Roston Butterfly House

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The seasonal Roston Native Butterfly House at the Springfield MO Botanical Gardens opened in mid-May and I have enjoyed my initial shifts. It will be my primary volunteer activity until September! The mornings are still cool enough that sometimes the butterflies are not as active when my shift starts at 10…. they warm up and are more active before the shift ends at 12:30 PM. I signed up for mornings-only from the beginning but have already learned that in May, the temperature for any of the shifts would not be problematic!

It is easy to get pictures with my phone!

I find myself enjoying being in the butterfly house just as I did in Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy in Maryland (pre-Covid). There is something magical about so many butterflies in a confined space. The Roston Butterfly House is only native species so there no biological containment requirement…which makes it less stressful for volunteers!

Fledging Robins

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The first brood of robins in our yard has fledged! I’m not sure where the nest was but I have been seeing the fledglings looking and finding food in the area between our eastern white pine and hollies…among the pine needles, hostas, wild strawberries and violets.

They are smaller than the adults and transitioning to adult plumage. They still have a few white marks on their head and back…and their breast is not all red yet. At first, they are clumsy fliers too; one grabbed onto the screen of my office window and held on for a few seconds before fluttering down to the flower bed below.

I am celebrating that my work to transition the area from grass over the past two years (i.e. adding pine needles collected elsewhere in the yard to those already there from the white pine, transplanting hostas, letting the wild strawberries/violets/lambs ear encroach, and adding an American Spikenard) has resulted in a place the young robins found…and found food!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 24, 2025

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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.

American Schools Have Been Feeding Children for More Than 100 Years. Here’s How the School Lunch Has Changed - The National School Lunch Program is the longest running children’s health program in U.S. history, and it has an outsized impact on nutritional health.

Pompeii’s Most Fascinating Finds of the Decade—So Far - From children's drawings to ancient fast-food counters, new finds continue to reshape our understanding of daily life in the ill-fated Roman city. very year, archeologists come across remains and artifacts that broaden our understanding of what daily life in Pompeii and, by extension, the rest of the Roman Republic was like.

Where in the world are babies at the lowest risk of dying? – Data collected by countries…and then tweaked to be made more consistent so that comparisons can be done. It’s about how to look at statistical data.

How gardening can help you live better for longer - In 2015, Norway became one of the first countries to create a national dementia care plan, which includes government-offered daycare services such as Inn på tunet – translated as "into the yard" – or care farms. Now, as researchers recognize the vast cognitive benefits of working on the land, more communities are integrating gardening into healthcare – treating all kinds of health needs through socially-prescribed activities in nature, or green prescriptions.

Chasing Unicorns: A Photographer’s Journey Documenting Rhino Conservation - Bringing the rhinos from one conservancy to another was a monumental effort. A photographer documented the work of conservationists and veterinarians.

Gilded-Age Tiffany Window Heads to Auction with Multimillion-Dollar Price Tag - With most surviving examples of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s mastery of mottled glass still affixed to the walls of churches or stately homes, purchasing opportunities are rare.

Pit Stops on the Monarch Flyway: Arkansas Partnership Benefits Pollinators - You just don’t see as many monarch butterflies as you used to. Researchers have documented that eastern populations of monarchs have declined by as much as 80 percent since the 1990s. A partnership in Arkansas is restoring pollinator habitat, providing those critical stops for butterflies to rest and feed. The habitat is also utilized by migratory songbirds and northern bobwhite, a popular gamebird that has seen significant declines.

Vitamin supplements slow down the progression of glaucoma - In glaucoma, the optic nerve is gradually damaged, leading to vision loss and, in the worst cases, blindness. High pressure in the eye drives the disease, and eye drops, laser treatment or surgery are therefore used to lower the pressure in the eye and thus slow down the disease. n experiments on mice and rats with glaucoma, the researchers gave supplements of the B vitamins B6, B9 and B12, as well as choline. This had a positive effect. A clinical trial has been started to see if the vitamins have the same impact in people.

163 Treasures from King Tut’s Tomb Arrive at the Grand Egyptian Museum - The museum one step closer to staging the first-ever complete display of the legendary boy king’s golden treasures. I remember the two King Tut exhibits I have views – in New Orleans and Baltimore.

Sulfur runoff amplifies mercury concentrations in Florida Everglades - Sulfur applied to sugarcane crops in South Florida is flowing into wetlands upgradient of Everglades National Park, triggering a chemical reaction that converts mercury into toxic methylmercury, which accumulates in fish.

USSR Crafts

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The ‘book of the week’ is another one published in the waning days of the USSR in 1987. It documents the folk art of the country – which is now split apart – and is available on Internet Archive. The book is in English, translated from the Russian by Jan Butler. It is well illustrated by the author’s (Alexander Milovsky) photographs – well worth browsing.

The Pure Spring Craft and Craftsmen of the USSR

Linden’s Prairie

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Linden’s Prairie was my 4th field trip this spring and 3rd prairie (post about the first three: Harold Prairie, Geology field trip nature center and road cuts, Noah Brown’s Prairie). The prairie walk was sponsored by the Missouri Prairie Foundation. We had been cautioned about ticks, so I wore my bug repellent gators and shirt…sprayed my jeans with OFF! above the gators. I decided to use my point and shoot camera (Canon Powershot SX730 HS) rather than my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max) for most of the photos. The first picture I took was of the sign near the mowed area where some of us were able to park.

The hike was in the late afternoon – sunny, warm but not too hot, a little breeze. There was a lot more grass on Linden’s Prairie than Noah Brown’s prairie last week. There might have been some armadillo holes, but they were harder to see!

Our guide talked about two things that are not around anymore on the prairie: passenger pigeons and elk. There is good documentation that both were plentiful originally. There were enough passenger pigeons that there were market hunters for them; it’s hard to imagine that pigeons were food…until they were hunted to extinction.

The swaths of red color from the Royal catchfly won’t be for a few more weeks across this prairie but there were plenty of flowers to see among the grasses…some almost hidden until they were close at hand. We saw corn salad, yarrow, delphiniums/lockspur, coreopsis, golden alexander, phlox, hoary puccoon, wood betony/lousewort, goat’s rue/hoary pea, lead plant, and wild indigo. The grasses were too hard to photograph…I concentrated on the flowers.

There was some prairie vocabulary too: mima mounds (small mounds in an otherwise gently rolling prairie landscape) and motts (clumps of woody plants in a prairie).

My favorite flowers on this walk were the prairie roses…small plants, lots of buds, grasses waving higher over the pink flowers. One had to be almost stepping on them to see them!

New Plants (in my yard)

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I added 4 new native plants to my yard recently: a red buckeye, another American Spikenard (the first is almost 2 years old and is doing so well that I wanted a second plant for another shady place), and two (eastern red) columbines.

The red buckeye was in the largest pot and I planted it first – on the east side of my house with violets growing almost all around it. I put some wood ships from mt daughter’s tree trimmers around the base. Right now the American Spikenard that is nearby is taller than the buckeye but that won’t be for too long. I hope it gets a good start this year and will – in years to come – attract hummingbirds when it blooms and shade the violets and spikenard through the hottest part of the summers.

I took a break from planting and trimmed the small branches that were at too narrow angles from the main trunk on the two young redbuds that came up in my yard…and that I am letting  grow.

I had the two columbines and the American spikenard still to go.

The spikenard’s new home is on one end of the hosta garden. The area is between hollies and a eastern white pine….shady all the time. I propagated the hostas from dense beds that were planted before we bought the house and now there will be an American Spikenard there too. It will be towering over the hostas by next year!

I planted the two columbines in an area I had planted some milkweed last fall…but it didn’t come up. So now there are two columbine plants there…with mulch around them. The area is sunny for most of the afternoon.

There is a shortleaf pine nearby and I noticed some spring developments on that tree as I gather up my tools and the emptied bin from the wood chip mulch.

The yard is changing – little by little – into the yard I want…less grass and more variety of plants and animals!

Road Trip to Dallas in May 2025

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The drive was easier than expected – no heavy rain or high winds. I made such good time that I was able to stop at the Texas welcome center on US 75 to photograph their wildflowers before meeting my sister for lunch in Sherman. The bluebonnets are waning but other flowers are blooming profusely.

I had an odd experience with my hotel. My reservation was canceled a couple of hours before I arrived because they had overbooked! They wanted me to make a reservation at a hotel next door, but I was already visiting my dad…so I told them to arrange to have a room held for me….and they did. They didn’t apologize at all for their overbooking. When I checked into the other hotel, I told them that it didn’t seem fair that I would have had to pay for the night if I had cancelled a few hours before my arrival…but the hotel could do it for apparently no penalty at all. That is still the way I feel. I am looking at other hotels in the area rather than continue to patronize a place that chose to not honor my reservation shortly before I was arriving.  The experience was made worse by the second hotel having a lot of noise during the night…and a mattress so lacking in support that my back hurt.

Now that I am home again…I have decided to try another hotel for my June trip to Dallas.

Springfield Botanical Garden – May 2025

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My daughter and I got to the gardens well before the native plant sale started so that we could walk around beforehand. Once we bought plants, we would have to leave so they would not get overheated in the car. We were very glad we did.

The peonies were the standout flower. I took lots of pictures and noticed the different shape and texture of the flower centers. Many of the plants had wire frames under/around them to support the flowers that are sometimes too heavy for the plant!

Of course there were other plants in bloom: alliums, passionflower, tulip poplar, and wild indigo were the ones I photographed.

The water feature in the hosta garden is one of my favorite places; the benches and chairs were not wet this time…we sat for a few minutes to enjoy the sights and sounds of the garden.

The varieties of hens and chicks near the Botanical Center are also a favorite place in the garden.

A blue bird eyed us as we made the final part of our walk…to the plant sale. I bought an American Spikenard, 2 columbines, and a red buckeye. More about them later.

At my daughters, she called my attention to the tiny roses near her driveway; I like their colors; they seem to get pinker as they age!

She had another plant that was blooming; we’d decided that it was a legume in previous years; this year we used the plant look up feature on our iPhones and realized that it was a yellow wild indigo. She will be adding an American Spikenard to her yard under a crabapple tree.

It was a good spring morning to be out and about!

Noah Brown’s Prairie

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I signed up for a guided tour offered by the Missouri Prairie Foundation of Noah Brown’s Prairie which is just to the east of Joplin MO. It is a prairie remnant with a reconstructed prairie adjacent to it. There were plenty of wildflowers to see in the hour and half we were there. Everything was wet from showers before we got there and for the first 15 minutes we were walking. Originally, I thought about writing this post as a wildflower id post…but when I looked at all my pictures I changed my mind….decided to just do a slideshow to give an idea of the ambiance of the prairie in May.

Of course, you can use the slideshow as an id challenge. Look for spiderwort, false dandelion, wood betony, Indian paintbrush (red, orange, and yellow), wild indigo (blue and yellow), prairie phlox, wild parsley, bastard toadflax, violets, rose, milkweed, shooting start (white and pink/purple), red sorrel….and of course lots of different kinds of grass.

There were 3 distinct areas that we walked through: the recently (last fall) burned area of the remnant prairie, the area that is due to be burned next fall, and the reconstructed area. The recently burned area was the easiest to walk through and had the most wildflowers. The area due to be burned next fall had a lot of thatch which made walking more challenging and not as many flowers. The reconstructed area is a work in progress. It had some non-native grasses and the only thing blooming was the red sorrel (non-native); it was somewhat difficult to walk through because it had dense clumps and then almost bare areas. The remnant prairie had micro-communities: some low areas that had standing water (vernal pools) and some mounds that had different plants than the surrounding areas.

I was very pleased to see the Indian paintbrushes up close since I noticed them blooming as I drove through Oklahoma last month….but didn’t find a convenient place to stop to see them better while I was driving.

Rhododendron!

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The end of April and the first few weeks of May are when the rhododendron at our house is blooming. It is a large bush near my office – although I can’t easily see it from my office chair. I took a few steps outside to photograph the flowers after some rain. The blooms were in various stages of development.

I cut one cluster that still had some buds to bring inside. The buds opened and the cluster lasted for a week or more in my office window.

Some of our neighbors in Maryland had rhododendron bushes in their yards but my Missouri house is the first one I’ve had where I can easily observe it over the entire cycle. Most years the blooms are spectacular but there has already been one year then the buds were damaged by very cold weather. The bush is getting larger each year and I will probably do some trimming at some point. It is one of the evergreens around our patio along with some holly trees.

Irises!

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When we bought our house in Missouri there were already some irises. They didn’t bloom prolifically because the rhizomes were too crowded. I dug some of them up and planted them in the area where we had a pine tree fall (and was removed). This is their second year in that location, and they are blooming wonderfully. They seem to survive wind and rain without blowing over better than in the original bed…which is blooming better now too.

I cut ones that had blown over to enjoy inside…..and did a round of macro images of the flowers while they still had rain drops on them.

The iris rhizomes I dug up at my parents’ house before they moved in January 2024 did not bloom at all last year. There are not many of them yet, but they seem larger (both the flower and the stem) that the others. They are a burgundy/mauve color too! Hopefully they will proliferate and make the whole area along the fence an iris bed!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 10, 2025

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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.

Bees, fish and plants show how climate change’s accelerating pace is disrupting nature in 2 key ways – Moving to higher latitudes/altitudes and emerging earlier to avoid phenological mismatch. Will it be enough for their survival?

Adventurous Bird Crashing into a Waterfall Wins Nature Photography Contest – From members of the German Society for Nature Photography….beautiful images of the natural world.

'We planted trees among the rubble': The dark WW2 history written into Germany's parks – Finding saplings in the gardens of Dresden’s ruined buildings and houses after World War II…and transplanting them along the city streets. Today, some of those rubble-sourced street trees still stand.

William Morris: new exhibition reveals how Britain’s greatest designer went viral - How did this Victorian designer and socialist, known for championing craftsmanship and preferring substance over style, become an icon of consumer culture? Morris began spreading thanks to the commissions he received from aristocratic and royal clients. The earliest Morris merchandise was printed for a centenary exhibition at the V&A Museum in 1934. One of its patterned postcards appears in a display case, the souvenir of Morris’s own daughter, May, whose handwriting is on the back. In 1966, Morris’s designs went out of copyright, marking a watershed. Pop Victoriana and Laura Ashley floral dresses depended on it for their reproductive freedoms.

See the Flower Paintings of Rachel Ruysch, Whose Stunning Still Lifes Are Finally Getting the Attention They Deserve - No Dutch flower painter was more renowned in her time than Rachel Ruysch, whose exquisite still lifes sold for even more than masterpieces by contemporaries like Rembrandt. Born in the Hague in 1664, Ruysch was the eldest daughter of Frederik Ruysch, a prominent botanist and anatomist. The Toledo Museum of Art has an exhibit of her work running from April 12 to July 27.

Saltpetre, Tuberculosis, Eminent Domain, Cave Wars, And the CCC – Some history of Mammoth Cave National Park.

In US, saving money is top reason to embrace solar power - Financial benefits, such as saving on utility payments and avoiding electricity rate hikes, are a key driver of U.S. adults' willingness to consider installing rooftop solar panels or subscribing to community solar power.

Stirrings at Mount Spurr - Mount Spurr lies on the northeastern side of the Aleutian Arc, which makes up a significant portion of the Ring of Fire. The 11,070-foot (3,374-meter) peak is located within the Tordrillo Mountains, west of Cook Inlet, and is bordered on the south by the Chakachatna River valley and the river’s headwaters, Ch’akajabena Lake. In 2025 gas emissions, earthquakes, and ground deformation in March suggested that an eruption was likely. Several of these indicators lowered slightly in April, reducing the relative likelihood of an eruption.

What Caused the Downfall of Roman Britain? - A team from the University of Cambridge has studied oak-tree rings and found that there were periods of extreme drought in the summers of A.D. 364, 365, and 366. They suggest that these extremely dry conditions affected the Romans’ main crops, spring-sown wheat and barley, and set the stage for the rebellions.

Deadly rodent-borne hantavirus is an emerging disease with pandemic potential – The new study found 6 new rodent species of hantavirus hosts…some with have higher prevalence of the virus than deer mice (the host known previously). The number of human cases is largely unknown because many infections may be asymptomatic, or the symptoms are mild/mirror other diseases.  Climate change can cause population changes in rodents…so there is potential change in the risk hantavirus poses.

Geology Field Trip (2)

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After eating our picnic lunch at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center, we headed out to stops along US 65 headed toward Branson. Our second stop (the nature center was the first) was at the MoDOT parking lot on East River Bluff Blvd. We walked across River Bluff and down onto the triangular shaped parcel of land between the southbound entrance ramp and US 65. There are outcropping there with fossils….including crinoids which are the state fossil of Missouri. There were flowers blooming along the roadside on our way to and from the fossils.

Here are the small fossils I picked up

We were in the Burlington part of the rock column. Most of us took pictures of the reference page our guide showed us to help us understand what we were seeing.

The third stop was the Ozark Post Office which is not far from US 65 and is across the street from a road cut that shows the boundary between the Burlington and Elsey layers.

The fourth stop was at the Branson (Saddlebrook) Welcome Center. We walked north on the west side of US 65 until we could see the roadcut on the east side of the highway. The rocks are all in the Cotter layer. The black weathering is from manganese in the rock. The area was an ancient tidal flat; the V shaped structures in the rock are channels where the water flowed in and out.

The fifth stop was also in the Cotter layer…and was an area to see fossilized stromatolites! We pulled into a wider shoulder area off US 65 just north of Saddlebrook Dr. There were layers of shale where water was trickling out and plants were beginning to grow.

My knee was hurting enough that I did not climb to the top of the road cut (via a drainage channel) to see the stromatolites from the top, but I did observe them from the base of the roadcut. They look a bit like a funnel.

I also picked up rocks: patterns of ancient ripples and a sandwich (thin layers of bluish chert with sandstone between them).

The sixth stop was a bit further north on US 65 to see the Highlandville Fault…where there is a crack in the face of the roadcut clearly visible.

So much to see…we ran over our allotted time by more than an hour!

Geology Field Trip (1)

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The geology field trip associated with the university class I took this spring was cancelled because of weather, but the one that was a follow-up to a Missouri Master Naturalist lecture happened on a beautiful spring day in early May! We started out at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center…the longest hike of the trip with stops along the way to see examples of

  • (Chert nodules)

  • Sedimentation – erosion and deposition

  • Soil creep

  • Bluffs and rock fall

  • Spring

  • Sinkhole

  • River meandering

Most of my pictures were not about geology! I noticed the turtle and water plants in the sedimentation area. It is easier to take pictures of landscapes than geologic features. The hike was over boardwalk and forest trails. The only place the trail was muddy/wet/slippery was where the spring water ran over it. Overall, it was a great hike…and I was ready for lunch afterward. If I do the hike again on my own, I will take it a bit slower; I’ve learned that my knees get sore with a lot of walking on uneven surfaces.

The botanical highpoint of the day was wild ginger in bloom!

A jack-in-the-pulpit was a close second.

From a tree perspective, seeing a young sassafras and a black locust in bloom was great too.

Near the nature center – there are plantings of native wildflowers. They had a cage around the lady slipper orchid that was blooming.

More tomorrow on the rest of the Geology Field Trip…

Project FeederWatch Finale

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We made our last Project FeederWatch observations on the last day of April…the end of  this Citizen Science activity until we start again next fall.

The birds we had seen since we started are still around: the house finches, the cardinals, the mourning doves.

Some like the white-throated sparrows and the juncos have migrated north. The white-crowned sparrows were still coming to our feeders but they will probably leave soon.

And there are birds that have returned with the spring – the grackles and robins and red-wing blackbirds (female).

The barn swallows have returned too. They don’t come to the feeders but do start nests at various places under our deck. They are difficult to photograph because they tend to not sit for long!

We’ll continue watching birds…but it won’t be in an organized way like is has been since last October. It was a routine we enjoyed.

Harold Prairie

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One of the topics that came up in the last Missouri Master Naturalist chapter meeting was the need for some maintenance for Harold Prairie - the last native remnant in Greene County, Missouri. Shortly after the meeting, an email was sent out offering a tour and about 8 of us walked around the prairie the next Sunday between Highway 123 and the Frisco Highline Trail northeast of Willard, MO.

We caravaned from one of the trailhead in Willard. The long and narrow prairie had been recently mowed (road to the right in the picture….trail to the left behind the brush that had not been mowed). The prairie plants were coming up in the thatch.

We saw wildlife right away in the fringe of brush at the side of the trail:

Ornate box turtle

Gray tree frog – Missouri’s most common species of tree frog

A few things were blooming!

Most of the plants were just green...emerging and growing rapidly with the warmer spring days.

We talked about a plant survey in June and burning in the fall. There could be some manual woody plant removal required too.

One such woody plant that I was pleased to photograph: a black cherry. It was on the other side of the trail from the prairie but maybe the goal will be to extend the prairie to be both sides of the trail in some areas. We’ll see.

I am looking forward to what will likely be the next activity – the plant survey in June. Hopefully I won’t have a conflict…and the weather will cooperate!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 03, 2025

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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.

Foraging Violets – I have a lot of violets growing in my yard…and I am going to start harvesting them for salads. Why buy fresh greens when there is such a plentiful supply that I can pick just before I eat them?

The Unexpected Science of Staying Happy – An article about the World Happiness Report. The U.S., Canada, and Switzerland—all once top 10 contenders—have dropped out of the top 20 for the first time since the report began. That decline is linked to a drop in social trust and a rise in what researchers call “deaths of despair,” especially among men over 60​.

The 120-Year-Old Tiny Home Villages That Sheltered San Francisco’s Earthquake Refugees – A different perspective on history….more substantial than tents.

Exquisite Street Photography Celebrates the Different Moods of New York City at Night – More umbrellas than I expected.

Emily Cole, Daughter of Hudson River School Icon, Shines in Overdue Museum Show – She became a porcelain painter (botanicals) and painted in her father’s studio…. exhibiting her work a what is now the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.

Relics of a Red World in Bighorn Basin – Satellite image of “red beds” in northern Wyoming and Southern Montana formed when the land was part of Pangea and there were extreme wet/dry seasons causing hematite in the rocks to oxidize (rust). The area is rich in fossils and oil/gas reserves.

Tree Rings Bear Witness to Illegal Gold Mining Operations in the Amazon, New Study Finds – The miners use liquid mercury which is then burned to obtain the gold….releasing toxic mercury into the air. Core samples from trunks of fig trees show the mercury levels…when they ramped up and how substantial they were/are.

Smoke from US wildfires, prescribed burns caused premature deaths, billions in health damages - Researchers estimated that smoke from wildfires and prescribed burns caused $200 billion in health damages in 2017, and that these were associated with 20,000 premature deaths. Senior citizens were harmed the most.

Check Out the First Confirmed Footage of the Colossal Squid, a Rare and Enigmatic Deep-Sea Species – This was a young one….only a foot lot. They can grow to be 23 feet long

The Only Ancient Greek Theater on the Ionian Islands Is Finally Unearthed – It was discovered in 1901 but was reburied after their survey…and olive groves and makeshift warehouses eventually covered the site. The site was abandoned during the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus.

Zooming – April 2025

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Springtime photography….is April the best month? It seems like that might be true this year. The photographs were taken at the Springfield Botanical Gardens, my yard, the Missouri State University Campus, my daughter’s yard, Onondaga Cave, and 2 volunteer activities. There were so many images to choose from; I selected 23. I used three different cameras – iPhone 15 Pro Max, Canon Powershot SX730 HS, and Nikon Coolpix P950. Enjoy the slideshow!

Road Trip to Dallas in April 2025

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I was braced to make the whole drive between my home in Missouri to Dallas in the rain last week….but the rain didn’t materialize until I got more than halfway there. The scissortail flycatchers are back for the summer and I saw quite a few flying over or beside the road; the silhouette is very distinctive. There also seemed to be more egrets too. I didn’t see quite as many hawks because the leaves are out on most of the trees and that makes the birds harder to spot. There was an interesting mural on a truck at one of the truck stops.

It rained heavily as I got to McAllister OK but then was only sprinkling when I got to the Texas Welcome Center on US 75. The bluebonnets were in bloom!

It had evidently done more that sprinkle at the place just before I got there…the water droplets were still clinging to the flowers. Most of the plantings are native…but there are a few yellow roses too.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 26, 2025

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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.

Liberation of Bergen-Belsen: how a lack of protective clothing cost lives – Typhus was rampant when the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945. Anne Frank had died there just a few weeks before. What happened in the immediate aftermath of liberation is described.

How climate change is supercharging pollen allergies – Longer growing season….and extreme allergy events where trillions of pollen particles, sucked up into the clouds as the storm formed, splintered by rain, lightning and humidity into ever-smaller fragments – then cast back down to Earth for people to breathe them in. In one such event in Australia - emergency rooms saw eight times as many people turning up with breathing problems as they would normally expect. Nearly 10 times as many people with asthma were admitted to hospital. 10 people died. It’s been called ‘thunderstorm asthma.’ In the US, pollen levels are expected to be higher than average in 39 states…with worse symptoms.

Colorful city birds – Brown shades are more common in natural environments than in cities. Successful urban bird species have more elaborate colors in their plumage, which is especially true for females. Cities seem to favor more colorful birds -- probably because there are fewer predators in urban areas and 'being seen' poses a lower risk than in rural areas.

See the Titanic in Remarkable Detail With a 3D Scan – From National Geographic. …a digital reconstruction of the wreck.

Royal Meteorological Society Celebrates 10 Years of Incredible Weather Photography – Great photographs an interview with Kirsty McCabe, UK's Royal Meteorological Society’s senior broadcast meteorologist and editor of their MetMatters blog.

Odd-Looking Blue Creatures Are Washing Up in Large Groups on California’s Beaches Once Again –The jellyfish-like creatures in this post are Velella velella – thin, oval shaped blue or purple that usually are 3-4 inches long. They use their stinging blue tentacles to prey on plankton.

Meet Four Amazing Endemic Parrots from New Zealand – They are quite different from each other…and the parrots we see in zoos.

Why you should avoid lotions and creams that contain 'fragrance' – Avoiding fragrance is easy enough…but other things are harder to detect and avoid.

Six immersive experiences for more joy – The 6 seems reasonable to me…most of them I had derived for myself already!

Ten National Wildlife Refuges That Need Our Support Most – All the wildlife refigures I have visited over the past few years have unmet maintenance needs. Funding for materials, equipment and staff has been too low for some time. There are Friends organizations that try to address some of the needs…but it is never enough. Some of the places that became refuges because they are very special are suffering now…maybe being irrecoverably harmed.