People call them air rats or trash birds, but I really like gulls. Especially the western gull (Larus occidentalis), known colloquially among birders as the WEGU. Yes, gulls eat garbage, but that’s only because humans are so good at making garbage and leaving it all over the place. Other gulls may travel quite far inland–in…
Month: October 2019
Field trip to MBARI
Last Wednesday, 23 October 2019, my marine biology students and I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing. We were led through the facilities by Kim Fulton-Bennett, the PR officer. MBARI isn’t generally open to the public, so this was a rare opportunity to peek behind the scenes at what goes…
A world beneath your feet
When we stop to marvel at the wonders of the natural world, we usually forget about all the life that is going on that we don’t get to see. But there is a lot happening in places we forget to look. For example, any soil is an entire ecosystem, containing a variety of small and…