Birds are animals, too!

Belly landing captured during this week's Bodega Bay visit

One of the most common errors I've heard people make

(including famously smarty-pants types)

is saying birds and animals, or even that birds are not animals.

My theory is they are thinking about MAMMALS,

and yes, birds are not mammals,

but, they are animals.

"Animals" is today's assignment for the 30 day photo challenge.

Figured I'd use the assignment to remind people that

birds are people too.

Oops. I meant animals. =)

Framed weirdly (landing, immature western gull) but I liked the lighting & detail

xoxobb

bb's industry rewarded by nature, pays it forward 2 U!

  
These are some of the things I came upon during this morning's outdoor flurry of hosing the sidewalk (watching the lemon yellow pollen foam wash away--yikes!!!) and our screens and other things right near our windows which facilitate the placement of TINY pollen grains in my eyes, nose, throat, ears, skin, etc.

These shots are all big, today, so feel free to click on them and zoom in to get a better look.

The first is the moth, which has rich orange in its hindwings, but I didn't catch that via camera. I scared it up from the grass via hosing.

This looks like the one that skepticalmoth said was Noctua pronuba "an invasive species introduced to the east coast from Europe a few decades ago. Not a horrible invasive, they feed mostly on grasses and are common around houses/lawns."

Any expertise input re: id would be greatly appreciated.

Next, this beauty was posing nicely by the second faucet that I moved our super-short hose to in order to continue with the pollen spraying.

Isn't she pretty?!? And rather regal. Very poised.

Woah, I was GOING to call this Pseudacris regilla, feeling all smart 'cause I knew that what USED to be called Hyla regilla is now Pseudacris regilla.

Yeah, well, in reading Wikipedia and CaliforniaHerps.com, looks like what I have is a Sierra treefrog, Pseudacris sierra--check out the distribution map on CaliforniaHerps.com. Apparently MOST of what I'll encounter is now called Pseudacris sierra, including where I'll be doing field work NEXT WEEK, so good to know.

Love how this blog keeps me learning.

Isn't she gorgeous? I'm assume, based on sizable ROUND belly, this is a lady and she's gravid.

So, then, after hosing off the north side of the house, I return the hose to it's original site, and see this:

I took about 7 shots of this TINY spider (note it's dwarfed by water droplet) and only this LAST one was sharp and WOW, what a difference! Click and zoom in, this one is especially rewarding.

What a beauty! Anyone have a guess what it is? It looks like a crab spider, to me...

By the way, I was SO industrious (dumping out and WASHING and drying litter boxes, hosing down sidewalk, screens, pulling weeds out of sidewalk, spraying the cars) this morning, that Bear said, before taking off, "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm not going to do anything to fix it."

=)

bb can be phenomenally LAZY and blob-like, so this is a happy occasion.

Years ago, we were camping. FYI, I am not super skilled re: outdoors, but I pride myself on breaking camp like a bandit (FAST FAST FAST). Like get OUT of my way or you may end up rolled up and stuffed into a duffel bag, then the trunk (erf!).

Right after we got up, Bear wandered off to powder his nose. The moment he left I decided to see if I could break camp and get EVERYTHING back in the car before he returned. So I was speed packing, collapsing poles like my hair was on fire, cramming sleeping bags into stuff sacks, etc. but, alas, I was not QUITE done when Bear returned.

However, he did remark, smiling quietly while I madly flung pillows into the car: "You're cute when you're industrious." =) So, I felt like I'd won.


Anyhow, the animals pictured above are the lovelies who showed themselves to me during my cleaning mania, leaving me richly rewarded. Thus, I wanted to share the wealth with you.

I hope your weekend is going wonderfully.

xoxoxo

biobabbler

* I really DO need to figure out how to add a page to my blog to assemble all the species that have been identified... Any of y'all know how to do that in blogger? I can do SOME HTML but don't really feel like doing this whole thing from scratch, so if you know of a reasonably simple way to add a page, I'd GREATLY appreciate your tossing me a clue.

Nabokov: butterfly evolution genius?

 
Check this article out (by Carl Zimmer), in the New York Times. Apparently, while not penning genius literary works, Nabokov was the curator of lepidoptera at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. And he didn't just dust the shelves.

In 1945, he wrote a paper on the Polyommatus blues.

copyright Lynne Kirton

Nabokov had done a bunch of careful work on these creatures, clarifying their differences and similarities, rearranging their family tree, making sense out of a group that had confounded many.

In that paper, "He envisioned them coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves."

Well, since then folks in lab coats who are good with DNA have been testing his theory.

"On Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right. 'It’s really quite a marvel,' said Naomi Pierce of Harvard, a co-author of the paper."

Vindicated 65 years later.

=) Awesome.

Incidentally, he was a SELF TAUGHT lepidopterist.

Wow.

And motivated: "He used the proceeds of his second novel, 'King, Queen, Knave,' to finance an expedition to the Pyrenees, where he and his wife, Vera, netted over a hundred species."

=)


Sounds like a cool guy.

And a serious smarty pants.

Nice work, Vladimir!


biobabbler