Flamingo Friday: Yoga

“…And this, class, is the ‘upward-downward-backward-sideways-facing bird’ position…”

Just continuing the DC conversation, folks.

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“A Firefly Never Forgets”

(That’s an allusion to both the Marx Brothers and pachyderms, all at once.)

A Firefly never forgets, and neither does an elephant, and neither does an Olivia. I have not forgotten about the blog, and in fact lately I feel as if I have more to talk about—and more I’d like to hear from you about—than ever before.

However, Annie and I are in the process of moving, and that does tend to distract one from the important topic of zoological philosophizing.

So: Elephants never forget—and while this is in part just one of those proverbial attributions, like the wisdom of owls, there is evidence that elephants remember their dead in a way that not that many other species (that we know of) do.

Are there attributes that you think accurately characterize a certain species? Have you found butterflies to be capricious, or ravens ironic, or sparrows buffoons?

["I remember that you gave me treats..."]

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Saturday's Watchful Catbird

[Needs no explanation]


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Flamingo Friday: A Pinker Shade of Pale

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“For Kids”

[please note: this is a sea lion,
not a seal, but she is a kid]

Yesterday as I was looking through science-news headlines I saw one titled “For Kids: Seal Science.”

Wait a minute! I thought. I want to learn about seal science, too! Why is all the cool stuff always for kids?

I admit that that’s a generalization. Thanks in part to the internet and social media, there’s a lot more popular science out there directed at all audiences—which is great. And yet so often anything to do with animals (think zoos, among other things) is presented as being only of interest to—or the exclusive purview of—children.

I think this is a shame, since it makes adults who get excited about animals feel childish and embarrassed—or the science itself never gets on their radar because it’s targeted at kids.

Have you noticed this too?

What about science’s presentation to popular audiences bothers you?

[P.S. Check yesterday’s post's comments for the answer to the mystery-animal game!]

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Guessing Game

Anyone know what this fine creature is? (I've made the photo black and white to add mystery!)

Incidentally: Is that a great expression on its face or what?

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An Update from the Non-Wild Wildlife

Just saw this news story: National Zoo welcomes baby panda

Which includes the following quote: “Moore said the panda camera caught the moment of birth. ‘She kind of breathes funny and then she jerks her body, and then she stands up and kind of looks at something for just seconds ... and then picks it up.’”

Just like human births, right, all you mothers out there?

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Why I’ll Miss Being Able to Walk to Work

In the morning, admiring the flowers that lit up the otherwise less-than-thrilling sidewalks and byways, I spied a couple of animals I don’t usually expect to see hanging out on black-eyed Susans.

The first is at least an insect:

-But the second is one of those rare land-dwelling crustaceans, the wood louse…

…also known as the potato bug, pill bug, or roly-poly, depending on where and how you grew up. (Did you know it was a terrestrial crustacean? Isn’t that cool? It’s a kind of isopod, which will mean something to beachcombers but probably no one else.)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen traversing a blossom before.

And on my way home to work I spotted this lovely creature hanging out on a (morning glory?) growing on a chain-link fence:

There’s nothing like a little urban wildlife—coupled with the smug sensation of being the only one to have spotted it—to improve one’s commute.

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A Silent Saturday: Bonnie, "Posterized"

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Flamingo Friday: Ruffling

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Leave It the Hell Away from Beaver(s)

Only two days ago I alerted you all to a news story on an octogenarian attacked by a rabid beaver. Now there’s another story to add to the list:

Rabid beaver chases children in Springfield

My joke about zombified beavers is feeling a little less funny…

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Other Worlds

I don’t myself believe that there are celestial beings crowding the firmament, but I’ve always thought that if angels did exist they would look like sea lions in water: those sleek bodies, that broad-shouldered sweep of wings. (“Pinniped” does mean “feather-foot,” after all.)

What do your divine or supernatural beings look like? Do you envision stalk-eyed fly sprites or porcupine kobolds or cephalopod deities?

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Beware, For Here Be…Beavers?

Sometimes it’s the animals you least expect that can scare the hell out of you and nearly bite off your thumb.

I don’t mean to be too flippant, since this is a shocking incident—although luckily one with a happy ending for the victim (less happy for the beaver, but since it was rabid, there’s probably no truly happy ending there):

Woman, 83, attacked by rabid beaver at Lake Barcroft in Fairfax County

Still, it’s also one of those stories that remind us that the natural world is not a pristine wonderland designed for our entertainment and protection. (An ecologist friend of mine at Yellowstone once overheard the following comment from a tourist: “The bears here must be harmless, otherwise they wouldn’t let them in.”)

Keep an eye out, folks. Nature is majestic, but it isn’t nice.

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International Rock-Flipping Day, 2012 – In which the author learns a modicum of humility

[you find all sorts of things in the woods]

I spent the time leading up to international rock-flipping day sulking. I didn’t have any shoreline to explore—no lovely cobble beaches whose rocks I could lift, exposing the scuttling shore crabs and hermit crabs, the squirming polychaetes, the small snails gripping the underside of the stones themselves—so why bother?

Eventually I got over my sullen fit and decided to flip a few rocks in the aptly named Rock Creek Park. And, while my under-rocks discoveries were not magnificent, I’m very glad I did.

It had been a long time since I’d walked in the park, and I had forgotten the pleasure and mystery of walking through a wooded area on a sunny day.

You wander through a land of dappled shadows—“woven shade,” to quote W.B. Yeats—and everywhere you’re struck by the sense of secret movements and beauty hidden in the gloom.

And every patch of sun, every open area, dazzles you with a miracle of light that your eyes strain to decipher.

Before flipping my first rock, I admired the area in which it was situated: near the (thanks to yesterday’s torrential rain) babbling creek, studded with horizontal spider-webs that sliced rainbows into fine threads, dotted with bright weeds hardy enough to survive in the undergrowth.

My first rock yielded a couple of beetles like this one:

And many soil castings from, I assume, industrious earthworms (and a cricket, out of focus and hidden in the shadows of this photo).

Under several other rocks, nothing visible except for a single nematode that quickly slithered out of sight.

I kept walking, admiring the spill of rocks down a hillside that looked as if the earth itself had already flipped them more than once. I also looked up at the leaves so pierced and glowing with sunlight that they seemed to be paper-thin slices of emeralds, aventurines, jade, shivering and susurrating in the breeze.

When I lifted my final rock, a swarm of ants spilled across its surface, glittering like beads of dark amber as they scurried away from my intrusion.

I wasn’t thinking like a scientist—I probably wasn’t even thinking like a determined rock-flipper—but I stopped being so sulky about missing the shore and instead felt grateful that the event had made me take the time to relearn the astonishing infinitude of marvels existing in a world not so different from our own.

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Flamingo Friday - Pretty in Punk

Okay, I suppose it's not all that punk, but sometimes you get a little excited about using the "posterize" function in Photoshop, and then you start thinking about good names for flamingo rock bands...

Like, for example:

Flamingo Bingo
The Beakies
The Down and Outs (get it, down?)
Head-Flagging in November
Penny Pinfeather and the Fowlettes

Feel free to add to the list! You never know when you might come across some frustrated flamingo musicians just waiting to launch their careers.

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Seal You Later

How many seal puns can *you* come up with? (I've got a list.)

Coming soon: more on the zoo's new exhibit, the mystique of pinnipeds, and the dangers of wildlife.

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Better than Reality TV

That’s right, it’s time for: Guess Those Remains!

[these remains right here]

The first to guess correctly will…have guessed correctly!

(And from there it’s only a short step to becoming an internet phenom just like Justin Bieber!)

I'll give you one hint: it's something that lives in or near the ocean.

Ready? Go!

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It’s Scandalous!

…How little I’ve been posting lately, but I’ve been somewhat distracted by first the anticipation of and then my visits to the zoo’s newest exhibit.

More on that soon.

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