Tag Flora and Fauna

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

It is a terrible comparison, rainbows to snakes, but they both are silent in their appearance; and no matter how many times you see one above or below, it startles you when suddenly there they are right in front of you.…

Nature Notes 10 March 2014

From the road, just a couple of creature features from the recent web archives. [su_heading]Virus Back From the Grave — yet another plot line for a SF writer.[/su_heading] “Scientists at a laboratory in France have thawed out and revived an…

Doin’ It When it Don’t Fit

Forgive me the incorrect grammar and the suggestive title. The phrase just seems to, well, mate with the mood of the moment. You see I am cooking in somebody elses kitchen, going on a week. The MacPro is in the…

O Sting–Where is Thy Death?

This reversal of a Biblical verse (for the throngs no long familiar with that volume) is the word play by Tim Flannery, author of this NYT long-read about jellyfish called They’re Taking Over. The piece consists largely of a review…

Egg-Suckin’ Snake in the Grass

Our hens are giving us NO eggs lately but I discovered one of them nestled in the weeds on a well-concealed nest behind the garden mid-day and was sure I’d find at least one egg there later in the evening.…

We Brake for Butterflies

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many congregations of swallowtails on our road at one time. The image above shows only part of one patch, and there were watering holes all up and down the lane from barn to…

Biota of the Blue Ridge: Oil Beetle

If you look in Google Images for this flightless creature that looks like an obese steel-blue ant, you’ll not find another picture among the many of this insect in a human hand–like the one you see here perched on my…