April 11th, 2007
just a couple of things
Today I’m just going to post a couple of things that may be of interest to some of you. I might have written more today, but I’m feeling a little “talked out” after last night’s slide presentation to the Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club down at the Canadian Museum of Nature. For those who are curious, I believe it went quite well. I did a quick count while waiting to speak and there were about 50 people in attendance. I talked and showed slides pertaining to nature photography for about an hour — how to use photography as part of one’s study of nature — then answered questions for another half hour or so. There were lots of good questions about cameras, techniques and how to work around insects and other creatures. However, being the hermit that I am, I’m not accustomed to speaking for extended periods of time. In the course of a day, I don’t speak a heck of a lot, so an hour and a half of almost non-stop talking seems very long indeed!
* Okay, first item up: Yesterday, I received an email asking permission to use the above image of mating craneflies on an very nice insects website that I didn’t know about — The Crane Flies of Pennsylvania. As anyone who has tried to ID crane flies will know, they’re a bit difficult and I wasn’t aware that there was such a nice resource online. I’ve just added the link to the Fly Identification Page on my main website as it may come in handy for anyone participating in the Blogger Bioblitz here in the northeast at the end of April. By the way, Chen was able to tell me that the above pair of mating craneflies are Tipula (Lunatipula) disjuncta.
* Next item: Dave at Via Negativa sent along an interesting link to add to the Citizen Science project page. It’s for a new initiative that goes by the name, Project Budburst. It’s a site where participants can record their observations on the leafing and flowering of trees and flowers in their area. Submitted data can then be used to track such things as climate change, plant phenology, etc. It looks interesting, so do check it out.
Tags: Project Budburst, The Crane Flies of Pennsylvania, Tipula (Lunitipula) dijuncta