Sunday, February 19, 2006
Today marks the return of the robin to Mystic. Large voracious flocks of them have descended on the berries and trees here. I tried counting them, but they were flitting to and fro in large numbers. At one point there were at least 25 stripping the remaining berries from the 4 or 5 small holly bushes along our front walk area.
We’ve always loved Robins, but ever since Idaho they have had a very special place in our hearts. They nested right outside our window and let us watch them raise two broods of chicks. In part it was all the more exciting as it was confirmation of our efforts to rehabilitate the backyard environment where we lived. We still have the time-lapse video we took. Two years of hard work paid off with the Robins, hummers, hummingbird moths and many others.
Like the Robins our activity here has been a bit sparse. Hopefully that will pick up a bit. We do have a couple of entries in the wings and we’ld like to catch aeveryone up on our doings over the late fall and winter. It’s been busy — some good, a little bad — basically life…Abundantly.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Johann: Daddy, what did you learn at school today?
Me: Mostly we learned about ocean sediments and sedimentary rocks.
Johann: What did you learn about sentamental ewoks?
Me & Tammy: …..snarfing and rolling on the floor laughing…
Wow! Rumors of this have flown around before only to be squashed, but now it looks to be the real deal. Adobe has announced it will be buying Macromedia. It will be interesting to see the fallout of this one, especially as the two companies have a number of directly competing products, many of which I (and most graphic & web designers) own.
Another brief “word of the day” entry:
- Philopatry —
- The tendency of an individual to return to, or stay in, its home area or another adopted locality, as opposed to nonreturning roaming behavior or simple dispersal away from home areas. Most philopatry research has concentrated on the homing behavior of migratory birds, but it now appears that many animal species display some degree of philopatric behavior. Derived from the Greek for “home-loving.”
Word and definition found through a research paper by Dr R. E. Hueter and Dr. M. R. Heupel, marine scientists at Mote Marine Laboratory’s Center for Shark Research.
Courtesy of a 4 year old’s curiosity at the Aquarium yesterday comes the word of the day:
- Madreporite — măd-rә-pôr-īt
- A perforated plate in echinoderms (including starfish, sea cucumbers and urchins) through which water is filtered and admitted to the animal’s water vascular system — essentially a hydraulic system to control their feet. You can see the madreporite of the short-spined sea star, Pisaster brevispinus at the BioMedia Galleries. The term madreporite is a derivative of Madreporaria, the order (hard corals) which brain corals belong to. The madreporite of many sea stars resembles brain corals in miniature.
