The Naturalist Notebook 

Solar Eclipse This Sunday

Thursday, 05/17/12

At the Naturalist Center, 10 AM-5 PM:
>> Color an Eclipse Dragon
>> Watch a documentary about the Sun
>> Play games, puzzles and much more

Join docents with telescopes on the roof, 1-4 PM.

View the eclipse, starting at 5:16 PM, outside the Academy’s entrance.

Note: Program is free of charge with admission to the Academy.

Earthquake Exhibit Blog 

Secrets of the Shake House

Thursday, 05/17/12

The Academy’s Earthquake exhibit explores the Earth’s tectonic plate movement on a vast geological timescale, the effects of earthquakes on a more immediate human timescale, and quake preparedness tips for living in seismically active regions like the Bay Area.

In the Shake House, the titles on the bottom bookshelf are:

Earth

An Ever-Changing Place

Early Warning

The Imperial Mantle

Earth in Motion

The Story of our Earth

The Story of Mechanics

The Story of Force and Motion

The Earth Before Man

Our Beginnings in the Old World

The Majestic Rocky Mountains

America

Your Land and Mine

San Francisco

San Francisco in Color

Oh, California

Pacific Rift

The Last Place on Earth

Our Town

Plain Talk from the Hill

Tales of Land and Sea

A World Unsuspected

Catastrophe!

Life on the Line

Power Shift

Fire

One More Time

Unforgettable Fire

Ashes to Ashes

Design of Masonry Structures

Clear and Present Danger

Sign of Chaos

Thriving on Chaos

Lord of Chaos

Alarms and Diversions

Losing our Cool

Heat

Studies on Hysteria

This Moment on Earth

Making Peace with the Planet

The Winds of Change

Disaster Preparedness

Fun Facts

• Inside the Shake House, the walls are painted white. Everything that rattles and bounces during a quake is brightly colored.

• “Water” in the sealed fish bowl is actually mineral oil. It was chosen because actual water would turn green with algae growth and need to be regularly changed.

• This room has no breakable items. The plates, glasses, mirror, and fishbowl are all made of plastic.

• The chandelier uses LED light strips to simulate incandescent lighting of 1989 and the flickering gas lights of 1906.

• Be sure to look at the titles on the lower shelf of the book case. Reading from left to right, you’ll see how these titles literally spell out the larger idea behind the entire Earthquake exhibit.

• The room’s framed painting pays tribute to the schooner Academy, an 89-foot sailing vessel that took Academy scientiststo the Galapagos Islands in 1905. The great 1906 earthquake struck San Francisco during the expedition, destroying the Academy’s original Market Street building and a majority of the collection. The 75,000 specimens collected in the Galapagos formed the basis of the new, rebuilt Academy in Golden Gate Park.

Earthquake Exhibit Blog 

Behind the scenes with Scott Moran

Thursday, 05/17/12

With the Earthquake exhibit less than a month from its public opening, I caught up with Scott Moran, Director of Concept & Exhibit Development, as he darted between ladders and rolling tables loaded with power tools and electrical wires on the ground floor of the Academy’s West Pavilion. Moran was on his way to test the audio portion of the new Shake House exhibit, set inside a replica of a San Francisco Victorian-era dining room.

Scott Moran pauses by the exhibit's entry sphere

“Every exhibit tells a story,” he says, comparing this phase of preparation to a dress rehearsal.

To tell the story of Earthquake, Moran and his team are using an 8,000-square-foot area and six different installations (including a mini-dome theatre, a live animal enclosure, fossils, and a 25-foot wide model of Earth that you can walk through) to describe the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates across two very different time spans—the vast stretch of geologic time and the more immediate lens of human time. (Launching at the same time will be a new planetarium show that examines the seismic forces that shape the Earth. Stay tuned for a behind-the-scenes look at the artists and visualizers who are putting the finishing touches on this show.)

“Geologically, earthquakes are a natural process of our dynamic planet,” Moran explains. Plate tectonics has impacted evolution, the dispersion of species, and the creation of continents over hundreds of millions of years. “But on a personal level,” he says, “we experience this process as a series of jolts. We call these jolts earthquakes.”

Maybe that’s why the Shake House is so popular. This version is the third such exhibit to open in the Academy. Two previous versions were developed in the 1980s and 90s by Dr. Bruce Bolt. Bolt was a UC Berkeley professor and former president of the Academy’s Board of Trustees.

“This time, we didn’t just want people to go into a dark room and get a good shake, no matter how fun that is. We asked ourselves, ‘what happens when you’re in a quake?’ You’re usually at home. The first thing you do is look around and try to figure out what’s happening.”

That’s why the new Shake House is an immersive experience set in a living room. The walls are painted stark white. But everything that rattles around during a quake—paintings, dishes, glassware, books, and a chandelier—are vibrantly colored. The view through the bay window is of San Francisco’s famous “Painted Ladies of Alamo Square,” a row of Victorian houses framing the city’s downtown skyline.

The experience will take visitors through the tremors of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. Then the lights will flicker and dim. The view out the window will slowly change from the modern city to the skyline circa 1906. A simulation of the historic 7.9 tremors will begin.

A Santa Cruz native, Moran has lived through several California earthquakes, including the 6.7 Northridge quake in 1994. “I wasn’t in San Francisco for the ‘89 Loma Prieta quake, but I felt it,” he says proudly. Attending Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Moran remembers that the powerful tremors woke him during an after-class nap.

All this shaking is having a subtle impact on the Academy staff working around the clock to complete the exhibit before May 26. “People are telling me they’re making the time to put together earthquake preparedness kits,” Moran says.

“Last weekend,” he adds with a grin, “I even found myself buying three additional flashlights.”

The Naturalist Notebook 

Endangered Species Day

Wednesday, 05/16/12

Friday, May 18, 11:00 am-4:00 pm

Join us at the Naturalist Center to make an African penguin bag puppet in honor of Endangered Species Day. Learn about the importance of protecting endangered species and everyday actions that individuals can take to help protect our nation’s disappearing wildlife.

Note: Program free of charge with admission to the Academy.

The Naturalist Notebook 

Spotlight On…

Tuesday, 05/15/12

Check out this week’s featured specimen!

(Pictured below, really close up!)

Photo: N. Sincero © California Academy of Sciences

Can you guess what it is?

Here are some hints:

• This animal has stretchy ligaments on its jaw that allow it to open wide enough to swallow prey whole.
• This animal is a powerful swimmer.

Leave us a comment with your answer! Then come see us in the Classroom on Sunday, May 20th at 2:30 pm for Science Story Adventures to see if you’re right and to learn more about this animal. Science Story Adventures is our program for children ages 4 - 8 and their caregivers. In the program, we explore the natural world through stories, specimens, games and crafts.

California Academy of Sciences - Project Lab 

International Migratory Bird Day

Thursday, 05/10/12

This week, May 7^th to May 13^th, the Academy of Sciences celebrates International Migratory Bird Day.  Although it was originally slated as the second Saturday in May, the birds don’t always recognize our time schedule, and in some places, migratory birds had already left the area so the single day celebration was extended to an entire week.

Here at the Academy, the Ornithology and Mammalogy department’s research collection aids researchers in studying bird migration. Often times migration can be shrouded in mystery-exact migration routes of species can be little known or unknown altogether! By analyzing stable isotopes, or chemical compounds, in feathers of our study skin collection, researchers can determine geographical locations visited by the migrating birds on their long flight. But why migrate at all?

Many birds use migration as a tactic to ensure secure food supplies all year round, especially around breeding time.  Generally, in the Northern Hemisphere, birds will fly north to more temperate spring/summer breeding grounds and then head back down south when winter approaches their northerly breeding habitat.  This allows them to take advantage of warm weather year round, effectively securing their food source consistently for their own stomach and the young they raise.  Some migration journeys take months and some take days depending upon the distance and flight of the bird.

Arctic Terns have one of the longest distances to travel of any birds; they travel 12,000 miles from Antartica in the southern hemisphere’s summer to their Arctic breeding grounds during the northern hemisphere’s summer.  This journey from pole to pole takes this 13-inch bird only a few months to complete!

Instead of migrating for a few months, Bar-tailed Godwits migrate in a little over a week.  This is despite the fact that Bar-tailed Godwit has one of the longest continuous migrations.  They often journey 11,000 miles from New Zealand to their breeding grounds in Alaska in one trip.  A trip to Hawaii from San Francisco is around 2300 miles.  Imagine flying to Hawaii and back four and a half times without stopping!

These long migrations are not limited to larger birds either.  Allen’s hummingbirds also migrate from parts of Southern Mexico up the coast to southern California, a trip of 1500-2400 miles!

For all birds, migration can be a dangerous, exhausting time.  Since one of the driving factors is food, some birds choose not to migrate if they are fed all year round by an outside source like bird feeders or if they land somewhere that has a temperate climate all year.  Some hummingbirds will choose to stick around if they have access to bird feeders and a subspecies of one of our San Francisco residents, the White-crowned Sparrow will not migrate and choose to breed along the coastline.

Bird migration is a truly awesome feat of stamina!  Come check out the Project Lab during Migratory Bird week for some specimens of migratory birds on display. We also will be having specimen preparation during Nightlife on May 10th as well as our collections manager, Maureen Flannery, discussing bird migration!

You can also visit the official International Bird Day website here: http://www.birdday.org/birdday.

Codie Otte
Curatorial Assistant and Specimen Preparator
Ornithology & Mammalogy Department

The Naturalist Notebook 

Spotlight On…

Tuesday, 05/08/12

Check out this week’s featured specimen!

(Pictured below, really close up!)

Photo: N. Sincero © California Academy of Sciences

Can you guess what it is?

Here are some hints:

• Breeding pairs of this species stay together all year round and migrate south with their offspring.
• They are found in wetlands and agricultural fields.

Leave us a comment with your answer! Then come see us in the Classroom on Sunday, May 13th at 2:30 pm for Science Story Adventures to see if you’re right and to learn more about this animal. Science Story Adventures is our program for children ages 4 - 8 and their caregivers. In the program, we explore the natural world through stories, specimens, games and crafts.

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