The days of yore, part one

Okay, I admit it: I have no idea what the hell “yore” is. But since it’s not the season for nature photography, I’m hearkening (yeah, ditto) back to a time when it was. That I’m intending to make this an occasional habit is indicated by the ‘part one’ in the title…

This past summer, a tree alongside the house played host to a fairly common sight, which read more

But how? Part five: Life!

Walkabout podcast – But how? Part 5

Having taken a break longer than I should’ve, we now return to the “But how?” series of posts that examine how things might work if we stop using religion as a default explanation. Our topic for this evening is “life.”

It is admittedly hard to believe that such a thing could come about on its own, dictated only by the simple read more

Too cool, part 12: Won’t fit in the bag


Courtesy of NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day, I present one of the most interesting examples of unintuitive physics: the curvature of spacetime to produce a gravitational lens. The ring that you see here is not the shock wave from a supernova affecting the surrounding gases, as I first read more

Amateur naturalism, part four


I didn’t initially intend it this way, but we’ve been working through a scale of increasing difficulty and effort in this series, starting with insects, then working through birds, read more

Book Review: Big Bang

This was a book that, I admit, wasn’t on my reading list, but when I came across a copy I began reading it out of interest. It is a credit to the author that I stayed with it, and chose to throw it into the review lineup.

Big Bang by Simon Singh is named in a very straightforward way, read more

Amateur naturalism, part three


Our next topic in the series is reptiles – you can also refer back to the posts about insects and birds if you like.

Reptiles (and amphibians, which I’ll also refer to here but will use the same term for each just for convenience) are perhaps the most misunderstood of animal classes, which is unfortunate because they’re actually pretty cool. They become more prevalent with warmer read more

Drop the ‘Straight’

I used to think the column “The Straight Dope” was pretty good, and well researched. I was first introduced to it about twenty years ago, when it was carried in the local independent newspaper called, for some unknown reason, The Independent (this is a local publication, not the British one.) Many years later, I found it online, and made a habit of stopping by semi-regularly read more

I wonder why?

Yesterday, I had a visitor, who turned out to be (as most knocks on the door are anymore) someone who wanted to introduce me to god. The last couple of times that this happened, it was some Wally Cleaver types in white shirts and ties, which spells either mormons or jehovahs, and I wasn’t in any kind of mood then to open the debate, so I chased them off with obvious amusement. This time, however, read more

Sylvan Heights continued

And so, our saga resumes where it left off, with our heroes trapped within the confines of a completely non-treacherous and non-threatening bird park…

As I mentioned before, Sylvan Heights Bird Park provides great opportunities for close encounters, and to the photographer, the urge to do personal portraits of the birds is practically irresistible. read more

Too cool, part 11: Sylvan Heights Bird Park


As I indicated in the previous post, we had a trip planned that might produce some new images, and while I’d like to build the suspense to the point of frustration, I find this a hard thing to do, especially when I lead the post off with a header photo. So yes, we did get some useful stuff, and this will be another multiple post.

Nature photographers, as well as amateur naturalists and simply read more

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