he great gray owl is a large bird – the longest owl in the world – but not the heaviest. Adults are 24-33 inches long with a five-foot-long wingspan. They have a noticeably rounded face and yellow eyes. Their thick feathers make them appear much larger than their body – in general, the more common […]
Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa) Read More »
This is an eastern U.S. fish – I went to undergraduate (NJ) and graduate school (MD) back east and worked back there for another 8 years (with one summer in AK) before I landed back in Seattle for good, so I’ll throw in some interesting eastern species now and then. The Percidae family includes the
Chesapeake logperch (Percia bimaculata) Read More »
Well, it’s unlikely Allisa is going to cover this one during her Seattle Audubon Master Bird Classes. This is the Hoatzin, a resident of the Amazon Basin and Orinco Delta in South America. The genus Opisthocomus comes from the Greek meaning “wearing long hair behind”. Ok then. This refers to the punk hairdo – or crest. This
Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) Read More »
Manaova toy ny dian-tana jerena ny aloha, todihina ny afara. Like the chameleon, one eye on the future, one eye on the past. ———-Malagasy proverb This is another one of many endemic reptiles found on Madagascar. It has a very restricted range, depending on relatively intact humid forests in a band of the southeast portion
OShaughnessy’s Chameleon (Calumma oshaughnessyi) Read More »
When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a globe he doesn’t notice that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it. – Albert Einstein. These are black beetles about 0.2 – 0.8 inches in size. The Family Tenebrionidae includes a number of genera and species that
Darkling Beetle (Eleodes spp.) Read More »