Gleanings of the Week Ending March 23, 2024

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.

6 chemical stories of colors through time – A little history of these colors….some very toxic!

Possible Neolithic Body Piercings Unearthed in Anatolia – Over 11,000 years old…found near ears and chins of human remains.

Under Threat in Their Native California, Giant Sequoias Are Thriving in Britain - First introduced to country estates in the 19th century, half a million sequoias now grow in Britain, compared to just 80,000 along the western flank of the Sierra Nevada in California, where they are increasingly imperiled by warming. Up to a fifth of all large giant sequoias in California died in wildfires in 2020 and 2021. The trees in Britain are still relatively young — sequoias can live for more than 3,000 years — and squat. In Britain’s cool, mild climate, sequoias are growing nearly as fast as in California.

Whales That Go Through Menopause Live Longer and May Help Care for Grandchildren - Female tooth whales that go through menopause (narwhals, killer whales, false killer whales, short-finned pilot whales and beluga whales) have longer lifespans than those that don’t, surviving decades past their reproductive prime!

A healthier diet is linked with a slower pace of aging, reduced dementia risk - We have some strong evidence that a healthy diet can protect against dementia…but the mechanism of this protection is not well understood. This study suggests that slower pace of aging mediates part of the relationship of healthy diet with reduced dementia risk, and therefore, monitoring pace of aging may inform dementia prevention. Additional observational studies need to be conducted to investigate direct associations of nutrients with brain aging.

The next pandemic? It’s already here for Earth’s wildlife – The pathogenic strain of avian influenza has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals. Between January 1, 2003 and December 21, 2023, 882 cases of human infection were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal. To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms.

Ultra-fast fashion is a disturbing trend undermining efforts to make the whole industry more sustainable - Ultra-fast fashion is marked by even faster production cycles, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trends, and poor labor practices. Without change, the industry will account for 26% of the world’s carbon budget for limiting global warming to 2°C by 2050. Established brands such as Gap introduce 12,000 new items a year and H&M 25,000. But Shein leaves them in the dust, listing 1.3 million items in the same amount of time.

Seven ways to improve your sleep according to science – Science and historical perspective.

Warming Waters Bringing More Sharks to the Alabama Coast - Globally, warming waters are driving sharks to new areas where they were previously scarce. Great white sharks, tiger sharks, and bull sharks have all edged northward. From 2003 to 2020, the number of juvenile bull sharks swimming through Mobile Bay rose fivefold.

Incredible Winners of the 2024 British Wildlife Photography Awards – So many great images!

Fox Squirrels

The fox squirrels are very active in my parents’ backyard this time of year – chittering in the high branches, chasing each other around the treetops and along the fence tops (spiraling up and down the trunks)…dashing through the thick vegetation in the garden and a row of low bushes that separates the yard from the driveway.  This is the time of year the squirrels are enjoying the bounty of fall food….and increasing their interaction to produce the next generation of fox squirrels!

The squirrels ate the best parts of a bowl of scorched popcorn I threw into the garden within 24 hours!

They are more fun to watch than the birds!

2023 at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge

I made stops at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge on my way to and from Carrollton all during the year. On the way down, I arrived around noon; on the way home, it was just after sunrise.

Seeing/photographing birds is the big draw for my visits. I spend an hour or so moving slowly down the central wildlife tour road…sometimes taking a side road. I use my car as a blind and roll the window down when I see birds. My camera is on a monopod collapsed down to its shortest length. Most of the time I brace it in the cup holder between the front seats…tilt the head to get the image I want.

In the winter there are flocks of snow geese (and Ross’s geese) along with Northern Shovelers and Pintails. White Faced Ibis and American White Pelicans are seen during migrations. Egrets (snowy, cattle, great) are numerous in the spring and summer; I enjoyed an early morning seeing/hearing them on one of the ponds where they had obviously spent the night. Great Blue Herons are around all the time although are most numerous in the summer when the young are beginning life on their own. Red-winged blackbirds are year-round residents but murmurations of the birds are seen in the fall as they move about eating the mature seeds of the prairie plants. I saw Neotropic Cormorants for the first time this year.

Of course there are other things to photograph too – prairie type flowers, drift wood, insects, sunrise. This year I noticed a cluster of Queen butterflies in July…didn’t see many Monarchs until the fall when they were probably migrating. The butterflies were photographed in the butterfly garden near the refuge’s visitor center – along with a grasshopper! I was surprised to see a dragonfly perched on a plant so close to the car that I was able to photograph it during my drive down the wildlife loop!

Hagerman has become one of my favorite places in Texas…and I will continue to stop there as often as I can.

2023 at Josey Ranch

I am starting a series of posts that feature slideshows of pictures accumulated during 2023 of some favorite places that I visit almost every month. This post about the ponds and Pocket Prairie at Josey Ranch in Carrollton is the first in the series.

The changing of the birds over the course of the seasons: northern shovelers, scaups, widgeons, and coots in the cold months…baby birds (like geese) in the spring and juvenile birds (grackles and little blue heron) later in the warm months. The birds around all the time are swans, great egrets, mallards, and great blue herons. Bluebirds, grebes and cormorants are not seen frequently….are a pleasant surprise when they are around.

Josey Ranch is an easy place for me to get a nature fix….and enjoy some photography too. Some of my favorite photos are from an early morning jaunt in the summer…the light around a great blue heron and a swan sleeping on the water…a special moment that created a different sort of image.

The flowers bloom in the warmer months although last summer many flowers cooked in the long period of very hot weather without any rain. In the fall – the dried husks of seeds/stems is often photogenic too.

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Gleanings of the Week Ending November 25, 2023

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.

20 Incredible Winners From the 2023 European Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest – Lots of natural beauty…captured in photographs.

A known environmental hazard can change the epigenetics of cells – Formaldehyde. It is a widespread pollutant - formaldehyde enters our body mainly during our breathing and, because it dissolves well in an aqueous medium, it ends up reaching all the cells of our body. It is associated with an increased risk of developing cancer (nasopharyngeal tumors and leukemia), hepatic degeneration due to fatty liver (steatosis) and asthma.

How forest schools boost children's immune systems – It seems the benefits go well beyond immune systems.  Hopefully this type of school for 3 to 5 year old will increase in availability/popularity.

Circular Maya Structure Uncovered in Southern Mexico - Similar round structures have been found at the Maya sites of Edzná, Becán, Uxmal, and Chichen Itzá.

Health Care Workers Are Burning Out, CDC Says - The CDC researchers analyzed self-reported symptoms of more than 1,400 adults in 2018 and 2022 who were working in three areas: health care, other essential services and all other professions. Workers’ self-reported poor mental health days in the past 30 days was similar across all three groups in 2022, but health professionals saw the most significant jump, from 3.3 in 2018 to 4.5 in 2022. Reports of harassment at work also spiked among health care workers over the five-year period, going from 6.4 percent to 13.4 percent.

How To Bring Back the Prairie, a Tiny Bit at a Time – The use of “prairie strips” on farms in an effort to restore a portion of the Minnesota’s remnant prairie and to soak up polluted water.

These Ten Stunning Images Prove That Small Is Beautiful – From Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Contest. My favorite was the cuckoo wasp.

Deforestation in Colombia Down 70 Percent So Far This Year - Since taking power last year, leftist President Gustavo Petro has enacted a slate of new policies aimed at protecting Colombian forests, including paying locals to conserve woodland. The recent gains in Colombia mirror similar advances in the Brazilian Amazon, where leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has cracked down on forest clearing; deforestation is down 50 percent through the first nine months of this year. In 2021, more than 100 countries, from Brazil to Russia to Indonesia, set a goal to end deforestation by the end of this decade, but so far forest loss has declined too slowly to stay on pace for this target.

European wildcats avoided introduced domestic cats for 2,000 years – About 50 years ago in Scotland, however, that all changed. Perhaps as a result of dwindling wildcat populations and a lack of opportunity to mate with other wildcats, rates of interbreeding between wild and domestic cats rose rapidly.

Why grazing bison could be good for the planet - The shortgrass prairie makes up 27,413 sqare miles of remote land straddling the US/Canadian border to the east of the Rocky Mountains. This rare habitat is in ecological decline. Plains bison co-evolved with the short-grass prairie. In the 12,000 years since the end of the Pleistocene, they have proven themselves to be potent ecosystem engineers. An adult bison eats about 25lb (11kg) of grass a day. The grasses adapted to their foraging. Vegetation across the plains uses the nutrients in their dung. Birds pluck their fur from bushes to insulate their nests. Bison also shape the land literally. They roll in the dust and create indentations known as "wallows" that hold water after rainstorms. After the bison move on, insects flourish in these pools and become a feast for birds and small mammals. Pronghorn antelope survive by following their tracks through deep winter snows. Replacing cattle with bison greens floodplains…setting the stage for beavers.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 26, 2023

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.

Two Baby Condors at Pinnacles National Park Are Healthy, ‘Adorable Fluffballs’ – Avian flu killed at least 20 California Condors in Arizona and Utah last spring…so the health of these birds is great news. So far, their lead levels (often a problem if their parents bring them carrion with bullet fragments) are low. They will make their first flights in October or November.

Biden Designates Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni - Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument – Protecting the land around Grand Canyon National Park.

Nearly Two-Thirds of All Species Live in the Ground, Scientists Estimate - Soils are richer in life than coral reefs or rainforest canopies, providing a home to nearly two-thirds of all species. The study is the first to tally the total number of soil dwellers, large and small, finding that more than twice as many species live in the ground as was previously thought: 59 percent of all species depend on soil for their survival, including 90 percent of fungi, 86 percent of plants, and 40 percent of bacteria.

Incredible Winners of Light Microscopy Awards Show Artistry of Scientific Imaging – The beauty of microscopic life….

Research Sheds Light on Steamboat Geyser’s Eruptions, Past and Present – They discovered that the strength of shaking decreased as snow depth increased. The ability of snow to absorb sound makes a difference!

Stunning Fields of Sunflowers Are Blanketing North Dakota – The states farmers grew 625,000 acres of sunflowers this year…and they bloom throughout August. Maybe one year we’ll make the trek to see them; I haven’t been to North Dakota before.

Exceptional Winners of the 2023 Nature inFocus Photography Awards – Beautiful…and educational. My favorite image is the ant with aphids (“A Sappy Alliance”).

What Pots Say—and Don’t Say—About People – “What can such a well-traveled artifact tell us about the people who left it in the ground? Its culture of origin may be less important than how it fit into life where it was found.”

Microplastics found in human heart tissues, both before and after surgical procedures - Everywhere scientists look for microplastics, they've found them -- food, water, air and some parts of the human body….even in the heart. But it still is not known how/if the microplastics impact the cardiovascular system.

Microalgae vs. Mercury - In the search for ways to fight methylmercury in global waterways, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered that some forms of phytoplankton are good at degrading the potent neurotoxin.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 1, 2023

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.

How technology helped archaeologists dig deeper – Tools that tell us a lot more than excavation can: chemical and genetic analysis, lidar. This article uses new archaeological data from several cities (New York, Cahokia, Rome, Pompei, Angkor Wat)…pointing out that new analyses reveal that they were often full of immigrants that built the city and there were places those people lived nearby that often were not noticed by excavators! Archaeology is now able to tell us more about how ordinary people lived – not just the elite.

The white roofs cooling women's homes in Indian slums – Maybe white roofs will become a trend in lots of places…reduce the heat island effect that cities must struggle to overcome as the planet gets warmer.

Vienna is the most livable city in the world – It has stability, robust health care and education systems and strong infrastructure, among other factors. There are no cities in the US in the top 10; Honolulu, Hawaii is 25th on the list and the top city located in the US. There are 3 in the top 10 located in Canada: Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto. 

That's no pizza: A wall painting found in Pompeii doesn't depict Italy's iconic dish – Tomatoes and mozzarella were not available 2,000 years ago when the fresco was created! Tomatoes came from the Americas a few centuries ago and mozzarella was invented in Naples in the 1700s.

This Ancient Maya City Was Hidden in the Jungle for More Than 1,000 Years – Found during a survey with light detection and ranging (lidar) scans in the Balamku ecological reserve on the Yucatan Peninsula. The site is on high ground surrounded by extensive wetlands. The ruins have been named Ocotun (‘stone column’ in Yucatec Mayan) in honor of the many columns found at the site.

Is fast fashion making us sick? – Fashion can be rife with toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde and chromium…and the US has done little to protect consumers from these toxins in clothes. Researchers are correlating declining fertility rate and the rise in autoimmune diagnoses in the US with chemicals found in our clothes.

Winners of the 2023 Audubon Photography Awards Celebrate the Beauty of Birds – Eye candy images of the natural world.

Surgeons must tackle three global health challenges to save lives – Assuming that a new device or approach is always better - not a good assumption but a common one that surgeon make!

The perilous life of the solitary pangolin – Learn about this African animal…their situation in the wild…and how things have changed over the past decade.

Winners of the 2023 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition embrace our world’s biodiversity – Images telling stories.

Carrollton Yard – February 2023

The temperatures were getting warm enough in Carrollton TX for some of the hardy spring flowers to make an appearance.

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The naked lady lilies are just leaves now…building up for their bloom during the summer. The daffodils and hyacinths are blooming.

I noticed the fallen rooster and rusting toy surrounded by brown debris from last season and the greening new growth of spring. The rooster’s fall, twisted feather and the rust on the base/foot is new this season. I didn’t attempt to right it.

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The small landscapes appealed to me as well – the small rock that looks like a big cliff next to the green vegetation, the single pink flower at the base of a big mulberry tree, a red leaf surrounded by crinkled brown leaves and delicate new green growth, and a dandelion already in bloom (also at the base of a mulberry tree).

My favorite image from the February walk around the yard was a backlit dandelion seed puff.  Yes – the background is messy…but I always attempt to capture the situation as it was in nature, not something contrived.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 12, 2022

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.

America’s largest transit bus charging station & microgrid open in Maryland – The headline caught my eye because I lived in Maryland for over 20 years – 8 of those in the county where this is happening! I hope other states have the same sorts of projects in the works.

NASA Finds More Than 50 Super-Emitters of Methane – Finding them is only the first step….how many of them will be situations we can reduce or stop the emission?

Iron induces chronic heart failure in half of heart attack survivors – This study prompted testing of iron chelation therapy to remedy or mitigate the effects associated with iron in hemorrhagic myocardial infarction patients.

Unique Bronze Age belt discovered near Opava – Half my ancestors came from the area that is now the Czech Republic…I am drawn to articles about the history of the region.  The belt is quite beautiful…but was it a practical item of apparel?  

What happens if our circadian rhythms are out of whack? – WHO has proclaimed that disrupted circadian rhythms are a probable carcinogen. The study discussed in this post was about the mechanism that circadian rhythm disruption triggers lung tumors.

View 16 Breathtaking Images from the Nature Conservancy’s Annual Photo Contest – Take a little break….look at awesome images of our world.

Mississippi River Basin adapts as climate change brings extreme rain and flooding – This year the stories about extreme weather seem to be more frequent – and wide ranging in terms of water. The Mississippi was low enough for barge traffic to be impacted because of drought…yet there were floods along part of the river just last summer.

Eye-opening discovery about adult brain's ability to recover vision – An unexpected success…opening new ways to treat a vision impairment (LCA) and maybe prompt a re-look about how the adult brain can re-wire itself relative to vision.

The World’s Whitest Paint May Soon Help Cool Airplanes and Spacecraft – A way of making paint that was previously too thick/heavy for things that move. The thicker version works for homes and buildings. We’ll need this technology to reflect heat without expending energy!

Greater cloud cover may be narrowing the gap between daily high and low temperatures – Simulating clouds explicitly. Trying to understand why nights are heating up faster than days across the globe.

Springfield Conservation Nature Center – June 2020

My husband and I did a short hike at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center in late June. It’s a place I anticipate we’ll explore more fully in the months to come. The area is an oasis with high volume traffic arteries on two sides…neighborhood and lake on the other sides. We started out our first hike on the Boardwalk Trail (map) but extended to the Sycamore Cut-off down to the bridge over a branch of Lake Springfield….downhill to the lake level then back up. The forest is dense with a different kinds and ages of trees…there are cliff faces too. The paths are gravel. We spotted a great blue heron (still roosting) in shallow water….and a very active small bird in the bushes nearby (maybe a prothonotary warbler). There were probably some invasive plants in the mix – but they didn’t seem to be overwhelming. The slideshow below contains my favorites from the pictures I took with my bridge camera.

I am beginning to appreciate my phone – with it digital zoom – for macro photography. I took one image of a bloom that was hanging over the trail…

And then did more as we left the nature center after our hike.

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The round blooms of the button bush look intriguing at every stage!

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I am looking forward to seeing the trails in different seasons…stay tuned.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 27, 2021

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.

Lots of wonderful photography posts to enjoy this week: Winners of the Weather Photographer of the Year Contest Celebrate the Beauty of Nature, West Coast Landscape Photographer Perfectly Captures the Region’s Magical Vistas, Awe-Inspiring Winners of the 2021 Natural Landscape Photography Awards, and Photographer Zooms in on the “Hidden Beauty” of Small Seeds and Fruits – Not sure why there seemed to be so many of these in my feeds this week….

What is Play-Doh made of? – Thinking of toys this time of year….play-doh is something that has been around a long time. We don’t have any young children in our immediate family and I’m missing the joy of watching a child at play.

How your house will go carbon free – Efficiency and renewable energy. At least some of the technologies already exist and many can be retrofitted into existing houses.

Armadillos advance northward as temperature rises – I remember seeing armadillos years ago in Texas when we were camping….maybe we’ll be seeing them closer to Missouri and Maryland in the near future – although hopefully not digging up my yard.

Catching up on Top 25 birds of the week: Breeding and November 2021 – I am ready to do some birding…my husband registered us for a birding hike in a Baltimore hike in December and I hope the pandemic will wane enough that the birding festivals will be back in 2022.

Red, White and Green: Winter Colors in Arches are Awaiting You – My husband and I visited some of the Utah parks in October several years ago…and there was already a dusting of snow on some of the mornings and in the mountains. Maybe we’ll go in November next time.

California Condors Surprise Scientists With Two ‘Virgin Births’ – Maybe this happens in other species too. There was no way to verify the phenomenon before genetic testing became available.  

Seeing Red: What the Color of House Finches Can Tell Us – House Finches are frequent visitors to our bird feeders. It was good to learn more about them from this blog post.

For women, greater exposure to estrogen in life may protect brain regions that are vulnerable to Alzheimer’s – This post left me wondering if estrogen mimics in our environment (i.e. pollution) might be protective as well…and, if so, will younger women be less likely to experience brain shrinkage after menopause than the older generations of women are experiencing.  

Why mandatory vaccination is nothing new – A little history of vaccine mandates. I didn’t know that George Washington required all troops to be inoculated against smallpox in 1777!

Mini Road Trip: Mt Pleasant – March 2021 (2)

Continuing the sights of my mini road trip to Mt Pleasant….

I noticed 3 trees…for different reasons:

The light on the curling bark of a river birch.

A hole that looked recent in a high branch of a large tree. I wondered if it might be a woodpecker preparing a nesting cavity although I didn’t hear or see the bird.

The trunk of a red bud…with my regular camera

And then with my phone and a clip-on macro lens.

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There were also some interesting vines around small trees and hanging from low branches…natures ropes and knots.

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I always enjoy looking for shelf fungus as I walk on forest paths.

My favorite images are ones that capture the structure of the top and underside…the two pictures below are the same group…but different composition. I can’t decide which is my favorite. I didn’t realize that the tree rings were visible until I looked at the images on the bigger screen at home! The grouping was on the cut end of a tree trunk that had been cleared from the trail after it fell.

As I headed back toward my car – I stopped to photograph the jasmine…the early bloomer near the picnic area and

Some seed pods (not sure what they are) from last season. The seeds have been dispersed but the pods catch the light…become flower-like again.

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Overall – it was a very good walk around Mt Pleasant although I didn’t get down and around the meadow…. that is left for next time.   

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 14, 2020

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.

Mapping out rest stops for migrating birds: New metric can help determine when birds fly over a site or stop to refuel or rest -- ScienceDaily – Stopover-to-passage ratio during migration research involves analysis of weather radar data collected since the 1990s…teasing out bird movement from precipitation! Results so far have included some surprises (and there are probably more to come as more of the historical data is processed and the processing becomes more and more sophisticated).

This Crocodile Dad Gives Over 100 of His Kids a Lift – A large species (gharial) with a narrow snout…in India.

Top 25 birds of the week: November 2020 – Birds from around the world….so much beauty in the natural world to see…and try to protect.

Top Solar States Per Capita 2012 vs. 2020 — CleanTechnica Report and US Energy Dept. Aims For Affordable Solar Power – Two posts about solar power. The first article shows the growth since 2012. In states where there wasn’t much growth, I wondered if the utilities in the state or the state government posed barriers to solar power. It seems like the whole country  should be in the mode of getting out of the way or encouraging renewal energy. The second article was about community solar programs from DOE with a mission to ‘bring affordable solar power to every household in the US by 2025’ – a worthy goal but is there enough money in the pipe to do it? This is not a technical problem as much as ‘are we ready to just do it.’

Lullabies in any language relax babies -- ScienceDaily and Baby Bottles Can Shed Millions of Microplastic Particles: Study | The Scientist Magazine® - I’ve been thinking recently about how much things have changed since my daughter was a baby over 30 years ago. I had a lullaby tape (in English) that I played for her in the evenings (although when she got old enough to choose – she wanted soundtracks from Disney movies as often as the lullabies). Now – we’d have digital music playing (rathe than cassette tapes) and maybe there would be lullabies in different languages too. The second article is about some worrisome research and I hope that pediatricians are keeping up and advising parents on best approaches.

When Domestic Birds Go Wild – Chickens, turkeys, ducks, swans, guinea fowl, peacocks, ornamental pheasants, doves and pigeons, emus, and parrots.

Picturing Earth: Astronaut Photography In Focus – A video – just under 70 minutes….with good imagery and discussion.

The return of Europe’s largest beasts - BBC Future – Bison, wolves, and elk…will the agricultural sector of Europe learn to cope with the big herbivores…and a predator?

As Waters Warm, Ocean Heatwaves Are Growing More Severe - Yale E360 – It’s easier for us to notice the heatwaves on land…but the ocean is taking the bulk of the increased heat on the planet and research on marine heatwaves is just beginning. The precise definition of the phenomenon was only proposed in 2016.  

See the World in Detail Thanks to the Close Up Photographer of the Year – Ending the gleanings list this week with some eye candy….enjoy the visual treat.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/17/2020 - Gleanings

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Browsing through some issues of Vogue. The Internet Archive has some issues of Vogue online. I particularly enjoyed the one labeled Vol 138: Vogue which includes issues from October - December 1961 (a bound reference volume); you’ll have to create a free-sign on to check it out – browse through. I was in 2nd grade when these issues were originally published and the designs appealing; maybe we all have a subconscious affinity for clothes that were worn as we were growing up. It was a time when natural fiber fabrics were being replaced with synthetic fibers. I can remember learning to iron my cotton shorts and tops during the summertime when I was in the later grades of elementary school!

Noticing filaments algae in the sycamore branch vase. How did it get here? Were there spores on the branch when I brought it in? The picture on the left below is looking down into the vase, the branch being the diagonal shape in the lower left corner. I pulled some algae out and put it on the top of my iPad (using the iPad as a light table) and took a picture through the jeweler’s loupe (picture on the right)…not enough magnification to see any internal detail, unfortunately.

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Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

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.

These Colored Micrographs Show the Incredible Intricacies of Plants – A different botanical perspective.

Can fashion ever be sustainable? - BBC Future – This article fit right in with the Fashion as Design Coursera course I am working my way through right now. I already buy more than half my wardrobe from thrift stores and don’t buy very often. My closet is still too full; one indication is recently finding a pair of jeans I had forgotten about! This article has prompted me to think about how often I wash my clothes. Maybe I don’t need to launder some of them as frequently.

Why This Rare, Huge Ozone Hole Over the Arctic Is Troubling Scientists | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – It probably will close soon – but it’s an interesting phenomenon that probably would have gotten more press if coronavirus wasn’t overwhelming all other news.

Blood test detects over 50 types of cancer, some before symptoms appear -- ScienceDaily – This type of test has been a goal for years. Are we getting closer to reality?

Covid-19: The history of pandemics - BBC Future – The impact of coronavirus on our day to day lives is a unique experience for most of the world’s population. This article is a short history of  other pandemics: Justinian plague (6th century…killed as many as 50 million which was half the global population), the Black Death (14th century…killed up to 200 million), smallpox killed as many as 300 million people in the 20th century alone even though there was an effective vaccine available since 1796, 1918 influenza (50-100 million died), and HIV (killed 32 million and infected 75 million with more added every day). Since 1980, the number of outbreaks of new infectious diseases per year has tripled.

19 Incredible Winning Photos from Nature Photography Contest – Lots of interesting nature photos.

Wearable device lets patients with type 2 diabetes safely use affordable insulin option -- ScienceDaily – Maybe technology can deliver less expensive drugs in news ways….making the drugs more effective.

Bioprospecting for Industrial Enzymes and Drug Compounds in an Ancient Submarine Forest: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research - An unusually large, biodiverse, and temporally stable wood-associated marine habitat off the coast of Alabama. Within 100-200 prepared culture plates, the team identified approximately 100 strains of bacteria, many of which are novel and 12 of which are already undergoing DNA sequencing for further study of their identity and their biosynthetic potential to make new drugs.

Photographer Immortalizes the Ice Waves of Picturesque Lake in Colorado – It must have been cold work capturing these images!

6 Creative Ways Wildlife Find Shelter • The National Wildlife Federation - A fun article…with some great photographs too.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 3/18/2020

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Going to the grocery store turned out to be a rather overwhelming experience. The store opened an hour later than posted on their website (the decision evidently made last night after I checked) and there were more people that had accumulated by the time they opened. After sitting in my car for about 30 minutes and just before the doors opened, I walked over to the far edge of the parking garage to photograph the sunrise. It was the last calm moment of today’s shopping.

The carts were all lined up outdoors and we entered the store single file….spaced out. More than half the people looked 60+ (like me).  Everyone was wiping down carts, using hand sanitizer and trying to keep 6 feet apart. My plan is to shop weekly to maintain the 2 weeks of food and supplies in the house.

• We were running low on disinfectant for our counter tops because I had not been finding it recently; they didn’t have what I wanted today either, but I did buy something else. I didn’t find disinfectant wipes either.

• No toilet paper. I’m down to about a 1.5 weeks supply in the house…so I need to find some soon.

• I did find buy some boxed flax milk that can be stored in the pantry rather than the refrigerator because keeping 4 cartons of milk in the refrig at all times (which is what is I drink in 2 weeks), takes up too much room.

• The meat counters were bare as was the canned chicken shelf so we are dipping into our two-week supply if we don’t find any at the store we will try tomorrow morning.

• They had cat food but not the kind we were running low on. I didn’t buy any. That could become an issue next week. Hopefully the cat will eat some foods that he typically does not like as well (we pamper him…he’s 19 years old).

• I couldn’t find any dried beans. I cooked what I had in the pantry recently…wanted to restock.

• Medication we would typically use for a cold or the flu….just in case we somehow get sick…was sold out. My husband had bought a small supply before but it’s not enough if we both got sick and needed it for a week or more. We need to find some tomorrow.  

• My husband’s protein shakes were not available in the flavor he likes. I’m not sure what I am going to do about that.

• I found everything I wanted in the produce section (radishes, celery, kale, bananas) – fortunately.

After this experience – I might change to curbside pickup or delivery for next week.

Here are the unique activities for yesterday that helped me recover from the overwhelming start to the day:

• Ordering protein powder (NutraBio® 100% Whey Protein Isolate) based on my daughter’s recommendation – just in case we are challenged to get enough protein at some point. It also has the advantage of being a pantry item rather requiring refrigeration. I’ve enjoyed the beet powder I bought before all this ‘stay at home as much as possible’ started for the same reasons: great nutrition in a small space and long shelf life. They’re both smoothie ingredients! I’m wondering if the combination of the Dutch Chocolate protein powder, banana and the beet powder will be like a ‘red velvet’ smoothie!

• Watching the 5th video in the ‘Life in the Universe Pandemic Series’ from Charles Cockell – Will I ever meet aliens?

• Noticing that my neighbor’s forsythia is blooming…and that the spicebush in the forest is blooming too. It’s not as showy…but it’s a native. There is a butterfly that needs spicebush for its caterpillars too: the spicebush swallowtail. I’ll put on my hiking boots and tuck my pants into socks (to avoid deer ticks and Lyme disease) to troop back into the woods to get some pictures of their flowers someday soon.

• Responding to an email query about tips re cell phone nature photography….and was pleased to provide some links to two blog posts (one and two) with tips illustrated by examples that I did a little over a year ago. It’s nice to have some two-way interaction beyond my immediate family!

• Ordering some bugs from https://www.thebutterflycompany.com/ for a photographic project. My husband is the one that suggested it. We are anticipating needing to supplement the projects we’ve already started for ourselves while we are ‘staying at home as much as possible.’ We ordered: cecropia moth, Luna moth, eastern comma butterfly, question mark butterfly, zebra swallowtail, and eastern Hercules beetle.

• Watching the Cincinnati Zoo’s Home Safari – Sihil the Ocelot.

Previous “filling a day of social distance” posts: 3/15, 3/16, 3/17

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 13, 2019

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.

We organized a conference for 570 people without using plastic. Here’s how it went – It’s hard to do anything without plastic….but we’ll find ways eventually. I am focused on the ‘single use’ items first but when I can I choose materials other than plastic even for more durable items.

Arches National Park Recognized As "Dark Sky" Park – Now for my husband to find a way to get there with his telescope….

Timber Rattlesnakes: Cool Facts and an Uncertain Future – This snake is found in western Maryland….not in the county where I live. But we always mention it to students interested in snakes. This article provided some additional ‘cool facts’ to pass along.

Macro Photos of Water Droplets Reveal the Overlooked Beauty of Nature – Beautiful images in water droplets - And the artist included some pictures of the set up he uses to get the pictures!

In an Era of Extreme Weather, Concerns Grow Over Dam Safety – There have been dams in the news in recent years (like the Oroville Dam spillway failure in 2017). In our area, some small dams have been removed. But there are 91,000 dams in the US that are aging and need repairs. It’s going to be expensive…and the extreme weather we’ve been having probably makes it more urgent…but the funding is just not forthcoming so far.

Chiggers are the worst – Agreed.

Photo of the Week – July 5, 2019 – Milkweed in bloom. This is a blog post from The Prairie Ecologist…showing some bugs too. No Monarch butterflies though.

8 ways wild animals beat the heat – The mucous that hippos secrete was new to me…it’s acts as sunscreen, antibiotic, moisturizer, and water repellant. Now that we’ve learned that the sunscreen we’ve been using may be toxic to corals (and maybe to us too), perhaps we could develop an alternative by learning more about the hippo mucous.

Winter Bee Declines Greatest in 13 Years: Survey – Habitat loss, pesticides, Varroa mites….it adds up. Evidently in recent years the strategies that beekeepers have been using to deter mites have not worked as well. Some crops rely more on commercial beekeepers than others. Almonds, cherries, and blueberries are mentioned as examples.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Flowers – Last but not least this week…..birds and flowers. Enjoy the photographs.

Zooming – June 2019

So many aspects of nature to photograph in June: flowers and butterflies, frogs and birds…bunnies.

There were photos around home or close to home…and then in Missouri and Ohio. I’ll be learning the route between home and Missouri with two more trips in July…I’ll see how different the places look a month later.

There’s beauty to be found all over if we take the time to look for it!

Josey Ranch Lake

After visiting the Pocket Prairie, I headed over toward the lake. The highlight of this part of the walk was a flock of cedar waxwings feeding around the blooms of a tree. I think they may have been eating tiny insects that were attracted by the blooms. They were very active – chowing down before continuing their migration. I didn’t get any great pictures of them, but I saw enough to identify them while I watched them feed! For some reason – a tend to think of them as slightly larger than they are (maybe because they have a crest like a cardinal, and I lapse into thinking they are the same size).

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Otherwise the lake was a disappointment. There was a lone Canada goose and a few mallards. The birds that winter there have already moved northward. There were still a few coots around; they were all on the shore. Perhaps they stay for the summer too. The lake was almost empty.

The resident boat-tailed grackles are noisy and have a lot of attitude. I took two sequences. On that was walking on the sidewalk as I headed back toward the car…

And another in the front of the drive near the library….I think he might have been warning me to come no closer!

Macro Petals and Leaf

The last hurrah of some flowers I bought over the holiday was after it was spent – just before the stems and petals and greenery went to the compost bin. I experimented with my macro lens clipped to my cell phone – particularly the 60x one.

After some trial and error, I discovered that putting the specimen (a petal or a leaf) on a window provided good backlight and I could easily stabilize the lens too. I zoomed a little – just enough to take away the vignetting around the edges.

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The petals looked almost white to the eye, but subtle colors of the veins and cell walls came out at the higher magnification. The petals were desiccated and fragile. Some cracked as I held them. Fortunately, there were plenty more to try. 

In general, I like the lower magnification macro (15x) better than this lens…but the 60x was great for this project.

Zooming – December 2018

It’s been somewhat cold this month – but no snow yet. I’ve enjoyed photographing our transition to winter using the zoom on my camera to set the frame of the scene and/or to enable me to stay out of the mud (we’ve had lots of rain) or indoors and warm. There is still a little green left…and the sky sometimes seems brighter when its clear and cold. Enjoy the December 2018 Zoom slideshow!