For the past several weeks, I’ve been getting messages in the WordPress dashboard about my site’s PHP version being beyond security updates, and that I should switch to a newer one. No sweat the host has this easily accessible and lists numerous versions I can switch to. Only, the moment I do, any of them, the blog site goes down.
This is generally an indication that something on the
Nothing too exciting this week, so I’m making up for it by providing several different things – quantity instead of quality, the bywords of the US.
Let’s start with one that I discovered while mowing, and thus had to resort to the smutphone to capture, which once again convinced me how much they suck.
The mantids have not been highly visible on the property, and
Because I’m a supporter of George Hrab’s Geologic podcast, I receive his weekly newsletter, and the one from July 5th [yes, this sat in editing limbo for a bit] contained an article on superstition that he’d written for the James Randi Educational Foundation back in 2008. I’d done a post myself
Last night I took The Girlfriend out to the side of the driveway (livin’ large, you know it!) because the previous evening I’d found that the overgrown spot was loaded with newborn Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) all sleeping on the tall weeds there. Not quite as many there last night, seven as opposed to the eight that I’d seen the night before, but it was still
Today marked another opportunity to capture a transit, and this time, we had clear skies and I kept the timing straight in my head and everything. The target was the Tiangong space station, China’s own entry into low-Earth-orbit experiments and observations, and the waning crescent moon. I checked everything,
Last week’s Find was still fresh on the, um, server memory thingy, whatever, when I got the first clips of this week’s. A few days later I was able to add to the stock, so we have a couple of days worth of observations, which also added in the number of other species appearing. So without further ado:
Now, this was not a total surprise, because we’d been down at the neighbor’s
Sure, this was the weekly topic three years ago, but who says it can’t be resurrected?
I mentioned a few days ago that I could illustrate something better, and now I’m keeping my promise. We’ll start with an image from several years back, with new annotations.
With the light angle of approaching 1st quarter, waxing crescent now, Theophilus crater stands
The other evening I was out, for some reason without the camera, and witnessed something that I knew was going on from time to time, but usually too far off to do anything useful about. I debated about specifically trying for some pics, which would require a nighttime stakeout, but never got beyond the contemplation stage.
Then tonight, I lucked out a bit.
North American raccoons
The other night I checked out the waste can outside the door to Walkabout Studios, otherwise known as the Magic Bucket of Variety (the can, not the studios,) to find that it had snagged yet another capture. This one was a small-ish wolf spider (Genus Lycosidae) and I noticed as I tipped it out that it looked a little odd. A closer inspection told me why, and once again I got the camera in hand.
I don’t know, I think this was three nights ago, I just didn’t post it then. But while doing something else in the yard, I went past a dog fennel plant that was starting to get a little tall and found this:
Now, “a little tall” is relative to the surrounding grasses, which weren’t topping 20cm, but this was a bit less than a meter in height, and far
