“I think he’ll be to Rome/As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it/By sovereignty of nature.” Coriolanus, William Shakespeare The more common name for this bird is osprey, but it also is known as a sea hawk or fish hawk. Osprey have a wide distribution across North America and are found along the coasts […]
Seahawk (Osprey) Pandion haliaetus Read More »
his isle abounds with an infinite number of fowl, as Fulmar, Lavy, Falk, Bowger, etc.—A Late Voyage to St. Kilda, Martin Martin (1698). The northern fulmar is a pelagic bird of the northern oceans – it spends the vast majority of its life at sea and only comes to land to breed. They are related
Northern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) Read More »
Fish gotta swim and bird gotta fly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another. –Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. These are among the most common invertebrates in the environment but are rather inconspicuous because of their size. They are about 1/16th to 1/8th inch long, have three pairs of legs, a moderately long
Springtails (subclass Collembola) Read More »
Great horny toads!! — Yosemite Sam Generally known as horned toads or horny toads, these are small, squat lizards that have short tails with spines on the head and fringed scales on the sides of the stomach. Nostrils are present in the front of a blunt snout – the tail is about one third of the
Greater Short-Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi) Read More »
Platypus? I thought it was pronounced platymapus. Has it always been pronounced platypus? –Jessica Simpson One of the informal rules of OOTW is that I had to have seen the critter or plant, but we’re bending the rule a bit in honor of Steve in the Seattle office who is soon moving to Australia. And
Duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchos anatinus) Read More »