Second in this series from rq are plants growing in a bog. I hope she did not get too wet trying to get these pictures for us. They are beautiful and they do illustrate the biodiversity of an acidic bog nicely. There is even a predator here, hidden bellow the fold.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Possibly a plant from the Cyperaceae family
Calluna vulgaris
Calluna vulgaris
Vaccinium vitis-idaea L
Vaccinium vitis-idaea L
We’re on to chapter 4 of Ice Swimmer’s series, Harakka, an Island and today we’re heading toward the water. I’m always drawn to big, open water and these photos show off the sea beautifully. I’ll let Ice Swimmer fill you in on the details.
The western shore of Harakka is visible from Uunisaari and one conversation with Nightjar in the comments of a posting with a picture of Harakka from Uunisaari sparked the idea to go and explore the island.
1. Open Sea in the Southwest, ©Ice Swimmer all rights reserved
There is a path from near the northwestern corner of the Artists’ Building to the other side of the earthworks behind the building. The path leads to cliffs on the western shore of Harakka. When looking southwest from the path one can see some islands, but also open sea.
Terracotta Park, Pointe Claire, Quebec ©voyager, all rights reserved
This photo was taken in a place called Terracotta Natural Park and it’s right in the heart of Pointe Claire. It’s a huge park (almost 100 acres) with lots of connecting and well maintained trails. It’s one of Jack’s favorite places to go, but unlike our woods at home I won’t allow my boy off-leash here because of the threat of coyotes. We’ve never seen one ourselves, but there are signs posted at every entrance to the park advising extreme caution and noting that they’ve been spotted in the area. My husband grew up near the park and we’ve been taking our dogs to it for about 15 years and this is the first time we’ve seen such warnings. That probably means there’s an established population of coyotes. And why not? The park is exactly like their natural environment and it’s filled with their natural prey plus it has the added bonus of human leavings. As their environments shrink or die all animals, including large predators, will move ever closer to populated areas just trying to eke out a life and avoid extinction. I think they have as much right to the land as we do. Maybe more. At least they’re not destroying the planet.
Malbaie Salt Marsh
This is part of the Malbaie Salt Marsh which is a federally protected nature conservancy. The marsh is the largest natural lagoon in Quebec and is an important habitat for over 200 species of birds and 25 species of fish. It’s also an important location for migrating birds. This photo was taken at low tide and you can just see the sandbar in the background that separates the marsh from the ocean. At high tide there are gaps in the sandbar which allow the fresh and salt waters to mix.
Last one, from Nightjar. Click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
What a beauty, from Nightjar. Click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
From Nightjar, click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
From Nightjar, a breathtaking shot, click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
Stunning shots from Nightjar, click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
IV treatment helps Pillalamarri live another day. Courtesy of District Administration, Mahabubnagar.
An amazing story, this.
If the roughly 800-year-old banyan tree in Mahabubnagar, India, could talk, it would probably tell you the IV inserted in its branches is saving its life. Termites infested the tree, reportedly one of the oldest in India, and gradually chipped away at its wood until the poor banyan was near the brink of death. Last December, some of the tree’s branches fell down because of the infestation, resulting in officials closing the attraction to the public.
Known as Pillalamarri because of its many interweaving branches, the banyan tree measures 405 feet from east to west and 408 feet from north to south, according to Mahabubnagar District Forest Officer Chukka Ganga Reddy. The crown of Pillalamarri extends to 1,263 feet and the tree is spread across nearly four acres. Underneath the tree stands a small shrine that supposedly dates back to the year 1200, but the tree’s exact age is unclear. Nevertheless, calling the Ficus benghalensis a great banyan tree would be an understatement.
Pillalamarri’s branches bend close to the soil. Courtesy of District Administration, Mahabubnagar.
Such greatness attracts 12,000 tourists per year from every corner of the country to awe at its sheer vastness, but this tourism has also caused some troubles for the tree. According to Telangana Today, when Pillalamarri turned into a tourist attraction nearly a decade ago, the state government cut down branches and built concrete sitting areas around the tree for tourists. Tourists picked at the leaves, climbed on the branches, and carved names into the bark. Furthermore, to keep the area clean, the grounds team burned fallen leaves, which was bad for the soil. A recently installed dam on a neighboring stream restricted water flow to the tree.
I will never understand the pointless destructiveness humans indulge in. A 700 year old living being should, at the very least, garner some respect.
…Officials initially injected the trunk with the pesticide chlorpyrifos, but saw no improvement. So they tried another method to prevent decay: hundreds of saline bottles filled with chlorpyrifos, inserted into Pillalamarri’s branches.
“This process has been effective,” Reddy told the Times of India. “Secondly, we are watering the roots with the diluted solution to kill the termites. And in a physical method, we are building concrete structures to support the collapsing heavy branches.”
…Despite the tree’s stable prospects, the public won’t be seeing Pillalamarri any time soon. When they do visit in the future, “this time people have to see it from a distance away from the barricades,” said Reddy. For now, drip-by-drip, the banyan tree’s health is returning to its former glory.
What a shame that all those who would show proper respect won’t be able to do so anymore. I’m impressed and happy that a way to treat Pillalamarri has been found, and profoundly sad and disappointed by the people who were so damn destructive. It doesn’t speak well of humans at all.
A Mallee emuwren: it has the advantage of being objectively adorable. Photograph: Dean Ingwersen/BirdLife Australia.
People who get into dinosaur watching are always happy to see all birds, even all the hosts of the little brown ones. The Guardian has an interesting article up about endangered birds, and unfortunately, the little brown birds get overlooked in the race to preserve the more colourful ones.
In January 2016, a keen birdwatcher named Dion Hobcroft walked into the Pegarah state forest on Tasmania’s King Island with a recorded birdcall and took the first blurry photographs of the King Island brown thornbill.
The brown thornbill, Acanthiza pusilla archibaldi, is a subspecies of the Tasmanian thornbill, distinguished from its cousins on the big island by a slightly longer beak.
It is about 10cm long, coloured various shades of brown, and thoroughly unexciting to the untrained eye. Hobcroft’s was only the fourth confirmed sighting since 1974.
According to a forthcoming review of Australia’s avian threatened species programs, the King Island brown thornbill is most likely to be the next bird to be declared extinct.
It shares the podium with the King Island scrubtit, Acanthornis magnus greenianus, which, with a population of fewer than 50 adults spread across three isolated areas of ever-shrinking melaleuca swamp, is No 3 on the list.
The orange-bellied parrot, which stops off on King Island on its precarious annual flight from south-western Tasmania to the Victorian coast, and has a wild adult population of fewer than 20 individuals, is the second.
The difference is, you have probably heard of the orange-bellied parrot. As of Wednesday, it had garnered more than 1,700 votes in the Guardian’s bird of the year poll, and last year a crowdfunding campaign raised $140,000 to fund fieldwork during its breeding season. The thornbill didn’t make the list.
Bryan Fischer has come up with a novel case for being pro-death penalty: hey, good for the environment!
While making what he claimed was a biblical case for the death penalty on his radio program yesterday, Bryan Fischer said that executing criminals is something that environmentalists should support because that is the only process through which the land can be cleansed of “pollution.”
Citing Numbers 35, Fischer declared that “the land is polluted and defiled by murder; when innocent blood is shed, the land is polluted.”
As per usual with christians, one verse is selected while ignoring the larger context. Numbers 35 is all about building cities, and how murderers can flee to said cities and find refuge, until they are properly judged for their act and the revenger (nearest kin to the murdered person) is allowed to kill them. There’s a whole lot about how only the revenger can be the one to administer capital punishment. Basically, this is a chapter detailing the rules and manners of being bloodthirsty, and where you are allowed to spill blood, and where you aren’t. Miss Manners for killers.
Also, Mr. Fischer doesn’t seem to be overly concerned by the difference between literal and figurative. One particular definition of pollution does not automatically apply to the other definitions. I’d urge you to look at a dictionary, could be right helpful.
“If you’re an environmentalist and you care about the pollution of the land of the United States of America, then you want to see murder stopped and you want to see murder avenged,” Fischer said. “You want to see justice done in the case of murder because Moses says in verse 33, ‘No atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it except by the blood of the one who shed it.’ So if we want to see our land cleansed from the pollution of the shedding of innocent blood, it’s not just enough to lock people up for the rest of their lives.”
Well, if all it takes to clean up the environment is to condemn all those who have spilled blood, that’s an outright condemnation of every human on the planet, given our constant wars and all; not one society has ever stood up and said “nope, we refuse. no war.” Going by biblical standards, just being unhappy with wars isn’t enough, so we all need to die. Granted, that would do wonders for the environment. Let’s agree that’s not a great solution though, especially as you wouldn’t be able to get everyone on board with that idea.
If you’re going to stick with Numbers, then only the closest kin of those murdered can carry out executions, and those executions must be done in specific cities, at specific times. Good luck with that one, Mr. Fischer. If you want to insist on this spilt blood is the worst pollution ever, and you believe in Jehovah, then your target is clear: kill that fucking god of yours, because as killers go, it would be one of the worst.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve recommended Drunk With Blood by Steve Wells, but if you haven’t read it, please do. If you’re a christian, don’t be afraid of it, nothing but bible in it (KJV too), with a bit of clarifying commentary. What it will do is drive home the sheer awfulness of this god, the absolute lack of consistency anywhere in the bible, and the sheer delight this fiendish creation of a god takes in being a bloodthirsty psychopath with all the restraint of sugar-loaded toddler.
Via RWW.
A shipwreck from the medieval period, of a type known from literature but never previously seen, was discovered during an underwater survey of the Black Sea this past summer. UConn researcher Kroum Batchvarov says seeing it for the first time was ‘a truly thrilling moment.’ (Courtesy of Kroum Batchvarov).
While conducting their mapping in late summer using the most advanced underwater survey equipment in the world, Batchvarov and his colleagues discovered a total of 43 shipwrecks. The team had expected to see sunken ships, but were surprised at just what they found.
An Ottoman period shipwreck with well preserved wood carvings. The images, which show the shipwrecks in three dimensions, were produced by a process known as photogrammetry. It combines photographs and videos taken by cameras mounted on remotely operated vehicles with distance measurements produced by sonars. (Courtesy of Kroum Batchvarov).
Batchvarov first spotted the well preserved medieval shipwreck on a screen in the control room of the expedition ship after nearly 48 hours of monitoring images from the high remote survey vehicle moving along the floor of the Black Sea.
“That was a truly thrilling moment. We spent the next six hours looking at the wreck. No one had ever seen anything like it,” he says. “We had known of it. There have been descriptions in Venetian manuscripts that survived from the 15th century describing earlier vessels. But this was the first time that we were seeing it.”
The ship was complete, according to Batchvarov: “The masts were still standing. You could see the spars [wooden poles], the yards on deck. Everything was there.”
[…]
The vessels the Black Sea MAP team discovered date over the course of a millennium, from the 9th to the 19th centuries. Many were merchant ships from the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries, mostly from the 18th century. But the medieval ship – dating from the 13th to the mid-14th century and probably of Mediterranean origin – provides the first view of a ship type known from historical sources but never before seen.
[…]
While analysis of the shipwrecks is ongoing, the team continues with its intended purpose, investigating the area for evidence of how humans reacted to changes in the environment in previous eras.
“We are answering an archaeological question: At what stage did the level of the Black Sea change and what once would have been marshy coastal land become inhabitable and then become inundated?” Batchvarov says, noting that the team’s findings could add to previous studies on catastrophic flooding in the Black Sea region.
