Posts by Biodiversivist
February 25, 2010
Esteros del Ibera—Buenos Aires, Argentina
By Biodiversivist | Posted on February 25, 2010
To get to this wildlife preserve from Seattle, fly for about 15 hours to Buenos Aires. Rent a car, load it with your family and drive North toward Brazil for a day or so to a small town called Collinia Carlos Pellegrini where you will find a dirt road. Drive down that dirt road for three hours. Cross a rickety one-lane wooden bridge.
September 17, 2009
Cougar Sign
By Biodiversivist | Posted on September 17, 2009
I found the above photo on the Flickr Commons. It was taken at a trail head somewhere in California. A cougar was recently removed from a Seattle park just a few miles from where I live:
August 9, 2009
Teenage Mutant Frog
By Biodiversivist | Posted on August 9, 2009
While on a hike in the Adirondacks last week, my wife and youngest daughter took this picture of what should be a green frog.
July 19, 2009
The Giving Tree
By Biodiversivist | Posted on July 19, 2009
If you have children, you are probably familiar with The Giving Tree. Our version is a Stella cherry tree. My neighbor, Farmer Breakfield, allowed me to plant it on his property in the side yard between our houses way back when my first born was not yet a year old. It was just a stick, barely eight feet high. He was a good neighbor and ate many a cherry from that tree before passing on.
My wife and I were having dinner on our front porch the other day watching the starlings and crows that had descended on Stella (the name given to this tree by my daughters) when suddenly, like a cannon shot going off, a hawk attacked. The birds exploded out of the tree and within a second or so there was dead silence. Over Lake Union the flock of forty or fifty starlings was weaving through the air in an evasive maneuver, looking very much like a school of black fish. The crows had disappeared.
June 30, 2009
The Michael Jackson Bird
By Biodiversivist | Posted on June 30, 2009
Got a laugh when I saw this video over on Grist tonight. It was made in 2006 but is starting to draw a lot of hits lately. Just thought I’d share it.
June 28, 2009
Costa Rica Adventure—Part I
By Biodiversivist | Posted on June 28, 2009
Eco tourism is great but doesn’t scale well. There just are not enough tourists around to save the whole planet. I’m hoping effective carbon trading schemes will be worked out that will make it profitable to protect ecosystems. Time will tell.
My family took a trip to Costa Rica a few years ago. I was like a kid in a candy store and shot a lot of (poor) footage. Don’t expect National Geographic quality. I have never posted it on the Internet so I thought it was time I did. I will be writing about the trip in sections with new wildlife footage in each post. Today’s footage covers reptiles. I didn’t see any snakes. All of the lizard footage was taken on the wonderfully overgrown grounds of the rundown hotel we stayed in. Eleven species were found on about a single acre of land. Biodiversity is a hallmark of tropical rainforests.