This is Diego. He is a Phidippus johnsoni jumping spider, and he lives on a jade plant in my front yard. There are several spiders of this species that can be found on the jade plant on any given day, but I know when it’s Diego I’ve spotted. Adult males of this species are around […]
Animals
One morning a few years ago, I woke to find I had lost most of the hearing in my left ear. In place of my usual acoustic environment was a high electronic ringing—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—as if a giant TV had been left on mute. Me being me, I assumed the issue would work itself out, but when […]
I have never fallen into quicksand, but like most people, I have been anxious about it at least several times in my life. You have too, right? It’s a real thing — you can be sucked down into the soft liquefied Earth unexpectedly, on hikes or on random walks. One of my friends fell into […]
In the last two years I’ve had a number of stressful experiences. And every time I’ve realized: I am really suffering, but this is a very normal experience. People do these things all the time. How did I not realize how amazingly tough all these people are? For example: my parents both died, about 7 […]
In a few weeks, the back fence by the elementary school with be a place where migrants gather themselves before they leave. The fence is popular because of its temperature and the protection it offers. The sun hits the fence from mid-morning until late afternoon in May, and so many years of sun has turned […]
I write to tell you that I am always surrounded by animals. The woods are thick enough with pine and oak trees that I can barely see my neighbors’ houses, so sometimes I like to imagine that I have no human neighbors, and the only creatures sharing the woods with my family are nonhuman. The […]
I’ve been following a wild animal sightings page for a couple years and it started with useful game cam shots and pictures of tracks, a place a wildlife biologist might pause while scrolling. Lately I see more from hunters hoisting lifeless bags of fur in their arms, which is a form of sighting, though I […]
Colony: Punta Tombo, Chubut, Argentina Date: 9 November Site: RFID B Nest: 708H Nest type: Burrow, northwest-facing, mid-slope, concealed from above Penguin: Male, toe-tag no. 14113/RFID no. 37189 Device: AX3 accelerometer no. 99290, day three of a five-day deployment Nest Contents: Two eggs Notes: Purpose is to ground truth time-stamped accelerometry data from AX3 with […]
