Wildlife and Landscape Pics

[Caroluna]

Here are some really cool ones I’ve stumbled on recently and had to share.

This 80,000-Year-Old Aspen Grove Clones Itself

“The oldest living organism in the world is 80,000 years old, and clones itself. Known as Pando, and nicknamed The Trembling Giant, this organism is a single grove of Quaking Aspen trees in Utah.”

The following are screen shots from a video of some Pileated Woodpeckers. The chicks are adorably ugly, like baby dinosaurs!

ML440601 - Pileated Woodpecker - Macaulay Library

Here is a website where that video, and many others, can be found. I struggled to decide what adjective to put in front of the word “website”.
“Amazing” “Mind-boggling” “Fascinatingly educational” “Black Hole of Online Distraction”

Macaulay Library

OK, your turn! I know there’s some nature photographers out there

[Caroluna]

This is from a tumblr which points out some of the weirder creatures in the world and says, “Hey Evolution, uh, really?!”
Caution, some of the pics are kinda gross (but I mean that in the nicest possible way)
http://wtfevolution.tumblr.com/

“I really don’t want anyone to eat this wattle cup caterpillar.”

“Sure, evolution, that’s understandable.”

“I’m going to put some huge spikes on it.”

“Okay.”

“Now I’m going to put more spikes on the spikes.”

“… okay.”

“And I’ll make them sting!”

“Fair.”

“And I’ll color the whole thing like a bad acid trip.”

“That might be overkill, but all right. I guess you really like this one. I bet it’ll be especially beautiful once it metamorphoses into a butterfly, huh?”

“What? Oh, no, this one doesn’t turn into a butterfly. It’s a hairy brown moth.”

Source: brisbaneinsects.com
Hairy brown moth here

http://www1.ala.org.au/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=21431

[Caroluna]

I just read a review of this book in the New York Times and was so fascinated that I clicked right over to Amazon.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/science/flights-of-winged-majesty-review-of-the-unfeathered-bird.html?_r=0

The review at NYT includes a separate link where you can get a close look at some of the illustrations.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/12/science/12scibook-unfeathered-bird-zoomer.html?ref=science

Look at the trachea on this bird!!! It must have a very low voice. Over to Youtube to find out.

Some of the review

@James Gorman at the New York Times

In the acknowledgments to her unsettling and irresistible book, “The Unfeathered Bird,” Katrina van Grouw pauses in her listing of names to say, “I must assure readers that no birds were harmed during the making of this book.”

It seems an odd disclaimer for a collection of bird drawings, until you look at the drawings. The birds in this book are not merely unfeathered, they are also skinned, skeletal and sometimes — to serve the presentation of a skull or a wing, a tongue or a trachea — disassembled.

Then they are drawn and described in the text, with great skill and attention to the details — of their structure, their evolution and their lives — and with a slightly wicked sense of humor that appears often enough to lift the book beyond another compendium of bird life.
A certain amount of mischief is inherent in the plan of the book. The birds, sometimes muscled, sometimes only skeletons, all drawn from real specimens that either died accidentally or were already preserved in collections, are posed as they might have been in life — flying, standing, walking.[…]

A good example is the kink in the heron’s neck, compellingly drawn and well-explained, as “the result of a single elongated vertebra that attaches to its neighbors at a right angle instead of end to end.” Why? “The kink forms a sort of hinge mechanism, enabling the bird to lunge forward with lightning speed and astonishing precision.”[…]

The resulting drawings, detailed and monochromatic, will please those with a taste for the mildly grotesque. I particularly loved the red-and-green macaw […] drawn with most of its skin removed, but it retains its musculature, scaly feet, and piercing eyes that stare directly at you as it perches on one leg, holding a pencil to its beak with its other foot. The stare seems to demand a response, but I had no idea what to say.