Random and such
Apr. 10th, 2010 07:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanI'm up unnecessarily early this morning. I'm feeling some anxiety about today's Urban Nature Walk, mostly of the "what if too many people show up?" variety. Not that I'm all that, it's just that it gets hard to lead a walk when there are too many participants, and people can't hear everything, and I end up saying the same stuff over and over again. I imagined ImprovEverywhere doing a prank called "best nature walk ever" and arranging to have 200 people show up for my walk. Dream on! It'll be fine--probably 8 or ten people as usual.
Hey I've got links to share!
My friends Mike and Andrea have kicked off their herp-walk season and posted about it here. On facebook you can't use the word "herp" without eliciting tons of hilarious jokes about how that sounds like "herpes" which is something we reptile and amphibian enthusiasts have never heard before.
All of us nature walkers would love to discover new animal species. It's wonderful that there still ARE new species to discover, and that sometimes they are tiny things that don't need oxygen and sometimes they are giant lizards. The lizard article begins thus: "It has a double penis, is as long as a tall human, and lives in a heavily populated area of the Philippines." Once you are writing for NatGeo you can stop trying to get people to read your article by putting the word penis in bold print in the first sentence. Many lizard species have paired hemipenes, are you jealous or something?
In Japan, farmers welcome thunderstorms because there is a belief that lightning encourages the growth of (edible) mushrooms. Those wacky Japanese farmers! It turns out they're right.
Meanwhile, I found an interesting beetle indoors at work, took a decent picture of it, and am planning to use it in my 50 more urban species project. Unfortunately, I am fairly confident to genus level, but not species. I posted it to bugguide, and an entomologist replied with a curt identification. I happen to disagree with him, so I'll wait a minute to see if there are any dissenters before I go out on a limb with my guess.
Hey I've got links to share!
My friends Mike and Andrea have kicked off their herp-walk season and posted about it here. On facebook you can't use the word "herp" without eliciting tons of hilarious jokes about how that sounds like "herpes" which is something we reptile and amphibian enthusiasts have never heard before.
All of us nature walkers would love to discover new animal species. It's wonderful that there still ARE new species to discover, and that sometimes they are tiny things that don't need oxygen and sometimes they are giant lizards. The lizard article begins thus: "It has a double penis, is as long as a tall human, and lives in a heavily populated area of the Philippines." Once you are writing for NatGeo you can stop trying to get people to read your article by putting the word penis in bold print in the first sentence. Many lizard species have paired hemipenes, are you jealous or something?
In Japan, farmers welcome thunderstorms because there is a belief that lightning encourages the growth of (edible) mushrooms. Those wacky Japanese farmers! It turns out they're right.
Meanwhile, I found an interesting beetle indoors at work, took a decent picture of it, and am planning to use it in my 50 more urban species project. Unfortunately, I am fairly confident to genus level, but not species. I posted it to bugguide, and an entomologist replied with a curt identification. I happen to disagree with him, so I'll wait a minute to see if there are any dissenters before I go out on a limb with my guess.
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 11:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 12:15 pm (UTC)Looks like O.sulcatus to me. But again, whilst we have many, many weevils, we don't have that one over here, so you're better off going with a local...
no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 12:36 pm (UTC)Can you break them into groups and give some hand outs?
Have a great time!
(loved the stuff on mushrooms and thunderstorms!)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 12:40 pm (UTC)http://www.jstor.org/pss/610395
(don't know how much you care; i happen to dig ethnomycology :)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 03:01 pm (UTC)need to get out a turtle guide, i only know snappers and painteds by sight, not the other common ones.
haven't seen frogs or wogs yet, but the frog orgy and chorus is shaking the house.
#
no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 03:23 pm (UTC)well, 'nuff said.
Maybe do a "creatures of the twilight hours" walk?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 11:56 am (UTC)re: turtles... we've seen a ton of painteds already but we're surprised by the amount of red-ears. I guess that they are full-on Mass residents. I'm glad that they are such a hearty bunch of chelonians... I thought it was too cold up here for them to thrive.
above post
Date: 2010-04-11 11:57 am (UTC)