Yesterday afternoon when I got home I checked out the red-tailed hawk nest across the canyon and didn’t see anybody home. Then I started scanning the trees on both sides of the canyon to see if the parents were around. While I was looking the dad flew in with prey and perched on the top…
I’m famous!
Well, fame is all relative, right? VICE magazine’s May 2015 issue is focused on environmental crises of various kinds. One of the feature articles is on sea star wasting, which I’ve blogged about before, beginning in September 2013. The author of the VICE article, Nathaniel Rich, came out to the marine lab and interviewed me…
Almost branchers
Our red-tailed hawk chicks are sooo close to fledging now! I’ve been told that the tree-nesting raptors usually first leave the nest to hop around on branches; hence they’re called “branchers.” This afternoon I watched the chicks and was able to catch some of the maneuvering, which included hopping around the edge of the nest….
When is a tube worm not a tube worm?
Answer: When it’s a snail! Yes, there are snails that secrete and live in white calcareous tubes that look very similar to those of serpulid polychaete worms. Here, see for yourself: The worms secrete calcareous tubes that snake over whatever surface they’re attached to. When the worm is relaxed, it extends its delicate pinnate feeding…
A naturalist goes in the field
This morning I took a small group of Seymour Center volunteers on a tidepooling trip to Point Piños (see red arrow in the photo below). Point Piños is a very interesting site. It marks the boundary between Monterey Bay to the right (east) of the point and the mighty Pacific Ocean to the left (west). As…
Practice makes perfect
The red-tailed hawk chicks across the canyon from us continue to practice their flapping, preparing to take their eventual first flights. We frequently see one of the chicks standing up in the nest, flapping away and whacking its sibling in the head. They’re too big now for both to be flapping at the same time….
Timing is everything
This morning I went here (see arrow): See how it’s covered in water? I took this picture at about 13:00, probably right at high tide. And of course when I was out there this morning at 06:00, it was low tide. It wasn’t the greatest of low tides but it allowed me to see what…
Pre-flight calisthenics
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…
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…