Science
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Species at risk
The appearance of this news item on the CBC’s site was especially timely in light of my last post. Some of my readers, I know, are wondering how an animal that has been in the news a lot, as a threatened species, can be hunted. Some of my readers I know, wonder how any animal
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Circus of the Spineless
By far, the most successful group of animals on our planet are the invertebrates. In terms of both sheer numbers and biomass we animals with spines just cannot compare. The current edition of the carnival that celebrates these spineless creatures just happens to be hosted by one of my favourite bird bloggers, John over at
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Look! Up in the sky, its… its… what the heck is it?
Sunday morning, something streaked across the sky in Arctic Bay. I didn’t see it myself I was, uh, sleeping. But a friend called me to ask if I knew what it was. Speculation was that it was the errant US spy satellite brought down early, but that didn’t seem plausible. In the different versions I’ve
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A Citizen Science Challenge
The Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up. This annual event (this is the eleventh) is put on by Audubon and Cornell, and takes place on the 15th to 18th of February this year. Traditionally participation in Nunavut has been low, which is not really surprising given the dearth of species in Nunavut in February.
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And the award for “Best title of a scientific paper” goes to…
Female-limited polymorphism in the copulatory organ of a traumatically inseminating insect. The runner up is…One-sided ejaculation of echidna sperm bundles. Just go to Bootstrap Analysis for the explanation. You should be going there regularly anyway.
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Curse you, Donald Kroodsma – a Review of Raven 1.0
One of the utilities recommended by Donald Kroodsma in his book The Singing Life of Birds is a free software program offered up by Cornell for generating sonograms. I took some time last night to download the program, Raven Lite 1.0. The full Raven Lite program is being offered free (there is also a demo
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How did this happen?
Seems like I just read all of my favourite blogs and now everyone has two or three posts up. Did I get sucked into a vortex or something? Not only that but two of them are carnivals! I really really said I was going to have a post for I and The Bird #20, seeing
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Charlie, I wish I knew ye.
It’s the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin today. No one in history has had a greater impact on the natural sciences than him, and he remains to this day an icon, a true great in the world of Science. Reading On the Origin of Species was an epiphany for me. Darwin became my hero, and
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The Circus of the Spineless
The latest edition of the wonderful invertebrate carnival, Circus of the Spineless is presented in pictures over at the always entertaining Pharyngula. If you’ve never visited Prof. P.Z. Myers’ excellent blog, take some time to explore it at it’s new location. You are sure to find this wide ranging, chephlapodcentric, reality based blog a treat.
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Some odds and ends to start the year
Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for coming to visit. I’m always a little amazed that people come and read about life up here, and I’ve met such interesting people in the last eight months since starting on this journey. Thank you for enriching my life. I plan a longer post soon, on New Years