In the ads and documentaries, whale watching looks like you go out on the boat on a beautiful day and watch the whales jump right next to the boat.
In reality, whale watching is cold and rainy, can make you motion sick, and the whales stay far away – mostly underwater.
Still worth doing, but it’s good to have realistic expectations.
Sometimes I play with my LensBaby lens. Sometimes it works out.
A weird thing about visiting a lot of zoos is that they specialize in rare species. This is not a rare species. It’s all over Asia … but it’s the first one I’ve ever seen and I had to go to France to do it. I’ve seen tons (literally) of animals rarer than the yellow throated marten, but this was the coolest animal of the visit – because it was new to me and that doesn’t happen that much anymore.
I have a theory that these birds would shine brightly when viewed in the UV spectrum. So I got a UV camera and special lens to find out.
Turns out all the zoos keep them indoors, carefully shielded from all UV light.
… has France ever seen a snake?
Fabio* was airbrushed**
* For those of you who haven’t seen 40 yet, Fabio Lanzoni was a famous model in the 1980’s*** and 1990’s*** who only looked like this around the (bleached) hair.
** For those of you who haven’t seen 30 yet, airbrushing was an analog**** version of photoshop.
*** For those of you who haven’t seen 20 yet, I am talking about things that happened in the last century.
**** For those of you haven’t seen 10 yet, this means “in those ancient day before computers existed”.
Red panda that still isn’t all that sure about this 2021 idea.
Unlike our Northern cormorants, this one has contour shading, implying the existence of a predator that attacks from below as they swim or fly.
Eh, it’s Australia. Seems legit.
Crocodile inviting acquaintances into his Parler.
This orangutan sees humans complaining that the internet is full of negativity and is waiting for them to realize the internet is made of electrons.
This seriema is upset that the book he was writing on the freedom of companies to do what they want has been canceled by his publisher.
The idea of posting this way is to build a buffer so if you have a tiring or distracting day, a post still goes up. The downside is that it is harder to comment on recent events.
That’s okay. I’m sure nothing of interest happened yesterday.
My French isn’t that great, but I’m pretty sure this sign says “Do not re-elect Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader”.
It’s okay. They each have their own COVID bubble.
The yellow mongoose believes that karma will address the humans’ destruction of the wild.
The yellow mongoose also carries rabies because sometimes karma needs a little help.
This, it seems, is what they think Pallas cats look like in Paris (despite having one in the enclosure right next to the sign.)
Everyone needs a hobby. This skink collects rocks … and keeps her collection scattered in the pockets of five year olds all over the world.
This orangutan suspects that claims that all bad things will end along with the year 2020 are mistaken but doesn’t want to bother people about it – as bothering humans seldom goes well for orangutans.
This woodpecker has spent several hours linking WordPress to Facebook and misses the days when the Internet was simpler and less monetized.
Happy Colobus Day everyone.
It’s worth celebrating the colobus because, at no point in their history did they subjugate, murder, maim, and torture others of their species, just to get more a shiny metal that they didn’t even make things out of.