The two tips of a snake’s tongue allows them them to determine directionality of chemical traces. One would presume that snakes only need two probes because they are, largely, two dimensional beings and that, could snakes fly, they would be equipped with a triple split tongue. However, sea snakes exist in a three dimensional world and only have the normal split tongue.
This just goes to show that nature does what works, not what fits human theories.
At the time of this posting, the windchill was -22° F.
Wear a hat.
This is an example of the marmoset roaming free. I was lucky that this little guy decided to come down from the trees and spend a good fifteen seconds posing on this fence for me.
There is a scene in a much later book by a much older Gerald Durrell.
He wrote about what it was like to be old and tired. He was done with journeys. He had achieved his dream.
As he wrote, he sat in the manor house, looking over the land and thinking about all he had done in his life to save animals … first one creature at a time, now, managing entire species.
He wrote about how he had international foundations assisting his goals, young zookeepers helping out, and his friends and family all working on helping to keep things running smoothly.
He closed the book by describing his new home, surrounded by the living memories of a life well spent, and what it was like to finally rest and look out the window at the crowned cranes performing mating displays thousands of kilometers from their natural home, but still, living their lives.
I like to think that this is what he saw.
Horned screamers have floppy feathers.
A couple of years ago, I started playing with a new technique that is only useful in specific cases. At the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, they have a free flight demonstration against a (usually) clear sky. This allows me to do a multiple exposure so you can see the different movements of a hawk’s flight and how they gain speed. Here, it’s particularly interesting how hawks become almost vertical when turning.
Before I went to Ireland (like, immediately before) I took a side trip to the Isle of Jersey and visited the Durrell Wildlife Park. I had read about it in some of Gerald Durrell’s many excellent* books, and since I was going to be in Ireland anyway, I figured I’d go check it out. What makes this place special is that the balance between endangered species management, education, and entertainment is shifted much further to the endangered species side of things and considerably away from entertainment. Think of them as the anti-SeaWorld.
They have a considerable amount of land and they place their animals very sparsely, so they have tons of space in which to roam. There is a piece of wood in which marmosets are (somewhat) free to roam. I walked around it five times before I saw any, because they are extremely small monkeys in a very large space. The same goes for their lemurs though, lemurs being larger, they were easier to see.
They also pay attention to history. The history of this park is quite well documented in the twenty six autobiographical works. Being able to see the places that were described was fascinating, but perhaps the most interesting was the little two-room museum to Gerald Durrell’s life. This particular sculpture illustrates a memorable scene from My Family and Other Animals, in which Gerald Durrell, as a boy, puts a scorpion with babies in a matchbox for safe keeping. As often happens when one is young, this is forgotten and his brother goes to get a match for his cigarette. Hilarity ensues.
If you haven’t read the book, you probably should. The others are good, but none of them come close to the brilliance of My Family and Other Animals.
* This is not to imply that all of his books were excellent, just many of them.
They may not be very good at it, but they sure do take flying seriously.
Snakes are made by gluing all the scales you have into a big long tube, then, when you run out, sticking the eyes on one end.
This lemur suddenly realized that there is little more indicative of the systemic failure of the American mental health system than the fact that the only therapist that Charlie Brown can afford is the same person who constantly bullies him in football.
This was a pet parrot that the people kindly let me photograph.
It doesn’t seem to see a need to take care of its feathers anymore.
This jay suddenly realized that Burger King has been around for 62 years, which is near the upper end of a monarch’s reign and wonders what they have decided in terms of succession planning.
Best shot of a magpie that I was able to get … at least with the lenses I had at the time.
I didn’t have my camera in video mode, so you can’t see what happened when the tennis serve was returned but, trust me, it was hilarious.
This snake just saw someone on an Internet forum complaining that oil for his brand new $30,000 car cost $22 per quart.
Turns out that, in Ireland, sheep can go anywhere they want. We had to wait for five minutes while they decided they’d like to move off the road.
Here comes Peter Cormorant
Hoppin’ down the birdie slant
Hippity hoppin’, Inti Raymi’s on its way
Wakes up in the middle of the night and wishes there was a name for the sort that dream that isn’t a nightmare, but whose happiness and joy leave one saddened and mournful because waking life can never, and will never, compare.
As far back as memory stretches, the dock had been there. No one knew who had built it, just that it was there, made of a dark type of ice that glinted not in the sun, but at midnight … only at midnight.
The elders spoke of its destruction, the story passed down the generations, of the time of the great war, when the fallen had returned, fighting on the other side. Their village had been almost destroyed but, in the final cataclysm, the dock was shattered as the last wave of reinforcements approached.
The shards of ice took years to finally sink from sight and as they did, the returned fallen grew ever thinner until they were gone from sight, the last one crying in the arms of her love as she faded away.
The elders also spoke of its recreation, one year later, out of stone. The footings were quarried from distant mountains and platforms hewn from boulders from the fields, each piece meeting her strict specifications. One solitary boat was launched and, as it drifted towards the horizon, the dock crumbled, vanishing into the depths as the boat did into the mist.
The story told of the boat’s eventual return and the village prepared. At the annual remembrance of the war and the launch, they practiced, each year’s team trying to beat the time of the last. They could build a new dock out of wood in three hours, position it in one to land upon the few footings that remained. The team of six, for a wooden dock could support no more, could race from one end to the other in fifteen seconds, leaving two entire minutes to board the boat, rescue the two passengers, and return, before the dock would catch fire, sizzling as charred pieces danced across the surface, growing ever smaller.
That might be enough time.
After each year’s session, they would mourn. Sometimes for those team members that ran too fast, overshooting and skidding into the lake itself. Sometimes for those who ran too slowly or stumbled, and were caught in the conflagration. Always though, they would morn for their ancestor, name lost to time, who departed in the boat, seeking her love.
Then, they would feast, in memory of the many that had stayed and grown old. The elders would re-tell the stories, grandparents would share memories, and children would race around playing games.
And so it was, every year that there was one day of sweat, one day of tears, and one day of joy.
Such is the cost of living on the border of death.
Remember that photo of a tern a while back that wasn’t great but was still good enough to share?
Well one good tern deserves another.