Rebecca Lexa, Naturalist @rebeccathenaturalist - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag

Rebecca Lexa, Naturalist

@rebeccathenaturalist

Master Naturalist, Nature Educator & Writer, Author of "The Everyday Naturalist: How to Identify Animals, Plants and Fungi Wherever You Go" (Ten Speed Press, Summer 2025); PNW Nature Tour Guide, All-Around Nature Nerd. AuDHD. Reblogs, OC, Weekly Deep Dives Into Natural History Topics - Asks Open! http://www.rebeccalexa.com - http://ko-fi.com/rebeccathenaturalist

7,329 posts

Posts

flyingiseasy-landingnotsomuch

A painted sky resting on an endless ocean.

Bandon Beach, Oregon / 2026

deadmotelsusa

I resisted making a Dead Motels USA Facebook since starting this Tumblr in 2018.

Until a few days ago when I started receiving messages about a fake Facebook page that was stealing my posts and reposting them as their own. They had amassed 25k followers pretending to be me.

Ngl, it felt really weird to watch in real time as someone went through all my photos and videos, took my years of research, revised all my handwritten captions with AI and got millions of views from every nostalgic boomer on the internet.

So I went ahead and reported them for impersonation (all posts have been removed, thankfully) and made a Facebook to combat that happening again in the future.

I'd appreciate it if you would follow the page I made.

https://www.facebook.com/deadmotelsusa

Love you guys. Currently deep in research with new content for you all. More to come soon!

there-is-a-way-forward

bumblebeeappletree

[Photo ID: a screenshot of the 2016 film Moana during the “You’re Welcome” song where Maui is on Moana’s boat. It has the captions of the lyrics but the “you’re welcome” has been edited over with a black box with new white text over it.

What can I say except It is still possible to save the environment, there is still hope and we must try

/END ID]

there-is-a-way-forward

bumblebeeappletree

[Photo ID: a screenshot of the 2016 film Moana during the “You’re Welcome” song where Maui is on Moana’s boat. It has the captions of the lyrics but the “you’re welcome” has been edited over with a black box with new white text over it.

What can I say except It is still possible to save the environment, there is still hope and we must try

/END ID]

waspdaily

Today's wasp of the day is Orasema occidentalis!

Credits: photo 1, photo 2

Many wasps that specialize in parasitizing ants are phoretic; that is, they hitch a ride on an ant without their notice so that they can infiltrate their colony. That still has it's risks of discovery though, and so wasps of the genus Orasema go an extra step sneakier. They hide in the ant's food. It's hypothesized that these wasps lay their eggs in close association with thrips in order to use them as intermediate hosts. The ants collect the thrips as prey, unknowingly bringing the stowaway wasps with them.

waspdaily

I like her back grooves and subtle colors :)

mammalianmammals

Cottontail Rabbits in combat!!! - TX, USA

photograph by Hector D. Astorga

whalesharkcat

they're in a two circle flow

alphynix

I keep forgetting I still have unposted PBS Eons work, so let's have a little bit more of that this week:

• The polydolopimorphian metatherian Wamradolops and the paucituberculatan marsupial Perulestes from "When the Amazon Flowed Backwards"

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NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

brian4rmthe6

stamp-svc

Preservation of Polar Regions and Glaciers, Hungary, 2009

feather-bone

grizzly and friends and food :) this will be the postcard for creature club in June!

alookseeblog

assemblyglassworks

wenevergotusedtoegypt

Do you think it's immoral to use chatgpt for college assignments? I think it's unfortunately unavoidable.

It is absolutely immoral, completely counterproductive to the goal of learning things, and turns out incredibly subpar work.

As for unavoidable….you understand that the vast majority of people who have ever graduated college throughout history did so without ever once using AI, right? You understand that?

wenevergotusedtoegypt

You understand that the point of writing papers isn’t just to have a paper with words on it, right? You understand that the entire point is to do the mental work necessary to put your learning into organized words, such that you actually learn it? And that if you outsource that to AI you are not learning?

We started a new project in the weekly metalworking class today! We're practicing metal piercing, and I'm liking it a lot better than I thought I would. These three pieces will be sweat soldered together like a sandwich, with the copper tree in the back, the brass tree in the middle, and then the copper stag on top. I think I want to refine the stag's muzzle a bit more, since he looks rather moose-ish.

I also dropped the trillium pendant from my weekend class into the pickle longer to get the rest of the carbonization off of it. It still obviously needs a lot of filing and polishing, but you can see some of the brass peeking through on the petals.

I will admit that at the end of my very first class weeks ago, I had my doubts as to whether I was going to actually enjoy all this. I kept breaking saw blades. Sawing corners was really difficult. I wasn't good at precise lines. But by the end of the second class, when I had successfully soldered those tiny, imperfect bits of metal together, I felt like I had accomplished something.

And now here we are, a month in, and I'm already working on my second sweat-soldered statement necklace, I have four little rings waiting for next week's class on polishing and refining, and I'm looking forward to moving someplace this fall that has an actual outdoor space where I could do my own soldering at home.

I am SO glad I enrolled in these classes.

#metalsmithing #metalworking #metalcrafting #jewelry crafting #metal crafting #nature #trees #stag #red deer #trillium #wildflowers #nature aesthetic #naturecore

wildjunebugs

a walk after the storm

powerfulwizard

I had a dream last night that I ran away from fascists and ended up at this farm that was full of this weird but very large prehistoric animal that was like a fluffy Tapir and I want to know if it actually exists. It was about the size of a Dairy Cow.