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With telescopic camera
Apr. 21st, 2014 08:47 pm
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 13. High today: 19.
I dunno what the heck these things are--
--but a) they sure look like fish, b) they are tiny, probably less than a centimetre long (which is why they're so blurry), and c) they were swimming around in a puddle at York. (ETA: over on the eljay side, kest and her omniscient boyfriend have solved the mystery: they are fairy shrimp! This is extremely surprising and pleasing. :D ) I mean, a big puddle that has been standing for a while, but still. I actually stopped to look at this puddle because I thought I might've seen a waterstrider on it, which I wouldn't have even thought of if I hadn't seen waterstriders on a puddle in a park last year. (I learned a couple of weeks ago that backswimmers fly. (And also that they bite, and also that they are backswimmers. I looked them up after taking some pictures of what until then I could only have called "water beetles" and noticing that they swim upside down.) And, well, how about that, waterstriders can fly, too, or at least some of them can, sometimes.) This puddle also had lots of (actual) water beetles beetling around in it, and lots more insect (I presume mosquito) larvae. Funny thing is, I used to idly look around for fish in puddles like this one that were standing in a park near my highschool--I would examine them as if they were lakes and I was looking at them from way above, imagining the submerged grass was water weed. I think I used to ponder putting goldfish in these big puddles. Not that I ever would've done that to goldfish, but how awesome would it be to see goldfish in a puddle in a park? (All right, it'd be kinda awful. But also kinda awesome.)
Also under the heading of "What the heck is that?", there is this:
Lots of these things are sprouting in one of the woodlots on campus. The leaves suggest they're some kind of tree suckers, but I've sure never seen any kind of tree sprout with fully formed leaves like that.
Seagull letting a red-tailed hawk know that it is not actually at the top of the food chain:
In my last ... or maybe second-last ... Heidegger class, I was facing the long wall of windows in the 8th-floor classroom and saw a vulture come swooping in. I pointed it out and one of the students said he didn't know there were vultures around here. It's rife with vultures around here:
And the bugs were warmed up today, and all the hungry pollinators were back at the pussy willows--
--among other early bloomers:
But it's going to cool off again over the next couple of days. The forecasts suggest the weather is planning to remain difficult for some time. Might as well, everything else is.
I dunno what the heck these things are--
--but a) they sure look like fish, b) they are tiny, probably less than a centimetre long (which is why they're so blurry), and c) they were swimming around in a puddle at York. (ETA: over on the eljay side, kest and her omniscient boyfriend have solved the mystery: they are fairy shrimp! This is extremely surprising and pleasing. :D ) I mean, a big puddle that has been standing for a while, but still. I actually stopped to look at this puddle because I thought I might've seen a waterstrider on it, which I wouldn't have even thought of if I hadn't seen waterstriders on a puddle in a park last year. (I learned a couple of weeks ago that backswimmers fly. (And also that they bite, and also that they are backswimmers. I looked them up after taking some pictures of what until then I could only have called "water beetles" and noticing that they swim upside down.) And, well, how about that, waterstriders can fly, too, or at least some of them can, sometimes.) This puddle also had lots of (actual) water beetles beetling around in it, and lots more insect (I presume mosquito) larvae. Funny thing is, I used to idly look around for fish in puddles like this one that were standing in a park near my highschool--I would examine them as if they were lakes and I was looking at them from way above, imagining the submerged grass was water weed. I think I used to ponder putting goldfish in these big puddles. Not that I ever would've done that to goldfish, but how awesome would it be to see goldfish in a puddle in a park? (All right, it'd be kinda awful. But also kinda awesome.)
Also under the heading of "What the heck is that?", there is this:
Lots of these things are sprouting in one of the woodlots on campus. The leaves suggest they're some kind of tree suckers, but I've sure never seen any kind of tree sprout with fully formed leaves like that.
Seagull letting a red-tailed hawk know that it is not actually at the top of the food chain:
In my last ... or maybe second-last ... Heidegger class, I was facing the long wall of windows in the 8th-floor classroom and saw a vulture come swooping in. I pointed it out and one of the students said he didn't know there were vultures around here. It's rife with vultures around here:
And the bugs were warmed up today, and all the hungry pollinators were back at the pussy willows--
--among other early bloomers:
But it's going to cool off again over the next couple of days. The forecasts suggest the weather is planning to remain difficult for some time. Might as well, everything else is.
