All My Blogs

Franklin's ground squirrel at Wabamun Provincial Park, Alberta I thought I was familiar with most of the squirrels in Canada.  It turns out that I have never seen or heard about one called Franklin's ground squirrel.   It is not that common, appearing in a narrow swath across central Alberta, across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and down into the prairie regions of the central states.  I saw this one near the extent of its western range in Wabamun Provincial Park.   Franklin's ground squirrels used to be fairly common in Alberta.  However, their numbers have been steadily declining due to habitat loss and population fracturing.  The prairie that it once thrived in has been converted to farms, towns, and roadways.  Most sightings now occur in protected areas, which is exactly where I saw this one.  As the areas where it lives constrict, there will be less and less genetic variation and the fewer numbers will likely produce inbreeding, a situ...

Canadian tiger swallowtail (and one pale swallowtail) butterflies near Dutch Lake, Clearwater, BC. I have seen this before, in fact, many times.  I wrote a similar blog on this subject here .  Butterflies on dirt, proboscis extended, probing the substrate for something.  But what? It turns out that many butterflies do this.  The soil they are on is usually damp.  The tiny tube, called a proboscis, has an internal diameter of less than 0.04 mm (about 40 microns).  To give you an idea how narrow this is, you couldn't insert a human hair into it; it's too narrow.   One advantage of the extremely narrow gauge of the proboscis is that fluids will naturally climb it through a process known as capillary action.  There is also a small muscular organ called the cibarial pump.  This is found in many sucking insects; it creates a low-pressure area at the end of the tube that facilitates fluid motion.  The combination of the two pulls liquids t...

Judolia instabilis , the unstable longhorn beetle, photographed in Clearwater, BC. The word "unstable" can be taken several ways.  If you have over-indulged with alcohol, you may be unstable in your walking or driving.  If your emotions get the better of you and you become a ranting machine, some may call you unstable.  I suppose the term could be used if a stable in a barn was converted into another purpose - as in, the chicken coop is an unstable, versus being unstable because of shoddy construction.  I don't think any of these terms apply to the fellow in the photo. The term unstable is used to describe the varied patterns found on this species of beetle.  It turns out that the colouration and mottling vary wildly.  The beetle may be completely black, be a pale cream colour with black spots, be black with pale cream spots, and the spots are different sizes, shapes, and locations. I did an image search for the beetle and took a screenshot of the result; y...

Danielle and Trish - two of the students in my special needs program at Garibaldi, 2006 Trisha Parsons, a student of mine while I was teaching at Garibaldi Secondary School in Maple Ridge, has passed away.  I got the news yesterday, and my heart sank.  It's still hard to believe, her face, so clear in my mind, and her lively spirit, are gone.  Not the memories, mind you, but the hope for her future now lies in pieces.   That hope is what drives teachers.  Each child we engage with represents a future, a life, that we have been given to shape as best we can.  Trisha was no exception to that, although she had CP (cerebral palsy), which limited her physically.  In spite of her immediate challenges, she made every effort to be the best she could.  She loved others, was loved, and had a great deal of potential we were all meant to unlock. I cannot speak to what her life looked like after high school.  I have not been in contact with her for o...

Flamingo, great egret, oyster catcher, American robin.  All photos taken by me. You've seen it.  A bird, perching on a single leg.  But why are they doing it?  It's not something we do, or any other bipedal organisms for that matter.  Ever see a kangaroo standing on one leg?  What about primates, pangolins, certain rodents (kangaroo rat), or even dinosaurs (many theropods were bipedal, not that we have evidence that they ever stood on one leg)? There are two main reasons that birds stand on one leg.  The first has to do with maintaining body heat.  Legs have no feathering (mostly, there are a few species that do have feathery legs), and the bare skin will experience significant heat loss.  By tucking a leg up into the lower breast feathers, a bird can cut the heat loss from the legs by half. The second reason has to do with resting.  It takes energy to stand.  The birds can rest one leg while the other does the work.  They will...

  It's been a busy week.  We have gone through boxes of stuff we haven't looked at since we moved (5 years ago) and pulled out things that weren't going to be missed, which was most of it.  If you haven't used it in five years, you probably don't need it. The problem is that maybe nobody else needs it either.  Such is the nature of a garage sale.  Maybe you'll find treasure, or maybe you'll find mostly trash.  And people want what you're selling cheap.  However, we managed to sell about 20% of what we had; the rest will either go into storage or be donated to a thrift store.   This is probably my 20th garage sale.  I used to have one every year, then it slowly changed to once every couple of years.  Now it has been half a decade since my last one.  The upside is that I now have some room to create some space.  I will be listing some of the stuff, like the cameras, on Marketplace.  It's more of a pain, but it will also...