More Birds

Since my last blog post on birds, I've had my eye out for more birds. There are lots in Taipei, because I hear their calls, but it's hard to seen them let alone photograph them. Some are easy to photograph, like the pigeons that roost outside of apartment window.

They seem to know that I can't reach them through the window.  There other more exotic birds but the more you have use the telephoto lens, the fuzzier the picture gets like this black crowned heron.

I was really happy to get this picture of the Black Swan while at National Taiwan University. About 500 years ago, most Europeans hadn't much experience with Asia and so thought all swans were white. "Black swan" was a term for the impossible. But when explorers came back from Asia and reported there were black swans, it just added to the exotica of Asia.

By coincidence, I am reading the book "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb". (It's not about ballet.) It's about how the highly improbable(and unpredictable) effects our lives. For example, in the past 10 years, the 9/11 Event and the Housing Market Collapse have had huge effects but neither one predicted, each could have been called highly improbable, until they happened.

For these events, because they are new, they are not predicted by past experience. Taleb tells a nice story about a Thanksgiving turkey. From beginning as a chick to just before Thanksgiving, his total experience has been that nice humans come every day and feed him. From the totality of his experience, his confidence increases until the very last day, when the improbable happens. So past  experience is NOT always a good predictor of the future.  ...