Category Archives: natural history

beliefs, food+drink, memes, natural history

Listography – Random

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Yet again I’ve not done Kate’s Listography for a few weeks, in part because she has used several weeks of Listography space running a Top 5 Toys for Christmas survey for which I wasn’t eligible (‘cos her rule said “parents only”).

But this week we’re back to normal and I’ll let Kate herself introduce this week’s exam:

This week’s Listography is simple but with a very wide scope — Top 5 Random Things I Like.

Just one word of warning though – random is not ‘I like chocolate’ — that’s just not going to cut it round here. However ‘I like chocolate sauce with my chips’ is getting a bit warmer.

So, in the hope that my choices are whacky enough, here we go …

  1. Wasps. They generally get a bad rap, and I would agree can be annoying. But they are superb creatures and wonderful predators. Without them we’d be knee deep in creepy crawlies.
  2. Plane Crashes. Not because I like seeing people hurt or killed. Of course I don’t and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. No, my interest is forensic and analytical: I like to try to see if I can work out guess what happened and why. Think of it as a giant puzzle game.
  3. Curry with Avocado, Banana and Mayonnaise on the Side. Yep it works really well. Chopped avocado and chopped banana. Mayonnaise instead of yoghurt dressing (although I like that too). It’s a nice combination of flavours and contrasts of hot and cooling.
  4. Latin Liturgy. Despite not being at all religious — indeed I’m anti-religious — I do find that proper Tridentine Latin Mass does something to me. Well it is a spell, isn’t it?!
  5. Deep-fried Haggis. Yep again this works wonderfully well. I first met it 40 years ago when a student: the chip shop nearest the university in York used to sell it. Sausage-sized haggis, thickly battered and deep fried. And bloody good it was too especially on a cold winter’s night after a few pints. Sadly I don’t recall seeing anyone doing it since. And anyone want to try deep fried black pudding — I reckon that would be good too.

So there you are. I’m sure I have more interesting “random likes” than this but they escape me for now. Anyone care to add to the list?

memes, natural history, words

Word of the Week : Amaranth

Amaranth

1. An imaginary flower reputed never to fade; a fadeless flower (as a poetic conception).
2. A genus of ornamental plants (Amarantus, family Amarantaceæ) with coloured foliage, of which the Prince’s Feather and Love-lies-bleeding are species.
3. A purple colour, being that of the foliage of Amarantus.
4. A yellow amaranth: A composite plant (Helichrysum Stœchas).

memes, natural history, personal, photography

[42/52] Green Woodpecker

[42/52] Green Woodpecker
Week 42 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

Green Woodpecker (probably male) this morning on our next door neighbour’s lawn. This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen him visiting in the last 2-3 weeks. He spends a lot of time (I watched him for 45 minutes one day) covering the same area, so it must be very rich in ants.

Taken at a range of 20-25 yards from our study window with my biggest lens and still this is a small crop from the middle of a frame.

natural history, photography, topographical

Weasel!

Weasel

Weasel!

Weasel??!!??

Blimey, that is a weasel!

Something I never expected to see in suburban London — at least not in broad daylight. And I think it is only the third time I’ve ever seen a weasel, the previous two times being fleeting glimpses in the twilight as they disappear out of sight at breakneck speed.

This one was running around on the pavement and road (trying hard to get run over – stupid creature) on the busy Greenford Road right outside the Bridge Hotel about 1130 yesterday morning. (If you go to the “Location” tag at the bottom of this page, or to the Flickr image, you can see exactly where this is on the map.) The beastie is here seen lurking under a piece of metal barrier; (s)he’s probably about 15cm (6 inches) long in the body.

It was so fast it was a question of point the camera out of the car window in vaguely the right direction and hope. I got one shot in before the lights changed (and I almost missed that!). This is a tiny crop from the middle of that one shot.

memes, natural history, quotes, science

Word of the Week

Hoatzin

A species of colourful, remarkably saurian, chicken-like bird, Opisthocomus hoazin, found in swamps, riverine forest and mangrove of the Amazon and the Orinoco deltas of South America. It is notable for having chicks that possess claws on two of their wing digits; the chicks are also able to swim and climb — useful when you’re a pheasant-sized bird which nests in trees over water!

It is brown in colour, with paler underparts and an unfeathered blue face with maroon eyes; its head is topped by a spiky, rufous crest. The Hoatzin is herbivorous and has an unusual digestive system with an enlarged crop used for fermentation of vegetable matter — broadly analogous to the digestive system of mammalian ruminants. It’s common name of Stinkbird is due to the strong smell produced by the bird, perhaps due to its consumption and fermentation of leaves.

Despite its striking plumage, unwary nature and poor flight it seems to be only rarely hunted by the indigenous peoples of its native range. Consequently it is not endangered. It is the national bird of Guyana.

natural history, personal, photography, science

Skills I Do Not Have, No. 253 of 44975

Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris by kcm76
Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris, a photo by kcm76 on Flickr.

I present you with the Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris.

I found this critter dead on the bedroom floor this morning and in picking it up for recycling I realised just what stunning creatures wasps are. We so often think of them a nuisanceful pests whereas they’re amazingly engineered and even in death almost beautiful. So I had to photograph it – click the links below for larger views.

Image 1 (top left) shows just how hairy they are when we think of them as bald. And you can just see the tiny, shiny bulge of the top of the wasp’s compound eye.
Image 2 (top right) shows some of the mazing engineering: just look at the hooks and barbs on the legs – just what is needed for gripping caterpillar/insect prey and crawling over plants.
Image 3 (bottom left) shows the face and jaws which are the characteristics that identify this as Vespula vulgaris rather than any of the other UK species.
Image 4 shows something I’d never realised before (although my book shows it clearly) and that’s that wasps have two pairs of wings: look carefully and you can see in front of the large main wing a smaller wing. No wonder they’re such skilled flyers.

These are tiny, amazingly delicate yet robust insects. This individual, a worker, is just 12mm long with a wingspan of about 22mm. In her lifetime she may well have “salvaged” numerous flies, caterpillars etc. as food for the next generation of grubs – without wasps we would be knee deep in creepy crawlies.

This was taken under my desk lamp (hence the slight colour cast) with my point-an-shoot Lumic TZ8 – which is amazing for macros like this as it will focus down to just a couple of centimetres (much better than my dSLR)!

And as I was taking these I thought: how the hell do you go about dissecting something this small? Clearly scientists have done so, but it’s a skill I don’t have and I’m not dexterous enough to ever conceive how to do it! Amazing insects and amazing scientific work to dissect one!

Montage created with fd’s Flickr Toys