there will come one May night
of every year that she’s alive
when the whole world smells of lilacs
— Al Purdy, “May 23, 1980″.
May 19, 2009
The prophecy is fulfilled.
September 30, 2008
Homo sapiens!
Not much is easier than bioblitzing a hospital room (provided you restrict yourself to macroscopic life). Jordan Charles came into this world at 7 lb 12 ounces, and covered in fur. The fur, of course, is lanugo, an interesting mystery of evolution in its own right, and also a possible piece of the larger puzzle of human hairlessness.
September 24, 2008
Beach bugs.
Despite spending some time with What’s that bug, I can’t identify the millipede, spider, or bees above. The flower, of course, is Goldenrod. A reddish centipede, 3 cm long, shared a pit trap with the spider, but the photo is kind of blurry.
September 21, 2008
Ottawa River
Here for the weekend, I’ll try to see who lives on the beach. Here are my over/unders:
Plants: 24
Birds: 5
Bugs and other crunchy things (phylum arthropoda): 24
Rodents: 2
Bivalves: ?
September 19, 2008
Blogger Bioblitz portal and crowdsourcing tool.
September 9, 2008
2008 Blogger Bioblitz Announced.
The 2008 blogger bioblitz is on for the week of Sept. 20 - Sept. 28. (Two weekends to work with!) Blindingly soon, yes, but what the heck.
A portal will be up next week with a data spreadsheet for download; instructions on conducting a blitz; and some basic browsing and querying capabilities.
Keen to put our semantic eco-blogging tools to use, the Spire project has volunteered to do this year’s data integration and analysis. If you want to share your observations, you will be able to contribute data any of 3 ways: by uploading your data spreadsheet; by maintaining an on-line spreadsheet (via, e.g., Google Docs); or by using Spotter to automatically generate an RDF record for each taxon observed. If you do one of the first two options, you’re data will be converted to RDF by rdf123. (Note: Spotter is currently broken on Firefox 3 - we hope to fix this shortly. UPDATE : Fixed.)
Our goal (beyond encouraging people to explore their natural environment) is to integrate data we receive with background and contextual data (e.g. invasive species lists, food webs, etc.), put it on a map, and make it browsable. Our broader goal is to develop technology that transforms bioblitz and eco-blog data into a global human sensor-net.
If you plan on participating, please either leave a comment on this site or send me email, so that we can link to your blog from the portal.
Many thanks to all who get involved!
August 30, 2008
Bats!
My wife has developed a methodology for catching bats that find their way into the house. It’s sound and efficient, though not as elegant as this guy’s approach. Despite their name in so many languages (letuchaya mysh, fledermaus, etc.), bats are not rodents. In fact, order Chiroptera appears to be more closely related to primates than to mice. By process of elimination, I believe that the recently released critter below is a little brown bat, Myotis lucifugus. I also believe (though I can’t find the reference) that bats are the only known reservoir of rabies in the Laurentians.
What smells with it’s tongue, gives live birth, and loves a sun bath?
My 4-year old kept an eye on this guy while I went into the house for my camera. It’s flicking its tongue to get a smell of the surroundings; it’s tongue is forked to enable it to smell in stereo. It is Thamnophis sirtalis, the common garter snake, one of only a handful of species of reptile that give live birth.
What!? I thought live birth (and lactation) was the very definition of being a mammal. But, according to Wikipedia, the current definition of mammals is “sweat glands, including sweat glands modified for milk production, hair, three middle ear bones used in hearing, and a neocortex region in the brain.”
What a tangled web we weave when we try to classify life on earth!
September 29, 2007
Pond scum with a vengeance.
Blue-Green Algae Close 98 Quebec Lakes … More Closures as Cyanobacteria Problem Worsens … Ancient Bacteria Plagues Quebec … Town Councils Make Clouseau Look Like Maigret
Well, I made the last headline up, but the others pretty much tell the story. As it turns out, the on-again/off-again cyanobacteria infestation I posted about earlier in not only a Lac Mercier phenomenon. While we’ve suffered two more beach closures since my first post, other lakes have fared worse.
Blame is being placed everywhere dishwasher detergent; leaking septic systems; agriculture runoff; global warming. To me, lawns are the obvious culprit. Development has been very aggressive the last few years, with whole new subdivisions going in. The lawns that come with the houses are a double whammy; forest (which takes nitrogen and phosphorous from the soil) is uprooted, and sod is put down and way over-fertilized. Landscaping has been banned within 15 meters of shore, but continues unabated for the hundreds of other meters between shore and mountain ridge.
The Quebec Legislature wants to ban phosphates in detergent; I haven’t seen a proposal to ban lawn fertilizer.
Mice
Back in early June, I spent half an hour stalking this guy, before chasing him into the mudroom. There, he found an empty bottle of mead, lapped the neck until drunk, and let himself be tossed outside. That was pretty much it with mice for the summer. And then, last week, I killed 12 of them in the house. I needed more traps, but 5 Mont Tremblant stores were sold out. Local exterminator said that he’s been killingmice for 23 years, and that he’s never had this many calls.
All of last week’s victims looked pretty much like the good natured inebriate from the spring. Deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), says my lazy man’s guide to mouse identification.
Back home in Toronto, we also have an infestation, thanks to our psychotic summer tenants who spent a month throwing garbage in the garage and leaving it there. But these are darker, and more uniformly colored. I suspect Mus musculus, and will post a picture if I come across one slow enough to pose.
Here are some things I’ve learned: