On a brisk 37 degree morning in Northern Illinois I decided to dust off my camera and explore the progress of “spring”. I hit Rollins Savanna Forest Preserve by 6:30am, just in time for first light to melt the patchy frost. A week and a half ago temps were pushing the upper 80’s and summer . . . → Read More: Prairie on a Cold Spring Morning
 Comments are closed  Miscellaneous  Aves, Birds, Illinois, Non-Insects, Photography, Prairie, Rollins Savanna Over on Arthropoda, fellow SFS blogger Michael Bok shared an image of his field buddy, Plugg the green tree frog. My first thought was of a similar tree frog that haunted welcomed me everywhere I went in Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica. Needless to say, Costa Rica instills a sudden habit of double checking . . . → Read More: Frog Surprise Share this! Comments are closed Miscellaneous Costa Rica, Field Work, Frogs, Hazards of Collecting, Janzen, Non-Insects, Santa Rosa National Park I’ve known for a while that beetles and other inverts occasionally have vertebrates on their menu, but I didn’t really know how large of an animal they could subdue! Even when the odd mantis grabs a hummingbird the size difference is not as substantial as is shown below. This impressive video was . . . → Read More: Take that, vertebrates! Share this!
Source: Wikipedia It turns out that Richard Branson has a new idea; to save the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) by importing them to his private British Virgin Island. As the article points out Branson spent millions of pounds and years of effort to turn the island into “the most ecologically . . . → Read More: Richard Branson is an Idiot Share this! 8 comments - (Comments are closed) Skepticism Bad Science, Conservation, Media, Non-Insects, Species
Perhaps the only place in the world where you can find an American bison (vs. buffalo) standing near a beach next to a palm tree. The week on Santa Catalina was an wonderful one, and despite a cool spring with a few unseasonable frosts, some decent collecting was done. Here are just . . . → Read More: The Bison of Catalina Share this! 2 comments - (Comments are closed) Miscellaneous Bison, Catalina Island, Conservation, Endemic Species, Islands, Non-Insects For those Californians reading, especially those in the south, keep an eye out for this beautiful little spider, Latrodectus geometricus – the brown widow. Arachnologists at UC Riverside are monitoring the spread of this invasive species. Ironically it turns out to not be as dangerous as our native black widow. Nonetheless, it is not . . . → Read More: Have you seen me? Share this!For the last four weekends now I have been on a goose chase, for one moth, Heliolonche celeris. It’s a beautiful small Noctuidae with pinkish forewings and stunning orange-red hindwings. It isn’t very often encountered and only found along the northern California mountain ranges feeding on Malacothrix floccifera – a CA endemic flower. Every trip . . . → Read More: The Art of a Goose Chase Share this! 10 comments - (Comments are closed) Entomology Entomology, Flowers, Hazards of Collecting, Lepidoptera, Moths, Non-Insects A 15 foot gray whale just washed up in the San Francisco Bay. Now is our chance for exploding whale part 2! Share this! |
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