Rock and Winter Wrens

This month in our Audubon display on the 4th floor of the Paterno Library are the Rock and Winter Wrens. The Rock Wren is a pale wren of arid, western North America. These wrens are also found in non-rocky habitats as long as there exist areas rich in crevices, passageways, recesses, nooks and crannies of diverse shapes and sizes. These wrens are more easily heard then seen. Rock Wren songs are unmistakable, but beauty lies in the ears of the listener.

The Winter Wren creeps mouselike around the forest floor, next to, into, and out of large logsand other tangles and sings loudly from favorite perches. A superb songster, and more often heard than seen, this small, brown, cryptically colored wren generally inhabits dark, moist conifer forests in North America, although some breed in hardwoods or on cliff faces on treeless islands.

Rosetta Stone Presentation

The presentation scheduled for Wednesday 11 November has been cancelled.

PubMed/New Interface

The PubMed redesigned interface is now available. The goal of the new design is to simplify the search interface. More information is available http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so09/so09_pm_redesign.html.

Rosetta Stone presentation

Rosetta Stone, the company that offers language learning products, will be giving a demonstration of their online product on Wednesday, November 11 from 1-3 p.m. in Foster Auditorium.

This Month in our Audubon Display

This month in our Audubon Display case on the 4th floor of the Paterno Library we are featuring three different birds, the Western Kingbird, the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, and the Say's Phoebe. The Western Kingbird is a conspicuous bird of open habitats that breeds in the western United States and winters in southern Mexico and Central America. It occupies a variety of habitats including riparian forests and woodlands, savannahs, shrublands, agricultural lands, deserts, and urban area. Typical of tyrant flycatchers, this kingbird forages by aerial hawking and perch-to-ground flights, often with acrobatic flying maneuvers. Insects make up the majority of its diet.

The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher is a common sight throughout the south-central United States and northeastern Mexico during spring and summer. It favors open areas -- savannah, grassland, shrubland, and agricultural and urban habitats -- with sufficient perches for feeding and trees and shrubs for nesting. Well suited for life in the open grasslands, it eats mostly grasshoppers and beetles, more so than other North American flycatchers.

The Say's Phoebe is similar in behavior, size and breeding biology to the Black and Eastern phoebes, although its voice, coloration, and habitat preferences are distinctive. Say's Phoebe breeds over much of western North America, from the Great Plains west nearly to the PAcific coast. It has one of the broadest latitudinal ranges among the North American flycatchers, extending from central Mexico farther north than any other into the arctic tundra, apparently constrained only by the lack of suitable nesting sights.

Pine Grosbeak

This month in our Audubon Display case on the 4th floor of the Paterno Library we are featuring the Pine Grosbeak. The Pine Grosbeak is a large, unwary finch, the Pine Grosbeak inhabits subarctic and boreal forests from eastern Asia to Scandinavia and, in North America, from eastern Canada to western Alaska. Pine Grosbeaks are most abundant in open forest, a condition occurring near treeline in taiga and montane forests, and near natural and human-made openings elsewhere. A short, conical bill allows this species to nip buds and growing tips of conifer branches and to crush seeds, although it feeds its young mainly on insects captured on the ground, in vegetation, and by fly-catching.

Scopus Trial

The libraries currently has trial access to Elsevier's Scopus database. The trial runs through the middle of August. Access is limited to Penn State folks on campus, or accessing resources through the VPN. The Scopus database is a direct competitor to ISI's Web of Science. The libraries will NOT be able to afford subscriptions to both databases, it would have to be one or the other. Comments on the database can be left here on this blog, or let your thoughts be known directly to your librarian.