Popping up on all sorts of blogs this morning is the news that the BBC natural history unit has been using elephants to film their latest documentary. The tone of most posts is in the “How cool is this?” vein, and while it’s certainly ingenious, I can’t help but be intrigued by it for different […]
Category: Nature
Noticed: March 11, 2008
My first Robins of 2008. I saw one male on my walk this morning eating crab-apples and another, from the apartment, in the crown of our Mulberry tree. I wonder how the snow effects them–since they’re frutivores, I would imagine less than some ground-feeding birds. House Sparrows collecting nesting material. In this case it was […]
Do birds get sunburns?
So, I was uploading this photograph taken in Peru of a Turkey Vulture. Now, with its red head and the fact that it was on the beach in Mancora, I kind of thought that it looked like it had a sunburn. The thing is, TVs have red heads all the time, so I’ve just assumed […]
Salt water blues
Better living through chemistry, originally uploaded by Gavatron. I’ve lived with a saltwater aquarium for the past two-ish years now, ever since Heather moved into the apartment. To this point, I’ve been pretty hands off the whole endeavour, not because I wasn’t interested, but because of the steep learning curve associated with keeping a salt […]
Fruit Flies versus Lobsters
I came across two blog postings today, one that seems to normalize our attitudes toward one animal and another that messes things up. The first is that lobsters, apparently, don’t feel pain. Well, not pain in the way we’re supposed to think of pain, at least. This, unspoken, suggests that boiling lobsters, for example, is […]
Family matters
Ollie & siblings at 8 weeks, originally uploaded by Gavatron. Heather, Ollie and myself had a great little experience this morning–we met (Heather & Ollie for a second time and me for the first) Fozby, one of Ollie’s litter-mates (or, as Max, Fozby’s alpha-male, refers to the two of ’em: “the Beavertown Boys”). The two […]
Ah, the cat bib.
I’m not sure if it is a well-kept secret or not, but I have a certain distaste for cats, likely originating when I was two and family friend’s Siamese cat crawled up my back as I was singing Happy Birthday. A distressing event. I’ve never really warmed up to them for many reasons including: the […]
Ant “farmers” and Hemipteran “cattle”
Ants and Aphids, originally uploaded by furryscaly. A neat photograph of some species of Citronella Ant (Acanthomyops sp.) “farming” Aphids or Mealybugs (both Hemipterans). The hemipteran insects feed on the roots of plants and exude a sugary substance called honeydew that the ants then feed on.
The fur is dead. Long live the fur!
The fur is dead. Long live the fur!, originally uploaded by Gavatron. Ollie is a new dog, now that we’ve finished stripping him.
Truth in advertising
Petfinder.com is a great way to find dogs available for adoption and in fact, Herbie was found with Petfinder’s help! Usually they have some sappy description about the dog that is completely irrelevant to the dog’s demeanour (something along the lines of what celebrity a dog looks like, for example). I was looking to see […]