Dr. Roberta L. Bondar is globally acknowledged for her pioneering contributions to house drugs analysis, advantageous artwork pictures, and training on the surroundings. Aboard the Area Shuttle Discovery mission STS-42 in 1992, she performed experiments within the first Worldwide Microgravity Laboratory, a precursor to the Worldwide Area Station. Skilled by NASA’s Earth Observations workforce, she additionally photographed the Earth whereas circling it 129 occasions. Dr. Bondar later turned an honors pupil 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. Non-public, company, and institutional collections in Canada, the USA, and the UK maintain Dr. Bondar’s advantageous 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 countless 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 lovely, they might additionally fly. I wanted an airplane. Later, as an astronaut, I flew in house like a hen, and not using a passport throughout worldwide boundaries. Reality be instructed, it’s not fairly the identical factor. Fowl flight is gracious, versatile, reactive, dedicated, balanced, and purposeful to call just a few qualities of the various. An astronaut floating inside a spacecraft might transfer purposefully, and though dedicated, will not be almost as gifted with flight, particularly given a hen’s nice potential to defy gravity on Earth, with sudden course modifications, and extended flight and not using a foothold.
Area flight nonetheless, deepened the connection of my astronaut self to birds of Earth in surprising 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 hen sound or track is a chilling glimpse right into a future the place human impression and modifications in local weather will have an effect on habitats, and survival of biodiversity—the place birds may 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 either side of the globe, by 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 defend it. Area for Birds is a technique of sharing an emotional reveal, of birds whose nice flights to safe their future, train 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 imagine that we share a need, nonetheless, that spaceflight will convey us extra humanity, deeper perception into questions on life itself, and the universe–to see the world with larger readability and compassion.
And that’s the place hen migration comes into this story, for what birds see, contact and want, 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 are able to provide 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 Area Middle, 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 alternative body the angle. A large angle lens for instance, permits scanning, and appreciation of distance. My bias is to ask that pictures from the Worldwide Area Station embody 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, trying northward from South Africa, 2016.04.03, GMT 11:51:33. Picture credit score: ESRS, NASA Johnson Area Middle, 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 virtually two dimensional. Though avian imaginative and prescient will not be an identical to human imaginative and prescient, dissimilarities and discontinuities within the panorama could be recognizable by each hen and human being.
A solo Whooping Crane approaches a distant level, Wooden Buffalo Nationwide Park, Northwest Territories/Alberta, Canada. Copyright Roberta L Bondar 2018
Area for Birds transports the reader alongside a path of discovery by pictures, supported by dialog, present scientific understanding, and dialogue of creative parts. It options the endangered Whooping Crane (Grus americana) of the Western hemisphere and the near-threatened Lesser Flamingo (Phoeniconaias minor) of the Jap 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 habits, the place assembly, nesting, feeding, and flying are carried out in teams that may be properly 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
Method earlier than I used to be born, Leonardo da Vinci created works that included parts of what now are separated into cultures of both artwork or science. Skilled as a neuro-ophthalmologist, I outline my subspecialty as “the best way to see and look at the world round us”, implying each artwork and science that my pictures and writing replicate. For instance, my aim 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, regardless of the depth of inquiry, will discover solutions in science. The larger the connection, the extra extended the engagement and fewer fleeting its impression. Area for Birds makes use of retro views or canvasses of landscapes of sunshine and texture onto which birds enter and depart on a timescale that’s completely different from their backdrop, or certainly, from the planet itself as seen from house.
Area for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Magnificence and Flight by Dr. Roberta L. Bondar (Determine 1 Publishing) Out there September seventeenth at bookstores in all places
