Dr. Roberta L. Bondar is globally acknowledged for her pioneering contributions to house drugs analysis, nice artwork pictures, 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. Educated by NASA’s Earth Observations workforce, she additionally photographed the Earth whereas circling it 129 instances. Dr. Bondar later turned an honors scholar in skilled nature pictures. For her Passionate Imaginative and prescient challenge, 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 nice artwork photographic prints. She is the creator of a number of best-selling books that includes her writing and pictures.
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 regarded stunning, they may additionally fly. I wanted an airplane. Later, as an astronaut, I flew in house like a chicken, with no passport throughout worldwide boundaries. Fact be instructed, it’s not fairly the identical factor. Chook flight is gracious, versatile, reactive, dedicated, balanced, and purposeful to call just a few qualities of the numerous. An astronaut floating inside a spacecraft could transfer purposefully, and though dedicated, isn’t practically as gifted with flight, particularly given a chicken’s nice means to defy gravity on Earth, with sudden course adjustments, and extended flight with no foothold.
House flight nevertheless, deepened the connection of my astronaut self to birds of Earth in sudden methods. When in house in low earth orbit, not seeing birds or different life with the unaided eye (aside 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 tune is a chilling glimpse right into a future the place human impression and adjustments in local weather will have an effect on habitats, and survival of biodiversity—the place birds would possibly now not be a part of the pure life-support system of planet Earth. The aim of this e book is to share a visible story of two extraordinary avian species, one from both sides of the globe, by means of the three views of house, from the air, and from the floor. The premise is that in case you love one thing, you’ll want to shield it. House for Birds is a technique 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 consider that we share a need, nevertheless, that spaceflight will carry us extra humanity, deeper perception into questions on life itself, and the universe–to see the world with higher 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 lined 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 will supply 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. Picture credit score: ESRS, NASA Johnson House Heart, ISS052-E-63066
The extent of those pathways within the air is emphasised by the house view as we’re unable to seize a whole migratory hall in a single picture. Whereas house views are past the realm of most human experiences, the chance to see Earth from house is rewarded by visuals of distinctive and novel patterns of land and water. The digicam angle and lens selection body the attitude. A large angle lens for instance, permits scanning, and appreciation of distance. My bias is to ask that pictures from the Worldwide House Station embrace ones at an indirect angle, with the sting of the Earth or limb, to remind us that we and all Earth’s lifeforms stay on a planet.
West Asian/East African Flyway, wanting northward from South Africa, 2016.04.03, GMT 11:51:33. Picture credit score: ESRS, NASA Johnson House Heart, 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 nearly two dimensional. Though avian imaginative and prescient isn’t similar to human imaginative and prescient, dissimilarities and discontinuities within the panorama could 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 by means of pictures, supported by dialog, present scientific understanding, and dialogue of inventive components. It options the endangered Whooping Crane (Grus americana) of the Western hemisphere and the near-threatened Lesser Flamingo (Phoeniconaias minor) of the Japanese 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 conduct, the place assembly, nesting, feeding, and flying are carried out in teams that may be effectively 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
Manner earlier than I used to be born, Leonardo da Vinci created works that integrated components of what now are separated into cultures of both artwork or science. Educated as a neuro-ophthalmologist, I outline my subspecialty as “how one can see and examine the world round us”, implying each artwork and science that my pictures and writing mirror. For instance, my purpose 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, irrespective of the depth of inquiry, will discover solutions in science. The higher the connection, the extra extended the engagement and fewer fleeting its impression. 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 completely different from their backdrop, or certainly, from the planet itself as seen from house.
House for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Magnificence and Flight by Dr. Roberta L. Bondar (Determine 1 Publishing) Accessible September seventeenth at bookstores in all places