Su Rynard

Çağan and road kill Near Kars, Turkey

in Director's Blog  by March 27, 2014 0 comments

May 27. 2013 Kars Turkey

Çağan and road kill Near Kars Turkey

Dr. Çağan H. Şekercioğlu is a conservation ecologist at the University of Utah, but it’s his field-work in his native Turkey that got us excited about including him in SongbirdSOS. Our trip to film with him near Kars was C R A Z Y. Cagan certainly is a guy on the go – a force to be reckoned with. We had just met and we were traveling with him in our rented mini van and he suddenly demanded that we stop immediately! He jumped out of the car, grabbed his camera, and began photographing. He had spotted a rare Egyptian vulture.  (This is a man who has a bird list nearly 600 species long). The vulture was circling road kill. The road kill being another bird. So we all jumped out filmed him telling us this story.

http://www.kuzeydoga.org/

Related posts:

  1. Filming at Lake Kuyucuk near Kars Turkey
  2. Çağan Şekercioğlu wins Award for Conservation Work
  3. The Messenger’s Cagan Şekercioğlu’s Environmental Request while Accepting a Prestigious Award
  4. The Messenger Spreads Its Wings and goes on a Road Trip!

Amar Arhab

in Director's Blog  by March 27, 2014 0 comments

Zupten Netherlands, May 24, 2013

Here is Amar Arhab, our wonderful camera man, kindly draining the water out of the water jugs we used as counter weights for our high angle shots, while at the same tie trying to squeeze in a smoke break. That’s the truth of our shooting schedule — we never really stop moving.

Related posts:

  1. In Zutphen Netherlands with toxicologist Henk Tennekes
  2. Rain Rain Rain
  3. Filming at Lake Kuyucuk near Kars Turkey

A Disaster in the Making

in Director's Blog  by March 27, 2014 0 comments

Filmmakers Blog. May 24. 2013. Zutphen, Netherlands.

“A Disaster in the Making” is the name of Dr. Henk Tennekes book. The book is about why bees, the number one insect pollinator on the planet are dying at an alarming rate.

What impressed me so much about this book is that is the art and design. It’s a beautiful book, visually full of amazing paintings by Ami-Bernard Zillweger.  When I asked Henk about this he said that he felt it was such a tragic topic that the book needed to be beautiful. And it is. There is a bitter-sweet quality when exploring the pages, with the art work reminding us of the natural world, where we are loosing so much so quickly.

Quote from Jody Spear.

“Why is it that birds are falling from the skies, their numbers crashing in mass extinctions? Henk Tennekes has an answer: He cites evidence in this book that the species suffering dramatic losses (mostly out of public view) in the past two decades — sparrows, swifts, starlings, and many other insectivores — are struggling to find food; insects such as beetles, springtails, and earthworms are being wiped out by neonicotinoid insecticides, chiefly imidacloprid and clothianidin. “The excessive imidacloprid levels noted in surface water of … [places] with intensive agriculture have been associated with insect decline and [subsequently] a dramatic decline of common grassland birds.”

And this is what we explore with Henk in SongbirdSOS.

http://www.disasterinthemaking.com/

Related posts:

  1. In Zutphen Netherlands with toxicologist Henk Tennekes
  2. How do you know a film is making an impact?
  3. Are Pesticides Causing Problems for Tree Swallow Songbirds?
  4. Two amazing books: ” Birds Art Life ” by Kyo Maclear and “The Evening Chorus” by Helen Humphreys

In Zutphen Netherlands with toxicologist Henk Tennekes

in Director's Blog  by March 27, 2014 0 comments

Filmmakers Blog. May 24. 2013 Zutphen Netherlands

After a distinguished international career, Dr. H. A. (Henk) Tennekes now lives in a tiny apartment above a shop in Zutphen, the same town where he was born. Here, in the ‘attic of a forgotten provincial town’ he made hugely important discovery…

“ The way a new generation of insecticides, the so-called neonicotinoids, work has much in common with chemical carcinogens – cancer-causing agents, the implication being that safe exposure levels cannot be defined for a category of pesticides used all over the world. My paper convincingly demonstrated that the risk of chronic exposure of arthropods (including bees) to neonicotinoids, which are mainly produced by Bayer CropScience, had been severely underestimated.”

I knew I wanted to interview Henk for SongbirdSOS when we spoke on the phone. We were talking about how the neonicotinoids pesticides were killing bees and other insects, and Henk said, “they are causing a break in the food chain and anything above that break is in danger of extinction.” I shivered, as I certainly understood that we humans are on that same chain.

More on Henk’s work here. www.farmlandbirds.net

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  1. A Disaster in the Making
  2. Saskatchewan Scientist Studying Impact of Pesticides
  3. Wind Turbines Near Leiden, The Netherlands.
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A Birds Eye View of Hans Slabbekoorn

in Director's Blog  by February 17, 2014 0 comments

Filmmakers Blog. May 21, 2013

In a quiet area of a wooded park, Hans Slabbekoorn and his students play previously recorded traffic sounds to birds. Their goal is to see if the birds “change their tune” to sing above the noise.

I couldn’t help but wonder what the birds would see when they would look down at these crazy humans with speakers and other audio recording devices.

So here we have it, filming our birds eye view…IMG_0223

Related posts:

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  2. Touring Costa Rica to film the birds
  3. Soundtracks – where do they begin?
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