One interesting thing you can easily do here in Santa Barbara is whale watching. Gray Whales, Blue Whales, and Humpbacks all migrate through the Santa Barbara Channel at various times of the year and there are a number of boats out of the harbor here and down in Ventura who will take you out for …
Around the Web
Not much time to blog– Matt just swooped through (and I expect will have pics and maybe video soon) and guests plus Mr. and Mrs. Peculiar are coming for Thanksgiving. But here are a few tidbits to tide you over. Attention houndmen: PETA is trying to steal your dogs. HT Patrick of course. As I …
Another Quiz
Anyone want to try and identify these three crania? That is a centimeter scale for reference. ANSWERSFrom left to right:Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos)Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)Barn Owl (Tyto alba) Very good everyone and thank you! “In vino veritas,” eh, Pluvialis?
Mercy
Falconer, author, blogger, and Team Red proprietor Rebecca O’Connor has had her essay “Mercy” published in the South Dakota Review. Congratulations Rebecca!
Betsy
Twenty years ago Saturday, Betsy Huntington died. She accompanied me from Boston to New Mexico, where we made a home,and where I still live. She was the first person I knew to use the word “querencia”, and she is the single biggest influence on who I am today. I am not sure how much I …
Packrat Middens
Earlier this week, the New York Times had an article on the use of packrat middens as sources of proxy data for climatic reconstruction. These middens have been an important source of data in the western US for decades, but I can’t remember seeing another piece on this in the popular press. From the article: …
White Rats
Patrick Burns tells us the story of how British Victorian terriermen and ratcatchers paved the way for advances in modern medicine.
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Or…?
I know a number of accomplished naturalists and science-types browse this blog—at least two of them write this blog! So I am putting to you all a Challenge of Identification From The Natural World (…or not). Actually, one of my daughters is putting you up to it: She found this interesting item in a pile …
More Neanderthal News
As I mentioned in a post last week, news accounts have been hinting that more reports on Neanderthal DNA research were due out shortly. Nicholas Wade of the New York Times breaks one of these today, with a progress report on the Neanderthal genome mapping project that I posted on in July. From the article: …
Asteroid and Comet Strikes
The NY Times has a great piece on an ongoing project that is reviewing the world’s shorelines for “chevron” deposits. The article decsribes some found in Madagascar like this: “On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of …