The honey locust tree some blocks from here is dropping pods:Years ago, in Vienna, I saw carob pods sold as "Johannisbrot", evidently from a tradition that these were the "locusts" John the Baptist ate in the desert. The OED gives as its fourth definition of locust "a. The fruit of the carob tree; a locust-bean. b. A cassia-pod, the fruit of Cassia fistula.", going on to say(The Gr. name ἀκρίς, properly denoting the insect, is applied in the Levant to the carob-pod, from some resemblance in…

After yesterday’s post about the pear crop there must have been more wind in the night and I went out to find that the baby pear tree (Red Williams I think) had lost a branch, laden with majestic pears. Poor baby tree. It will recover though. In the mean time I have a little glut of gigantic unripe pears to contend with. Recipe ideas incoming.

Spoiled. Rotten. There’s no other reasonable way to describe the feeling that washed over me as Andre Lafferma guided the metallic blue Bell Jet Ranger II helicopter off the gravel bar, elevated into the cold, gray sky, and disappeared into the rain-blurred ether. Light three passengers and some fly-fishing gear, the chopper climbed to the lip of the river canyon, topped the spruce and cedar trees that reached to the slate-gray heavens, and, just like that, we were alone on a remote,…

The rising sun appears through new holes in the forest understory just after it tops the ridge. Crows and jays are in an uproar over a young peregrine falcon, who hangs around for a couple of hours, periodically giving chase to its most obnoxious persecutors until they all find better things to do elsewhere.

I'm quite sure I will not reach the summit, but I toil on the slope. Sailing. Shop skills. Engineering skills. The view is improving every year. As for understanding people and cultures, I'm not far above the canyon, but at least I know that.

School of striped mullet in Pacific waters of Mexico 15 October 2026 Striped mullet, also called flathead grey mullet, (Mugil cephalus) are coastal fish with a worldwide distribution. Adult mullet spend the summer in freshwater rivers and estuaries, then migrate to warm saltwater spawning grounds in the fall. Historical biogeography of the Mugil cephalus species complex and its rapid global colonization (map from Science Direct) Because they’re good food for predators mullet travel in tight…

Although it sounds like another big fish story, Great Big Nature’s naturalist, Brian Keating, recently snorkelled with about 100 big mature Bull trout out near Banff, Alberta., Canada! The Bull trout is Alberta’s official Provincial fish. Its populations have been in serious decline for decades and are now a threatened species. “It was tricky ‘sneaking’ up to the fish to observe them (they were easily spooked), but we found the best way was to swim up-wind, and allow the breeze to gently blow…

Chiricahua may soon become a national park. But will increased tourism bring the resources needed to protect it? Some thoughts on industrial tourism and public lands. Read More ... Continue reading Brave New Industrial Tourism – Chiricahua National Park at PMags.com.

Our littlest maple has gone all red.

3703 Saint Helena Highway, Calistoga, California 94515, United States

As with the previous post, the images here are not arranged chronologically. That’s how the fall colors develop … in no particular order. There might be some green mixed in here, and then trees that are past their prime there. I’ve included a few intimate landscapes of aspen arrangements that caught my eye. And, with … Continue reading More Autumn!

17. Top deck dazzler, Clerkenwell 18. Tolkien’s Yews, Stow-On-The-World 19. The Major Oak, Sherwood Forest 20. The Bee Tree, Sherwood Forest 21. Stumpy, Sherwood Forest 22. Parliament Oak, Sherwood Forest 23. Newton’s Apple, Woolsthorpe

• 3-star hike • 4 mile loop • Easy | Gain 270 feet • Merrimack, NH | Merrimack Region . Reflections on Lastowka Pond. The Horse Hill Nature Preserve's Loop Trail provides a great representative tour of the park, guiding you past the property's woods, ponds, and wetlands. Despite the park's name we didn't observe any horseback riders on the trails, though it does appear to be particularly popular with local dog walkers. The route winds around several large ponds where you can see lily pads and…

Eternal life. Phacelia tanacetifolia grew on this area of the allotment and self-seeded. Under a tarpaulin under a wheel barrow a few of the seeds were exposed to light and water where the tarp was torn. That was enough for them to germinate.

Source Northern Gannet North Bay, Ingonish After my gannet post last month this is a good follow up pic. Prior gannett mentions.

Solar Dynamics Observatory Limb darkening observed during the transit of Venus. The Sun is so intensely bright we can’t safely look at it directly. We need a filter to block much of its light. And when we do, we can start to see some interesting features. Sunspots are one of these features, and the ebb and flow of their numbers has been studied for centuries. But a more subtle feature is that the edge of the Sun appears less bright than its central region. It’s an effect known as limb…

Trees emerge from the waters of Oklahoma’s Broken Bow Lake. The post Come Out of the Water appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

The elk you see here, Cervus canadensis, belongs to a lineage stretching deep into the Pleistocene—a time when ice sheets advanced and retreated across much of North America, reshaping landscapes and every living thing within them.Elk are members of the family Cervidae, a group that first appeared in the fossil record during the Early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. These early deer

Red Wings used for what Red Wings are for.

Warm and breezy at sunrise. One katydid is still calling, as if reluctant to see the end of what could be the katydids’ last big party night of the year. Two yellow walnut leaves land on my laptop.

Church CrawlingWalk 23 from the new Cicerone book finds me on a butterfly trail. Seems a bit cheeky stealing the council's work to put in a walking book. Just like blogging about it, I suppose. A publicly available PDF showing the exact same route.ConservationInformation on the groundThe PDF tells you all you need to know about the Brown Hairstreak - including the conversation work to perfectly maintain their required environment. Hawthorn hedgerow management taken seriously in this part of…

One of the most interesting of anuran groups – in my humble opinion – is Hyloidea, also known as Hyloides…. Caption: a montage of hyloid frogs relevant to this article. From left to right: a young Helmeted water frog (or toad) or Gay’s water frog Calyptocephalella gayi, an australobatrachian, Southern cricket frog Acris gryllus, a hylid, and Common toad Bufo bufo, a bufonid. Images: Asiel Olivares, CC BY 4.0 (original here); Stephen Friedt, CC BY-SA 3.0 (original here); Darren Naish. As you…

There is a certain residence in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, right on the border with Carroll Gardens, which regularly displays large inflatable holiday and seasonal decorations. As far as holidays go, we have covered in these pages its offerings for Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, Easter and St. Patrick’s Day. Having collected all the photographs for those articles since 2023, I would have certainly shared an inflatable Halloween offering had I seen one. But it was not until the…

A recent photo of the Marunouchi entrance to Tokyo Station (1914) in the afternoon sun. 午後の日差しを浴びた、東京駅丸の内口（1914年竣工）の最近撮影された写真。

Greater flamingos in the lagoons of Vendicari. Black liner pen and watercolor. Along the Ionian coast, in the far southeastern corner of Sicily, Vendicari is one of the few places on the island still largely untouched: salt pans, shallow lagoons, a big blue-eyed dragonfly with the wrong name, and flamingos stretching out so far they become strokes of pink and white. It is a good place to think about citrus before we started arranging it to suit us. Part V of The Citrus Kingdom goes back eight…

BB crawled in to AB’s bed at wakeup time to cuddle. Had a long walk around Prospect Park with AB this morning. Perfect temperature. She is VERY in to acorns. Walked about 1.3 miles, which is pretty good going for her little legs.

Beachgoers on a windy, overcast day at Pacific City Beach, Oregon. The post Kite Flyer appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the climate crisis and how it’s part of a larger collapse of ecosystems, like how insect populations in Germany have declined by 75% in the last quarter century, how populations of large predatory fish have declined by 90% in the last century, how the Amazon is nearing a tipping point where it may cease to be a jungle, and so on. Did you hear about the UK government report on ecosystem collapse? It was created not only by the environment department…

Almost five years ago, I posted a photo of this Milo tree (here). It had been planted as a shade tree and there was a picnic table beside it. However, the tree had grown with a 90° bend, a result of the strong winds that blow here. A few days ago, I went for a walk on the coast there, for the first time in ages, and this is what I saw. I’m assuming the tree was pruned like this in the hope that new growth would be in a more normal direction. I doubt that will happen, though the winds aren’t as…