An amazing-looking planaria (Bipalium sp.) It is just so cool.
 Looks like a stick insect, but could be a couple other things. Here is the latest in my sporadic effort to put up pictures I've published. The National Speleological Society has made a huge effort to get much of its historical content online, and the Karst Portal is a big part of that. So, if you have never read my account of a trip to look at cave bats in Jamaica, now is your chance! And it's actually not a bad read... Go to: http://www.karstportal.org/FileStorage/NSS_news/2005-v063-009.pdf and you can read the original article. The front cover, the back cover, and one of the full color pages in the middle are all my photos that go along with the many black and white photos in the article itself. And for fun, here is the shot I did NOT use for the cover. It just seemed that having two grown adults standing in practically sewage water covered in way stinky mud and stuff best not described in great detail...laughing at a joke one of the off-frame cavers made just wasn't the mood I was looking for.  While the great blue heron was my main focus, this heron was also in the zone. 
Green heron in the weeds.
Green heron up close.
Somehow this post got saved to my drafts folder instead of published yesterday. So, this is actually the set of photos that should be dated Oct. 15, but such is what such is. Either way, I took a few heron photos yesterday and thought they were up.  A great blue heron at Burke Lake, in northern Virginia, US.  going fishing  Caught one!  The heron tossing the fish to get it ready to swallow.  The weird neck fluffing thing after each fishing attempt. 
Gecko from Borneo in the Sarawak area.
These critters are fairly common around the Sarawak, Borneo forests. And while I have an ID somewhere in my files, I can't find it right now. So just a pic for today's blog post.
 This rather striking butterfly is from the Sarawak area of the island of Borneo (the Malaysian side). Borneo has great critters, and I really should put up a lot more pics from this area. But hard to give IDs on such things, as I am not an expert on Borneo invertebrates.
While I reduce my photos a lot to keep the blog readable by folks without massive connection speeds, of late they have only been visible at the even more reduced size that the software puts up.
The good news is that I finally figured out how to let you click on the photos to see them at the size I made them for the blog, which while isn't a huge difference, often gives a much better look at the photo. So click on the photos to see them just a bit better! I have gone back and done this for all the photos since the software upgrade From the technical end, this was a silly bit. There is a box with the label "lightbox" in the options for doing things to photos on the website. I tried clicking this earlier with no real result, and it didn't seem logical that a "lightbox" would make my photos clickable for a larger result. But, by turning on the "lightbox" the photos are, in fact, now clickable.  Beech Drops (Epiphagus virginiana) from Burke Lake Park in northeastern Virginia Beech drops (Epifagus virginiana) is a wild flower with an unusual twist. It has no chlorophyll, and thus is not green. It is parasitic on the roots of beech trees. Generally considered not harmful to the trees, it sucks the sap from the tree roots, thus making it saprophytic in the jargon.
Found generally across the eastern United States, it is not really rare, just that most people don't recognize it as a wild flower, and well, mostly ignore it as it is not showy by any means. The flowers in this photo are a foot tall or a little better, and were found at Burke Lake Park in northern Virginia. |
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