Birds are tough creatures!

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Alt headlines

This is Why Birds are So Tough

Why Birds Survive Winter Like Champs

So THIS is How Birds Get Through Winter

The post How Birds Survive Winter appeared first on EcoSalon.

Spread your wings with the feather and bird design trend.

Both birds and feathers have long been used to decorate our homes and adorn our bodies–images of birds were even found among the cave paintings at Lascaux, France that date back to 15,000 BCE. Birds and feathers invoke the natural world and the freedom and beauty of flight and their image is one that has held meaning for our species for a very long time.

It only makes sense that we want to decorate our homes and choose fashions that feature bird-themed motifs. Whether you go in more for the graceful or the cute, embrace your inner peacock or feather your nest with these stunning bird-themed critters.

Image: Shovava

1. Bird Wings Scarf – Spread your wings in the most gorgeous of ways with this handpainted white cotton scarf featuring black and white illustration of bird wings. It’s also available in different colors and multi-colored versions as well. This would make the perfect shoulder cover up this spring and summer.

Image: dutchdoor

2. Bird Tea Towels – Add a little Scandinavian folkloric flourish to your kitchen with these quaint screenprinted bird-themed towels. Practical and cute!

Image: AnnaWiscombe

3. Wooden Wall Birds – Add a lovely little flock to your walls with this family of birds that are handcrafted from oak and finished with little carved details and a bright finish of paint. Brighten up a dingy corner with these sweet little birds.

Image: StreetWallz

4. Feather Wall Decal – Decorate a quiet book nook in your home with these colorful and delicate feather wall decals. These wall decals are printed on woven fabric that looks and feels like canvas, but with a removable peel and stick self-adhesive.

Image: NanLawson

5. Bird Illustration – Adorn your walls with some sweet bird-themed artwork like this pretty illustration from the artist Nan Lawson.

Image: wildandfreejewelry

6. Feather Crown – Channel your inner free spirit with this dramatic feather crown. It comes in a variety of feather colors and is perfect for festival season.

Image: ClearSkyDesigns

7. Rustic Bird Charm – Feathered friends adorn these rustically reclaimed barn door panels. Add them to your home for some bird style.

Related on EcoSalon

16 Minimalist Birdhouses To Go Totally Cuckoo Over

7 Graphic Patterns For Home Decor You Don’t Know the Names Of—But Will Now!

How to Use 5 Bold Design Patterns to Make Your Home Pop, Gorgeously

The post 7 Bird Design Trends for Birds of a Feather (Lovers) appeared first on EcoSalon.

Sometimes, there aren’t words to describe nature. This 2011 video showing a murmuration of starlings in flight…well, it left us speechless in a really profound way.

Murmuration from Islands & Rivers on Vimeo.

The post We Want Wings: A Stunning Formation of Starlings You Have to See to Believe [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Pigeons as art? At what price?

“Augmented reality” is going to be the next big thing in tech – but here’s an artist with a low-budget version: pigeon-painting.

Pigeons have a credibility problem. As a species, we increasingly hate on them (there’s even a technical term for fear of pigeons: peristerophobia). With nicknames including “sky rats” and “flying ashtrays,” their current-day status belies their importance in world history…and so it’s overdue for a makeover.

Berlin artists Julian Charriere and Julius von Bismarck decided to take this sentiment at face value.

…and paint the pigeons of Venice…

…all colors of the rainbow.

The aim was to try to make pigeons more attractive to the public in the most straightforward way possible. Fun way to raise awareness? Perhaps, but there’s the question of how it benefits the unwilling participants and their mating habits (unless they were painted in pairs?) – not to mention the fact that they’re suddenly far more visible to natural predators and pigeon haters alike…

How do you feel about it?

All images: Julian Charriere & Julius von Bismark, via design boom.

The post What Not To Wear: The Pigeon Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

The outside is calling you.

Not to get all Jack London on you, but this is a great time of year to listen to the call of the wild and shun one of humanity’s greatest inventions, the roof. In celebration of both spring and Earth Month (here are a few reading suggestions for the latter), let’s take a stroll into the EcoSalon archives in search of anything that might pry us off our computers and gadgets – just for a while.

Think Facebook isn’t a big time-sink in your life? Try adding it up. The average U.S. Facebook user logged a rather horrifying seven hours and 46 minutes per month as of August 2011, and that figure has probably risen since then. Imagine if you spent all of that time on something that makes you feel genuinely happy, grounded and relaxed. Here are 20 suggestions, from letter-writing to exploring your neighborhood.

20 Things To Do Instead Of Being On Facebook

The technology that so many people rely on to do their jobs has undoubtedly made us more efficient and, for that reason, it’s likely not going anywhere. That means many people will never have jobs that require using their hands for much more than typing and clicking. But that doesn’t change the fact that human beings were designed to create more than just tweets and word documents.

7 Ways T0 Get Your Hands Dirty

Take up urban foraging. Who doesn’t like free food? Learn about wild, regional edible plants or befriend a neighbor with an overloaded fruit tree going to waste. Augment your diet with fresh, free foods!

Broke? 20 Fun Things To Do Without Spending A Dime

Hundreds of sick pelicans have fallen to the ground from Mexico to Oregon, smashing into cars, boats and beaches, and experts are baffled. Authorities have ruled out domoic acid poisoning, which has affected wildlife before. It’s nothing short of a mystery. Surviving pelicans have been found in yards and on roads, disoriented and weak. So far, experts think the cause could be anything from unknown poison contamination to exposure to the toxic run-off from the recent Southern California fires to malnutrition due to evaporating fish stocks.

Though the exact cause is a mystery, it’s almost certainly due to human impact. And, it’s only the most recent case in a slew of disturbing mass animal deaths around the world.

Pelicans Are Falling Out The Sky (And Other Mysterious Mass Animal Deaths)

Gardening is hot, hot, hot. And why not? Planting a few seeds on your deck or in your backyard yields delicious, organic results – and money savings, too. Besides, April is National Gardening Month! You know the basics of how to start your own vegetable garden, but where do you go from here? Here are some crops that even the least green thumbed among you can tackle, and tips on how to make them flourish.

The 10 Easiest Vegetables To Grow At Home

If you’re taking a stroll through the English landscape…Andy Goldsworthy wants to stop you in your tracks.

He’s a British sculptor, photographer and committed environmentalist, and he likes arranging things. He turns random piles of stones into gravity-defying structures and scattered leaves into dazzling gradiated rainbows. He tracks lines and curves upon the ground where none should exist, stacks ice in the unlikeliest of places, and puts patterns and colors into the landscape that would make any onlooker rub their eyes. And the true magic of his work is that for a second – just for a second – you believe it’s the work of nature. What would your first thought be if you encountered these in the wild?

Andy Goldsworthy’s Amazing Works Of Art

Images: photosteve101, sir mervs, sun dazed, Ron Dressel and paolobrandao.

The post From the Vault: The Call of the Great Outdoors appeared first on EcoSalon.

Remembering the power of nature. 

Nature is powerful, and sometimes you get caught in a serendipitous moment that makes you appreciate it in a whole new way.

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

We love the art of storytelling, so every weekend we bring you videos that have been making the rounds at EcoSalon. Enjoy!

The post Video: Murmuration appeared first on EcoSalon.

This is a healthy pelican – quite beautiful. Unfortunately, very sick pelicans are falling out of the sky these days. It’s one of many recent alarming indicators from our fellow creatures that things are seriously wrong.

Hundreds of sick pelicans have fallen to the ground from Mexico to Oregon, smashing into cars, boats and beaches, and experts are baffled. Authorities have ruled out domoic acid poisoning, which has affected wildlife before. It’s nothing short of a mystery. Surviving pelicans have been found in yards and on roads, disoriented and weak. So far, experts think the cause could be anything from unknown poison contamination to exposure to the toxic run-off from the recent Southern California fires to malnutrition due to evaporating fish stocks.

Though the exact cause is a mystery, it’s almost certainly due to human impact. And, it’s only the most recent case in a slew of disturbing mass animal deaths around the world.

• In Arkansas this week, there were sightings of 5,000 blackbirds dropping from the sky. The reason? Wildlife experts said that the birds have poor night vision, and with the sounds of New Year’s Eve fireworks, the birds became spooked, causing them to crash into houses and signs.
• On New Year’s Eve, 300 turtle doves mysteriously fell to their death in Faenza, Italy. Found with blue stains around their beaks, this rare occurrence was said to be either a result of hypoxia caused by suffocation or potassium cyanide, a poison which is often used by poachers.
• This week alone, two million fish have washed up on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, with the same occurrence happening in Spruce Creek, Florida, where thousands more have been found. Maryland Department of Environment said it is most likely caused by natural causes like cold water stress – “An increased juvenile population and limited deep water habitat would likely compound the effects of cold water stress.”
• In the last two years, California’s crops were affected by a mysterious disappearance of bee hives. Known as Colony Collapse Disorder, the worker bees simply fly away and never return. Since October 2006, over 35% of the honey bee population in the United States has vanished. In some states, as many as 90% of bees have disappeared. Scientists don’t know what causes CCD, but theories range from stress due to travel (bees are trucked across thousands of miles, in some cases, to pollinate), or pesticide exposure. A case for local, organic food?

• Dolphins off the beaches of Cornwall, thought to be stressed by Royal Navy operations, apparently committed a mass suicide last summer. 26 dolphins consumed and inhaled debris and mud. Though dolphins have been found dead en masse before, this is the most baffling incident. The only other possibility, experts say, is that the dolphins may have been scared by a whale. Scared enough to willingly fill their lungs and bellies with mud?

• Cases of seals and sea birds washing ashore have been common in recent years. For example, over 1000 Shearwater sea birds were found dead in the Bahamas and parts of Florida in 2007. The cause wasn’t bird flu, as experts had suspected when shearwaters turned up dead in 2005. There is still no explanation, but every year sees an increase in sea bird deaths, with toxicity the most common culprit.

• Also last year, at least 40 endangered gharials in the Chambal river in India died of cirrhosis of the liver, due to apparent poisoning (a flood in 2007 is thought to have increased metal levels in the river). What was particularly odd about the incident was that only wild gharials, of breeding age, died – the captive bred animals were fine.

• And here’s a case for organic textiles in addition to food: in 2006, a controversy erupted over the plight of sheep and goats who became ill and died after eating genetically modified cotton. People working with the animals said they simply became “dull and lifeless and died”. They were found dead with swollen stomachs, mouth lesions and black stools. Bacterial and viral infections were ruled out; and no sheep grazing on non-modified cotton died. In 2007 the same thing happened, also in India, to cattle.

• Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of sea turtles were found floating dead or washed ashore in El Salvador in 2006. At first thought to be caused by fishing activities, experts quickly ruled this out and the case remains a mystery.

Image: sir mervs

The post Mysterious Mass Animal Deaths Redux appeared first on EcoSalon.

We may have mentioned that we’re a fan of the men. Give us a guy who can quote Gloria Steinem or Michael Pollan (or Gloria Steinem quoting Michael Pollan) and we will show you a guy we’re dancing around like vegan Bacchante. For December, we brought you the greatness that is Ryan Gosling. Now for the new year? We’re agreeing with Time and Oprah on this one: author Jonathan Franzen is our January Man We love.

Why is he of the well-written word so cool? As our editor-in-chief Sara notes, “I love how he notices textures, his sense of humor, and that great big brain. It’ll be fun to see if he lets out his mean streak in future books. And, he’s adorable, tall, and watches birds. What’s not to like?”

Further, his list of accomplishments as a writer is the stuff of dreams for this one. There’s his National Book Award in 2001 for The Corrections, a New York Times best seller. He’s a Pulitzer Prize nominee. He’s been called “The Great American Novelist” by Time Magazine and he’s tangoed with Oprah Winfrey, only to come out on top as her final book club selection ever with his latest tome, Freedom.

So yes, there’s a wee bit of fawning of the Franzen. But a recent interview got us thinking about what this man is doing for the environmental movement with Freedom. Freedom tells the story of Walter Berglund, a “greener than Greenpeace” environmentalist who takes on the task of negotiating strip mining for a bird sanctuary.

Walter wants to save a warbler species that Grist, in an interview with Franzen, points out leads his to make “a Faustian deal with a mountaintop-mining coal company.” Franzen works with the American Bird Conservancy, which is dedicated to helping wild birds of North America. But when asked if Freedom is an activist book, Franzen makes the point that modern day environmentalism includes many shades of gray. As he mentions,

There is a place for radical stances – Greenpeace with the whales, some of the anti-mountaintop-removal stuff going on in Appalachia. And you can actually sometimes succeed by taking the really hard-line position. But much more often, if you talk to the people doing the work and getting things done, it’s a gut-wrenching compromise every day. You have to cultivate extremely wealthy people. You have to cut very imperfect deals with industry. People have said to me, about Freedom, “Oh, you must be satirizing this poor Walter Berglund who gets corrupted when he sets out to do good.” In fact, what I was after was a purely realistic portrayal of contemporary conservation work in Appalachia.

Franzen further points out that his way of turning people’s attention to certain interests is to hook them on the human story first. He concludes that “engaging people on the environment is really, really hard” and cautions that people should not lose sight of that.

Franzen’s subtle exposure of the modern-day environmentalist in his latest work is fantastic. But he also knows how to motivate his acolytes. He recently told The Guardian, “It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.” Point taken, Mr. Franzen. (She writes, as she sits on her hands to avoid clicking on the latest headlines.)

Photo courtesy of Chris Buck for The Guardian

The post January’s EcoSalon Man We Love: Jonathan Franzen appeared first on EcoSalon.

Ever wish you could fly south for the winter like our favorite feathered friends? Spending several months of the year in some sunny, beachfront locale may be out of the question, but with these five finds, you can create a warm, welcoming oasis that combines clever details with elements from nature.

1. Twig Birdhouse from Terrain ($18, picture above)

Crafted from natural twigs, this birdhouse beckons the birds to your garden, providing a charming shelter and a chic outdoor accent.

2. Peepsie Print from Shine by S.H.O. (price not listed)

We love the vivid colors and rich detail of this print, taken from the perspective of a “bird’s eye view.” It’s also signed by the artist and limited edition, so chances are good that your guests haven’t seen it before.

3. Salvaged Wood Nesting Tables from VivaTerra ($258)

Cluster these nesting tables together to save space or spread them around the room for extra table space. We adore the juxtaposition of modern steel, salvaged wood and varying heights.

4. Little Modern Birds Pillow from Etsy ($50)

Organic cotton twill and water-based ink makes a whimsical addition to your living room or bedroom decor. And the unusual proportions of this pillow combined with the cute design make it an instant focal point.

5. Sort Sol Lamp from Anthropologie ($298)

Recycled glass gets a stylish twist with hand-painted papier mache birds. We can totally picture this dreamy lamp perched on a bedside table or adding a playful touch to a living room.

What do you think? Which piece(s) caught your eye?

The post Friday 5: Feathering the Nest appeared first on EcoSalon.

Dogs are worse for the Earth than SUVs – at least according to the authors of Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, Robert and Brenda Vale. So if you’re in the market for a new pet, you might want to stay away from the canine variety. I admit, I probably have no place telling you not to adopt a dog – I have a rather un-earth-friendly purebred. We all commit a few environmental sins, right? But if you don’t have a pooch yet, there are plenty of cute, cuddly, furry and friendly animals that come without the bark and big carbon pawprint. Consider loving one of these low-impact pets instead.

Hamsters

Using the Ecological Footprint Technique, the Vales came up with carbon footprint comparisons for many pets. Owning two hamsters is like owning a plasma television. They only need a small cage and a wheel to run around on. You’ll need to line the bottom of their cage, too, but the ink on old newspapers and magazines can be toxic to hamsters. Instead, look for pet bedding that’s biodegradable and compostable. In addition to pelleted food which comes with the carbon costs of shipping and production, hamsters can eat fruits and vegetables from your garden or kitchen scraps including leafy greens, apples, bananas, green beans, cucumbers and carrots.

Canaries

A captive-bred variety of birds like canaries has a relatively low impact – four of them have the same carbon footprint as two hamsters, or a plasma TV. Birds taken from the wild do adversely affect the local wildlife population though. Canaries and other small birds like parakeets also eat grain, which must be produced, processed and shipped to you. You can help lower a pet bird’s impact by recycling newspapers to line the bottom of their cage.

Goldfish

While a little orange fish swimming around in a bowl might not be as fun as taking a dog for a walk, the Vales say their impact is comparable to two cell phones. Since they don’t require a heater or filter their energy consumption is low. You will need to clean the bowl and change the water about once a week. You’ll use about a gallon of water a week, which is probably less than a pooch consumes. Also, since goldfish food flakes are very lightweight and their daily serving is minimal, you don’t have to factor in much for the cost of shipping and production.

Cats

Felines aren’t without fault either, but instead of causing SUV-sized trouble for the Earth, the New Zealand architecture professors compare cats to Smart Cars. One of the biggest problems with cats is kitty litter. More than eight billion pounds of the non-biodegradable material gets dumped in landfills each year. So if you choose an eco-friendly kitty litter you might be able to reduce your cat’s impact.

However, there’s no getting around the fact that cats’ waste can also carry toxoplasma, a parasite that can cause problems with pregnancy and can even survive through sewage treatment plants to later kill marine life including sea otters.

Images: Vivian Chen, cdrussorusso, greencolander, scary carrie, Paul McGuire

The post Reasons to Resist Those Puppy Dog Eyes appeared first on EcoSalon.