The anonymous reader who lives in Idaho, and has sent us spectacular pictures of the landscape and animals around him (see here as well), just sent a new group of his photos. These feature a nesting bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and they are, as always, beautiful. Click to enlarge.
I’d post a plant, too, if I could find a cute one . . . from NIMA VoRoJak via Michelle
Yesterday reader/photographer Al Denelsbeck sent me this picture with the caption: The pic is from yesterday, after a horrendous deluge cleared. We’d had a mantis hatching in an azalea bush by our porch a few weeks ago, and I’ve been following the little guys regularly. (Click to enlarge.)
I’m posting a few holiday snaps from this week’s seminar trip to Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. It’s very strange for a biologist to reach his dotage without seeing a salamander in the wild, but I confess to that deficiency. But it was rectified Thursday night when my host, Howie Neufeld, along with […]
by Greg Mayer Last month the University of Chicago Press published The Book of Barely Imagined Beings by Caspar Henderson. I’ve not seen the book yet, but it seems to be a natural history of a diverse set of odd and interesting animals, in the style of a classic or medieval bestiary, and The New […]
A reader sent me two pictures of birds that he took at Aubrey Spring Ranch on Loving Creek, near the Nature Conservancy’s exquisite Silver Creek Preserve. White pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos): Sandhill crane (Grus canadensis):
The red panda (Ailurus fulgens, or “shining cat” in Latin) is a denizen of the same bamboo forests of China that harbor the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca, meaning “black and white cat-foot”). They also subsist largely on bamboo leaves, though they’re a bit more omnivorous than their larger relative. Although it’s called the “lesser panda”, […]
I love raccoons (Procyon lotor): they’re wily, cute, and fiercely smart. I used to have one who regularly came through the cat door of my old crib and ate the cat food—but not before washing it in the cat’s water bowl. I first realized something was amiss when I kept finding dirt in the water […]
Well, at least some of them. Matthew, our resident author, just called my attention to this video showing a sea anemone swimming to avoid predation. Although sea anemones are in the phylum Cnidaria along with jellyfish and box jellies, I’ve always thought of them as completely sessile. Well, some of them are, but not all. […]
I am currently editing my bat photos and choosing among the 40 bat movies I took at the Bat Zone facility at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Michigan. With luck, I should be able to post some nice movies showing bat behavior, including their echolocation “clicks” made audible with a bat-o-meter. In the meantime, […]
