Category: plants

Readers’ wildlife photos

September 9, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today I’m stealing (with permission) some photos from Professor Scott Ritchie of Cairns, Australia. Scott’s IDs and captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. (Scott’s Facebook page is here.). I’ve inserted the Latin binomials and links to the bird page.

Well, it’s my turn to post some pics from the Daintree Boatman Wildlife Cruises. Good fun with Rebecca, Jon Westaway and Eden Gray-Spence ES.

Green Pygmy Geese (Nettapus pulchellus) playing tag at Ferrero Road:

Sacred Kingfisher (Todiramphus sanctus) searches for a prawn:

Green Tree Snake (Dendrelaphis punctulatus) chills out:

Female Papuan Frogmouth (Podargus papuensis)  just gives us the eye:

Bird on a stick series. Amazing how close we got to this Azure Kingfisher (Ceyx azureus):

And he showed us his “Fake eye spots” designed to instil indecision in predators sneaking up from behind:

Azure KF with spider lily:

Azure KF with mangrove pneumatophores:

Such a lovely couple!:

Nankeen Night Heron (Nycticorax caledonicus):

Little Kingfisher (Ceyx pusillus) looking for Peter Manins:

Great-Billed Heron (Ardea sumatrana) and interesting mangrove roots:

I tried some blur shots (1/15 sec.) on Cattle Egrets (Bulbulcus sp.) at the roost tree:

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 23, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today’s photos are from Dean Graetz, who’s compiled various assorted photos, each with a story. Click on the photos to enlarge them; Dean’s stories and captions are indented.

Photos with a Story

Photography makes my life interesting.  I photograph scenes that look interesting and then explore the story they have to tell.  Almost always, the story is far more interesting than my photograph.  Here are eight examples of photos and their story.

This is the most beautiful flower I know. It is a dry country ephemeral and its (arterial) blood-red flowers are stunning. It is much loved and cultivated under the name Sturts Desert Pea (Swainsona formosa).  Its story is from the ‘Dreamtime’ mythology of Aboriginal people.  A young women (and child) who were promised to a Warrior eloped with another man: an act punishable by death.  The vengeful jilted Warrior tracked them, and at night, killed all three.  At dawn, he was horrified to find these flowers growing where blood had been spilt.  No matter where he fled, dawn relentlessly revealed the persecuting blood flowers, displaying his crime and eventually destroying him.:

The story of this ‘cute’ image is a technological one.  The water-repellent waxy cuticle of this sturdy leaf forces the rain drops to coalesce and form slightly-flattened spherical globules.  Each globule now acts as a lens visibly enlarging details of the underlying leaf surface.  A natural microscope.  In the1670s, an amateur Dutch scientist, Leeuwenhoek, made the first microscope using simple glass beads—a globule lookalike—as lenses.  His invention significantly and irreversibly enhanced human observing power and began the critical science of microbiology.  Since before and after, with raindrops and waxy leaves, Nature continues to demonstrate its small-scale microscopes:

A near-spherical, balanced granite rock poses three questions: why round, why balanced, and how did it get there?  Roundness is a granite characteristic because it (exfoliate) weathers in large slivers (see LHS edge below) like a peeling orange.  The rock is balanced because a line through its centre of mass passes through the contact area with the base rock – thus perfectly vertical.  Because there is no hard rock connection between the balanced and its base, how did it get there?  The geological answer is a step-wise process beginning with the cooling and cracking of liquid magma, millions to billions of years ago, then chemical weathering of hard rock to less resistant material, and finally the eroding away of the softer material.  So, the balanced rock in the picture is the remnant core of very, very much larger volume of granite now removed – like the pit/stone of a peach.  It is difficult to accept this explanation because we just cannot grasp the vast expanse of time involved, but the circumstantial geological evidence is there:

A female Leaf Curling Spider (Phonognatha graeffei) hidden by the structure she built, waits for the vibrations of flying insects struggling in her web.  This one species, though common, has an uncommon set of behaviours such as selecting a leaf, curling and silking it into shape, then hauling it up from ground level and centring it into a funnelling web.  The sexes cohabit in separate locations within the sheltering leaf.  This spider’s story raises the usual two questions.  The Why question is easy – because it obviously works.  The species is sufficiently abundant to be labelled Common.  How could such a strategy come to be?  There is the usual blind faith assertion of Big G’s intelligent design.  Or the reasoned argument that because the behaviour is instinctive, not learned, then it must be heritable and therefore likely variable.  Thereafter, Nature will relentlessly reward the strategy that ‘works best’, as it has done here:

This is a difficult photo to interpret.  I was shooting straight up into the sky.  The uppermost layer is actually a shelf or ledge projecting out over the lower rock wall.  The story here is based on two features.  There are two very different rock types with a very sharp boundary between the two.  The upper layer appears to have been smeared over the lower.  The upper is a layer of rocky ‘rubbish’, materials of diverse types and sizes jumbled together.  It looks like what a bulldozer blade might push up.  The bulldozer here was a glacier.  The timing was about 720 million years ago when this part of the Australian continent was located at the Equator.  Now known as the Sturtian Glaciation, it began the speculation that planet Earth may once have been Snowball Earth.  Geological timing and ages are always thought-provoking:

This magnificently gaudy grasshopper introduces an intriguing story.  Locally known as Leichhardt’s Grasshopper (Petasida ephippigera), its flamboyant colouring says, ‘don’t eat me’.  It is not common, found only on certain plants in three areas of northern Australia.  The intriguing story is about Leichhardt, a young man seeking fame and fortune as an explorer and naturalist.  Which he did with his 1845 expedition (4000 km, 2500 m, 443 days long).  On that long walk, he encountered and described this grasshopper species noting their abundance.  Subsequently, he achieved lasting fame with his 1848 expedition to span the East to West coasts of the continent (4000 km, 2500 m), an expedition that completely disappeared without a trace.  Interestingly, so did the namesake grasshopper.  It was assumed extinct until positively identified more than a hundred years after their 1845 description of abundance.  I photographed this one in the same type of country where Leichhardt first saw them.  This was a minor thrill because I had long known the story and had speculated where in Australia’s deserts the 1848 Leichhardt party had ‘done a perish’:

Kenya (30 years ago): Day1.  Field work with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).  My local (Kikuyu) Assistants are using my soil colour charts to determine the colour classification of their skin.  I had explained to them that Melanin determined the skin colour of all humans: colour variation was in the amount and packaging.  My sermon concluded with the statement that no people were Black.  Very dark Brown: Yes.  But not the derogatory Black.  My two Assistants agreed but were quite sure that the Maasai were Black.  I knew that the Kikuyu disliked the Maasai and thought this statement reflected cultural bias, not fact.  Nobody was Black!:

Kenya: Day2.  UNEP added a young woman to the fieldwork.  Neither of us knew why.  A young American non-scientist, who was very excited to be out in the African Bush.  My concern was that bra-less may be comfortable but potentially unwise.  Come noon, universal lunchtime, with the wonderful lunch packs the tourist hotels provided.  Right on time, two Maasai appeared, both armed, announced by my retreating Assistants as “Trouble, Bwana, trouble!”  I did think then that it could turn into an SOS moment (aka Shit!  Oh!  Shit!).  However, it was peacefully resolved by international trade.  The two Maasai agreed to one photograph and a swift departure for two unopened lunch boxes, one Australian and one American.  She thought it was all thrilling.  I was both hungry and wrong.  The skin colour of one Maasai was the darkest I had ever seen.  But Black?  I plead selective breeding because the Maasai value Black as a spiritual ‘strong’ colour and that could influence mate choice.  My Kikuyu Assistants were delighted that they knew more than the Bwana:

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 13, 2026 • 8:30 am

Please send in wildlife ph0tos if you have some good ones.  This feature has become pretty intermittent.

Today’s wildlife photos come from reader Jan Malik, who sent bird photos taken in Poland. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

In July, I had an opportunity to hike in the northern, Polish section of the Tatra Mountains. This part of this alpine range is probably less biodiverse than the substantially larger Slovak part, where a large portion of the slopes are south-facing. Still, I saw a few animals—both vertebrates and invertebrates—that were new to me.

A sample of the habitat at the entrance to a valley in the limestone Western Tatras:

Just as I stopped by this creek to eat my breakfast on the go, a bird appeared, forcing me to postpone consumption and switch to photography mode. The bird was a male Grey wagtail (Motacilla cinerea), which in its breeding plumage is actually bright yellow. He was hopping lively on the cliff, collecting arthropods to feed his chicks. The white, woolly-looking flower by the wagtail is the emblematic Edelweiss (Leontopodium nivale), a hallmark of limestone alpine mountains (it grows only on basic substrates). The flower’s woolly appearance may be an adaptation to low temperatures and intense ultraviolet radiation:

The wagtail disappeared for a moment and then returned, having fed his chicks. Its flight is highly undulated, and when resting it, well, wags its tail vigorously:

Another successful hunting run finished, and the wagtail is ready to return to his nest with a beak full of insects. Judging by their opaque wings and long antennae, these are caddisflies (order Trichoptera):

The wagtail left, and just as I was going to resume my hike, another bird landed on the same spot—a good lookout in the middle of the creek. This was a White-throated dipper (Cinclus cinclus), a close relative of our American dipper, which I had once searched for in vain in the American Southwest (Zion National Park and the like). This genus is unique among songbirds in that it is mostly aquatic when feeding. It nests close to the banks of fast-flowing streams and forages by wading and diving underwater in search of arthropods, sometimes using its wings for underwater propulsion if the current gets too strong. I think in this picture the bird holds a caddisfly larva (stripped of its protective debris case) and possibly a couple of adult caddisflies.

Dipper females and males are monomorphic, and both sexes sport a white bib, which their American cousins lack:

Apart from a nearly identical body structure, what they have in common with our American dipper (or, as some say, the water ouzel) is a white upper eyelid, visible when the bird blinks. Unlike wagtails, they fly in a dead straight line, patrolling and defending their stretches of waterways:

For the next 20 minutes I watched the bird collect food above and under water, but capturing its underwater feeding was harder than I thought, with the bird being restless and the autofocus being thrown off by the turbulent water. They usually start nesting as soon as the water is free of ice, which in this location can be mid-April. If they are still nesting in July, it may mean they are raising a second brood:

They are called “dippers” because of their habit of bowing and bobbing. While they are songbirds, I didn’t hear any calls, but I read they do call and sing, like any songbirds. It is reasonable to assume that, since they live in the fairly noisy environments of fast mountain creeks, they communicate visually via displays like wing-quivering. It was a real treat to see these birds in action, especially in the crowded environment of Tatra National Park, which sees more than 5 million visitors annually. To put it in perspective, that is more visitors, in a much smaller area, than Yellowstone National Park receives. During my 30-minute impromptu birding session, an incessant stream of people kept streaming into the valley right behind my back, but the birds were completely habituated to the human presence:

After ascending for a while, I reached the krummholz and alpine meadow zone. A notable distinction between this and a similar zone in the Adirondacks of NY or the White Mountains of NH was the presence of a specialized high-altitude dwarf mountain pine (Pinus mugo), forming dense thickets. In the US, these zones feature dwarf, bonsai-like variations of spruce and balsam fir from the boreal forest zone:

I noticed a little commotion in the dwarf pine thicket; it was a fledgling following its parent, begging to be fed:

After a while, the adult bird appeared. It was, I believe, a Black redstart female (Phoenicurus ochruros); the “black” part comes from the male’s coloration. They nest in rocky areas across Eurasia;

Comparing the Tatra Mountains to mountain ranges in the US Northeast, it is surprising that, even though the Tatras are about 5 degrees closer to the North Pole and higher (I believe the last three pictures were taken almost at 6,000 feet altitude), they are more biodiverse.

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 7, 2026 • 8:30 am

Today’s photos come from Miriam Meyerhoff, who responded to my call for readers to send it photo. (That call, by the way, still exists!). Miram’s captions are indented and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

In June we spent a week in Orkney (Mainland and Westray) to see neolithic sites and some wildlife. I’m not good at photographing birds (and I just have an iPhone) so I have photos of puffins, some fulmars and lots of plants.

On the Mainland of Orkney, we visited Skara Brae and various stone circles. Skara Brae was first inhabited about 3100 BCE. The homes had built-in furniture (kind of like Frank Lloyd Wright did with his houses) with a dresser of shelves opposite the door and beds built into the walls on the right and left walls:

On Westray, we walked for about an hour with a local guide, Megan of Wild Orkney Walks. Megan was extremely knowledgeable about plants and wildlife and is deeply concerned about the impact of over-fishing on the Orkney sea birds.

It turns out puffins (Fratercula sp.) are not at all scared of people and will let you come very close:

They nested alongside fulmars on the cliffs. Fulmars  (Fulmaris sp.) are not gulls, they are in the same family as albatrosses and petrels. Apparently, fulmars can defend themselves by spewing up a foul smelling oily mess and spitting it at you. The first syllable ful- is cognate with the word foul on account of this habit:

The clifftops we walked along had many plants that were new to me. Sea thrift (Armeria maritima, aka sea pinks) and red campion and sea campion  as well as meadowsweet [flowers in order]:

There was also an impressive selection of different thistles. I think this was a cruel thistle (Cersium ferox):

Along the roadside there were masses of marsh orchids, hogweed, and yellow flags were still in bloom (flowers in order):

Wild roses (Rosa rugosa) were also in bloom. I didn’t know you can eat the petals. They taste a bit like glycerin to me:

Back on the mainland, the oddest plant I saw was Cottonweed. The seed heads do produce something very like cotton wool:

But the most beautiful (to me) was the smallest flower on a clifftop near Yesnaby, sea milkwort. I gather it is quite common in the northern hemisphere, but I didn’t grow up here. I loved how simultaneously tough and dainty it manages be.

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 16, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today’s plant photos come from Rik Gern of Austin, Texas.  Rik’s captions and IDs are indented and, as always, you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Here are a few odds and ends from around my neighborhood for you.

When it’s the leaves fill out in the Summertime the Chinaberry Tree (Melia Azedarach) is pretty nondescript, but in the Winter when all that’s visible are the branches and berries, it is interesting and looks like it could have been designed by Dr. Seuss. The Chinaberry Tree is an introduced species, but is quite popular in this area:

The berries look like small wrinkled white grapes, but are hard as stones:

Here is another picture of the full tree, this time in black and white:

Another introduced species, originally from the Mediterranean, Rue (Ruta graveolens) is very popular with home gardeners:

Goldshower (Galphimia Glauca) hails from neighboring Mexico, but does quite well in the region:

This scrappy little plant is indigenous. It’s called a Silverleaf Nightshade (Solanum elaeagnifolium) due to the color of its flower, but I didn’t get to see it in bloom:

Here it looks like a tomato from a tough neighborhood, but it’s apparently more closely related to the potato:

The last image is a distortion of Chinaberry branches and berries. The clusters of berries made me think of the tinker-toy like models of chemical structures that you used to see in chemistry class, and that got me to thinking of DNA and all the plasticity of expression it allows for. Since this ended up with a vaguely Art Nouveau feel, I’m calling it DNA Nouveau:

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 12, 2026 • 8:15 am

Voilà: my last batch of photos, this time a small selection from Norm Gilinsky, including two species we have in Botany Pond.  Norm’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

All of these photos were taken with an ordinary iPhone on June 1 on the eastern shore of Lake Washington just east of Seattle.

Extravaganza:

Here in the Pacific Northwest, the poikilotherms have come back to life, finding homoiotherms by their sides. This picture, and the others, are from the Kirkland side (east side) of Lake Washington. Mallard ducks (Anas platyrhynchos) and Red-eared Sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans) living the lush life:

Red-eared Sliders close-up:

Red-eared Sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans), ebullient in the late spring warmth. Red-eared Sliders have driven our Western Pond Turtle (Actinemys marmorata) almost to the brink of extinction, but we love them nonetheless:

Afternoon snooze:

We came across this sleepy bunch of Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) just off a walking path in the Lake Washington nearshore wetland. People were gawking at them and photographing them, but they didn’t care. Maybe they even liked the attention:

Lounging Cottontails:

June 1 was a warm one in western Washington this year, and these Eastern Cottontail bunnies (Sylvilagus floridanus) were taking dust baths and lounging. Living life to the max.

Nootka Rose:

One of our native roses (Rosa nutkana). As with all the life form in this set, this Nootka was all puffed up at its showy best:

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 8, 2026 • 8:15 am

Well, this is the last batch of photos I have, and it’s very sad to run out. How far this Ozymandias has decayed!

But today we have lovely flower photos from Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The last two batches of pictures I sent you consisted mostly of images in which a brown earth tone color predominated, so I thought I’d change the pace with a softer and more delicate palette this time.

These pictures were taken in the first few months of the year while taking short walks around the neighborhood in South Austin.

The first pictures are of a blossoming tree, the Mexican Plum (Prunis mexicana). Taking pictures of a tree’s flowers is a different experience from photographing ground  flowers, because it’s more immersive and you feel like you’re stepping into another world. I could live in this world forever!

Mexican Ruella (Ruellia simplex) not only has a beautiful flower, but is a sturdy plant that can survive both drought and flood conditions.

I’d always thought of the beauty below as a Wandering Jew (Tradescantia zebrina), but a search for the Latin name informed me that it is now to be referred to as the *Wandering Dude. The common assumption was that the name referred to Israelites wandering the desert and/or Jews displaced due to persecution, but there was also a 13th century myth of a Jewish man who heckled Jesus while he carried his cross on his way to crucifixion and was then condemned to wander the desert till the second coming. The name “Wandering Jew” is now considered bad because the story of Jesus’ alleged heckler was used to justify anti-Semitism. I had never even heard of the heckler story, so the name seemed benign to me and if anything seemed sympathetic, and the flower seemed like a reminder that even the displaced and wandering can produce beauty. Every Jewish person I’ve mention this to has been surprised and said that they never found the original name offensive. My question is, did the name change protect Jews, or did the Dude culturally appropriate the Jew? Or could the Dude be Jewish? I wonder if we need to consult the Cohen brothers? Whatever you call it, the flowers sure are pretty!

[JAC: I never found the name or the term offensive. In fact, in college I formed a group called “The Wandering Jews,” a group that accepted weird people but did nothing other than that.]

The last flowers are from another tree, the Texas mountain laurel (Dermatophyllum secundiflorum), a hardy plant that smells as good as it looks. Another world I could live in forever!: