Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Walking through candle ice

@outsidemagazine Luc Mehl waited all winter for the opportunity to play with—and learn more about—candle ice. Luc is an ice rescue instructor based in Anchorage, Alaska.     Columnar ice forms when the initial ice growth is fast and there are many nucleation points, which results in smaller crystals on the surface of the water. Once the crystals can’t grow larger at the surface, they grow down into the water, forming columns.      Candle ice forms when the boundaries between columnar ice melt. The ice rapidly weakens and can’t support weight—very dangerous conditions for travelers.    During the winter, Luc visited this lake twelve times to create a mental map of the different ice zones. The payoff was a fun (and cold!) bike-to-swim date with his wife Sarah Mehl Histand. 📽️ : lucmehl via IG #getoutside #ice #frozen ♬ original sound - Outside Magazine






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Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Bioluminescent Petunias



Here's the preorder, shipments expected to begin Spring 2025.
The Firefly Petunia emits a soft glow similar to moonlight. It can be grown in pots, baskets, or gardens, quickly attaining about 8 to 10 inches in size with abundant white flowers. This plant is easy to care for, thriving without needing special conditions or treatments.

Although typically regarded as annuals, petunias can be grown indoors if placed in a sunny spot. They flourish under long summer days, preferring at least six hours of direct sunlight. Promoting vigorous growth will produce a brighter glow.
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Sunday, October 13, 2024

Visiting the Louisiana alligator airboat tour made famous by Lana Del Rey

A fun write-up with good photos from the trip. Reminded me of Susan Orleans's The Orchid Thief.

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Monday, June 24, 2024

Golden veil made of bee wings, sourced from beekeepers who lost their hives due to a harsh winter






Her slide show about the veil. Bonus necklaces (some jewelry is for sale):


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Friday, June 7, 2024

Coastal home owners in Florida are fighting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over beach access as the ocean increasingly erodes the land

Route Fifty:

A series of storms, culminating in last fall’s Hurricane Idalia, have eroded most of the sand that protects Redington Shores and the towns around it, leaving residents just one big wave away from water overtaking their homes.

This perilous situation is the result of a standoff between local residents and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that handles flood prevention and protects many of the nation’s beaches. The Corps often rebuilds eroded beaches by hauling in thousands of tons of sand, but the agency is refusing to deliver $42 million of new sand to Pinellas County unless the area’s coastal property owners grant public access to the slivers of beach behind their homes. Hundreds of these property owners, however, are in turn refusing to sign documents that grant these points of access, which are known as easements. The faceoff has brought the area’s storm recovery to a near standstill.

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The Corps put the easement policy in place decades ago to ensure that it didn’t spend public money to restore private beaches, but the agency didn’t begin enforcing the rule in earnest until after Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

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Sunday, May 12, 2024

Comic book-style dissertation on prairie ecology

(It's sold out at the moment)




Some posters she's featured in her feed:

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Friday, May 10, 2024

Described as a photo of a Ukrainian soldier under the Aurora

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Gorgeous photos of Svalbard ice







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Saturday, April 6, 2024

Mount Etna is blowing smoke rings




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Wednesday, December 6, 2023

The Earpick fungus

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Friday, November 3, 2023

Check out this horrifying bug I learned about

My initial guess was 70% this tweet was accurate, 30% it was just a scifi creature:



Yes, it's horrifyingly accurate:
In order to construct their barrels, females first locate a suitable salp, pyrosome, or cnidarian host and either cut into the host or enter through an existing opening. Once inside, the female consumes the organism within and carve out the gelatinous inside, leaving nothing but the tunic.

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Female Phronima sedentaria are capable of producing up to 600 eggs at a time. Juveniles spend their early development within the mother in a specialized pouch called the marsupium. After finding a suitable host, the female begins to transform the barrel into a nursery for its young. 

Here's more footage:


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Wednesday, August 2, 2023

A look at the "underground network of wildlife enthusiasts who are returning species back into the landscape without asking permission"

Lengthy article on rewilding in various countries:

Rewilding has become a popular activity among Britain’s landed elite.

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[An environmentalist] jokingly described an emerging black market for wildlife trade unfolding in the gentlemen’s clubs of Mayfair. “You’ve literally got conversations happening over the lunch tables of White’s where one landowner is passing beavers to another,” he said. “You know: ‘I’ve got beavers on my farm in Perthshire, old buddy old pal. I could bring a few to you in Herefordshire.’”

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He procured almost all the beavers from ... a wildlife manager based in Bavaria known as “the Pablo Escobar of beavers.”

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 In Tayside, Scotland, where beavers were illegally introduced around 2006, farmers shot the animals on sight. There was no law to stop the farmers from doing so because, although the beavers were endangered, they also weren’t officially there. 

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It’s not just beavers: There are boar bombers, a “butterfly brigade” that breeds and releases rare species of butterfly and a clandestine group returning the pine marten — one of Britain’s rarest mammals — to British forests. 

Related:

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Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Today's news and jokes





Read more »
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Monday, May 29, 2023

Horn sharks lay their eggs ins a disturbing spiral-shaped egg casing

@california.shelling Some sharks give birth to live young, and others are oviparous, meaning they lay eggs. California horn sharks mothers lay these corkscrew egg cases. When it comes out, it is very pliable, but hardens over time. Hope this lil guy makes it! 🦈 #shark #sealife #oceanlife #fyp ♬ original sound - California.Shelling


"After laying, the female picks up the auger-shaped egg cases and wedges them into crevices to protect them from predators." (I found some videos of sharks transporting and eating the casings, but not burying them.)
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Sunday, April 30, 2023

China is trying to stop poachers from using electricity to mass-capture earthworms

The dried remains are popular in herbal medicines, but the use of electric devices is so effective, that ecosystems are being damaged: 
With a device called “an earth dragon device” 地龍儀 to capture earthworms, “a battery, two wires, inserted in the ground, earthworms immediately crawl out, it’s blood-chilling to watch.” In some places, it only takes 20 minutes to catch five or six pounds of earthworms, and a fully charged battery can work continuously for five hours. In the land that has not been “electrified” previously, a day of electrocutions bringing up two or three hundred pounds of earthworms is no problem.
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Although farmers know that the presence of earthworms benefits the soil, there are few ways for many rural people to earn money faster and easier than with electro-captured earthworms.
(More from SCMP last year.)
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Monday, April 17, 2023

Plant looks like a disembodied mouth



The Conophytum pageae stalk grows out of the "mouth."

*Previously: This sun-chasing robot looks after the plant on its head
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Saturday, December 24, 2022

Light pillars in the sky



*Previously: Brocken Spectres are terrifying
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Thursday, May 19, 2022

Living in a reverse terrarium

@lovejoy_paradise

I live in a reverse terrarium? 😱😍 i could not have dreamed up a more perfect spot to observe wildlife from

♬ original sound - OBEEHAVE
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Sunday, March 20, 2022

Serenity Through Confinement; Forbidden cake pops; Good opening theme for anime California Crisis




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Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Quasi-official bootleg TMNT comic; Lego Cyber City Supercruiser; Panic Grass illustrated




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