Our red-tailed hawk chicks are growing bigger every day, and trading fluff for feathers as well. Their bodies are almost completely feathered by now, which makes their heads look small and strange, as though the heads are developing more slowly than the rest of the body. Given that the head is where the brain is…
Month: April 2015
Graduation Day
Today was a big day for me. I got to graduate some of my baby urchins from glass slides onto coralline rocks. They were growing very quickly on the slides, chowing down on scum faster than I can grow it, so now it’s time for the biggest ones to really put their Aristotle’s lanterns to…
Hitting the wall
We humans use the term “hitting the wall” when we find ourselves in situations in which progress is elusive despite extreme effort. For endurance athletes or anyone doing any serious physical training it can mean not being able to break one’s personal best time for a race, or not being able to continue getting measurably…
Eating, pooping, and turning over
My baby urchins have become scum-eating machines! They are 88 days old now and I am beginning to wonder if I can generate scum fast enough to keep up with them. I did a head count this morning and have three bowls, each of which holds a population of ~100 urchins, and a bowl that…
The good father
In case you were wondering, here’s what our red-tailed hawk nest looks like from our deck: See that little red circle? That’s the nest. Without the spotting scope, even with binoculars it’s hard to find. WITH the spotting scope, we can spy on the nest from our deck. And using a nifty gadget that clips…
Symmetries II
Most of the animals that we are familiar with (think of any pets you’ve ever had) have bilateral symmetry: they have a head end and a tail end, a left and a right, and a top and a bottom. In scientific terms that translates to the anterior-posterior, left-right, and dorsal-ventral axes. Also, most bilateral animals…
Feeding babies
For the past several weeks we have been watching a pair of nesting red-tailed hawks across the canyon. They built a nest in a eucalyptus tree, then the female began incubating a clutch of eggs. The male would bring her food and spell for short stints on the nest, while we spied on them through…
Symmetries I
As a long-time student of invertebrate zoology I have for most of my life appreciated the immense variety and ingenuity of animal body plans. And one of the things I’ve always found the most intriguing is the pentaradial symmetry of echinoderms. I remember thinking, the first time I encountered a live echinoderm (probably a star at the…
Catching a mondo swarm
On Easter Sunday we got a call about a big swarm of bees in our neighborhood. The woman who called has a couple of hives in her backyard, one of which had swarmed three weeks earlier. We caught that swarm and installed it into our Green hive at our house. This time it was her other…
And. . . we have mouths!
Finally! At long last I have evidence that my juvenile urchins have mouths and are feeding. A week ago I put a batch of seven teensy urchins onto a scuzzy glass slide and have been watching them daily ever since. And yesterday, just as I was beginning to worry that they’d never be able to…