urbpan: (dandelion)
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A flooded parking lot makes a good setting for some puddle trees.

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Kambiri, our littlest gorilla poses with a big tree made of cement.

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An animal I forgot we had, a day gecko. I guess it's never come through the hospital when I've been around.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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Someone pointed out to me that Disney's Animal Kingdom is more of a theme park than a zoo. It's true--the park is divided into Asia and Africa (and dinosaur) sections with lots of cultural architecture and signs like this one. Just not much information about the animals. And most of the animals are a little hard to find.

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urbpan: (dandelion)
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I took a million pictures at Busch Gardens Tampa, so I'll break it into pieces. Here's a bunch of very nice looking American alligators!
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urbpan: (dandelion)
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My brother: designated driver for the week, wearing his aloha shirt covered with little aloha shirts.

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I had my first "local beer," from Tampa's Cigar City Brewery (not bad). I posted this pic on instagram and a friend expressed worry that if they call the white beer "Florida Cracker," what do they call the porter? It's called "Puppy Breath," so that's okay.

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And at the end of the day: a Mediterranean house gecko on the hallway ceiling.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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Orlando Science Center is not too different from the Boston Museum of Science where I got my start in animal care. They have a lot more alligators though.

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urbpan: (dandelion)
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Well, not the brown anoles--these are pretty much everywhere. Nothing weird about little brown lizards darting around everywhere you go.

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urbpan: (dandelion)
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Zoo Teens with rosy boa and blue-tongued skink.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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I went to a coworker/friend's party last night and got to meet her bearded dragon, Pickles!

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Her roommate's cat kept a close watch on things.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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We spent some time trying to "find" Fort Myers. Gertrude Stein may have lamented that "there's no there there" about her home town of Oakland, but I've heard it more accurately applied to other places. We tried in vain to find a town center, walkable village, or cohesive sense of Fort Myers that we could understand as New Englanders. One time I set the GPS for Centennial Park, in "downtown" Fort Myers. There were tall buildings and a park, but we didn't stay long. This laughing gull gave us a funny look as we looked across to the hotels of North Fort Myers where spent the night.

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urbpan: (dandelion)
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Hey! How would you like to see some of the wildlife of Antigua? These are all creatures that do well around humans, naturally, since I'm not exactly traveling to the deep wilderness. All of these pictures are from the house or by a restaurant. This is an Antiguan anole, a colorful little insect-eating lizard seen scurrying across walls and walkways.
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urbpan: (dandelion)
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A lot of people--unless they have little kids--don't go to the zoo when they go on vacation. I'm really glad we did. I definitely recommend the Los Angeles Zoo if you like venomous snakes. I saw so many hot snakes that I completely lost track of what the species were.

Expandmore Zoo! )
urbpan: (dandelion)
IMG_0965
If you've been following my journal, you know that the night before this picture was not good. The short of it is that I tried to visit with my friend and ran into two road closures due to one serious and one fatal traffic accident. This is the glorious sunset at Ventura Beach, complete with full moon. We stayed in Ventura because we were to spend the next day at the Channel Islands National Park. These islands are across the Santa Barbara Channel from LA (as opposed to within the English Channel, where the other Channel Islands are).

ExpandCome to the island )
urbpan: (dandelion)


At one point I figured we'd seen about all that we could in the botanical garden, but my dad wanted to keep walking. We found this little pond, and there was a couple on a park bench by it. Just a couple feet in front of them was another (maybe the same?) great egret. This was a pretty imperturbable bird! We moved quietly closer, and saw that there were also ducks and at least one gallinule near the couple. They were eating, and tossing some bread crumbs to the birds. The ducks and gallinule were happily eating the bread. They tossed some near the egret, which took a predatory pose and struck, and came up with a big fish! When my snapshot alarm went off I set the self-timer so that I could get a shot of my dad and myself, with this story in the background.

ExpandRead more... )
urbpan: (dandelion)


In our last hours in Puerto Rico, we went to the Jardin Botanico at the University of Puerto Rico. I took more pictures there, in a few short hours, than I did on any other day of the trip. We do love botanical gardens, what with their conveniently labeled plants and attractiveness to wildlife. This one was a bit undermaintained, with some crumbling bridges and neglected pathways, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Nonetheless, it was a great ending to our vacation. I'll break this into two or three posts, so as not to overwhelm you.

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urbpan: (Default)


As seen in my sneak preview post, this is my Dad on the balcony of Casa Cubuy, the lodge we stayed for two nights. This place is way way at the end of a tiny road way up in El Yunque National Rain Forest.

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urbpan: (Default)


Moses the leopard gecko is disguising himself as a turtle by poking his head out of his coconut shell "hide."
urbpan: (Default)
I took these pictures and then later understood more about the place. I could edit the lot of them and then reorganize them in a more educational order, but I'll save that for my powerpoint presentation for work. Enjoy them in their relatively raw state:


This was the view out my dorm room. The students and professors would gather back here after classes and meals to socialize (and smoke cigarettes). First thing in the morning this area would be full of grazing rabbits--there is one in the background of this picture, behind the yellow line.

ExpandRead more... )
urbpan: (Default)
My dad and I got up from our hotel, took a cab up the windy windy narrow roads up to the "village" of Trinity (not much village to speak of really--a pub, a church) to Durrell Wildlife, which most people still know as The Jersey Zoo. They changed their name in 1995, after founder Gerry Durrell died. We hurriedly met some people, figured out where our dorm room was, dropped off our bags, and dad and I went our separate ways--he went back to St. Helier to do some tourism. I dug out my notebook and handouts and started up some school. Good introductory lectures (made even better by British accents, I confess) and then a tour of the zoo!


ExpandRead more... )
urbpan: (marmot)
I'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.
urbpan: (treefrog)
I was watching a keeper at her job and asked her a dumb question, but one that showed that I was in the business. (I actually wanted to know the answer to the question: "Are you removing toxic plants, or cutting browse?" I wasn't just trying to show that I was cool guy who knows zoo jargon.) She explained what she was doing (cutting browse--though I never learned what the climbing ground cover she was cutting actually was) and asked if I worked in the field. Quite unexpectedly, Becky--a herp keeper--offered to give my dad and I a tour behind the scenes in the reptile area! Here's what we saw:


A Suriname toad, a bizarre looking amphibian with an even more bizarre form of reproduction. I'll let you google it--it gives some people the creeps just imagining it.Expandbut wait, there's more! )

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