spatuletail hummingbird courtship

November 5, 2009

An exhausting performance for the lady of his choice.

biggest spider ever

October 23, 2009

According to the Beeb, Nephila Komaci has a leg span of almost five inches.

Which makes my biggest garden/garage spider puny in comparison. I really don’t think I’ll be getting a ruler and stretching out its legs. For which we’re both grateful.

Yes, yes, I’m releasing it today. Not only does it seem to have an imploring gaze when I look at the photos, but yesterday found me searching the garden in vain for some live insect food to sustain it.

some observations about giant squid

September 28, 2009

In which the poor beast is compared to Tom Cruise.

so glad it’s against the fence

September 18, 2009

This time of year it’s hard to check the garden without walking into spider webs. In the 95° temps this afternoon, I found this creature. A hot breeze came up, so I didn’t get the shot I wanted. I suspect it will still be there tomorrow.

carp that look a little like you

March 3, 2009

The Korean fish with human-like eyes, noses and mouths:


Smithsonian photo contest: natural world

October 27, 2008

Some images from finalists in the 4th Annual Photo Contest.

chickadees and hoarding

October 18, 2008

Last night I bought a 5-lb bag of sunflower seeds, the black kind recommended for birds. At the feeder this morning, I tossed out a fistful. Within a couple of hours, probably less, they’re all gone, taken by a few chickadees.

Despite the fact that they’re hounded by the juncos, the chickadees do a quick overview of the various seeds, and pick out only what they want. Some days, it’s bits of peanuts. The popcorn yesterday seemed to intimidate all the birds, but after I cleaned off the feeder, a lone chickadee swooped in to get the one morsel of popcorn left.

No, they didn’t manage to eat all the sunflower seeds. They cache it somewhere, hopefully where the squirrels can’t get to.

elk, sprinkbok, cape buffalo, zebra, lemurs

October 13, 2008

Saturday, family members and I went to Pt. Reyes looking for tule elk, said to be near the end of their rutting season. I think they looked at the calendar and decided it was close enough, and called it quits. We could see them from a great distance as they rested.

On Sunday, we tried Safari West, and were pleasantly surprised at how many animals we could see up close. There might be pictures after I sort through all the blurry ones. We weren’t used to that kind of in-your-face experience, especially the drooling giraffe. Next time, we’ll be better prepared.

Speaking of elk, I found this link quite by accident. It’s old, but incredibly good.

a most unusual and ancient ant

September 18, 2008

It is named Martialis heureka after Edward O. Wilson exclaimed, ‘Wow, this ant might as well be from Mars, it’s so different.’

wolves, venison, salmon

September 5, 2008

Wolves know that it is better to catch a salmon than to go after a deer. For one thing, they sustain fewer serious injuries. For another, well, there’s that omega-3 thing.

the mysterious insect again

August 12, 2008

I saw it lurch by the window, and ran out with my camera. It’s not the most graceful of insects, and indeed its wings are a vivid blue/green. Loud too. It headed for a tomato bed. I got one shot off, but missed it. It looks like a shield bug, but unlike ones I can find online. After sloppily landing in a few other places near the ground, it disappeared once again.

It appears to be over an inch long, possibly an inch and a half.

piddock: how to tell when you’re getting sick

August 5, 2008

Years ago, a friend and I decided that your hair knows when you’re coming down with something. A really bad hair day just might mean there’s a bug in the system.

Thanks to Olympic pressures, a discovery has been made to detect infection early in athletes. The test, which involves the assistance of a luminescent mollusk, known as the piddock, will help coaches decide when to isolate a team member or to cut short the hard training sessions of a soon-to-be-ill competitor.

But I bet their hair looks like crap too.

the hawk and the songbird

April 28, 2008

Hawks frequently leave traces of their meals in my yard. Piles of feathers, usually, sometimes part of a wing. Some shrubs bear the unmistakable marks of a bird of prey that has been digesting in the branches above. From time to time, I even get to see one.

No one knows exactly what happened to this hawk, found by the side of the road here in California. The more sensational headlines surmise that the ingested bird managed to claw its way through. A more sensible theory is that the hawk was hit by a car, which caused the its crop to burst. But it’s certainly an startling photo.

the physics of Rapunzel’s hair, flying carpets and the Little Mermaid’s voice

February 17, 2008

Could a woman’s long hair support the weight of a man? Could a carpet really fly? Did the witch who took away Ariel’s voice have access to current technology?

things we usually don’t get to see

January 28, 2008

Photographed by Taryn Simon, they include nuclear waste giving off an eerie blue glow known as Cherenkov radiation. A mentally retarded white tiger, the result of selective inbreeding. A peek inside the Cryonics Institute in Michigan.

From Wired.com.

a promising Alzheimer’s drug

January 11, 2008

One patient showed remarkable results within ten minutes after the drug was injected. Experts say that Etanercept, usually prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis, might not have this effect on all Alzheimer’s patients.

giant scorpion: why our ancestors didn’t swim in the seas

November 26, 2007

At over eight feet in length, this formidable creature could make quick work of its prey with its 18-inch claws and saw blades on its legs. Nothing about the tail, though.

activity from the little motion lights

November 9, 2007

Quite active this afternoon. Perhaps there is earth movement nearby.

surrounded by a wolf pack

November 8, 2007

In the Arctic, three British explorers were surrounded by 17 wolves with blood-stained fur.

This is not the time to think of that Grandpa Simpson quote.

aftershocks and tirefly lights

November 2, 2007

In the previous post, I mentioned tirefly lights, which I learned about from the evilmadscientist site via a tip from son Chris.

Like the author, I found the lights at Target. ( Amazon is out of stock at the moment.) Aside from their Halloween uses, they seem to be handy aftershock detectors. Once in a while, one will start flashing, and I’ll assume it is telling me we are experiencing one of the numerous - 40 at last count - aftershocks of that quake we had.

MRSA: the answer has been under our noses

October 26, 2007

All this time, as scientists tried to devise ways to kill the antibiotic-resistant superbug MRSA, the solution was simple and close at hand. Thousands have died when they encountered MRSA in hospitals, especially the elderly and others with suppressed immune systems.

Garlic is powerful medicine.

Tollund Man and an acorn mast year

October 15, 2007

According to the local paper, those of us with oak trees are not going crazy. Acorns in vast numbers are raining down on roofs and yards, and if you have skylights, it is particularly noisy. Such an abundance is known as ‘mast’.

This only happens every few years, and the current opinion is that the last one was in ‘89.

That would have been the year that Tollund Man made an appearance in our front and backyards. My boys would have been 6 and 8, and decided the gazillion acorns were nothing more than a multitude of well-preserved corpses.

I never quizzed them about the details of their play. But when I step out in the yard and see all those capped acorns now, I remember the man preserved in peat. And the little guys who suddenly had a ton of action (inaction) figures to play with.

today’s apod

September 18, 2007

Is awesome. The one for 9/18/07.

the durian undergoes a makeover

April 11, 2007

A Thai researcher has created a durian without the offensive odor. His next goal is a durian without the formidable spikes. Not everyone, however, is thrilled with his improved product.

N’kisi: parrot of many words

February 15, 2007

An African grey parrot’s 950-word vocabulary stuns researchers. Hmmm. Almost a thousand words. Isn’t that more than some politicians can manage?

Cyphochilus: a paler shade of white

January 20, 2007

Or should I say, a whiter shade of white. Scientists are amazed at the unusual brightness of the white beetle, whose secret is a shell covered with ultra-thin scales.

the poisonwood tree

December 4, 2006

Sometimes, trees are not benign. The poisonwood is found in Florida, the Bahamas and the Caribbean. The locals have an interesting solution if you should be so unlucky as to touch it.

Plus, the article’s author eats a fruit from the manchineel tree, and lives to tell the painful tale.

Lord Nelson whacks Destiny’s Child with a handbag

September 18, 2006

And other tricks of the mind from the competitors at the World Memory Championship. Those folks who can tell you the order of a deck of cards in under a minute.

if you’re a boy, I’m a girl, if you’re a girl. . .

September 11, 2006

For certain coral reef fish, gender is not a predetermined thing, as it is for most of us.

EHS: an unusual allergy

September 8, 2006

Does your laptop or cell phone make you feel sick? Do you feel strangely warm, dizzy or nauseous around electrical equipment?

Perhaps you have electromagnetic hypersensitivity, the subject of a new study by the University of Essex. People who suffer from EHS find it next to impossible to work at their computers or use mobile phones without distress. Some resort to viewing their monitors with binoculars from a distance.

As we adapt to our high-tech lives, was this bound to happen?

good news for fans of woad

August 17, 2006

Fans of Braveheart remember the vivid blue paint Mel Gibson and his followers wore into battle. That paint is derived from woad, a plant in the broccoli family that contains large amounts of glucobrassicin, a powerful anti-tumor compound that is especially effective against breast cancer.

can you drink explosives?

August 16, 2006

Or what happens if a terrorist is asked to take a sip or two of his milk or juice in front of airport security.

genetics and the rat people of Pakistan

August 2, 2006

The legend goes like this: when infertile women came to a local shrine and asked that they be blessed with children, the wish might be granted. However, the first child will be a ‘chua’, or what is referred to by residents as a ‘rat person’ due to the skinny face, sloping forehead and protruding teeth. This firstborn must be given to the shrine or else the woman will only produce chuas. These facial characteristics are also indicative of microcephaly.

Some said that priests might be guilty of retarding the growth of otherwise healthy babies by attaching clamps on their heads. Experts disputed this, saying that such deformities cannot be caused by human tampering. They pointed out that a certain percentage of Pakistanis living in Britain also suffered from this condition.

Then a Leeds geneticist stepped in, resulting in an encouraging future for families who carry the genetic mutation.

the end of allergies

July 13, 2006

How drug research at St. George’s, University of London might wipe out allergy problems in five years.

to sleep, perchance to remember better

July 11, 2006

A recent study indicates that those who get a good night’s sleep are much better at retaining a sequence of facts, even when that sequence is complicated by new information.

photo: cloud as rainbow

June 19, 2006

A most unusual sky phenomenon in Idaho on June 3, the circumhorizontal arc.

PicoCricket: for the youngest programmers

June 9, 2006

From the mind of Mitchel Resnick of the MIT Media Lab comes a kit filled with the stuff of traditional crafts but juiced up with sensors, cables, sound boxes and a small, programmable computer.

The recipient of such a box of treasure will be able to create musical sculptures and toy figures that will interact with their maker.

According to Resnick, the kit appeals to girls as well as boys. I certainly wouldn’t mind having one of these.

Kerala: the blood-red rain of 2001

June 8, 2006

Upon closer examination, scientists found cell-like red structures that could reproduce. Yet, they contained no DNA. Theories abound, including a possible meteor strike into a flock of bats. But blood cells are unable to replicate.

Another idea is based on panspermia, and suggests that microorganisms from space enter our planet via comets now just as they did when life began.

the Crucian carp and oxygen

June 2, 2006

Scientists are studying the fish that can survive without oxygen for months at a time. Its blood and gill structure have evolved to survive low-oxygen situations in a remarkable manner.

the June sky: planets line up

May 30, 2006

Coming soon to the sky near you, Saturn, Mars and Mercury plus the Beehive cluster.

cocolitzli: dormant plague in Mexico?

History assumes that Cortes and his army infected natives with European microbes, decimating the population. An epidemiologist challenges this belief, and offers up his own explanation for the massive numbers of deaths.

He believes that the plague known as cocolitzli could well be a form of hemorrhagic fever spread by rodents.

when a scientist cooks an egg

It can be a very complex exercise indeed.

the chicken or egg dilemma

So which came first? The chickens still aren’t revealing their family secrets. But a chicken farmer, a geneticist, and a philosopher just might have the answer.

how malaria is like the Irish potato famine

May 28, 2006

The malaria pathogen and the potato famine pathogen both use the same protein code to infect their hosts.

This does not mean that one day you will have to be excused from work because you have come down with Irish potato famine. But researchers may be able to produce a single drug that could attack both microbes that cause malaria and potato famine.

water to the moon via SLAM

May 26, 2006

The idea is so simple it just might work.

the woman who remembers everything

She can recall each day of her life from early childhood, and has kept a diary. The good, the bad, the people, the weather.

If we all have this ability, perhaps evolution has decreed that we also don’t have the wherewithal to deal with so much data, considering our current brain toolset.

Websites of the future might provide ways to organize the vast, entire minutiae of our lives rather than just putting our photos in order.

Patagona gigas: the biggest hummingbird

May 25, 2006

A hummer that is 8-1/2 inches long, yet still builds a tiny nest.

an underwater volcano eruption

May 24, 2006

Video of a very active eruption more than 1,800 feet below the surface.

bears and osteoporosis

How is it that a bear can hibernate all winter, barely moving, and emerge from its den with stronger bones in the spring?

When humans are inactive for long periods of time, such as during illness, our bones grow weaker. Scientists are studying the way that bears recycle the calcium in their bodies to keep their bones strong.

oreo rockets

It is possible to power a model rocket with Oreo cookie filling. But don’t try this at home by yourself. No really, don’t do it.

Out of Oreos? Apparently, Gummi Bears and Pixy Stix also work. But please, apply rocket science responsibly.