The Flying Polish Hare of Google Street View

The Google Street View Birding Facebook Group is still going strong, nearly two years after its creation. It's pretty amazing. My goofy little procrastination side-project now has more than 4,300 members (most all of them much better at finding birds than I ever was), and has tracked down a simply incredible 1226 different bird species. It's a supportive and kind group of folks and I couldn't be prouder.

A line of discussion began in the group after Linda L. posted a screenshot of some caribou crossing the road in Finland - In all these miles of driving and recording by the Street View car, had it ever hit anything? Street View Roadkill? In theory you'd be able to see the entire story: a poor creature running into the road in front of the car and then left on the road out the other side. I had never seen anything, had others?

Well, yes, in fact. Group superstar Aaron Polichar recalled at least one likely incident which made the tabloid rounds in July 2019 and was brought to our attention by Oswaldo Zuniga: the sad saga of the Polish Flying Hare.

It's a sad saga because, although we can't be absolutely certain, it seems unlikely that this beautiful European Hare survived being struck by the Google Street View car and launched way, way into the air. At least it went with style. RIP.

Just as I figured, the constant recording of the Street View car allows us to reconstruct a sort of flip-book of the last incredible moments of this creature.

We're on a road called the Biala Droga, south of Krakow, Poland. The Street View car is cruising down the road -- and I do mean cruising - I wish I could mathematize the actual speed but it appears to be going much faster than I expected Street View cars to be able to travel -- and in the distance a hare appears running down another road.

First shot here.

The next click forward for the car and the hare is still coming down the road, into harm's way.

The hare has only moved a couple feet forward while the car has traveled, what, 40 feet? It's hauling, and the rabbit is right in the path. The next few panels are a little rough, because though you can't see the car itself, you can see the hare being struck.

Okay now so reversing to the back of the car, the poor animal continues to apparently bounce along near the top of the car and its camera tower. It's definitely moving upward, but it's unclear whether it's hitting anything else. That's its head facing outward in this image.

Next comes the incredible image. The hare has continued upward and is captured in what appears to be mid-leap, composed and graceful looking for all the world like its bounding to the moon.

The creature can be seen again as the Street View car continues on its path. Here, the hare is further off the road, still very high, and flailing.

The car continues and the hare keep falling. It's visible here, from further down the road, in a righted position still, what, ten feet in the air? Below the treeline and above the tree in the foreground.

Finally, it lands in the field, on its back. The grace is gone, and the sad reality of human destruction is all that's left.

It's sad, but an incredible sequence. There's no way of knowing what happened to the hare but it seems doubtful that the poor thing could have survived an impact like that, despite the hare looking fairly composed in some of the shots. Still, you never know. The Flying Polish Hare of Street View may have gotten back up, dusted itself off, and had one hell of a story to tell.

ABA Podcast

Hey everyone. Had the honor of joining Nate Swick and the crew of the American Birding Association on their ABA Podcast this week. We talked about Birds at Large, Google Street View Birding, and more. Give a listen:

http://blog.aba.org/2018/12/american-birding-podcast-birds-at-large-with-nick-lund.html

Google Street View Birding Hits the Big Time

I've been looking for birds on Google Street View for more than five years. It's been a minor passion of mine, mostly picked at in the few minutes of down time between meetings. A fun diversion, and a personal one.

I had the idea two weeks ago to make it a bit less personal, and open Street View Birding up to office-bound birders everywhere. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. A Facebook Group seemed like the right venue, and so I set one up and invited folks via the Birding Memes group to help search for birds with me and post their findings. I figured a few would join, but a whole bunch did.

There are currently more than 700 birders in the Google Street View Birding Facebook Group, and we've collectively found more than ... wait for it ... more than ... this is a big number so sit down for this ... 500 different species by creeping along the roads and trails of this great world and zooming in on tiny pixelated specks in the distance. It's incredible.

I found a few good species in my pokings, but as a groups we've made some real discoveries. Two owls -- Burrowing in Florida and Buffy Fish-Owl in Singapore. We have about FORTY gull species, just about all that can be reasonable expected given GSV's scant coverage in China and the Middle East. Huge birds from Condors to tiny birds like Vermillion Flycatcher. And the beat goes on.

If you read this and would like to join the group, please do. We need all the weirdos we can get.

Javan Pond-Heron, Little Egret, and Asian Openbill, spotted in Thailand by Krit Adirek. Here's the link to Google Maps.

Google Street View Birding VI: Canada

O Canada!
Birds' Home and Native Land!
Loons, Crossbills, and Doves in all thy bins command!

That doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense, sorry, but it's a great anthem anyway.  Canada is a marvelous place, and millions upon millions of birds make their way up to breed each summer.  Also making their way up in the summer, apparently, is the Google Street View crew, who unwittingly managed to capture a number of those birdies in their jaunts.  And I, during slow moments of my days, have been able to track a few down.

For those interested in previous installments of Google Street View Birding, check here:

• Street View Birding I
• Street View Birding II: Midway Atoll 
• Street View Birding III: Mexico
• Street View Birding IV: Florida
• Street View Birding Antarctica Part I: The Falkland Islands
• Street View Birding Antarctica Part II: South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands
• Street View Birding Antarctica Part III: Antarctica

OK, back to Canada.  Let's go birding, and start out West.

The West Coast of Canada has a bunch of gulls that I don't usually see out here on the East Coast.  Gulls are great for Street View Birding because they're big, often sit in conspicuous places, and let people and cars get relatively close. Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest have a couple of fairly easy-to-identify gulls that I thought I could find in Street View.

The trouble with gulls is that they hang out by the ocean, i.e. not where Google Street View cars are driving. Thankfully, cars aren't the only way Street View gets images.

I found this gull resting on a dock from which the Street View guy was leaving on a boat trip at the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, south of Vancouver. Not a great view of the head, but a big gull with very light wingtips? Looks like a Glaucous-winged Gull to me. 

Here's another one I found, somewhere in the same park. This one's tougher, because of the light, but it looks darker and with dark wingtips. Maybe? It's possible that it's a Western Gull, but ... I dunno. Hard to say, so I won't call it for sure.

Nearby, the Street View guy straps on a backpack and walks down a big tidal spit. Very cool.  Along the way he or she passes this group of dark shorebirds. Black Oystercatchers! What, ten? We should eBird that!

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Google Street View Birding: Antarctica Part III: Antarctica

Antarctica. The Great White Desert. The Tundra Down Under. The Big Ice Cube. The Cold-tinent. Ol' Snowyface.  We've finally made it.

Like the polar explorers of old, we've slowly made our way across the stormy seas to our destination. We've seen a lot of amazing things along the way, including endangered wrens in the Falkland Islands and nesting albatross (260 times larger than the wren) on South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands. We've seen adorable seals. And terns. And shags. And weird ducks and caracaras and oystercatchers and geese and vultures and a whole lot of penguins.

We start - led by our intrepid Google Street View friends - at the Antarctic Peninsula, that long point of land sticking out towards South America. We start on a small outcropping called Half Moon Island, just off the mainland of Antarctica. According to the informational overlords at Wikipedia, the 2010 images taken here were the first to put Google Street View on all seven continents. There to welcome them, of course, were penguins.

These are chinstrap penguins, named for the stripe running along their throat that looks like that bad haircut worn by the burnout kid in your 1995 high school class.

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Google Street View Birding: Antarctica Part II: South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands

The adventure continues!

We are a third of the way though our epic, vicarious journey to Antarctica, stowing away with the crew of Google Street View.  We've just left the Falkland Islands, which dazzled us with winged splendor, introducing us to hordes of penguins, weird geese, and even a tiny, endangered wren. A great first stop, indeed.

But we must move on. Our next stop across that cold southern ocean is the wild South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

There isn't much human history on the South Sandwich Islands, save for a handful of whale-butchering operations operated on the largest island, South Georgia, in the early 20th century. This was messy business, according to my intensive research (cough cough Wikipedia cough wait why am I typing all this out), and occasionally involved some downright frigging disgusting things: "A rotting whale could fill with gas to bursting, ejecting a fetus the size of a motor vehicle with sufficient force to kill a man." Great!

Well, lucky for us, the whale carcasses are gone but the birds remain. Let's check it out.

The first stop in the South Sandwiches is a small island off the coast of South Georgia, and it's a doozy. It's called Prion Island (good start), and it's heavily protected by the small South Georgia government because of all the cool creatures that live there, like South Georgia pipits and burrowing petrels. And like these penguins:

Gentoos are the ones with the white dots on their heads (most of them) and up in the top right are some Kings.  

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Google Street View Birding: Antarctica Part I: The Falkland Islands

Hello, and welcome back to the worst blog on the internet.

Today brings another installment of Google Street View Birding, where I sit at my desk in the dark, my pasty face squinting at the screen, and surf around Google Street View looking for birds.  This installment is my favorite yet, and takes us to a place with very few species of birds, but many excellent Google Street View looks: Antarctica.

Gentoo Penguins on Petermann Island, Antarctica

Though there is very little coverage of Antarctica and the surrounding islands in Street View (I mean, there are no streets...) there are a crap-ton of great views of birds. So many, in fact, that I need to break this thing into multiple posts. Luck you! Let's start the same way many oceanic trips to Antartica start: with a visit to the Falkland Islands.

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