Birdies come and go

Yesterday was my last day at work, party and everything. I did not think that it would be quite so hard. Or rather, I knew that it would be hard but knowing is one thing, living it is another.

 

It feels weird leaving ones nest, as I call it, and at the same time it feels right. In some ways it is not different from when I left home for uni. In most ways it is exactly the same thing, the only thing being different, when all the details like space and time are shed, is how I see and relate to the events around me.

It feels weird because it is a strange mix of the things that I made to fill my life and of the people, each very special and unique, that quite spontaneously and of their own accord filled it even more in ways in which things never could.

I was asked if there are any earlier pictures of me at DLR...well here is one:

Back in days... in Köln....as a PhD Student who had decided that space transportation systems are THE enablers of all space activities.

But this is not a post intended for reminiscence. It is a thank you post and a forward-looking one.

Thank you to all those that pushed me forward not by pushing but just by serving my infinite curiosity and my enthusiam with chances.

The chance for a PhD, the chance to do testing at a testbench, the chance to build up a group and bring people together, the chance to pose questions and find and provide answers, to guide and be guided.....the chance to find solutions in scientific research, the chance to address high-level concerns and again bring even more people together to help decision makers provide the right answers, the chance to question standards and indicate alternative routes, and to then follow these other roads to success and shared joy and pride, the chance to grow and discover through hard work and dedication,....the list is truly endless,....

I, for one thing, I am looking forward to my next destination and even more to the road thereto.

I went to visit my PhD supervisor today - my second PhD - to inform him that I will not be able to continue as my road to ESA will no longer allow me to find the time to do what I had embared upon a few years ago (back then when I had but my group and research in Lampoldshausen): exoplanets and SOFIA.

I entered his office with a heavy heart as I felt that I had to part from something that I did not want to part from. I left happy having discovered a whole new level of interation with him: not student and professor, but rather two people interested in making a seemless chain of innovation in space a reality.

Chances.

With great power - the power of giving and receiving chances - comes great responsibility.

Just for the record

..yeah, just for the record. Oh and it was not an April Fools'...

The more I know, the more...

...I know that I know nothing compare to all that there is that could be known.

It is the one amazing thing about bird watching, about science, about knowledge in general.

Much of what we do, think, much of how we act and interpret the world around us is based on strings of observations, some related some unrelated. We fill in the gaps and construct what we call knowledge.

Data - information - knowledge. There is a great deal of processing along the way.

I have now observed Great Tits building nests for the past 10+ years and had established what I thought was a solid hypothesis that Great Tits build their nests mostly out of moss, some dried grass and some soft material, like animal fur.

I always examined the nests once their owners had left and the hatchlings too. And twigs were just not in the mix.


In an earlier post this week (Just when things start getting exciting...) I commented on the fact that the nesting box was filled with twigs, thin ones, but twigs nonetheless. I conjectured that Eurasian Tree Sparrows might have been active in the nesting box as this is what I had observed in the past.

Well, my friendly readers, I was wrong. Or rather, I now think that I was wrong.

Why Sherlock?

Simple dear Watson!

Today, I observed, for the first time since bird watching, the female Great Tit bring in twigs. Together with some dried grass and moss, she did bring in a significant amount of small twigs.

Now, the question is: was I blind all these years?
Or is something different this year?
Or is this a revolutionary birdy that has decided to do things differently?

So now another chapter begins in the Nistkasten Adventure.

Oh, and Blue Tit also flew past, and peered inside. The season is starting sizzle with nestbox hunting. Oh! how I love it!!

Setbacks, beginnings, and Gulliverian reflections

Setbacks are never an easy thing. 

Especially so when on the one hand you know that that which is in your range of influence is marginally not enough to undo the current state of affairs and move things forward constructively and on the other hand that which lies ahead is a larger endeavour, not separate just larger, enlightened with a broader range of influence and responsibility, the delightful responsibility that comes with the chance to enable, and is drenched with its apparently inseparable counterpart - the unrelenting supremacy of survival of the one over survival of content - multiplied and transmitted subliminally. 

An image suddenly springs to mind: Gulliver...

...in Gulliver's Travels (http://4umi.com/swift/gulliver/) by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726.

Large and small endeavours alike share obstacles and setbacks. How is it that building a nesting box to visualise what happens inside is not unlike larger endeavours?

I shall recount and we will see....

I have already partially recounted what I did to attain my goal of peering inside my first nesting box: http://nistkasten-project.blogspot.de/2010/03/my-nistkasten-project-2010.html 

What I did not recount is that prior to me starting, I, excited as I always am when I discover something new, be it the smallest screw ever seen - by me, or something as fascinating as proprioception in combination with the doings of gravitational microlensing...

 galaxy cluster: SDSS J1038+4849 - Hubble Space Telescope - Wide Field Planetary Camera 2

...spoke to everyone willing to listen about the adventure I wanted to embark on.
To my utmost surprise I was told that what I wanted to do would never work. 

What?! Something so utterly cool and all I get is: "it will never work".

"Why?" 
"Because"
"Because?!"
"Yeah, because it won't" 

Cleverly insightful. 

I was upset and disappointed. And what was more I was upset and disappointed that I was upset and disappointed.  

Oh so really really silly really. The human condition of "not invented here" and of being a human unwilling to accept that there can be such a thing as "not invented here". 

Worries, fears, disappointment, isolationism.


I prefer responsibility, curiosity, fascination, openness, .... in the face of opportunities, challenges and dangers alike. 

If the universe can smile in the face of the forces at work, then I too shall do the same, unremittingly!