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Oddbills 2
This occasional series began recently here. It seeks to celebrate some especially wonderful and unexpected bird bills; all bills are pretty amazing organs, but some really do make us open our mouths in...
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As the Sun Sets on 2012...
It is traditional to review the year that is about to slip below the horizon (as my friend Martin from The House of Fran_Mart has done so comprehensively here), and I was tempted to do so, but in...
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... and the Sun Rises on 2013
Well, maybe it's a bit predictable, but it does seem appropriate to complement my symbolic sunsets from last time with some equally symbolic sunrises to mark the beginning of what I hope will be a...
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Australia; a backwater for backfangs
We have long known that Australia is fundamentally different from the rest of the world with regard to its mammal fauna and its flora. More recently we've accepted that the majority of our Passerine...
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On This Day, 5 January; the big wet
As I write this, it's 38 degrees C outside (and in my study!), about 10 degrees above our long-term average maximum for January. In many places in south-eastern Australia it's well over 40 at present....
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Black Thoughts
Last month I foreshadowed an occasional series on colours, starting with white. It seems logical that the next instalment should be white's opposite - black. While white is produced when all...
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Sometimes Nature Really IS Black and White! #1
Maybe it doesn't happen to you, but I often find I'm not really in control of what I write. OK, you may well agree that you've noticed that, but what I actually mean is that I sit down with a topic in...
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Sometimes Nature Really IS Black and White! #2
I began this train of thought in my last post, and am picking up the thread here. There we focussed on animals which use the visibility of black juxtaposed with white to draw attention to themselves,...
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Two Beautiful Heads are Better than One
It's a rule of taxonomy that no two animals or plants can have the same genus name, for obvious reasons of clarity. However there is nothing to prevent a plant and an animal genus from being...
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On This Day, 18 January; When Canberra Burned
On this day exactly ten years ago – 18 January 2003, a date branded into Canberrans’ minds – the unimaginable happened. Bushfires of incredible intensity crashed into the south-western suburbs and in...
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Bark Codes; or Barking Up the Right Tree
The oozing of sap from the trunk is not the first - or probably 10th - thing I'd think of when asked to characterise eucalypts, but early Europeans certainly did. Abel Tasman back in 1642 in van...
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Playa Espumilla; where Darwin walked
A highlight of my recent life was a week in the Galápagos Archipelago; so much to say about that, but for now I'd just like to share an amazing morning's experience on Santiago Island - not that much...
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Entebbe Botanic Gardens
When I visited Uganda a couple of years ago I absolutely loved the country. My introduction to it was Entebbe Botanic Gardens, where I walked on my very first morning there. On that walk I discovered...
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Sturt National Park; dry, distant and dramatic
It's a Sydney conceit to think of anywhere west of the Blue Mountains (ie less than 100 kilometres from the sea) as 'western New South Wales'. Sturt National Park however fully merits the description....
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Nature Red in Feather and Leg
Time for another instalment in the ongoing saga of postings on colour in nature. Animals and plants wear red - like black and white that we discussed previously - to be noticed. Crimson Chat Epthianura...
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Redness in Plants
Continuing the theme of red in nature, today's the turn of plants. As with animals, plants generally show red to be noticed. Probably the most obvious manifestation of this is in flowers; the entire...
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Taken as Red; more on plants
Any flower pollinated by animals needs to be seen; red is a good way to achieve that. Having been pollinated, the next function of the flower is to form a fruit, which both protects the developing...
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From Puerto Montt to Puerto Chacabuco; water, mountains and beauty
I'm not a sea person by nature - it's definitely not my element - but I love boat trips, and one I can highly recommend is the 20 hours on Navimag's ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Chacabuco in...
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An Australian Treasure; the National Botanic Gardens
This is the second in an irregular series on botanic gardenswhich I regard as special.Part of the entrance garden, opposite the Australian National University.To the right can be seen large mature...
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On This Day, 17 February; three biological birthdays
Actually, only one of today's three birthday boys was an Australian biologist, but all three live on in the names of familiar Australian organisms. They were three very different people indeed, in...
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