Bird on the Ice Age National Scenic Trail in Wisconsin. Please comment if you know what type of bird this is.
Related: Backyard Wildlife: Blue Jay – Bird Using Bread as Bait to Catch Fish – Friday Cat Fun: Cat and Crow Friends – Backyard Wildlife: Sharpshinned Hawk
I took this photo of this mother Raccoon with 3 youngsters in my backyard. Raccoon’s are pretty big; it is somewhat amazing to me they manage to find enough to eat. I have seen individuals around over the years (not very often though) but only saw this family twice.
I continue to have many wildlife sightings in my backyard which is quite nice.
Related: Backyard Wildlife: Fox – Backyard Wildlife: Great Spreadwing Damselfly – Red-Shouldered Hawk – Backyard Wildlife: Turtle
I think this is a Great Tailed Grackle, please comment if you think I am wrong. This is taken in my backyard in Arlington, Virginia.
Related: Red-Shouldered Hawk – Backyard Wildlife: Fox and Deer – Backyard Wildlife: Blue Jay – Backyard Wildlife – Chimpmunk – Backyard Wildlife: Robins Attack Holly Tree
I have seen this (or another fox) several times recently but this was the first time it stayed visible long enough for me to get a photo. It is fun having backyard wildlife to connect us to nature.
A few years ago another fox enjoyed laying out in the sun in my backyard for a few weeks.
I am amazed how many animals I have seen in my backyard in a very urban area. In the last few weeks, in addition to this fox: possum, raccoon (I’ll post photos later), deer, squirrels, and various birds.
Here is an updated photo of deer, since my first few sightings didn’t result in a good photo.
Wisegeek has photographed what 200 calories of various foods looks like. A small sample is shown here:
Some of the other 200 calorie portions they show are 1425 grams of celery, 588 grams of broccoli, 385 grams of apples, 333 ml of whole milk, 290 grams of grapes, 204 grams of sliced smoked turkey, 150 grams of eggs, 72 grams of a blueberry muffin, 53 grams of brown sugar and 52 grams of a donut or pretzel.
Related: A Healthy Lifestyle is More About Health Care than the Sickness Management That We Call Health Care Is – Healthy Diet, Healthy Living, Healthy Weight – Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. – Better Health Through: Exercise, Not Smoking, Low Weight, Healthy Diet and Low Alcohol Intake – Obesity Epidemic Explained – Kind Of (1970 – Americans ate an average of 2170 calories per day 2000 – Americans ate an average of 2700 calories per day) – Examining the Scientific Basis Around Exercise and Diet Claims
This video show some wonderful images from remote cameras equipped to film when an animal is spotted. These camera have aided scientists in understanding wildlife in their natural environment and also by providing us cool images.
Related: Rare Chinese Mountain Cat – Bornean Clouded Leopard – Photos of Rare Saharan Cheetah and Other Wildlife – Scottish Highland Wildcats
I think rubber trees are pretty cool, dripping out nice latex is just neat.
Photo of rubber trees in Khao Lak, Thailand
Latex is collected from trees which is then treated to make rubber. Hevea brasiliensis (originally found the Amazon basin in Brazil), the Pará rubber tree, sharinga tree, or, most commonly, the rubber tree, is a tree belonging to the family Euphorbiaceae. Gutta-percha (Palaquium) is a genus of tropical trees native to Southeast Asia. The milky latex extracted from the trees is the primary source of natural rubber. Now refining petroleum is an alternative way for creating products that required rubber previously, but rubber is still economically important.
In 1876, Henry Wickham gathered thousands of para rubber tree seeds from Brazil, and these were germinated in Kew Gardens, England. The seedlings were then sent to India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Indonesia, Singapore and British Malaya (now Malaysia). Malaya was later to become the biggest producer of rubber. In the early 1900s, the Congo, Liberia and Nigeria also became significant producers of natural rubber latex.
Rubber tree seed from near Fraser’s Hill, Malaysia, by John Hunter.
Fire Rainbow, Johor Bahru by John Hunter
Yesterday afternoon I spotted this odd, colorful, spectrum seemingly in a cloud in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. The colors are similar to a rainbow but the prism effect takes on a bit different form than a rainbow as I learned with a bit of searching online. I added a short post to this blog, about the phenomenon a few years ago.
Johor Bahru under a large cloud which is topped with a fire rainbow.
A circumhorizontal arc is an optical phenomenon – an ice-halo formed by plate-shaped ice crystals in high level cirrus clouds. They are also known as “fire rainbows,” if the cloud is at the right angle to the sun, the crystals will refract the sunlight just as when rainbow is created.
The Olympus BioScapes 2011 Winners Gallery is full of great photos and videos of micro bioscapes.
Floschularia Ringerns Rotifer feeding by Charles Crebs
Winning photo by Mr. Charles Krebs, Issaquah, Washington, USA
Specimen: Rotifer Floscularia ringens feeding. Its rapidly beating cilia (hair-like structures) bring water containing food to the rotifer
Technique: Differential interference contrast microscopy
The photo shows the microscopic animal’s self-made reddish tube-shaped home, with a building block in the process of being formed inside the rotifer’s body.
Related: 2006 Nikon Small World Photos – 50 Species of Diatoms – Art of Science at Princeton – Art of Science
The cool Lytro light field camera lets you adjust the focus after the picture is taken. Wow what a surprise the company is located in Mountain View, California. Oh wait, no that isn’t a surprise. Those of us in the USA should thank our lucky stars for having Silicon Valley in our country.
The Lytro will be available in early 2012 starting at $399 (a 8 GB model able to hold up to 350 images) and $499 for a $499 16 GB model able to hold 750 images.
The camera does take 3d images. That feature will be enabled via a software update after the initial release.
Related: Rare Saharan Cheetahs Photographed with Camera Trap – Awesome Camera for Your Cat – Curious Cat Gadget Blog – Amazon’s Android Tablet, the Kindle Fire – Qubits Construction Toy
This image shows the abundance of life in the sea, measured by the SeaWiFS instrument aboard the Seastar satellite. Dark blue represents warmer areas where there is little life due to lack of nutrients, and greens and reds represent cooler nutrient-rich areas.
The nutrient-rich areas include coastal regions where cold water rises from the sea floor bringing nutrients along and areas at the mouths of rivers where the rivers have brought nutrients into the ocean from the land. NASA has posted a large gallery of great images for Earth Day.
Related: Altered Oceans: the Crisis at Sea – Microbes Beneath the Sea Floor – A single Liter of Seawater Can Hold More Than One Billion Microorganisms
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