, called seres, always lead towards homeostasis, and the result is a climax ecological system.

As a showcase of natural habitats, the garden adjusts to the development of niches and diversity indices. The garden never sleeps, to speak. It is a living arena and the drama of life goes on and on.

When we look at a life, we look at it in physics and chemistry- the flow of energy through the food chain, food web and their hierarchic order, the food pyramid. The light energy of the sun is transformed into chemical energy in plants, and is passed on to various organisms, one after another through the links of a chain. The remaining energy is used by the decomposers that transform organic substances into inorganic forms for the use of the next generation organisms- and the cycle goes on and on. We can witness this phenomenon among the residents in the pond, and among insects, arachnids, birds, and reptiles that reside nearby.

The garden is a laboratory for sociobiology, in the words of the founder of this field, Dr E.O. Wilson. Animal behavior is demonstrated both by instinct and condition learning, and, to an extent, incipient intelligence. The ingenious building of a spider of a web to trap its prey awes the visitos of the garden. But wait until they observe the preying mantis and the green tree ant. Ingenuity of nature in plants is observed in tropism - reactions to light, touch, and the other elements. Plants, to sociobiologists, are not insensitive and incapable of communicating with one another. As members of a community, they, too, respond, singly and collectively, through some kind of communication medium.

Biological indicators 

There are biological indicators of the state of the environment. The garden has a host of these indicators, such as lichens and fireflies, the presence of which attests to the fact that the environment is tolerably favorable to them in spite of air pollution, and that the garden has become their home. The garden itself is also a barometer of climatic adversity, like El Niño. The flowering of the bamboo is an antecedent of its episode.

I believe that, in spite of the crowded environment of high rise buildings around the UST, the Botanical Garden is not without natural populations of species. Butterflies, natural and cultured, find the garden a suitable abode, having the right kinds of plants they feed on and rear they young.

The ponds are a sanctuary of dragonflies as well, and their waters teem with both phytoplankton and zooplankton, seen only under the microscope. These in turn key up the food web, linking one organism to another in an amazing network of interrelationship.

"As a gene bank, the garden is a depository of biological diversity, providing access to genetic studies, propagation and exchange with other institutions," says Dr. Anselmo S. Cabigan a well known biologist and ecologist. The UST Botanical Garden was under the supervision of Dr. Romualdo M del Rosario until his retirement from the university.  

Morning at the UST Botanical Garden

Dr Abe V Rotor

An On-the-Spot Painting at the UST Botanical garden by the author, with the

 tallest tree Alstonia scholaris, locally known as dita. as principal subject. (24" x 38")

 

It is misty, it is foggy, here at the garden,

     or it must be smog in the city air;

and the early rays pierce through like spears,

     yet this is the best place for a lair.

But the artist must be provoked, challenged;

     for peace can't make a masterpiece;

only a troubled soul do rise where others fall,

     where ease and good life often miss.

This lair is where the action is, the battlefield,

     where pure and polluted air meet,

where a garden in a concrete jungle reigns,

     where nature's trail ends in a street. ~

Art, where is art, when the message is unclear,

     colors, colors, what color is blind faith?

what color is rage, what color is change?

     colors be humble - black is your fate. ~