a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
This is the time of year for some mushrooms to sprout in urban gardens here in the Pacific Northwest, and I discovered a new type under my laurel fence this year. Maybe they’ve been coming out every year, and I just haven’t noticed before!
I don’t have a Halloween pumpkin on my porch – but found a crow sitting there today (on the post by steps to my front door).
I like Mr Crow’s sharp, inquisitive look, checking me out, as I was snapping his picture.
We had morning fog around the Puget Sound the last few days, delaying air traffic at Seattle-Tacoma airport at times.
Fog is really a low-lying cloud with tiny droplets of water suspended in the air. And the difference between mist and fog? If visibility is reduced to less than 1,000 m (0.62 mi), it’s fog.
I made my way down to the Amazon biospheres today to catch a glimpse of Morticia*, the name given to the giant corpse flower that is blooming there. (Report by local TV station King5 here).
I had to be content to just check the flower out from the sidewalk. It was too late to book a time slot (all were taken), and I don’t have a friend employed by Amazon that could take me in as a guest! Aw.
*I suspect this is a reference to Morticia Addams, a fictional character from The Addams Family television and film series. A memorable quote (Morticia to her husband): ‘Don’t torture yourself Gomez, that’s my job.’
I love this picture of an octopus, the ‘chameleon of the seafloor’. The skin of an octopus is like that of a pointillistic work of art: it has millions of chromatophores (cells with pigments). Octopuses have yellow, orange, reds, browns or even black pigments, and can camouflage itself against its background when an enemy approaches. There is a complex connection between its brain, its nervous system, and the nerve cells that control the color of its skin.
There was a beautiful ‘60 Minutes‘ segment on TV tonight, about wildlife photographer Joel Sartore’s quest to photograph all the creatures in zoos, for the National Geographic Photo Ark project (natgeophotoark.org).
The project’s goal is to increase awareness of Earth’s biodiversity and the efforts by zoos to save threatened species. He has visited 40 countries and has completed intimate portraits of more than 8,485 species so far.
Wow! I thought, as I walked by this maple tree late this afternoon, with its flaming reds, oranges and yellows. This is on 18th Avenue, close to my house.
This little bird hopped around in my backyard this afternoon, and I had to wait a little bit for it to come out in the clear, so that I could snap a picture.
I believe it is a hermit thrush. They like to hop around and forage in fallen leaves, and they can sing in beautiful notes.
.. and I thought this ghoulish picture below of Wahlberg’s epauletted* fruit bat is quite fitting to help us prepare. I found it in a Mother Jones article. (Quite a mouthful, the creature’s name! .. and the bat in the picture below has a mouth full of fruit, explaining its puffy cheeks).
*An epaulet is an adornment consisting of an ornamental cloth pad worn on the shoulder, much as some military uniforms have. I guess the bat has something that looks like an epaulet on its shoulder.
Two pictures from around the apartment complex here in Dameisha.
Our project manager ran out to Walmart yesterday and brought back a bunch of space heaters for the office. Yay! and Thank You! we said. There will be no gallivanting around Shenzhen or Hong Kong this weekend : we have to work !
This metro bus with the giant giraffe, advertising South African Airways flights out of Hong Kong, pulled up across from my hotel when I was there last weekend. The direct flight to Johannesburg is 13 hours.
