Making friends with Egyptian Geese

The Torres

Chacma Baboon enjoying his reflection in my window

Sunning with my Mousebird

Naja nigricincta woodi. Got a little close and it actually spat at my camera. Lucky I was wearing glasses.

This guy. sitting on my car.

Andean Condor

One of the more interesting days of my life

Joy

Calochortus clavatus (clubhair mariposa lily), a rare find on my hike in California.

Wave ripples.

Kinda fun camping and watching these guys interact with humans and also how they behave in the wild. Sleeping under them is very noisy.

Monarch chrysalises get these vivid gold spots from lutein, a carotenoid they absorb from milkweed. The 1978 Rothschild study showed that without these carotenoids, the spots turn silver instead. Why travel far to see exotic animals, when you can enjoy subtle and spectacular nature in our own gardens!

Harvestmen prowl the ground at night, no webs, harmless scavengers running around in large groups. Look just like daddy long legs, but those are “Cellar spiders”. Both are called daddy longlegs, but only one’s a real spider. Both are arachnids. This one, Ojai, California.

One of the most magical aspects of my life was the privilege of to grow up doing conservation and exploration in South Africa. I had a bird hospital for about 15 years. My first patient was at the age of about 6 or 7. Rehabilitated many 100s of birds into the wild. There were some that refused to leave and I would awaken in the morning with them in my bed, and this one, Tufty, refused to join a flock and stuck around living inside and outside my home as a young man. Mousebirds (family Coliidae, order Coliiformes) are a phylogenetically isolated, Africa-endemic group often called living fossils, with only six extant species. These small, gregarious birds feature soft, fluffy plumage, crests, and very long tails, with pamprodactylous feet enabling mouse-like scrambling and upside-down hanging while foraging on fruit, buds, and leaves. Most curiously, they enter facultative torpor to drop body temperature and metabolism during cool or food-scarce conditions, often huddling communally for warmth and basking belly-up in the sun. This is her basking in my head.

This evening’s swim was fun and tried out my new water camera: Vellella velella are a colony, and each single “sailor” is either entirely male or entirely female…..all its polyps share the same sex and work together as one unit- superb and nature surprises me everyday. The reproductive polyps asexually bud off thousands of tiny (approx. 1 mm) jellyfish-like medusae. The medusae sink into deeper water, mature in about three weeks, and then release eggs (if female) or sperm (if male) into the open ocean. Fertilization happens by chance when sperm meets egg in the water. The resulting larvae eventually rise to the surface and grow into the observed sailing colonies.

Any of my X friends know anything about the whereabouts or modern history of The Esperanza Stone? Major Frederick Russell Burnham standing next to the stone he found in Mexico (1910).

Pico Fm.