Punalu’u Black Sand Beach, South Point, and Green Sand Beach

Punalu’u Black Sand Beach does indeed have black sand! I took a jeweler’s loupe with me to the beach and took a picture of some grains of the sand through it with my husband holding the paper with the sand grains! They are bits of basalt – not as find as on most white sand beaches. This beach has even bigger rocks – not sand like at all like these grains.

There are wetlands (fresh water with lily pads and turtles)

And ducks that are very acclimated to people.

I set my camera to shorten the exposure so that the very bright sunny day would not wash out blackness of the day (dark but reflective) at the tidal pools,

Leading up to the palms,

The shore line,

And a ocean crashing on some rock that still jutted out from the shore….wearing it way to form more grains on the black sand beach.

There was a green turtle looking sleepily at the tourists. Just after this picture was taken, the turtle closed its eye completely.

There were mynah birds around too. This one looks particularly alert and very serious.

Our next stop was South Point – the southernmost point in the entire US. It was very windy so we didn’t stay long. Evidently at high tide – people jump from the top of the cliff and climb back up the rickety ladder afterwards. It was low tide when we were there and most people were like us – took a quick look around – and continued to their next destination.

Our destination was Green Sand Beach. We paid to $15 to a local driver to take us over the very bump 2.5 miles to the beach and back. It was even windier than at South Point. We climbed down the cliff via a crevasse (mostly with secure footing); this is the picture from the bottom of the cliff with the crevasse we came down to the left and then angling back to the right going upward. My husband managed to find a small place sheltered from the wind so I could take the picture of the sand through the jeweler’s loupe. This is not a big beach and there are cautions to not take any of the sand away. The grains of greenish olivine are clearly visible….as are some other colors. The olivine is from the cinder cone that is eroding to form the beach.

The green sand is on the cliff face

And down to the sea. Note the hair and clothes in this picture; everyone was being sandblasted! My husband’s glasses blew off as he was climbing back up the cliff; fortunately, my daughter was able to retrieve them. My hat pulled so hard at its tie that it now has new character! As I looked down at myself as we made the bump rid back, I realized that everywhere I had put sunscreen has a thin film of grit!

Previous Hawaii Posts:

• Getting to Hawaii
• Thurston Lava Tube and Kilauea Iki Trail
• Chain of Craters Road
• Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden
• Lava Tree State Park
• Maunakea
• Akaka Falls State Park
• Puu Makaala Natural Area Reserve

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 26, 2015

Violet Snail spends whole life drifting on self-made bubbles -  A sea snail that floats around underneath bubbles….a pretty denizen of our oceans that preys on Portuguese man o’ war.

There are twelve different kinds of rainbows – I was hoping there would a reference with pictures of the 12 different kinds…but it isn’t in this post.

Ten Cool Thinks the Kitchen of the Future Will Do – Some things on this list don’t seem that great to me. Printing dinner with a countertop 3-D printer does not seem appetizing at all to me.

10 Truly Guilt-Free Wholefood Vegan Cookies - Many of these cookies look more appetizing to me than the bakery offerings I used to be drawn to. I recently had a slice of carrot cake and left half the icing on the plate because it seemed like there was more icing than cake!

Treating colon cancer with vitamin A – As I read this article – I wondered if the vitamin A rich foods I love in my diet (and think of as ‘good’ for my eyes) are good for other reasons too.

See nature in a whole new light –  17 pictures of bugs!

A historical atlas of America, built for the 21^st century – From the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab….the site is called American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History. There are 4 maps now (the forced migration of enslaved people 1810-1860), the overland trails 1840-1860, foreign born population 1850-2010, and Canals 1820-1860) with more to come.

This physicist makes dazzling snowflakes in his laboratory – Wonderful images…Ken Libbrecht has a snowflake machine and photographs the unique snowflakes it creates from water vapor condensing on a sapphire substrate.

Cool roofs in China offer enhanced benefits during heat waves – As people put on new roofs….maybe the lighter colored roofs will become the norm on our warming planet.

Festive underwater creatures look like mini Christmas trees – Even though the Christmas holiday is over…I couldn’t resist including these tropical worms that look like colorful Christmas tree bristles on their calcium carbonate bases.

Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden

The Hawaii Tropical Island is along the coast north of Hilo on the Big Island. The garden includes tropical plants from all over the world and is located on a cliff going down to sea level. The first part of the path is a boardwalk that is just wide enough for the golf carts that help people that cannot walk down (or back up) the garden paths.

The understory of the forest is almost overwhelming with ferns – sometimes growing on soil but also coming from tree trunks too.

Some trees have colorful roots that start before the soil line

Moss and vines grow on trees trunks too.

Gold Dust Day Geckos (native of Madagascar) are colorful; they are easier to spot when they are not on foliage close to their own color.

I was surprised to spot these pitcher plants

And a lot of flowers that I had only seen in Conservatories previous!

The forest was shady for the most part but where the sun did make it through – the plants seemed to glow.

And the streams through the garden were brimming with lush vegetation – sometimes almost like carpets.

When we got down to the ocean – the boulders of lava were being battered by waves –

The surging for water against rock….on and on.

And then we made the climb back up the cliff.

The garden was a good place to be in the morning before the heat of the day. We covered exposed skin with sun screen and sprayed ourselves with bug repellent since we’d hear of Dengue Fever being a problem on the Big Island in the weeks before we arrived. The gift shop at the garden was good too….more on that when I summarize our purchases during the trip (later in this series).

Previous Hawaii Posts:

• Getting to Hawaii
• Thurston Lava Tube and Kilauea Iki Trail
• Chain of Craters Road

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 19, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

The future of medicine is testing our body fluids at home – Will the ‘annual physical’ become a thing of the past as this testing becomes more widely available?

The Coming Winter Part Two: The Elephant in the Room – The second part of Dan Satterfield’s explanation of the long range forecast for the winter.

Living Alone Now the Most Common Type of Household – Analysis of US households from 1930-2010. The over 60 population accounts for the majority of population that lives alone so the expectation is that the number of ‘living alone’ households will continue to increase.

Storing Electricity in Paper – Made from  nanocellulose and a conductive polymer….the basic research is promising…not to develop a production method for the power paper.

Improving Tools for Quantifying the Effectiveness of Conservation – Trying to quantify the effectiveness of conservation efforts is hard. This post is about the work of environmental economists to do it.

Pesticide found in milk decades ago may be associated with signs of Parkinson’s – I was reading this article while I was in Hawaii…and that is where the study was done. The pesticide heptachlor epoxide was used in the pineapple fields in the early 1980s in Hawaii and made its way into milk of that era in Hawaii.

Top 10 Winter Wildlife Experiences to Enjoy near You – Some ideas for getting outdoors in the winter. My husband and I are planning several jaunts to Conawingo Dam to photograph bald eagles this winter. And if we get snow (so far we have had a very warm winter hear in Maryland), we’ll look for tracks and look for wildlife in the morning/evening around our house.

Native Spotlight: American Holly – An item for the season. Holly is a plant often associated with Christmas. My picture is from a holly at Belmont Manor and Historical Park

Explore Machu Picchu in Google Maps Street View  and Artifacts from Machu Picchu from Google’s Cultural Institute – Another place for virtual travel.

One Million Icequakes – Data was collected from a glacier in Greenland for 2 years…one that produced 20 icequakes every 60 seconds. The icequakes offer a window into the glacier bed where the ice meets the sediment.

3 Free eBooks – December 2015

Like last month – one of the ‘books’ I picked for December was one referenced in the Ancient Egypt course from Coursera that I completed back in November; the follow up reading spilled into December. It was a challenge not to pick a book that included botanical prints…I switched to birds this month but couldn’t resist picking an artist (Charles Demuth) that did a lot of plant paint!

Haskell, Barbara. Charles Demuth. New York: Whitney Museum of Art. 1987. Available from the Internet Archive here. The title of the painting that I am including in this post (partial) is “From the Kitchen Garden.” The topics of his paintings included other topics too….a snapshot of different perspectives of the US and Europe in the first thirds of the 1900s.

The British Museum. Mummy: The Inside Story. Available from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine here. The mummy in this case is Nesperennub, a priest who lived at Karnak (Egypt) in 800 BC. The site is a series of slides (with pictures and explanatory text) about the modern way that mummies are studied….not by unwrapping. One of the amulets found near the neck of this money was a wedjat eye. One from another mummy was included in the images and clipped a portion for this post. Unfortunately – this site was removed from the The British Museum’s site when it was reorganized so now it is only available via the Wayback Machine. There are two other online tours (Cleopatra and Egypt in the Old Kingdom) that can be found by clicking on the ‘Egypt’ link just above the ‘slide’ portion of the screen.

Keulemans, John Gerrard. Onze volgels in huis en tuin – Volume 1. Leyden: P.W.M. Trap. 1869. Available from Internet Archive here. Keulemans  (1942-1912) is a well-known bird illustrator and this is one of his earlier works – in his native Dutch. I was looking at it for the illustrations rather than the text. There are two other volumes available on the Internet Archive (volume 2 and volume 3) that I have yet to read…and I’m going to look at other books that might be online that he illustrated. According to Wikipedia, his total output includes over 4,000 published images – virtually all before 1915 so not in copyright.

Enjoy good visuals and good reads!

Nature Photography through a Window – December 2015

My office window is my favorite place for ‘through the window photography’. Here are some recent images.

The nuthatch is the only bird to use the feeder this way! The bird is a little bigger than the chickadees and has a more aggressive personality. There is a titmouse waiting patiently on the deck railing for the nuthatch to finish.

Squirrels are very active this time of year.  The light caught this one with something to eat under the pines.

The dove was looking down at the seed bowl but ultimately decided that the bird bath was a better ‘next stop.’ Note that there are a lot of tulip poplar seeds in the gutter. We’ve has a bumper crop of seeds this year and they are still coming down with each brisk breeze.

We have robins in the neighborhood too. There are some that winter here but I haven’t seen them in the winter very often. There seem to be more that stayed in the neighborhood this year.

I’m not sure what this flicker was so interested in but it was in the area long enough to get a picture.

I’ll share another batch of ‘through the window’ images in January.

Lady Bug

We have lady bugs in the house! This often happens after some cold days in the fall...and at other times of the year too. Never constant or consistent. There are never a large number and the only aggravation they cause is if they get into one of the halogen lamps and roast themselves. I photographed one on the mirror in the bathroom.

The ladybugs are different than the ones I remember from my childhood. They are orange rather than red. And we never had ladybugs inside either. These bugs may be ones released to help control insect pests on the farms nearby. They probably starve to death in our house.

But I like to watch them wander around the walls….the ceilings…the mirrors. They are a part of the outdoors that I can welcome….not at all like stink bugs!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 5, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Indestructible Water Bears Have a Genome That Is Seriously Weird – Over 17% of their genome comes from other organisms! 9% of rotifer genome is from other organisms. Now that we are sequencing genomes nothing is as absolute as we’d once assumed.

Discover Jordan’s past and present in Google Maps – Take a look at Petra and other sites in Jordan.

5 Root Vegetables to Put on Your Radar – Parsnips, turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, jicama, and daikon radish…have you tried any/all of these? There are 3 that I have not so maybe they will be part of a food adventure this winter.

Farming Sped Eurasian Evolution – And it was a migration of people not a diffusion of ideas that spread farming into Europe.

London Was Diverse Even Its Early Roman Days – In 50 AD…London was already a cross roads with people from other parts of Europe and as far away as North Africa living alongside people that had been in Britain for longer.

Loss of mastodons aided domestication of pumpkins, squash – Mastadons ate pumpkins! The wild pumpkins of that time was bitter and maybe even toxic to humans. Initially the plant may have been used as containers or fishnet floats. Gradually (and in multiple locations) the cucurbitas were domesticated and we have the squashes we eat today.

1,400-Year-Old Gingko Tree Sheds a Spectacular Ocean of Golden Leaves – Even the smaller gingko trees can be spectacular. The shape of the leaves is unique too.

New treatment potential for heart attack sufferers – I was intrigued by the title but even more in statement that was buried more than halfway through the article: “Currently, 5-10% of the population is believed to have mildly elevated levels of bilirubin in their blood – a condition with no negative side effects….People with this syndrome have a 30-60% reduced chance of having cardiovascular disease…” I’m one of those 5-10%!

The grim and gory reality of surgery in space – It has some similarities to any remote exploration…with the added challenge of weightlessness.

Inside Each Flu Shot, Months of Virus Tracking and Predictions – I’ve been getting flu vaccines regularly for the past 10 years or so…and haven’t gotten the flu a single time. And now it is easier than ever – no visit to the doctor required now that pharmacies provide flu shots.

Downy Woodpecker

We had a woodpecker visit our bird feeder and seed bowl recently. I took pictures then used them to make the identification.

It turns out that Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers look very similar. I looked at many pictures but finally found a side by side comparison that pointed toward the identification of the bird as a Downy Woodpecker:

• It was smaller than a robin
• The beak was short
• There was quite a bit a white in the wing

It must have been a male to because it had a nice red patch on the back of its head.

I was very glad to see the bird after I found the woodpecker feathers a few weeks ago.

Nature Photography through a Window

My office window provides a great vantage point of our back yard and I’ve cleaned it so that sometimes I can get good pictures just steps way from where I write this blog. The deer wonder through

And the squirrels are active in the yard.

They climb up the sycamore or the steps to get to the deck if I have seed in a bowl in addition to the squirrel-proof feeder. It is surprising how fast they discover the seed in the bowl!

But I enjoy trying to capture images of birds. There have been some successes this past month. The dove sat for a very long time on the roof of our covered deck that is visible from my window. It was cold day but that was a sunny spot.

The cardinal sometimes shares the seed bowl with others…and sometimes chases them away but he doesn’t stay long so the others get their share.

The female cardinal seems to need water more often than seed!

The titmice come as a pair.

The blue jays sometimes come from water but they often move so fast that there is not time to even get the camera turned on. This one sat for a few more seconds than usual!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 28, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Plastic by the Numbers in the Atlantic Ocean – Samples taken during the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers show that microplastics are very common. There were 0 samples without any plastic! On a personal level, I’m reading labels on face washes and toothpastes now and not buying any that have microbeads.

6 Common Activities that Harm Wildlife – One of the six is ‘microbeads’ so another spur to action. The other activities are also thought provoking: sunscreen, feeding bread to birds, bleached products, removing weeds, and plastic bags. Most of them I had heard about before…sunscreen only recently.

Are superbugs deadlier near where you live? – They are everywhere…some places worse than others. Often they are indicators of use (and misuse) of antibiotics.

An easy pill to swallow – Research into a mechanism to deliver mucoadhesive patches via pill through the digestive tract to the small intestine. There is potential that this could change delivery of protein based therapies (insulin, growth hormone, antibodies, and vaccines) from a injections to a pill.

A Flight of Birds – 14 unusual birds…portraits from the Photo Ark project (one of the 14 is a California Condor)

800-Year-Old Ancient Extinct Squash Uncovered during Archeological Dig on Menominee Indian Reservation – I’d like to see this one in my grocery store!

Shenandoah National Park Counting on Beetles to Slow Invasive Insect – The wooly adelgid is killing the hemlocks in Shenandoah (and in our area of Maryland too). Shenandoah is importing a beetle from Japan (where the wooly adelgid came from). Evidently the beetle has already been used successfully in other parks, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

1,700-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Discovered During City Sewer Construction Project – Found in Israel by workers upgrading the sewer system.  It was the floor of a large room in a villa during the Roman period.

Pictures: Great Smoky Mountains National Park  and Pictures: Rocky Mountain National Park and Explore the Power of Parks – From National Geographic…lots of great pictures, of course.

Obesity: A Complex Disorder – Graphic from The Scientist with a link at the bottom for the full article. The more we learn about obesity, the more complex it seems to become.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – November 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each day is an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are my top 10 for November 2015.

Like October several celebrations involved the volunteering I do with the Howard County Conservancy. There were several types of volunteering this month and it was a grand finale to the season for me:

Fall hikes for 2^nd graders. This is the last season for the soil hike for 2^nd graders because of curriculum changes. I celebrated every hike that I did because the hike is such a favorite with the children and they participate so enthusiastically – getting their hands dirty learning about soil.

Belmont Colonial Holiday Celebration. The event is the beginning of the season for me and it gets me in the mood to decorate…to cook…to enjoy the people I am with.

Mailing Party. The ‘party’ to stuff envelopes with the annual accomplishments and request donations for the Howard County Conservancy is a ‘once a year’ volunteer event. We all are work madly for 3+ hours…but there is a lot of laughter and sharing of stories while we work. This time we took a break for a delicious Italian food lunch and then got back to work to finish everything. I celebrated the comradery and good food and getting it done!

I celebrated two ‘close to home places’ in November too:

Conowingo. Seeing a Bald Eagle is always a celebration. They have made quite a comeback in the 30 years we’ve been on the east coast. I remember vividly the first time I saw one in the wild – at Blackwater Wildlife Refuge on the eastern shore of Maryland…in 1990. Now we go to Conowingo and consistently see many of them fishing in the river there.

Brookside Gardens Conservatory. There is something special about every visit to Brookside. This time the highlight was seeing how they clean the glass top of the conservatory! I celebrate that we have a place like Brookside Gardens in our area.

And there were things at home that were good too:

A cold autumn day at home. Sometimes after being out and about almost every day – I celebrate a day at home. This month it came on a very cold day and I celebrated that I could stay indoors! There will be many more cold days soon but in November they are still ‘new.’

Wind blowing the leaves off the lawn. I had to rake quite a few of the leaves on our lawn but some of them were carried by the wind into the forest where they will decompose and nourish the forest. Hurray for the raking effect of the wind!

And 3 more celebrations to round out the 10 for November:

The Martian. I celebrated a going to a theater…and seeing a good movie!

No cavities. I had a dental checkup this month and I thought for sure I had a cavity on one of my front teeth…but it was only a stain! They polished the stain off….and I celebrated all the way home.

Getting things done on my list. Sometimes I move items from one day to next….then I have a day that everything gets done…and I celebrate that discipline comes to the fore!

Conowingo Dam – November 2015

We are planning day trips to Conowingo Dam (Maryland) this winter to attempt photography of the Bald Eagles that feed there from the fish in the outflow from the dam when electricity is being generated. We went in last May and saw more Bald Eagles than I had ever seen in one place before (my post from May is here) and it wasn’t even the peak season for the Bald Eagles being there! Now it is getting to the peak time so we are planning to make the trek once a month – on a time when the roads are not slippery. It’s about an hour from our house so a comfortable day trip (and we’ll bundle up and take something hot to drink).

The parking area below the dam already held some cars when we got there at mid –morning last week. And the photographers were lined up along the fence. The number of big lenses was impressive. There was a lot of water coming from the dam and we saw eagles immediately on the rocks

And perched on the electrical tower.

Periodically we’d spot an eagle flying over the water – and catching a fish.

This one caught a large fish and took it to one of the equipment towers. There were black vultures and an immature eagle that gathered there to eye the fish. Eventually – the eagle with the fish flew away with it. Who wants to eat with that kind of audience?

Sometimes the fish is small…sometimes large.

Next time I hope to position myself to improve the background for the photographs…and to go on a brighter day so that the wing movements will not be a blurry. I may also pay more attention to the black vultures next time we go. I only saw one Great Blue Heron on this trip (last May we saw more); they are frequently photogenic if they are not too far away.

On this particular trip – I enjoyed the remnants of fall color next to the parking lot (turning my back to where the eagles were).

I also noticed a feather. I wonder whether it was from a Bald Eagle or a Black Vulture.

There is a Facebook page for the Conowingo Bald Eagles Community for more information.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 21, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Poland's Mysterious "Crooked Forest" Populated with 400 Bent Pine Trees – Trees are remarkably resilient. Whatever caused these trees to be bent near the base…and then continue growing upright…they are survivors!

Why do we still not know what’s inside the pyramids? – I usually notice stories about Ancient Egypt that come in on my newsfeeds but my awareness is even higher right now because of the Ancient Egypt course I am taking on Coursera.

6 Homemade Vegan Sauces and Condiments that are better than Store-bought – I’m trying the recipe for peanut sauce after I finish the store bought bottle I have in my refrigerator!

The digital revolution in higher education has already happened. No one noticed. – Another dimension of higher education not mentioned in this thoughtful piece is the continuing education that many post-career individuals seek. I recently looked at face to face classes offered in my area of Maryland and decided that the selection available from Coursera and other online providers was much greater (and the price was right too). Another case where the digital revolution in higher education has already happened.

Photography in the National Parks: Your Armchair Guide to Big Bend National Park – Part 2  - A continuation of an article I included in my October 31 gleanings….good info for planning a trip there.

Tangy and Tasty Fresh Cranberry Recipes – My ‘new’ recipe to try for Thanksgiving is the Cranberry-Carrot cake. I am not going to put icing on it….eat it more like muffins for Thanksgiving Day brunch. Don't forget Cranberry Orange Relish either! Wegmans recipe is here.

Move Over, Turkey: Meet the World’s Other Bald, Be-wattled Birds – Thinking of turkey this week….here are some other birds that have similar heads. They all look odd to me!

Field Drain Tile and the “Re-Eutrophication” of Lake Erie – Why the algal blooms have worsened in recent years after improving for the prior 15 years.

Elegant Greenhouse Photos Mimic the Ethereality of Oil Paintings – Hmm…the textured glass reminded me of a shower door. This might turn into a winter photography experiment!

Incan Mummy Genome Sequenced – The mitochondrial DNA analysis was the first completed and placed the boy in a very small subgroup – only 4 other known individuals. Other genetic analyses of the 500 year old mummy of a 7-year-old boy are ongoing.

Woodpecker Feathers

Last week I saw a lot of birds one morning at our feeder (juncos, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, titmice), flitting between the trees in our yard (blue jays and robins) and back in the forest there were two kinds of woodpeckers: pileated and red-bellied. I next day I saw the red bellied woodpecker again and then it seemed like there were very few birds around at all for a few days. When I was working the yard yesterday – I found a pile of feathers. There must have been a predator in the area…probably some kind of hawk.

The pile was back in the pile of leaves I’ve creating at the edge of the forest. There were long feathers and fuzzy bits of down. The black and white pattern looked like a woodpecker and was probably the red-bellied woodpecker since a pileated woodpecker are mostly black rather than the black and white pattern.

I picked up some of the feathers to photograph. They were a little damaged so probably had been on the ground for a few days.

Yesterday, I noticed more birds at our feeder again. Maybe the predator has moved on.

Zooming – November 2015

The ‘zooming’ collages for this month all about views of fall:

• Colored leaves
• Mushrooms and puffballs
• Seed pods
• Geese over the treetops
• Ferns and moss surrounded by died leaves

Enjoy the slide show!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 14, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Globe Is Set to Cross 1 Degree C Temperature Increase Threshold in 2015 – Not good. The averages for temperature and carbon dioxide concentration is the atmosphere are still climbing…and we have done nothing so far to change the trend.

Weight’s the Matter? – The Scientist has an issue on obesity and I am including the articles I found most interesting in this gleanings list. This post outlines the articles available…from causes to the link to cancer (did you know that obesity has replaced smoking as the top preventable cause of cancer death in the US?) to possible side effect of environmental chemicals to weight loss.

Obesogens – Environmental chemicals change cause metabolic changes in animals causing them to gain weight. It is harder to prove for humans…but there are a lot of obese people these days. Maybe sedentary life style and high calorie diets are not the only reason.

Microbesity – Gut bacteria play a role in obesity too.

How to Design within Novel Ecosystems – Strategies when it isn’t possible to restore an area to its natural state….how to create something that still has high ecological value.

Ancient brains turn paleontology on its head – 520 million year old arthropod brains. When the first one was discovered, it was viewed as a fluke. Now there are more and the assumptions that said that brains are never fossilized are falling away.

6 Asian Noodles – Sometimes an article encourages action. This one caused me to add soba noodles to my grocery list and I’ll be trying them this week! I like that they have more protein than most noodles.

Insect Wings Made to Look like Blooming Flowers Explores Natural Concept of Mimicry – Beautiful work by a Paris-based artist….although I have to make an effort to not think about all the insects that were sacrificed.

Scientists Grow Beautiful Designs for First Ever Microbial Art Competition – A different type of media: bacteria and fungi in petri dishes!

The Chemistry of Silly Putty – A simple ‘toy’

For the Birds

Earlier this week I noticed that the bird bath on our deck railing was frozen when a dove tried to get a drink, failed and then proceeded to slide across the ice while two cohorts watched. It was time to put out the heated bird bath – of the changes we make to the deck for the birds in winter. The ring that is attached to our deck was purchased with the bowl we use in summer quite a few years ago and I was pleased to find a heated bowl that was exactly them size last fall.

Our bird feeder is full but there are a lot of foods in the woods and gardens now so we don’t have as many visitors as we will later in the season.

I put seed in a bowl sometimes since the feeder doesn’t work well for the larger birds (cardinals and doves) and sometimes even the small birds prefer the bowl. Once a squirrel discovers it the bowl empties very quickly so we try to chase them off. The chipmunks are fun to watch.

On the afternoon after I filled the bowl with seeds I saw a male cardinal, juncos, a nuthatch and a chickadee…we were fast enough chasing off the squirrel for them to still get their treat.

Our deck is ready for the birds of fall and winter!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 7, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

The Chemistry of Blood – When I do nature hikes for elementary school children about soil or rocks I always ask them what makes soil or rocks look red (some of them know that it is iron) then I comment that there is iron in our blood too….and that locks it for almost all of them. One time a boy answered my original question with one word: ‘blood’ – thinking he would get a disgusted reaction from me and he was really surprised when I told him the red came from iron in both cases!

Vitamin D pill a day may improve exercise performance and lower risk of heart disease – More evidence that more of us probably need Vitamin D supplements. It’s one I have been taking the past few year.

300 million-year-old 'supershark' fossils found in Texas – Lots of things are ‘large’ about Texas.

The Benefits of Getting Older – They define ‘old age’ and any age over 60! Are you surprised by any items on the list?

Greenland is Melting Away – How they take measures of the ice sheet from the ground…supplementing what can be determined from satellites and drones. The graphics of the rivers on the ice sheet are mesmerizing.

Hunting down hidden dangers and health benefits of urban fruit – When I read the headline I was braced for a lot of negative news…but it turns out that urban fruit is good overall.

Butterflies Weaponize Milkweed Toxins and Wing structure helps female monarch butterflies outperform males in flight – There were two stories about Monarch Butterflies in the news this week….and I saw one – probably migrating – as I was hiking with second graders this week!

Be Mesmerized by the Shifting Complexity of our Sun – The full video is a little over 30 minutes…and there is music too!

The Chemistry of Fireworks: Bangs, Crackles & Whistles – Color gets a lot of attention when it comes to fireworks. This post from Compound Interest is about the other things we enjoy about fireworks.

Hungry for Change: Deer Management and Food Security – Our area has a huge deer population and we have the chomped trees and bushes in our yards to prove it! The idea of combining deer management and food security may be something more communities should consider.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 31, 2015

Happy Halloween!

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Hamersley Shows Off the Beauty of Australia's Wilderness – A 4 minute film made using drones around the Hammersley rnage and Karijini National Park.

Blocking enzymes in hair follicles promotes hair growth - Wow! The results in mice a pretty dramatic for ‘normal’ mice. Experiments to address hair follicles affected by hair loss disorders are under way.

Microphotographs Reveal the Wonderfully Odd World of Plants – Images created for a 2016 calendar.

Photography in the National Parks: Your Armchair Guide to Big Bend National Park – Part 1 – This is a national park I’ve not explored....maybe it’s time to plan a trip.

A Rough Guide to the IARC’s Carcinogen Classifications – Andy Brunning’s graphic about carcinogens. Processed and red meats have been in the news during the past few weeks.

Using the Light When the Light is Right – A series of photographs from The Prairie Ecologist.

The Ten Creepiest Spiders of North America – Just in time for Halloween.  I remember by mother making sure I knew what a Black Widow spider looked like very early….a good thing since I found one in my sandbox one spring and recognized it!

Black Bears Facing Hard Times at Great Smoky Mountains National Park – Evidently the traditional fall foods for bears (acorns and grapes) did not do so well this year so they are foraging in larger areas and eating foods that are not their favorites (like hickories and walnuts).

Digging Deep Reveals the Intricate World of Roots – I do field trips with second graders where we collect some soil cores and then look at not only the soil the roots we find in it. They are always surprised that there are roots even 12 inches under the meadow where we usually go to collect the sample! This article shows that the roots actually are probably much deeper than 12 inches.

Urban Explorer Gives Viewers an Interior Tour of St. Petersburg's Architectural Gems – Over the top architecture…it is hard to image any of these being places people actually lived.